Ecological issues of justice

In the first part of this article the author explores the implications for justice of the wider range of parties holding moral standing that environmental ethics has recently disclosed. These implications concern the equitable treatment of future generations and nonhuman creatures, and are relevant both to policies, such as approaches to global warming, and procedures, which may need to be revised to give an equitable voice to unrepresented interests. Later the author considers some radical implications of regarding humanity as stewards of the planetary environment, a view defended in his recent book Creation, Evolution and Meaning. If all adult humans have this role, but many are prevented from discharging it by poverty and related constraints, then those who are thus disempowered need to be empowered to exercise this role. This requirement of equity would arise not from their moral patienthood but from what is involved in respecting them as moral agents. Some approaches to tackling global warming are considered in this connection.     

Is advance reconfiguration in voluntary task switching affected by the design employed?

In task switching, when the amount of preparation time is increased, a reduction in switch cost or RISC effect is observed. This RISC effect is frequently attributed to advance reconfiguration processes. In the explicit task-cueing procedure, RISC effects are observed when varying the preparation time within participants but not when varying the preparation time across participants—a finding suggesting that RISC effects in the explicit task-cueing procedure are restricted to specific designs. The present study investigated RISC effects in voluntary task switching and compared RISC effects in a within-subjects design with RISC effects in a between-subjects design. Our results indicate that RISC effects are present in both designs. We conclude that advance reconfiguration in voluntary task switching is robust.     

Coding categorical and coordinate spatial relations in visual–spatial short-term memory

Four experiments explored the coding of categorical and coordinate spatial relations in visual–spatial short-term memory (VSSTM). Participants judged whether two stimuli presented successively on a computer screen were the same or different. On positional change trials the two stimuli differed in the position of one element. Positional changes were of two types, coordinate and categorical. On coordinate trials the position of one element changed by a small amount, but retained the categorical relationships (above, below, left of, right of) to all other elements. On categorical trials one element moved by the same amount but additionally changed its categorical relationship to one of the other elements (e.g., changed from below to above). Participants detected categorical changes more accurately than coordinate changes when the elements were independent locations marked by squares, indicating that the categorical relationships amongst the squares were encoded in memory. Furthermore, this categorical advantage was unmodulated by either the suppression of articulation (Experiment 2) or by the requirement to retain either colour–position associations or positions only (Experiment 3). When the elements to be remembered were the vertices of simple outline polygons (Experiment 4) there was no categorical advantage, establishing the effect as spatial in nature. Contrary to predictions derived from Postma and De Haan (1996) Postma, A. and De Haan, E. H. 1996. What was where? Memory for object locations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49A: 178–199. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], the employment of categorical relations appears not to be specifically linked to either verbal coding or to the requirement to associate objects with positions. The results suggest that the categorical relations are an intrinsic property of the representation of spatial configurations.     

Sentence comprehension affects the dynamics of bimanual coordination: Implications for embodied cognition

Recent work in embodied cognition has demonstrated that language comprehension involves the motor system (e.g., Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002). Such findings are often attributed to mechanisms involving simulations of linguistically described events (Barsalou, 1999; Fischer & Zwaan, 2008). We propose that research paradigms in which simulation is the central focus need to be augmented with paradigms that probe the organization of the motor system during language comprehension. The use of well-studied motor tasks may be appropriate to this endeavour. To this end, we present a study in which participants perform a bimanual rhythmic task (Kugler & Turvey, 1987) while judging the plausibility of sentences. We show that the dynamics of the bimanual task differ when participants judge sentences describing performable actions as opposed to sentences describing events that are not performable. We discuss the general implications of our results for accounts of embodied cognition.     

Effects of visual cue and response assignment on spatial stimulus coding in stimulus–response compatibility

Tlauka and McKenna (2000 Tlauka, M. and McKenna, F. P. 2000. Hierarchical knowledge influences stimulus–response compatibility effects. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53A: 85–103.  [Google Scholar]) reported a reversal of the traditional stimulus–response compatibility (SRC) effect (faster responding to a stimulus presented on the same side than to one on the opposite side) when the stimulus appearing on one side of a display is a member of a superordinate unit that is largely on the opposite side. We investigated the effects of a visual cue that explicitly shows a superordinate unit, and of assignment of multiple stimuli within each superordinate unit to one response, on the SRC effect based on superordinate unit position. Three experiments revealed that stimulus–response assignment is critical, while the visual cue plays a minor role, in eliciting the SRC effect based on the superordinate unit position. Findings suggest bidirectional interaction between perception and action and simultaneous spatial stimulus coding according to multiple frames of reference, with contribution of each coding to the SRC effect flexibly varying with task situations.     

