Will the Real Moral Judgment Please Stand Up?

The recent, influential Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment (Haidt, Psychological Review 108, 814–834, 2001) proposes a primary role for fast, automatic and affectively charged moral intuitions in the formation of moral judgments. Haidt’s research challenges our normative conception of ourselves as agents capable of grasping and responding to reasons. We argue that there can be no ‘real’ moral judgments in the absence of a capacity for reflective shaping and endorsement of moral judgments. However, we suggest that the empirical literature indicates a complex interplay between automatic and deliberative mental processes in moral judgment formation, with the latter constraining the expression and influence of moral intuitions. We therefore conclude that the psychological literature supports a normative conception of agency.

Socially dependent auditory laterality in domestic horses (Equus caballus)

Laterality is now known to be an ubiquitous phenomenon among the vertebrates. Particularly, laterality of auditory processing has been demonstrated in a variety of species, especially songbirds and primates. Such a hemispheric specialization has been shown to depend on factors such as sound structure, species specificity and types of stimuli. Much less is known on the possible influence of social familiarity although a few studies suggest such an influence. Here we tested the influence of the degree of familiarity on the laterality of the auditory response in the domestic horse. This species is known for its social system and shows visible reactions to sounds, with one or two ears moving towards a sound source. By comparing such responses to the playback of different conspecific whinnies (group member, neighbor and stranger), we could demonstrate a clear left hemisphere (LH) preference for familiar neighbor calls while no preference was found for group member and stranger calls. Yet, we found an opposite pattern of ear side preference for neighbor versus stranger calls. These results are, to our knowledge, the first to demonstrate auditory laterality in an ungulate species. They open further lines of thought on the influence of the social “value” of calls and the listener’s arousal on auditory processing and laterality.     

幽默加工的脑机制

幽默是人类一种独特又普遍的现象,其研究具有重要的应用价值。已有的研究对正常人和特殊个体幽默的神经机制进行了探讨,主要涉及幽默加工的双阶段理论模型和神经机制、幽默加工中的认知和情感因素研究、幽默加工脑机制的个体差异以及幽默加工的大脑不对称性。未来的研究需在更宽的视野中对幽默的加工阶段模型以及幽默与其它心理过程之间的关系进行探讨     

抑郁认知易感性的新解释——双重加工模型

双重加工模型认为人类拥有两种信息加工模式,联想模式是快速、不需努力的加工,以良好学习联想(Well-learned associations)为基础:反思模式是慢速的、需要付出努力的加工,建立在基于规则的符号推理基础上,联想模式的发生是自动化的,当预期被违反时,执行反思模式,并需要足够的认知资源.当反思加工没有校正消极的有偏向的联想加工时,就会表现出抑郁的认知易感性.双重加工模型对抑郁认知易感性的评估、病原学和治疗提出了新的看法.     

情绪加工老化效应的神经机制

行为学研究发现,老年人对消极情绪的辨别、注意和记忆都有所下降,而对积极情绪并未表现出类似的现象。情绪加工老化效应的神经影像学研究发现,老年人在情绪加工过程中边缘系统（尤其杏仁核）的激活强度低于年轻人,但额叶皮层区域的激活却有所增强。研究者对该结果提出了两种假说,一种是功能代偿假说,另一种是策略改变假说。功能代偿假说认为老年人额叶皮层区域的激活增强是为了弥补边缘系统功能的下降,反映了大脑功能的代偿;策略改变假说认为老年人主动使用了不同于年轻人的策略,情绪加工方式的不同导致了两组人群大脑活动的差异。未来这方面研究可以从研究层面、研究方法、研究问题等方面逐步完善     

Early maturity of face recognition: No childhood development of holistic processing, novel face encoding, or face-space

Historically, it was believed the perceptual mechanisms involved in individuating faces developed only very slowly over the course of childhood, and that adult levels of expertise were not reached until well into adolescence. Over the last 10 years, there has been some erosion of this view by demonstrations that all adult-like behavioural properties are qualitatively present in young children and infants. Determining the age of maturity, however, requires quantitative comparison across age groups, a task made difficult by the need to disentangle development in face perception from development in all the other cognitive factors that affect task performance. Here, we argue that full quantitative maturity is reached early, by 5-7 years at the latest and possibly earlier. This is based on a comprehensive literature review of results in the 5-years-to-adult age range, with particular focus on the results of the few previous studies that are methodologically suitable for quantitative comparison of face effects across age, plus three new experiments testing development of holistic/configural processing (faces versus objects, disproportionate inversion effect), ability to encode novel faces (assessed via implicit memory) and face-space (own-age bias).     

