WHY PRACTICE PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE?

This essay explains why there are good reasons to practice philosophy as a way of life. The argument begins with the assumption that we should live well but that our understanding of how to live well can be mistaken. Philosophical reason and reflection can help correct these mistakes. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that philosophical reasoning often fails to change our dispositions and behavior. Drawing on the work of Pierre Hadot, the essay claims that spiritual exercises and communal engagement mitigate the factors that prevent us from living in accordance with our conceptions of the good life. So, many of us have reasons to engage in philosophical reasoning along with behavioral, cognitive, and social strategies to alter our behavior and attitudes so that they’re in line with our philosophical commitments. In these respects, many of us should practice philosophy as a way of life.     

A review of the methods used to describe and measure aggressive behaviour in physiological studies

A review of the methods used to study behaviour in a number of experiments investigating the physiology of aggression highlights in the following problems: 1) the narrow range of species studied, 2) the inappropriate conditions in which animals are often housed for observation, 3) the inappropriate stimuli used to elicit aggressive responses in some cases, and 4) the lack of adequate detail with which behaviour is often recorded and analysed. It is stressed that without better techniques for studying behaviour, many questions about the organisation of aggression will remain unanswered.     

Socially mediated learning in male Betta splendens. III: Rapid acquisitions

In four experiments with male Siamese fighting fish, the classical conditioning of visual/spatial cues with elicitors of aggression was demonstrated. These studies show that this type of socially mediated learning is more rapidly conditioned than was previously known. One 15-min training session is adequate to condition a preference for those cues that had recently been paired with conspecific images. Finally, behavior occurring during acquisition, in the presence of aggression-eliciting cues, was uncorrelated with the magnitude of the learned preferences that were assayed during extinction tests and in the absence of social stimuli.     

The attentional cost of inattentional blindness

When our attention is engaged in a visual task, we can be blind to events which would otherwise not be missed. In three experiments, 97 out of the 165 observers performing a visual attention task failed to notice an unexpected, irrelevant object moving across the display. Surprisingly, this object significantly lowered accuracy in the primary task when, and only when, it failed to reach awareness. We suggest that an unexpected stimulus causes a state of alert that would normally generate an attentional shift; if this response is prevented by an attention-consuming task, a portion of the attentional resources remains allocated to the object. Such a portion is large enough to disturb performance, but not so large that the object can be recognized as task-irrelevant and accordingly ignored. Our findings have one counterintuitive implication: irrelevant stimuli might hamper some types of performance only when perceived subliminally.     

Discontinuity in the enumeration of sequentially presented auditory and visual stimuli

The seeking of discontinuity in enumeration was recently renewed because Cowan [Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 87–185; Cowan, N. (2005). Working memory capacity. Hove: Psychology Press] suggested that it allows evaluating the limit of the focus of attention, currently estimated at four items. A strong argument in favour of a general constraint of the cognitive system is that similar discontinuities should be observed in modalities different from the classic simultaneous presentation of visual objects. Recently, data were provided on tactile stimuli, but the authors diverged in their conclusion about the existence of such discontinuity [Gallace, A., Tan, H. Z., & Spence, C. (2006). Numerosity judgments for tactile stimuli distributed over the body surface. Perception, 35(2), 247–266; Riggs, K. J., Ferrand, L., Lancelin, D., Fryziel, L., Dumur, G., & Simpson, A. (2006). Subitizing in tactile perception. Psychological Science, 17(4), 271–272]. Following a similar rationale, our study aimed at evaluating discontinuity in the enumeration of auditory and visual stimuli presented sequentially. The clear and similar discontinuity observed in error rates, response times and given responses for both modalities favours the general capacity limit view, but also questions the size of this capacity, because the discontinuity occurred here at size 2. However, the masking of stimuli in sensory memory could not be entirely discarded.     