Bartlett's schema theory: The unreplicated “portrait d'homme” series from 1932

In 1932, Frederic Bartlett laid the foundation for the later schema theory. His key assumption of previous knowledge affecting the processing of new stimuli was illustrated in the famous “portrait d'homme” series. Sequenced reproductions of ambiguous stimuli showed progressive object-likeness. As Bartlett pointed out, activation of specific schemata, for instance “the face schema”, biases memory retrieval towards such schemata. In five experiments (Experiment 1, n?=?53; Experiment 2, n?=?177; Experiment 3, n?=?36; Experiment 4, n?=?6; Experiment 5, n?=?2), we tested several factors potentially influencing retrieval biases—for example, by varying the general procedure of reproduction (repeated vs. serial) and by omitting versus providing visual or semantic cues for activating face schemata. Participants inspected face-like stimuli with the caption “portrait of the human” and reproduced them repeatedly under specific conditions. None of the experiments revealed a systematic tendency towards Bartlett's described case, even when the participants were explicitly instructed to draw “a face” like the previously inspected one. In one of the “serial reproduction” experiments, we even obtained contrary effects with decreasing face-likeness over the reproduction generations. A close analysis of the original findings raises questions about the replicability of Bartlett's findings, qualifying the “portrait d'homme” series more or less as an illustrative example of the main idea of reconstructive memory.     

Images and Symbols in Ancient and Modern Sport

Several aspects of human life are pervaded with images and symbols that often belong to what Jung (1981 Jung, G. Carl. 1981. Archetypes and the collective unconscious, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.  [Google Scholar]) called archetypes, characteristics of the mind with a profound influence on most aspects of culture and sport. The rationality introduced into our society, as the fruit of both the positivist concept of progress and the rapid development of technology, has, albeit while driving out excessiveness due to irrational explanations and often knavery, also disregarded the importance of images and symbols in everyday life. Yet a number of these inevitably still exist, since they are archetypal. With this observation as a starting point, the present work has been designed to analyse whether it is still possible to find ancient images and symbols in modern sport activities. The a priori reason for such a question arises from the acceptance that modern and ancient sports are profoundly different. This has been historically proved in terms of organisation and quantification, among other characteristics (Guttmann 1978 Guttmann, Allen. 1978. From ritual to record, New York: Columbia University Press.  [Google Scholar]).

The present analysis refers to a limited number of images and symbols concerning ancient and modern sport, which include a primordial Ur-symbol, that of bodily action or of body in movement. Others concern various aspects of the athlete's life, such as expression of religious beliefs, immortality, eternal return and the front. It suggests that many of these images and symbols may still be found in contemporary sports, in open contrast with some of the Olympic principles suggested by De Coubertin and chiefly prevalent in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

Effects of the degree of meaning similarity on cross-language semantic priming in highly proficient bilinguals

This study aimed to determine if access to meaning can be directly achieved from the words in the two languages, examining the influence of the degree of semantic overlap between related words across languages in the pattern of priming effects. Nonassociative semantically related words (members of the same category) were used, avoiding explicitly associative relationships. Using a priming paradigm, highly proficient Catalan–Spanish bilinguals were visually presented with pairs of words that either were translations of each other, had a very close semantic relationship (in terms of shared features), a close semantic relationship, or no semantic relationship at all. Participants performed either a lexical decision task (Experiment 1) or a semantic decision task (Experiment 2). The main results of the study were the same in both language directions (Spanish–Catalan and Catalan–Spanish), showing that the degree of semantic overlap (in terms of shared features) between words in different languages can modulate priming effects, regardless of the language of the prime and the task used. These results demonstrate that there is cross-language activation of shared semantic representations and, thus, that highly proficient bilinguals can have direct access to word meaning from the two languages.     

Explanations for cultural differences in thinking: Easterners’ dialectical thinking and Westerners’ linear thinking

ABSTRACT

Since Easterners’ naïve dialectical thinking, which is contrasted with Westerners’ linear thinking, was introduced, many cross-cultural studies on human thinking have been conducted, and explanations for the cultural differences have been proposed. First, after examining the robustness of these cultural differences, two existing explanations are discussed in this paper. The first is based on the discinction between Westerners' analytic cognition and Easterners' holistic cogntion. This is related to the distinction between Westerners’ independent self and Easterners’ interdependent self. The second is based on the philosophical tradition of China’s Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, which is contrasted with that of Ancient Greece. Second, we propose a new explanation based on the distinction between Westerners’ low-context culture and Easterners’ high-context culture (Beyond culture. Garden City, NJ: Anchor Books/Doubleday.). Finally, we show that this distinction can be based on socioecological approaches, and it is expected to explain the cultural differences between the Chinese and Japanese.     

Make the manikin move: Symbolic approach–avoidance responses affect implicit and explicit face evaluations

The present research aimed to replicate and extend findings of Huijding, Muris, Lester, Field, and Joosse (2011), investigating whether symbolic approach–avoidance responses can induce implicit and explicit evaluation biases. Faces with a neutral expression were shown on a computer screen, and participants were instructed to repeatedly move a manikin towards some faces (approach) and away from other faces (avoidance). An affective priming task and a face rating task were used to assess training-compatible differences in implicit and explicit face evaluations, respectively. Results showed that the manikin training was successful: The priming task revealed more positive implicit evaluations of approached than avoided faces, and approached faces were rated more positively than avoided ones in the face rating task. These findings replicate those of Huijding and colleagues by demonstrating training effects on explicit evaluations, and they extend them by demonstrating effects on implicit evaluations.