An ecological approach to cognitive enhancement: Complex motor training

Cognitive training has received a lot of attention recently, yielding findings that can be conflicting and controversial. In this paper, we present a novel approach to cognitive training based on complex motor activities. In a randomized controlled design, participants were assigned to one of three conditions: aerobic exercise, working memory training or designed sport — an intervention specifically tailored to include both physical and cognitive demands. After training for eight weeks, the designed sport group showed the largest gains in all cognitive measures, illustrating the efficacy of complex motor activities to enhance cognition. Designed sport training also revealed impressive health benefits, namely decreased heart rate and blood pressure. In this period of skepticism over the efficacy of computerized cognitive training, we discuss the potential of ecological interventions targeting both cognition and physical fitness, and propose some possible applications.     

Hate Crime Legislation Reconsidered

In “Is Penalty Enhancement a Sound Idea?” Claudia Card calls into question hate crime legislation, querying whether hatred makes a crime worse, whether hatred of the sort pertinent to hate crimes is worse than a more personal hatred, and whether the message sent by hate crime legislation is the intended message. This essay questions her assumption that penalty enhancement for hate crimes is warranted only if the crimes are worse than otherwise similar crimes that do not count as hate crimes. Instead, it may be the case that it is the proper business of the state to take a particular interest in such crimes, in part because they enact not just any hatred but civic hatred. And if hate crimes are understood as enacting civic hatred, hate crime legislation can indeed serve to counter a message that very much needs to be countered.     

Effects of treatment‐integrity failures on a response‐cost procedure

Effects of incorrect or partial implementation (poor treatment integrity) on response cost are largely unknown. We evaluated reduced treatment integrity during response cost on rates of 2 concurrently available responses. College students earned points by clicking on either a black circle or a red circle on a computer screen. Experiment 1 compared 2 types of treatment‐integrity failures (omission and commission errors) across 2 levels of integrity (20% and 50%). Compared to 100% integrity conditions, omission errors did not suppress responding to the same extent, and commission errors reduced target responding but also decreased rates of alternative behavior. Experiment 2 compared the effects of 20% and 50% omission errors within subjects. Implementation at 50% integrity adequately suppressed responding, but treatment effects were lost at 20% integrity. There may be a critical level at which response cost must be implemented to suppress responding, which has important implications for application.     

The role of the Self in assessing doping cognition: Implicit and explicit measures of athletes’ doping-related prototype perceptions

ObjectivesTo examine athletes’ implicit and explicit prototype perceptions of performance enhancing substance (PES) users and non-users.DesignA cross-sectional mixed-method study.MethodsCompetitive athletes from 39 sports (N = 226; mean age = 27.66 ± 9.74 years; 59% male) completed four self-report questions and two Brief Implicit Association Tests online, assessing prototype favourability and similarity of PES users and non-users.ResultsAthletes explicitly associated themselves with a non-user (M = 3.13 ± 0.92) more than a PES user (M = 0.56 ± 0.88) and perceived a non-user (M = 89.92 ± 14.98) more favourably than a PES user (M = 13.18 ± 21.38). Indexing behaviour on self-reports, doping contemplators did not differ from ‘clean’ athletes in their perceptions of PES user prototypes while dopers perceived PES users favourably and similar to themselves. In comparison, doping contemplators paired the concept of 'dopers' easier with themselves than with others, while clean athletes and dopers had no preference for either pairing (D = −0.33, -0.08 and 0.01, respectively). All groups demonstrated some degree of preference for ‘good and doper’, moving from slight to moderate to strong preference in the groups of clean athletes, dopers and contemplators, respectively (D = −0.20, −0.37 and −0.80, respectively).ConclusionsResults suggest that doping contemplators may have a positive bias towards doping which is not endorsed in self-reports. Implicit preferences, along with the disparity between the implicit and explicit measures of athletes’ doping-related prototype perceptions advance understanding of doping behaviour and make a unique contribution to research methodology. Factors influencing the interplay between explicit and implicit endorsements of PES user prototypes warrant further research.     

Empathy,culture and self‐humanising: Empathising reduces the attribution of greater humanness to the self more in Japan than Australia

People tend to ascribe greater humanness to themselves than to others. Previous research has indicated that this “self‐humanising” bias is independent of self‐enhancement and robust across cultures. The present study examined the possible role of empathy in reducing this bias in Japan (N = 80) and Australia (N = 80). Results showed that unlike Australians, Japanese participants who recalled personal experiences of empathising with others were less likely to self‐humanise than those in a neutral condition. The effect of the empathy manipulation was not observed in Australia. The findings suggest that empathy may reduce self‐focus and enable perceivers to appreciate the full humanness of others, but this effect may be culturally contingent.     

