Psychopathy and internalism

Do psychopaths make moral judgments but lack motivation? Or are psychopaths’ judgments are not genuinely moral? Both sides of this debate seem to assume either externalist or internalist criteria for the presence of moral judgment. However, if moral judgment is a natural kind, we can arrive at a theory-neutral criterion for moral judgment. A leading naturalistic criterion suggests that psychopaths have an impaired capacity for moral judgment; the capacity is neither fully present nor fully absent. Psychopaths are therefore not counterexamples to internalism. Nonetheless, internalism is empirically problematic because it is unable to explain psychopaths’ moral deficits.     

From marginal to mainstream: The role of perceived social norms in the rise of a far‐right movement

The present research intends to shed light on the processes enabling political minorities to transition into normatively acceptable groups, by investigating how a previously marginalised far‐right movement (the French National Front) is progressively becoming mainstream. Drawing on the social representations approach, we argue that perceived social norms play a pivotal role in this process. Using a longitudinal and experimental design, the study (N = 233) was implemented in the ecological context of the 2012 French presidential election at a Parisian university campus, a traditional anti‐far‐right bastion. We tested whether the electoral campaign altered the perceptions of social norms, whether the perceived social norms were easily malleable in this specific context and, most important, whether they influenced people's willingness to speak out in public against the far‐right movement. The findings support affirmative answers to all three questions. We conclude that, in periods of collective uncertainty, changing perceptions of social norms might play an important role in the weakening of public opposition to far‐right movements. This, in turn, helps to explain the recent transition to mainstream recognition of a number of previously marginalised political movements in Europe and around the globe.     

Is anaphoric reference cooperative?

Two experiments investigated whether the choice of anaphoric expression is affected by the presence of an addressee. Following a context sentence and visual scene, participants described a target scene that required anaphoric reference. They described the scene either to an addressee (Experiment 1) or without an addressee (Experiment 2). When an addressee was present in the task, participants used more pronouns and fewer repeated noun phrases when the referent was the grammatical subject in the context sentence than when it was the grammatical object and they used more pronouns when there was no competitor than when there was. They used fewer pronouns and more repeated noun phrases when a visual competitor was present in the scene than when there was no visual competitor. In the absence of an addressee, linguistic context effects were the same as those when an addressee was present, but the visual effect of the competitor disappeared. We conclude that visual salience effects are due to adjustments that speakers make when they produce reference for an addressee, whereas linguistic salience effects appear whether or not speakers have addressees.     

Momentum in Child Compliance and Opposition

Several event-dependent properties of child-mother interactions were studied to investigate momentum in child oppositional and compliant behavior. It was hypothesized that: (a) compared to an episode of child opposition, an episode of child compliance would be related to an increased likelihood of subsequent child compliance, and (b) the association between a target episode of child opposition and the likelihood of subsequent compliance or opposition would be mediated by the history of the dyadic interaction. These hypotheses were supported. In addition, the presence of interactional sequences predictive of child compliance was inversely related to mother dysphoria and unrelated to mother-reported child externalizing behavior disorder symptoms. Discussion focuses on antecedent interactional patterns as determinants of future child behavior.     

Influence of vowel context on the audio‐visual speech perception of voiced stop consonants

The work reported here investigated whether the extent of McGurk effect differs according to the vowel context, and differs when cross‐modal vowels are matched or mismatched in Japanese. Two audio‐visual experiments were conducted to examine the process of audio‐visual phonetic‐feature extraction and integration. The first experiment was designed to compare the extent of the McGurk effect in Japanese in three different vowel contexts. The results indicated that the effect was largest in the /i/ context, moderate in the /a/ context, and almost nonexistent in the /u/ context. This suggests that the occurrence of McGurk effect depends on the characteristics of vowels and the visual cues from their articulation. The second experiment measured the McGurk effect in Japanese with cross‐modal matched and mismatched vowels, and showed that, except with the /u/ sound, the effect was larger when the vowels were matched than when they were mismatched. These results showed, again, that the extent of McGurk effect depends on vowel context and that auditory information processing before phonetic judgment plays an important role in cross‐modal feature integration.     

