Ethical Phenomenology and Metaethics

In recent times, comments have been made and arguments advanced in support of metaethical positions based on the phenomenology of ethical experience – in other words, the feel that accompanies our ethical experiences. In this paper I cast doubt on whether ethical phenomenology supports metaethical positions to any great extent and try to tease out what is involved in giving a phenomenological argument. I consider three such positions: independent moral realism (IMR), another type of moral realism – sensibility theory – and noncognitivism. Phenomenological arguments have been used in support of the first two positions, but my general claim is that ethical phenomenology supports no metaethical position over any other.I discuss two types of phenomenological argument that might be offered in support of different types of moral realism, although I couch my debate in terms of IMR. The first argument asserts that ethical properties are not experienced in the way that rivals to IMR say we experience them. Against this I claim that it is odd to think that one could experience ethical properties as any metaethical theory characterizes them. The second argument is more complicated: the general thought is that an adequate metaethical theory should not distort our ethical experience unduly. I consider one aspect of our ethical experience – that there is some ethical authority to which our judgements answer – in order to illustrate this idea. I discuss why IMRealists might think that this phenomenon supports their position. Against them I claim that other metaethical positions might be able to accommodate the phenomenon of ethical authority. Even if they cannot, then, secondly, I argue that there are other aspects of our ethical experience that sit more naturally with other metaethical positions. Hence, one cannot argue that ethical phenomenology as a whole supports one theory over any others.     

The Silent Treatment? Changes in patient emotional expression after silence

Psychotherapy can be an emotionally laden conversation, where both verbal and nonverbal interventions may impact the therapeutic process. Prior research has postulated mixed results regarding how clients emotionally react following a silence after the therapist is finished talking, potentially due to studying a limited range of silences with primarily qualitative and self-report methodologies. A quantitative exploration may illuminate new findings. Utilising research and automatic data processing from the field of linguistics, we analysed the full range of silence lengths (0.2–24.01 s), and measures of emotional expression—vocally encoded arousal and emotional valence from the works spoken—of 84 audio recordings of Motivational Interviewing sessions. We hypothesised that both the level and the variance of client emotional expression would change as a function of silence length; however, due to the mixed results in the literature, the direction of emotional change was unclear. We conducted a multilevel linear regression to examine how the level of client emotional expression changed across silence length, and an ANOVA to examine the variability of client emotional expression across silence lengths. Results of both analyses indicated that as silence length increased, emotional expression largely remained the same. Broadly, we demonstrated a weak connection between silence length and emotional expression, indicating no persuasive evidence that silence leads to client emotional processing and expression.     

中国人的印象整饰特征及其影响因素初探

本研究探讨在中国文化背景下．一个人如何表现他自己,即强凋社会的和谐与人际关系的融洽,即印象整饰过程。旨在揭示中国人的印象整饰特征及其影响因素,从而增进对特定文化背景下的中国人的心理和行为模式的理解。结果揭示了２个独特的中国人的印象整饰特征：社会道德维度与人际关系维度。     

信息的性质对内隐社会印象的影响

为了考察信息的性质对社会印象的影响,通过语义差异法建构了具有六个维度的社会印象量表;采用２×２×８的混合设计,给被试提供自然信息和七类不同性质的社会信息（组内设计）,考察了评价人和被评价人性别特征（组间设计）在社会印象形成过程中的作用;同时,还测量了被试的外显性别态度。结果表明,在否定个人智慧、社会地位、性别特征和品质特征时,所形成的社会印象在被评价人性别特征上表现出了差异,并且男女被试都表现出了“好人主义”倾向;在外显性别态度上男女被试设有差异;此外,还分析了用语义差异法测量内隐社会印象的适用性。     

The recognition and categorization of upright and inverted emotional expressions by 7-month-old infants

Upright and inverted faces were used to determine whether 7-month-old infants discriminate emotional expressions on the basis of affectively relevant information. In Experiment 1, infants recognized the similarity of happy faces over changing identities and discriminated this expression from fear and anger when the stimuli were presented upright, but not when they were inverted. In Experiment 2, infants were able to discriminate happiness from fear and anger posed by a single model, regardless of the orientation of the stimuli. From these studies it was suggested that categorizing emotional expressions depends upon attending to affectively relevant, orientation-specific information, whereas the discrimination of emotional expressions can be done on a featural basis, something that remains invariant regardless of the orientation of the stimuli. In Experiment 3, infants discriminated toothy happiness posed by several models from nontoothy happiness and nontoothy anger when the stimuli were presented upright and inverted. Thus, when salient features were available, the infants based their discriminations on perceptual aspects rather than on conceptual aspects such as categories of emotions.     

