The origins of belief representation: Monkeys fail to automatically represent others’ beliefs

Young infants’ successful performance on false belief tasks has led several researchers to argue that there may be a core knowledge system for representing the beliefs of other agents, emerging early in human development and constraining automatic belief processing into adulthood. One way to investigate this purported core belief representation system is to examine whether non-human primates share such a system. Although non-human primates have historically performed poorly on false belief tasks that require executive function capacities, little work has explored how primates perform on more automatic measures of belief processing. To get at this issue, we modified Kovács et al. (2010)’s test of automatic belief representation to examine whether one non-human primate species—the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta)—is automatically influenced by another agent’s beliefs when tracking an object’s location. Monkeys saw an event in which a human agent watched an apple move back and forth between two boxes and an outcome in which one box was revealed to be empty. By occluding segments of the apple’s movement from either the monkey or the agent, we manipulated both the monkeys’ belief (true or false) and agent’s belief (true or false) about the final location of the apple. We found that monkeys looked longer at events that violated their own beliefs than at events that were consistent with their beliefs. In contrast to human infants, however, monkeys’ expectations were not influenced by another agent’s beliefs, suggesting that belief representation may be an aspect of core knowledge unique to humans.     

Sustained attention to spontaneous thumb sensations activates brain somatosensory and other proprioceptive areas

The present experiment was designed to test if sustained attention directed to the spontaneous sensations of the right or left thumb in the absence of any external stimuli is able to activate corresponding somatosensory brain areas. After verifying in 34 healthy volunteers that external touch stimuli to either thumb effectively activate brain contralateral somatosensory areas, and after subtracting attention mechanisms employed in both touch and spontaneous-sensation conditions, fMRI evidence was obtained that the primary somatosensory cortex (specifically left BA 3a/3b) becomes active when an individual is required to attend to the spontaneous sensations of either thumb in the absence of external stimuli. In addition, the left superior parietal cortex, anterior cingulate gyrus, insula, motor and premotor cortex, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, Broca’s area, and occipital cortices were activated. Moreover, attention to spontaneous-sensations revealed an increased connectivity between BA 3a/3b, superior frontal gyrus (BA 9) and anterior cingulate cortex (BA 32), probably allowing top-down activations of primary somatosensory cortex. We conclude that specific primary somatosensory areas in conjunction with other left parieto-frontal areas are involved in processing proprioceptive and interoceptive bodily information that underlies own body-representations and that these networks and cognitive functions can be modulated by top-down attentional processes.     

Working memory retrieval differences between medial temporal lobe epilepsy patients and controls: A three memory layer approach

Multi-store models of working memory (WM) have given way to more dynamic approaches that conceive WM as an activated subset of long-term memory (LTM). The resulting framework considers that memory representations are governed by a hierarchy of accessibility. The activated part of LTM holds representations in a heightened state of activation, some of which can reach a state of immediate accessibility according to task demands. Recent neuroimaging studies have studied the neural basis of retrieval information with different states of accessibility. It was found that the medial temporal lobe (MTL) was involved in retrieving information within immediate access store and outside this privileged zone. In the current study we further explored the contribution of MTL to WM retrieval by analyzing the consequences of MTL damage to this process considering the state of accessibility of memory representations. The performance of a group of epilepsy patients with left hippocampal sclerosis in a 12-item recognition task was compared with that of a healthy control group. We adopted an embedded model of WM that distinguishes three components: the activated LTM, the region of direct access, and a single-item focus of attention. Groups did not differ when retrieving information from single-item focus, but patients were less accurate retrieving information outside focal attention, either items from LTM or items expected to be in the WM range. Analyses focused on items held in the direct access buffer showed that consequences of MTL damage were modulated by the level of accessibility of memory representations, producing a reduced capacity.     