语篇语境对句子理解的影响：来自N400的证据

N400作为语义违反的特异性ERP组分,其波幅反映了语义整合加工过程的难度,因此可将其作为研究语篇语境意义建构过程的一项重要指标。语篇语境可分为语言语境和非语言语境。前人一系列基于语篇水平的N400研究表明,从语义的角度上看,语言语境对句子理解具有制约和协调作用,其机制涉及词汇语义启动、场景适宜性、文字内容信息以及因果推理等方面;非语言语境对句子理解具有制约和补充作用,但其机制尚不明确。两种不同来源的语义信息在实时理解中是同时得到加工的     

Cognitive adaptation and its consequences: a test of cognitive continuum theory

Cognitive Continuum Theory (CCT) is an adaptive theory of human judgement and posits a continuum of cognitive modes anchored by intuition and analysis. The theory specifies surface and depth task characteristics that are likely to induce cognitive modes at different points along the cognitive continuum. The current study manipulated both the surface (information representation) and depth (task structure) characteristics of a multiple‐cue integration threat assessment task. The surface manipulation influenced cognitive mode in the predicted direction with an iconic information display inducing a more intuitive mode than a numeric information display. The depth manipulation influenced cognitive mode in a pattern not predicted by CCT. Results indicate this difference was due to a combination of task complexity and participant satisfacing. As predicted, analysis produced a more leptokurtic error distribution than intuition. Task achievement was a function of the extent to which participants demonstrated an analytic cognitive mode index, and not a function of correspondence, as predicted. This difference was likely due to the quantitative nature of the task manipulations. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The affect heuristic in judgments of risks and benefits

This paper re‐examines the commonly observed inverse relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit. We propose that this relationship occurs because people rely on affect when judging the risk and benefit of specific hazards. Evidence supporting this proposal is obtained in two experimental studies. Study 1 investigated the inverse relationship between risk and benefit judgments under a time‐pressure condition designed to limit the use of analytic thought and enhance the reliance on affect. As expected, the inverse relationship was strengthened when time pressure was introduced. Study 2 tested and confirmed the hypothesis that providing information designed to alter the favorability of one's overall affective evaluation of an item (say nuclear power) would systematically change the risk and benefit judgments for that item. Both studies suggest that people seem prone to using an ‘affect heuristic’ which improves judgmental efficiency by deriving both risk and benefit evaluations from a common source—affective reactions to the stimulus item. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seek and ye shall find: test results are what you hypothesize they are

Expert clinicians were given batteries of psychodiagnostic test results (Rorschach, TAT, Draw-A-Person, Bender-Gestalt, Wechsler) to analyze. For half, a battery came along with a suggestion that the person suffers from Borderline Personality disorder, and for half, that battery was accompanied by a suggestion that he suffers from Paranoid Personality disorder. In Study 1, the suggestion was made indirectly, through a background story that preceded the test results. In Study 2, the suggestion was made directly, by the instructions given. The experts saw in the tests what they hypothesized to be there. In particular, the target diagnoses were rated higher when they were hypothesized than when they were not. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

句子理解过程中词类加工的功能性质

句法优先理论假设词类加工功能上优先于语义、动词论元结构和话语信息加工。来自德语和法语的证据显示, 词类违反阻断语义整合和动词论元结构加工, 因而词类优先于语义和动词论元结构。关于词类加工在功能上是否优先于话语信息加工, 尚无来自任何语言的证据。汉语证据尽管显示词类并不优先于语义, 但未充分讨论任务因素的影响。将来研究有必要使用ERP技术和违反范式, 从语义整合、动词论元结构加工和话语水平加工等多个层面, 同时操纵词类的正确性和非句法因素, 考察句法特性上与德语和法语不同的语言, 如汉语和韩语。这方面研究将有助于洞察一个语言的语言学特性如何制约或调整词类加工的功能性质。