Object representations are biased toward each other through statistical learning

The visual system is remarkably efficient at extracting regularities from the environment through statistical learning. While such extraction has extensive consequences on cognition, it is unclear how statistical learning shapes the representations of the individual objects that comprise the regularities. Here we examine how statistical learning alters object representations. In three experiments, participants were exposed to either random arrays containing objects in a random order, or structured arrays containing object pairs where two objects appeared next to each other in fixed spatial or temporal configurations. After exposure, one object in each pair was briefly presented and participants judged the location or the orientation of the object without seeing the other object in the pair. We found that when an object reliably appeared next to another object in space, it was judged as being closer to the other object in space even though the other object was never presented (Experiments 1 and 2). Likewise, when an object reliably preceded another object in time, its orientation was biased toward the orientation of the other object even though the other object was never presented (Experiment 3). These results demonstrated that statistical learning fundamentally shapes how individual objects are represented in visual memory, by biasing the representation of one object toward its co-occurring partner. Importantly, participants in all experiments were not explicitly aware of the regularities. Thus, the bias in object representations was implicit. The current study reveals a novel impact of statistical learning on object representation: spatially co-occurring objects are represented as being closer in space, and temporally co-occurring objects are represented as having more similar features.     

On Biotechnology,Theology, and the Human Sciences

There may be very good Christian theological reasons to oppose human biotechnological enhancement. It is, however, difficult to discern what they are. Much of the specifically Christian response to transhumanist biotechnological enhancement has revolved around the metaphysics of human persons; this is hardly surprising, given that similar themes appear in other bioethical themes, such as over in vitro fertilization, abortion, and euthanasia. The main aim of this paper is to clarify the theological requirements for such responses, particularly those that are mistakenly delegated to scientists. In particular, the paper will focus on the need for a Christian theological account of human nature that does not unduly rely on biological accounts of the same.     

Higher visuo-Attentional Demands of Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) Lead to A Lower Precision in Pointing Movements

Multiple object tracking (MOT) requires visually attending to dynamically moving targets and distractors. This cognitive ability is based on perceptual-attentional processes that are also involved in goal-directed movements. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that MOT affects the motor performance of aiming movements. Therefore, the participants performed pointing movements using their fingers or a computer mouse that controlled the movements of a cursor directed at the targets in the MOT task. The precision of the pointing movements was measured, and it was predicted that a higher number of targets and distractors in the MOT task would result in a lower pointing precision. The results confirmed this hypothesis, indicating that MOT might influence the performance of motor actions. The potential factors underlying this influence are discussed.     

BEFORE BABEL: REFLECTIONS ON READING AND TRANSLATING FREUD

The author offers some thoughts on reading and teaching Freud, on translating Freud, on translation in general, and on a possible kinship between translation and the psychoanalytic process. His reading of Freud's works, and the years he spent translating them into Hebrew and editing Hebrew editions of his writings, have made a deep and salient impression on his personal psychoanalytic palimpsest. The author began this labor prior to his psychoanalytic training and has no doubt that, to this day, the experience greatly shapes not only his attitude toward Freud himself, but also the nature of how he listens to patients and the way he thinks and writes about psychoanalysis.     

Object relational disturbances that may underlie the diagnosis of attention-deficit disorder in adults

Extensive case material is used to show how some adult patients who have been diagnosed with and medicated for attention-deficit disorder (ADD) may be actually suffering from underlying unconscious object relational conflicts that interfere with their ego-functioning, creating an inhibition of basic concentration, focus, expression, and learning. Early childhood experiences of trauma and neglect can create destructive patterns of projective identification based paranoia, guilt, and intense anxiety. The author proposes that these patients have to sacrifice their own identity, psychological organization, and ability to learn or teach in order to keep the peace with others. In order to avoid conflict, difference, and uncertainty, these patients do whatever they can to placate, please, and not disturb the object. However, they often end up extremely resentful, oppositional, and passive-aggressive in reaction. The overwhelming anxiety these patients experience in relationship to the object and to their own internalized demanding critic blocks their ability to learn and grow. In addition, new knowledge, mastery, and creativity are seen as dangerous, forced upon them, or bringing unsafe attention to them. So, in defense, they adapt an inert, scattered, or formless way of living to keep under the radar. This paper advocates the psychoanalytic treatment of such internal conflicts over the popular diagnosis of ADD. Difficulties of learning, attention, concentration, and organization can be better understood and treated as a set of core psychological issues open to gradual working through and healing rather than neurological defects that can only be controlled or managed with strong medication and behavioral exercises.     