Religion at the European Parliament: the Italian case

Italy is a predominantly Catholic country that developed historically on the basis of a strong, dominant religion and weak state institutions. Yet, openly clerical parties, direct advocates of the interests of the Catholic Church, have nowadays virtually disappeared and the relevance of the religious cleavage is decreasing, in favour of a more indirect support for these interests, mainly among moderate and conservative forces. Although the overall level of secularisation in Italy has increased, the degree of religiosity of Italian society remains one of the highest of the 27 member-states of the European Union (EU) and polarisation over religious issues in domestic politics remains high, particularly regarding moral values and family matters. In our study we explore the role of religion within the Italian political sphere with regard to the functioning of political representation, by taking into account the sub-national, national and European levels of government. We focus on the attitudes and behaviours of Italian political elites at the EU level. We hypothesise a strong influence of religion on the articulation between national and European politics. Our findings consistently show that the degree of religiosity of the Italian delegation to the European Parliament (EP) is high. However, the impact of such a high degree of religiosity among the members of the EP (MEPs) on their political activities appears less direct than one might predict, while the degree of political secularism is higher among Italian MEPs than among their national or regional counterparts. When we discuss a case study, namely the accession of Turkey to the EU, our data show that the religious attitudes of Italian MEPs play a crucial role in their stance on Turkish accession. The picture that emerges is thus nuanced. Religion significantly impacts on Italian MEPs’ ideological, political and moral attitudes, but plays a smaller role in their activities; while their left-right collocation emerges as the most relevant predictor, despite a number of exceptions.     

Thoughts on representation in therapy of Holocaust survivors1

This paper presents the problems of representation and lack of representation in treating Holocaust survivors, through clinical vignettes and various theoreticians. The years of Nazi persecution and murder brought about a destruction of symbolization and turning inner and external reality into the Thing itself, the concrete, or, in Lacan’s words, ‘The Thing’. The paper presents two ideas related to praxis as well as theory in treating Holocaust survivors: the first is related to the therapist’s treatment of the Holocaust nightmare expressing the traumatic events just as they happened 63 years previously; the second deals with the attempt at subjectification, in contrast to the objectification forced by the Nazis on their victims.     

Préservation d’une image positive de soi dans un cadre de vie « à risque »

According to social identity theory (Tajfel, 1972), individual try to maintain a positive self-image. Places at which he/she is attached contribute to identity building (Proshansky et al., 1983; Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996). Therefore, individual will try to maintain a positive a positive and stable image of such places. Our study is interested in what is the representation of their living area for individuals living in coastal area considered as exposed to erosion/flood risk, and attached to it. We are focused on how this representation influences their perception to coastal risk. We assume that individual attached to a place which he/she consider as “at risk” will put in place a strategy to preserve the positive image of this place and of himself/herself. Analyzing answers to a questionnaire, results demonstrate that individuals considering a place which they are attached as “at risk” mitigate the danger impact on that space. Thus, they conciliate probability of such negative event on place which they identifying themselves with positive image of this place and, by extension, of themselves.     

In which direction to move? Facilitative and interference effects of gestures on problem solver's thinking

Recent research shows that co-speech gestures can influence gesturers’ thought. This line of research suggests that the influence of gestures is so strong, that it can wash out and reverse an effect of learning. We argue that these findings need a more robust and ecologically valid test, which we provide in this article. Our results support the claim that gestures not only reflect information in our mental representations, but can also influence gesturer's thought by adding action information to one's mental representation during problem solving (Tower of Hanoi). We show, however, that the effect of gestures on subsequent performance is not as strong as previously suggested. As opposed to what previous research indicates, gestures' facilitative effect through learning was not nullified by the potentially interfering effect on subsequent problem-solving performance of incompatible gestures. To conclude, using gestures during problem solving seems to provide more benefits than costs for task performance.     

Excitatory and inhibitory priming by attended and ignored non-recycled words with monolinguals and bilinguals

Experiments examining identity priming from attended and ignored novel words (words that are used only once except when repetition is required due to experimental manipulation) in a lexical decision task are reported. Experiment 1 tested English monolinguals whereas Experiment 2 tested Twi (a native language of Ghana, Africa)-English bilinguals. Participants were presented with sequential pairs of stimuli composed of a prime followed by a probe, with each containing two items. The participants were required to name the target word in the prime display, and to make a lexical decision to the target item in the probe display. On attended repetition (AR) trials the probe target item was identical to the target word on the preceding attentional display. On ignored repetition (IR) trials the probe target item was the same as the distractor word in the preceding attentional display. The experiments produced facilitated (positive) priming in the AR trials and delayed (negative) priming in the IR trials. Significantly, the positive and negative priming effects also replicated across both monolingual and bilingual groups of participants, despite the fact that the bilinguals were responding to the task in their non-dominant language.