“To‐be‐forgotten” statements become less true: Memory processes involved in selection and forgetting lead to truthfulness changes of ambiguous sentences

What happens when people try to forget something? What are the consequences of instructing people to intentionally forget a sentence? Recent studies employing the item‐method directed forgetting paradigm have shown that to‐be‐forgotten (TBF) items are, in a subsequent task, emotionally devaluated relative to to‐be‐remembered (TBR) items, an aftereffect of memory selection (Vivas, Marful, Panagiotidou & Bajo, 2016). As such, distractor devaluation by attentional selection generalizes to memory selection. In this study, we use the item‐method directed forgetting paradigm to test the effects of memory selection and inhibition on truth judgments of ambiguous sentences. We expected the relative standing of an item in the task (i.e., whether it was instructed to be remembered or forgotten) to affect the truthfulness value of that item, making TBF items less valid/truthful than TBR items. As predicted, ambiguous sentences associated with a “Forget” cue were subsequently judged as less true than sentences associated with a “Remember” cue, suggesting that instructions to intentionally forget a statement can produce changes in the validity/truthfulness of that statement. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show an influence of memory processes involved in selection and forgetting on the perceived truthfulness of sentences.     

SCIENCE,SPIRITUALITY, AND AYAHUASCA: THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPIRITUAL ONTOLOGIES IN THE ACADEMY

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew from Amazonas, popularized in the last decades in part through transnational religious networks, but also due to interest in exploring spirituality through altered states of consciousness among academic schools and scientific researchers. In this article, the author analyzes the relation between science and religion proposing that the “demarcation problem” between the two arises from the relations among consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality. The analysis starts at the beginning of modern science, continues through the nineteenth century, and then examines the appearance of new schools in psychology and anthropology in the countercultural milieu of the 1960s. The author analyzes the case of ayahuasca against this historical background, first, in the general context of ayahuasca studies in the academic field. Second, he briefly describes three cases from Spain. Finally, he discusses the permeability of science to “spiritual ontologies” from an interdisciplinary perspective, using insights from social and cognitive sciences.     

THE SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF PHILIP HEFNER'S “CREATED CO‐CREATOR”

Philip Hefner's understanding of humans as “created co‐creators” has played a key role in the science and religion field, particularly as scholars consider the implications of emerging technologies for the human future. Hefner articulates his “created co‐creator” framework in the form of scientifically testable hypotheses supporting his core understanding of human nature, adopting the structure of Imre Lakatos's scientific research programme. This article provides a brief exposition of Hefner's model, examines his hypotheses in order to assess their scientific character, and evaluates them against the relevant findings of contemporary science. While Hefner's model is largely commensurate with contemporary science, he at times makes claims that cannot be scientifically falsified or corroborated. Hefner's accomplishments in demonstrating the scientific compatibility of many theological notions is admirable; however, his overall position would be strengthened with a more tacit acknowledgment of the limitations of scientific knowledge. His anthropology draws also from extrascientific commitments and is all the richer for it.     

Divided attention enhances explicit but not implicit conceptual memory: an item-specific account of the attentional boost effect

The Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) refers to the counterintuitive finding that words encoded with to-be-responded targets in a divided-attention condition are remembered better than words encoded with distractors. Previous studies suggested that the ABE-related enhancement of verbal memory depends upon the activation of abstract lexical representations. In the present study, we extend this hypothesis by embedding it in the context of a broader perspective, which proposes that divided attention in the ABE paradigm affects item-specific, but not relational, processing. To this purpose, we examined the ABE in the matched tasks of category-cued recall (CCRT: explicit memory) and category exemplar generation (CEGT: implicit memory). In addition, study time was varied (500, 1500 or 4000?ms), to further determine whether the attentional boost manipulation could influence late-phase elaborative processing. In agreement with the predictions of the item-specific account, the results showed that exemplars encoded with targets were recalled better than exemplars encoded with distractors in the CCRT, but not in the CEGT. Moreover, performance in the CCRT increased with study time, whereas the size of the ABE-related enhancement tended to decrease, further confirming that this effect hinges upon early phase encoding processes.     

抽象颜色偏好实验研究

本实验采用对偶比较法对4～21岁人群779名被试进行抽象颜色偏好调查研究,得出以下结果：（1）4～21岁人群抽象颜色偏好顺序依次是蓝、橙、红、黄、紫、绿;（2）男生和女生对抽象颜色的偏好具有明最差异;（3）不同年龄段的人群时抽象颜色偏好具有明显差异;（4）抽象颜色偏好虽然随着时代的变迁发生变化,但是仍有一定的规律性。     

反应风格的测量与统计控制

反应风格是共同方法偏差的主要来源之一。本文首先讨论反应风格的定义和类型,梳理其危害,认为反应风格能使测验分数出现偏差,影响测验信效度分析和变量关系分析,有必要控制其危害。然后介绍了常用的反应风格测量方法,包括计数法和模型法两大类,对测量方法的选择给出了建议,在此基础上,就如何结合反应风格的测量方法与残差回归法、偏相关法来控制反应风格危害给出建议。     

临床医生应具有很高的哲学修养

人体的复杂性和人命关天的特殊性决定了临床工作具有持久的挑战性.无论是病因的诊断,治疗方案的选择,还是治疗效果的判断都给临床医生的哲学思维提出很高的要求.因此,临床医生不仅要注重积累自己的专业知识和临床经验,而且要努力提高自己的哲学修养.     

汉字输入法对汉字字词加工的影响研究

用形似判断和同音判断作业就输入法对汉字字词加工的影响作了考察。结果表明,汉字输入法及输入速度对小学生语文学习存在明显的影响．但这种影响作用仪表现在汉字认知加工的较低层面。具体本研究而言,纵横输入法和拼音输入法对汉字认知加工的“形”和“音”均存在影响,但前者侧重于“形”．而后者侧重于“音”。笔者认为其直接原因是学生为提高汉字输入速度所付出的额外练习(相比于输入速度低的学生)所导致的．输入法充当了一种作用载体。     

关键字母法对中国学习不良儿童英语词汇记忆的作用

关键字母法是将西方世界著名的关键词方法的原理同汉字特点相结合的产物。以39名普通初一学生为控制组,以21名学习不良的小学五年级学生为实验组,以64个罕见的英文单词作为记忆测验材料,考察了关键字母法对于中国儿童英语词汇记忆的作用。该研究最重要的结果是,在关键字母法干预实验前,作为实验组的小学五年级被试的英语词汇记忆成绩显著地低于作为控制组的初一学生的记忆成绩,然而,在关键字母法干预实验后,前后两者的英语词汇记忆成绩不存在显著的差异。