Who is Afraid of Figure of Speech?

Aristotle's illustrations of the fallacy of Figure of Speech (or Form of Expression) are none too convincing. They are tied to Aristotle's theory of categories and to peculiarities of Greek grammar that fail to hold appeal for a contemporary readership. Yet, upon closer inspection, Figure of Speech shows many points of contact with views and problems that inhabit 20th-century analytical philosophy. In the paper, some Aristotelian examples will be analyzed to gain a better understanding of this fallacy. The case of the Third Man argument and some modern cases lend plausibility to the claim that Figure of Speech is of more interest as a type of fallacy than has generally been assumed. Finally, a case is made for the view that Figure of Speech, though listed among the fallacies dependent upon language, is not properly classified as a fallacy of ambiguity. More likely, it should be looked upon as a type of non sequitur. This has important consequences for the profile of dialogue associated with this fallacy.     

ADVANCING BACKWARDS

The proposal of Friman, Hayes, and Wilson (1998) that the concept of emotion be incorporated into behavior analysis is questioned. Their proposal is undermined by the problem of the verification of private events by others. A focus on private events, as exemplified by the proposal of Friman et al., can lead to a reversion to notions of agency and the autonomous individual. Also, the anchoring of hypothetical constructs to the behavioral data language is ill advised.     

中国传统情绪疗法及其应用

系统地探讨了中国传统情绪疗法：情志相胜疗法,相反情绪疗法,激情刺激疗法,与感觉刺激有关的情绪疗法,与别人有关的情绪疗法,顺情从欲疗法,抑情顺理疗法,移情易性疗法,情志导引疗法,七情合参疗法。这些中国传统心理疗法在现代仍有实用价值。     

Masked emotional priming beyond global valence activations

An immense body of research demonstrates that emotional facial expressions can be processed unconsciously. However, it has been assumed that such processing takes place solely on a global valence-based level, allowing individuals to disentangle positive from negative emotions but not the specific emotion. In three studies, we investigated the specificity of emotion processing under conditions of limited awareness using a modified variant of an affective priming task. Faces with happy, angry, sad, fearful, and neutral expressions were presented as masked primes for 33 ms (Study 1) or 14 ms (Studies 2 and 3) followed by emotional target faces (Studies 1 and 2) or emotional adjectives (Study 3). Participants’ task was to categorise the target emotion. In all three studies, discrimination of targets was significantly affected by the emotional primes beyond a simple positive versus negative distinction. Results indicate that specific aspects of emotions might be automatically disentangled in addition to valence, even under conditions of subjective unawareness.     

Childhood Maltreatment,Emotional Response Inhibition,and Suicide in Psychiatric Inpatients

Childhood abuse and/or neglect adversely influences development of neurocognitive systems that regulate affect and behavior. Poor inhibitory control over emotional reactions is thus one potential pathway from maltreatment to suicide. Adult psychiatric inpatients completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and an emotional stop-signal task indexing negative emotional action termination (NEAT): the ability to inhibit ongoing motor reactions to aversive stimuli triggered by negative affect. Clinical interviews assessed suicidal thoughts and behaviors during hospitalization (n = 131) and at follow-up assessments 6 months later (n = 87). Our primary aim was to examine whether maltreatment history and NEAT explain overlapping variance in suicidal behaviors (1) retrospectively and (2) 6 months following hospital discharge. Contrary to prediction, childhood maltreatment was unrelated to history of suicidal behaviors. However, NEAT was consistently associated with prior suicidal acts, even controlling for suicidal ideation and demographic covariates. NEAT similarly contributed to the prediction of post-discharge suicidal behaviors, whereas we found no effect of maltreatment history. The present study suggests that NEAT captures suicide risk independently of childhood maltreatment. Results implicated NEAT impairment specifically, rather than broader response inhibition deficits (e.g., to positive stimuli), in past and future suicidal behaviors. These findings provide preliminary support for NEAT as a behavioral vulnerability marker for suicide, with implications for understanding links between maltreatment history and suicidal acts.     

Mood-congruent biases in facial emotion perception and their gender dependence

Due to mood-congruency effects, we expect the emotion perceived on a face to be biased towards one's own mood. But the findings in the scant literature on such mood effects in normal healthy populations have not consistently and adequately supported this expectation. Employing effective mood manipulation techniques that ensured that the intended mood was sustained throughout the perception task, we explored mood-congruent intensity and recognition accuracy biases in emotion perception. Using realistic face stimuli with expressive cues of happiness and sadness, we demonstrated that happy, neutral and ambiguous expressions were perceived more positively in the positive than in the negative mood. The mood-congruency effect decreased with the degree of perceived negativity in the expression. Also, males were more affected by the mood-congruency effect in intensity perception than females. We suggest that the greater salience and better processing of negative stimuli and the superior cognitive ability of females in emotion perception are responsible for these observations. We found no evidence for mood-congruency effect in the recognition accuracy of emotions and suggest with supporting evidence that past reports of this effect may be attributed to response bias driven by mood.     

激活右腹外侧前额叶提高抑郁症患者对社会疼痛的情绪调节能力：一项TMS研究

负性人际交往经历和负性社会事件是抑郁症的重要诱导因素, 而社会功能受损是抑郁症患者的重要特征之一, 患者通常表现出对社会疼痛的情绪失调。为了提高抑郁症患者在负性社交情境中或面对负性社会事件时的情绪调节能力, 本研究采用经颅磁刺激技术(transcranial magnetic stimulation, TMS), 考察抑郁症患者在腹外侧前额叶(the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, VLPFC)被激活后其情绪调节能力的改变。结果表明, 当右侧VLPFC被TMS激活且患者采用认知重评策略调节情绪时, 实验组患者(n = 64)比对照组患者(n = 63)在社会排斥情境下报告了更弱的负性情绪体验, 这说明激活右侧VLPFC可以有效提高患者对社会疼痛的外显性情绪调节能力。本研究是采用TMS提高抑郁症患者情绪调节能力的首次尝试, 实验发现不但支持了VLPFC与认知重评策略的因果关系, 还为临床改善抑郁症等社会功能障碍患者的情绪调节能力提供了明确的神经治疗靶点。后续研究还需探讨多疗程TMS刺激方案、改变社会疼痛的诱发方式、对比左右侧VLPFC的治疗效果、尝试使用其他的情绪调节策略, 进一步验证本研究的结论, 优化TMS治疗方案。     

情绪效价与面孔类型对幼儿无意视盲的影响

幼儿对不同的情绪面孔图片存在不同的注意偏向,考察情绪效价与面孔类型对幼儿无意视盲的影响,可以帮助我们进一步认识幼儿对情绪面孔的注意偏向。本研究采用静态无意视盲的实验范式,通过2（面孔类型：符号化卡通、真人）×2（情绪效价：积极、消极）被试间完全随机设计,考察了111名幼儿（62.5±3.6个月,男生60名）在无意注意条件下对不同情绪效价和不同类型面孔的觉察情况。结果表明：（1）幼儿对积极情绪面孔的觉察率显著高于消极情绪面孔;（2）符号化卡通面孔与真人面孔的整体觉察率不存在显著差异;（3）积极情绪面孔中符号化卡通面孔的觉察率高于真人面孔。综上,情绪效价对无意视盲的影响会基于面孔类型的不同而不同,幼儿对卡通积极情绪面孔有更显著的注意偏向。