Greater self‐enhancement in Western than Eastern Ukraine,but failure to replicate the Muhammad Ali effect

Based on the cross‐cultural research linking individualism–collectivism and self‐enhancement, this research examines regional pattern of self‐enhancement in Ukraine. Broadly speaking, the western part of Ukraine is mainly Ukrainian speaking and historically oriented towards Europe, whereas Eastern Ukraine is mainly Russian speaking and historically oriented towards the Russian cultural sphere. We found self‐enhancement on a “better than average” task to be higher in a Western Ukrainian sample compared to an Eastern Ukrainian sample, with differences in independent self‐construals supporting assumed regional variation in individualism. However, the Muhammad Ali effect, the finding that self‐enhancement is greater in the domain of morality than intelligence, was not replicated. The discussion focuses on the specific sources of this regional difference in self‐enhancement, and reasons for why the Muhammad Ali effect was not found.     

Virtuous Play: The Ethics,Pleasures, and Burdens of Brain Training

Through normative appeals of cognitive enhancement, the brain has become a site of both promise and peril. Displaying oneself as ethically sound may now include showing requisite care for cognitive capacities. Moreover, enhancing our cognitive reserves is framed as aspirational means of averting neurodegenerative disease and neoliberal precarity. Such demanding labours of self-care warrant close scrutiny. Promissory discourses proclaim our ‘neuroplasticity’, encouraging subjects to work on endlessly improvable functional capacities that hold labour market value. Yet a ‘fun morality’ is equally prevalent in today’s experiential economies. Neuro-enhancement is thus sold not as an ascetic chore, but an ecstatic potential. Hope, fear, pleasure, and ethical conduct are, therefore, all closely entwined in the ‘virtuous play’ of ‘brain training’, where commercial entities use digital platforms for game-based tasks designed to enhance cognitive abilities. These services are typically promoted through appeals to our dutiful biocitizenship. This type of virtuous play is increasingly the means by which subjects produce themselves as simultaneously pleasure-seeking, productive, and resoundingly ‘well’. However, this understanding of virtuosity is often narrowly derived—reduced to ‘active ageing’, corporate-style ‘neurohacking’, and ‘brain profiles’—that threaten to foreclose other ways of imagining well-being. In failing to recognize the neoliberal underpinnings of virtuous play we entrench burdensome attachments to emerging modes of personal enhancement. Against these seductive appeals of combining pleasure with self-improvement, we must cultivate a critical reflexivity regarding exactly how ‘enhancement’ is conceived, opening room for lines of possibility outside of currently dominant frameworks.     

对相容和不相容析取关系下析取句与条件句之间推理的比较

研究析取句和条件句之间的推理能检验推理心理学中的主要理论解释。一个实验考察了析取句和条件句中两个基本成分之间的关系(相容析取与不相容析取)和推理方向(由析取句推条件句与由条件句推析取句)对析取句与其等值的条件句之间推理的影响。结果发现,推理方向的影响取决于条件句和析取句中基本成分间的关系,在不相容析取关系下的推理成绩好于在相容析取关系下的推理成绩。现有的推理理论不能解释被试的整体反应模式,作者提出的特殊知识启发式与一般的句法意义对比启发式的竞争能统一解释被试的主导反应模式。     

目光注视线索对客体注意的影响及作用机制

目光注视在人类社交以及捕获和维持注意方面发挥重要作用。但是, 目光注视如何与客体交互以引导注意分配至今尚不明确。因此, 本研究采用双框线索范式, 以具有两种注视方向(直视或回避)的面孔或实物作为客体, 通过操纵线索到目标间的SOA来考察目光注视对客体注意的影响及作用机制。实验1发现, 目光注视对客体效应的影响只出现在300 ms SOA时; 进一步分析发现, 客体效应的差异来自于直视条件下被试对无效相同客体位置上的目标比回避条件下反应更快。这表明与回避目光相比, 直视更能捕获我们的注意, 从而产生更大的客体效应。实验2将面孔对比度反转, 排除了低水平物理特征对实验1结果的影响。实验3使用两种注视方向的眼睛叠加杯子作为客体, 以探究目光注视效应是否能扩展到其他客体中, 结果与实验1相同。本研究结果表明, 目光注视能够与客体交互共同引导注意分配, 直视更能捕获注意, 但受SOA的影响, 上述结果支持了感觉增强理论。