Hierarchical forms processing in adults and children

Two experiments examined child and adult processing of hierarchical stimuli composed of geometric forms. Adults (ages 18-23 years) and children (ages 7-10 years) performed a forced-choice task gauging similarity between visual stimuli consisting of large geometric objects (global level) composed of small geometric objects (local level). The stimuli spatial arrangement was manipulated to assess child and adult reaction times and predisposition toward local or global form categorization under two distinct trial conditions, with varied density of the local forms comprising the global forms. In Experiment 1, children and adults were presented with common, simple geometric shape hierarchical forms composed of ovals and rectangles. In Experiment 2, adults were presented with hierarchical forms composed of the simple geometric shapes, ovals and rectangles, and additional novel complex geometric shapes, “posts” and “arches.” Results show a clear increase of global processing bias across the age ranges of the individuals in the study, with children at 10 years performing similarly to adults on the simple stimuli. In addition, adults presented with the novel complex geometric shapes showed a significant reduction in global processing bias, indicating that form novelty and complexity lead to additional attention to local features in categorization tasks.     

LOT,CTM, and the Elephant in the Room

According to the language of thought (LOT) approach and the related computational theory of mind (CTM), thinking is the processing of symbols in an inner mental language that is distinct from any public language. Herein, I explore a deep problem at the heart of the LOT/CTM program—it has yet to provide a plausible conception of a mental symbol.     

Grammatical Processing of Spoken Language in Child and Adult Language Learners

This article presents a selective overview of studies that have investigated auditory language processing in children and late second-language (L2) learners using online methods such as event-related potentials (ERPs), eye-movement monitoring, or the cross-modal priming paradigm. Two grammatical phenomena are examined in detail, children’s and adults’ processing of German plural inflections (Lück et al. Brain Res 1077:144–152, 2006; Hahne et al. J Cognitive Neurosci 18:121–134, 2006; Clahsen et al. J Child Language 34:601–622, 2007) and language learners’ processing of filler-gap dependencies in English (Felser C, Roberts L Second Language Res 23:9–36, 2007; Roberts et al. J Psycholinguist Res 36:175–188, 2007). The results from these studies reveal clear differences between native and nonnative processing in both domains of grammar, suggesting that nonnative listeners rely less on grammatical parsing routines during processing than either child or adult native listeners. We also argue that factors such as slower processing speed or cognitive resource limitations only provide a partial account of our findings.     

Pronominal Resolution and Gap Filling in Agrammatic Aphasia: Evidence from Eye Movements

This paper reports the results of three studies examining comprehension and real-time processing of pronominal (Experiment 1) and Wh-movement (Experiments 2 and 3) structures in agrammatic and unimpaired speakers using eyetracking. We asked the following questions: (a) Is off-line comprehension of these constructions impaired in agrammatic listeners?, (b) Do agrammatic, like unimpaired, listeners show eye movement patterns indicative of automatic pronominal reference resolution and/or gap-filling?, and (c) Do eyetracking patterns differ when sentences are correctly versus incorrectly interpreted, or do automatic processes prevail in spite of comprehension failure? Results showed that off-line comprehension of both pronoun and Wh-movement structures was impaired in our agrammatic cohort. However, the aphasic participants showed visual evidence of real-time reference resolution as they processed binding structures, including both pronouns and reflexives, as did our unimpaired control participants. Similarly, both the patients and the control participants showed patterns consistent with successful gap filling during processing of Wh-movement structures. For neither pronominal nor movement structures did we find evidence of delayed processing. Notably, these patterns were found for the aphasic participants even when they incorrectly interpreted target sentences, with the exception of object relative constructions. For incorrectly interpreted sentences, we found end of sentence lexical competition effects. These findings indicate that aberrant lexical integration, rather than representational deficits or generally slowed processing, may underlie agrammatic aphasic listener’s comprehension failure.