Body-ownership for actively operated non-corporeal objects

Rubber-hand and virtual-hand illusions show that people can perceive body ownership for objects under suitable conditions. Bottom-up approaches assume that perceived ownership emerges from multisensory matching (e.g., between seen object and felt hand movements), whereas top-down approaches claim that novel body parts are integrated only if they resemble some part of a permanent internal body representation. We demonstrate that healthy adults perceive body ownership for a virtual balloon changing in size, and a virtual square changing in size or color, in synchrony with movements of their real hand. This finding is inconsistent with top-down approaches and amounts to an existence proof that non-corporeal events can be perceived as body parts if their changes are systematically related to one’s actions. It also implies that previous studies with passive-stimulation techniques might have underestimated the plasticity of body representations and put too much emphasis on the resemblance between viewed object and real hand.     

The countertransference impact of autistic defence in an otherwise neurotic patient

This paper investigates the question of why, in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a patient with encapsulated autistic pathology, the steady maintenance of a therapeutically neutral stance can be especially difficult. Transference and countertransference vicissitudes are examined. The author notices that the patient's intolerance of ‘opposites’ (cf. Tustin, 1986), combined with extreme antipathy to having that intolerance noticed, can elicit corresponding, and potentially destabilizing, countertransference reactions. These reactions comprise an unstable tension between co‐existing pressures towards fusion with, or expulsion of, the patient, their co‐existence under further pressure to remain unnoticed. Until perceived, this state of affairs risks collusion with the pressure either to merge with or to expel the patient, and compromises the capacity to notice the detail of the transference process and even to notice co‐existent positive and negative transference images. Detailed clinical illustration is given, including a session where it was difficult to notice the patient's experience of a couple as a combined object. The author finds these observations of bipolar countertransference tensions illuminated by Green's concepts of positive and negative narcissism and of the disobjectalizing function, and specifically accounted for by Ribas's theory of autism as radical drive defusion.     

Infants’ recognition of objects using canonical color

We explored infants’ ability to recognize the canonical colors of daily objects, including two color-specific objects (human face and fruit) and a non-color-specific object (flower), by using a preferential looking technique. A total of 58 infants between 5 and 8 months of age were tested with a stimulus composed of two color pictures of an object placed side by side: a correctly colored picture (e.g., red strawberry) and an inappropriately colored picture (e.g., green-blue strawberry). The results showed that, overall, the 6- to 8-month-olds showed preference for the correctly colored pictures for color-specific objects, whereas they did not show preference for the correctly colored pictures for the non-color-specific object. The 5-month-olds showed no significant preference for the correctly colored pictures for all object conditions. These findings imply that the recognition of canonical color for objects emerges at 6 months of age.     

Goodbye and farewell: Siegel vs. Feyerabend∗

The discussion between Searle and the Churchlands over whether or not symbolmanipulating computers generate semantics will be confronted both with the rulesceptical considerations of Kripke/Wittgenstein and with Wittgenstein's privatelanguage argument in order to show that the discussion focuses on the wrong place: meaning does not emerge in the brain. That a symbol means something should rather be conceived as a social fact, depending on a mutual imputation of linguistic competence of the participants of a linguistic practice to one another. The alternative picture will finally be applied to small children, animals, and computers as well.     

The Soul Cluster: Reconsideration of a Millennia Old Concept

The article presents a comparative analysis of the theories on conceptions of soul in indigenous and early European traditions. The focal point of the study is the observation that the concept of soul is noticeably complex in aboriginal cultures, and its plural—especially tripartite—nature is the rule rather than the exception. Another observation is that the described pluralism, the number of soul components, and their attributes go through speculative changes as the tradition moves away of tribal origins, which have the shamanic state of consciousness as experiential source of knowledge instead of scholarly theorization. A three-network model of human experience is drawn to support the tripartition cum trilocation concept of soul.