Categorization of natural movements by pigeons: visual concept discrimination and biological motion

In three experiments, pigeons were exposed to a discriminated autoshaping procedure in which categories of moving stimuli, presented on videotape, were differentially associated with reinforcement. All stimuli depicted pigeons making defined responses. In Experiment 1, one category consisted of several different scenes of pecking and the other consisted of scenes of walking, flying, head movements, or standing still. Four of the 4 birds for which pecking scenes were positive stimuli discriminated successfully, whereas only 1 of the 4 for which pecking was the negative category did so. In the pecking-positive group, there were differences between the pecking rates in the presence of the four negative actions, and these differences were consistent across subjects. In Experiment 2, only the categories of walking and pecking were used; some but not all birds learned this discrimination, whichever category was positive, and these birds showed some transfer to new stimuli in which the same movements were represented only by a small number of point lights (Johansson's “biological motion” displays). In Experiment 3, discriminations between pecking and walking movement categories using point-light displays were trained. Four of the 8 birds discriminated successfully, but transfer to fully detailed displays could not be demonstrated. Pseudoconcept control groups, in which scenes from the same categories of motion were used in both the positive and negative stimulus sets, were used in Experiments 1 and 3. None of the 8 pigeons trained under these conditions showed discriminative responding. The results suggest that pigeons can respond differentially to moving stimuli on the basis of movement cues alone.     

叠音品牌名称对消费者知觉和偏好的影响

品牌名称是重要的品牌资产,在传递品牌价值、构建品牌形象和凸显品牌特征的过程中起到关键作用。以往研究发现,品牌名称的语义特征和语音特征都会对消费者知觉和偏好产生影响,但少有研究考察品牌名称语音特征中叠音的作用。本研究将从婴儿图式的角度,基于刻板印象内容模型,通过4个实验考察叠音品牌名称对消费者知觉和偏好的影响,并检验元音特征和产品类型的调节作用。研究结果表明:(1)与非叠音品牌名称相比,叠音品牌名称会让消费者觉得该品牌更像婴儿,进而感觉该品牌更加温暖,但是能力更低。(2)叠音对于消费者温暖知觉的影响受到元音特征的调节。当品牌名称中含有前元音时,叠音对于温暖知觉的影响会削弱。(3)叠音对于消费者偏好的影响受到产品类型的调节。对于享乐型产品,消费者更偏好叠音品牌名称;对于实用型产品,消费者更偏好非叠音品牌名称。本文为品牌名称的设计提供了指导,同时也丰富了婴儿图式和刻板印象内容模型的理论内涵。     

Human age classification using facial skin aging features and artificial neural network

In this paper a novel method based on facial skin aging features and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is proposed to classify the human face images into four age groups. The facial skin aging features are extracted by using Local Gabor Binary Pattern Histogram (LGBPH) and wrinkle analysis. The ANN classifier is designed by using two layer feedforward backpropagation neural networks. The proposed age classification framework is trained and tested with face images from PAL face database and shown considerable improvement in the age classification accuracy up to 94.17% and 93.75% for male and female respectively.     

韵律特征对句法结构歧义解歧作用的实验研究

本研究通过对不同类型歧义句的语义理解实验并结合声学参数测量分析研究了韵律特征对不同类型歧义句的解歧作用,同时对韵律特征消解层次切分歧义的机制问题进行了深入探讨。实验结果表明,韵律对不同类型歧义句解歧效果不一。对层次切分歧义句的深入研究表明,歧义音节的前后停顿时长是消解层次切分歧义的最主要的手段。     

Do adapted vignettes improve medical decision‐making capacity for individuals with Alzheimer's disease?

Medical decision‐making capacity (MDC) is known to decline in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The vignette method uses hypothetical information as a prerequisite for measuring the capacity to make well‐informed decisions to clinical trials. Our aim was to investigate if adapted vignettes can help individuals with mild AD to assimilate information, make decisions and express them in an understandable way, compared to corresponding decisions based on linguistically more demanding vignettes, as measured by the Swedish Linguistic Instrument for Medical Decision‐making (LIMD). Two vignettes from LIMD were altered linguistically with the aim to facilitate understanding for individuals with AD. An experimental within‐subject design was used to study the influence on MDC of readability (original/adapted vignettes) and content (two different clinical trials). We included 24 patients with mild AD in this prospective study, which read all four vignettes along with a few other tests. This allowed us to investigate the association between MDC and cognitive function. Adapted vignettes did not yield significant differences regarding MDC as compared with original vignettes using a two‐way repeated measures analysis of variance. A difference was found between the two clinical trials where LIMD score was significantly higher for Kidney disease than hypertension vignettes. Our results indicate that adapted vignettes may not improve MDC for individuals with mild AD. MDC was affected by which clinical trial the vignettes regarded, which implies that other factors affecting MDC need to be investigated, like length of text and vocabulary used.