The phenomenology of agency and intention in the face of paralysis and insentience

Studies of perception have focussed on sensation, though more recently the perception of action has, once more, become the subject of investigation. These studies have looked at acute experimental situations. The present paper discusses the subjective experience of those with either clinical syndromes of loss of movement or sensation (spinal cord injury, sensory neuronopathy syndrome or motor stroke), or with experimental paralysis or sensory loss. The differing phenomenology of these is explored and their effects on intention and agency discussed. It is shown that sensory loss can have effects on the focussing of motor command and that for some a sense of agency can return despite paralysis.

Analysis and treatment of finger sucking

We analyzed and treated the finger sucking of 2 developmentally typical children aged 7 and 10 years. The functional analysis revealed that the finger sucking of both children was exhibited primarily during alone conditions, suggesting that the behavior was maintained by automatic reinforcement. An extended analysis provided support for this hypothesis and demonstrated that attenuation of stimulation produced by the finger sucking resulted in behavior reductions for both children. Treatment consisted of having each child wear a glove on the relevant hand during periods when he or she was alone. Use of the glove produced zero levels of finger sucking for 1 participant, whereas only moderate reductions were obtained for the other. Subsequently, an awareness enhancement device was used that produced an immediate reduction in finger sucking.     

Effects of Visual Manipulation in Sit-to-Stand Movement in Children With Cerebral Palsy

The authors sought to verify the effects of vision on sit-to-stand (STS) movement performance by means of postural sway in children with cerebral palsy (CP) and typical children (TC). Participants were 42 TC and 21 children with CP. STS movement was assessed with eyes open and with eyes closed. Area and velocity of center of pressure sway were analyzed in each of the 3 STS phases. We observed greater postural sway during STS movement with eyes closed. Children with CP presented greater postural sway than TC did. Both groups exhibited greater postural instability with absence of vision expressing the role of vision to keep postural stability. Moreover, the greater postural instability was observed in children with CP.     

Perception2

The article is an overview of some central philosophical problems associated with perception. It discusses what distinguishes perception from other sensory capacities and from conception. It discusses anti‐individualism, a view according to which the nature of a perceptual state is dependent not just causally but for its identity or ‘essence’ on relations to a normal environment in which systems containing that state were formed. It discusses different views about epistemic warrant. By emphasising the deep ways in which human and animal perceptual systems, especially visual systems, are similar, it criticises a dominant view of the last century, in both philosophy and large parts of psychology, according to which a range of sophisticated supplementary abilities have to be learned before a child can perceive objective features of the physical world.     

视觉感觉记忆信息在模式识别中的作用

该研究设计了新的实验方法进行了两项全部报告实验和两项抽样模式识别实验,考察视觉感觉记忆(visual sensorymemory,VSM)信息在模式识别中的作用。结果发现,在限定利用短时记忆(shor-term memory,STM)信息的抽样模式识别作业中,识别出的模式与转换到短时记忆的模式在数量上无显著性差别,而在短时记忆和感觉记忆信息都可能利用的识别作业中,虽然转换到短时记忆的模式数量并未增加,但识别出的模式比转换到短时记忆的模式数量增加了1倍(P<0.001)。这表明,未能转换到短时记忆的感觉记忆信息可被直接用于模式识别。     

First‐hand sensory experience plays a limited role in children's early understanding of seeing and hearing as sources of knowledge: Evidence from typically hearing and deaf children

One early‐developing component of theory of mind is an understanding of the link between sensory perception and knowledge formation. We know little about the extent to which children's first‐hand sensory experiences drive the development of this understanding, as most tasks capturing this early understanding target vision, with less attention paid to the other senses. In this study, 64 typically hearing children (M_age = 4.0 years) and 21 orally educated deaf children (M_age = 5.44 years) were asked to identify which of two informants knew the identity of a toy animal when each had differing perceptual access to the animal. In the ‘seeing’ condition, one informant saw the animal and the other did not; in the ‘hearing’ condition, one informant heard the animal and the other did not. For both hearing and deaf children, there was no difference between performance on hearing and seeing trials, but deaf children were delayed in both conditions. Further, within both the hearing and deaf groups, older children outperformed younger children on these tasks, indicating that there is a developmental progression. Taken together, the pattern of results suggests that experiences other than first‐hand sensory experiences drive children's developing understanding that sensory perception is associated with knowledge.     

Modality-specific effects in bilingual language perception

ABSTRACT

Language switching typically leads to language switch costs. Previous studies demonstrated that production-based language switching often results in reduced costs when the languages are assigned to distinct modalities (i.e. bimodal language switching) compared to switching within a modality (i.e. unimodal switching). In Experiment 1–3, we compared unimodal to bimodal switching in language perception. In Experiment 4, unimodal switching was compared to bivocal switching (i.e. languages were assigned to different voices). Experiment 1–3 revealed significantly higher switch costs for bimodal than for unimodal switching, indicating fundamental differences to language production studies. While bimodal switching leads to no (additional) costs but – under specific conditions – even to advantage in production, it increases switch costs in language perception. Moreover, Experiment 4 indicates that this is more a modality-specific rather than a general perception-based effect. Different voices instead of different modalities evoked no similar increase in switch costs.