Evaluating preference assessments for use in the general education population

This study compared the effectiveness of a multiple-stimulus-without-replacement (MSWO) preference assessment and teacher preference ranking in identifying reinforcers for use in a general education setting with typically developing elementary-school children. The mean number of digits correctly answered was greater in the MSWO-selected reward and the teacher-selected reward conditions relative to the no-reward condition for 2 of the 4 participants, but there were no differences between the MSWO-selected and teacher-selected reward conditions for any participant.     

Effects of within-class differences in sample responding on acquired sample equivalence

Two experiments examined whether acquired sample equivalence in many-toone matching was affected by variation in sample-response requirements. In each experiment, pigeons responded on either identical or different response schedules to the sample stimuli that occasioned the same reinforced comparison choice (i.e., to the within-class samples). Transfer-of-control tests were then conducted to determine acquired equivalence, or lack thereof, between these samples. In both experiments, there was minimal or no evidence of acquired sample equivalence when pigeons responded differently to the samples within each common-choice class. By contrast, transfer was observed if pigeons responded (a) identically to all sample stimuli, or (b) identically to samples within each common-choice class (viz., to samples that occasioned the same reinforced choice) and differently to samples from different classes (viz., to samples that occasioned different choices). These results may help to explain the recent lack of evidence for response membership in pigeons' acquired equivalence (Urcuioli, Lionello-DeNolf, Michalek, & Vasconcelos, 2006). They also raise questions about the functional sample stimuli and about possible interactions between acquired equivalence and acquired distinctiveness.     

Combinations of response-dependent and response-independent schedule-correlated stimulus presentation in an observing procedure

Pigeons pecked a response key on a variable-interval (VI) schedule, in which responses produced food every 40 s, on average. These VI periods, or components, alternated in irregular fashion with extinction components in which food was unavailable. Pecks on a second (observing) key briefly produced exteroceptive stimuli (houselight flashes) correlated with the component schedule currently in effect. Across conditions within a phase, the dependency between observing and presentation of the stimuli was decreased systematically while the density of stimulus presentation was held constant. Across phases, the proportion of session time spent in the VI component was adjusted from 0.5 to 0.25, and then to 0.75. Results indicate that rate of observing decreased as the dependency between responses and stimulus presentations was decreased. Further, discriminative control by the schedule-correlated stimuli was systematically weakened as dependency was decreased. Increasing the proportion of session time spent in VI decreased the rate of observing. This effect was additive with the manipulation of the dependency between observing and presentation of the stimuli. Overall, these results show that conditioned reinforcers function similarly to unconditioned reinforcers with respect to response-consequence dependencies, and that stimulus control is enhanced under conditions in which the relevant stimuli are produced by an organism's behavior.     

Professional education of psychologists using online problem‐based learning methods: Experience at Charles Sturt University

Abstract: Problem‐based learning (PBL) is a pedagogical approach to professional training that emphasises the development of clinical reasoning skills and self‐directed learning. In contrast to more traditional lecture‐based approaches that focus upon the linear acquisition of course content, PBL is undertaken in the context of actual case presentations. Although PBL has been adopted widely in the professional training of medical practitioners and nurses, it is only just beginning to be used in the professional education of psychologists. This paper examines the nature and benefits of PBL for education in clinical and forensic psychology by outlining its implementation and development at Charles Sturt University, located in a rural area of Australia. Although a full and independent evaluation of PBL for education in clinical or forensic psychology is yet to be undertaken, this paper argues that PBL can make a significant contribution to professional training in psychology.     

情绪即社会信息模型述评

情绪即社会信息(EASI)模型提出,个体对他人的情绪信息加工具有两种方式:情感反应与推断加工。认识动机水平及不同的社会情境会影响两种加工的强度,进而影响个体的决策。该模型在谈判、领导者和最后通牒、独裁者博弈研究中获得了直接和间接的实证支持。心理理论与移情的新近神经生理研究成果也有助于深入探索该模型的神经生理基础。该模型具有很强的应用潜力,但形成时间尚短,需要进一步探索并应用到实践领域中去。