The Word “Time”—Voce “Tempo”

This article looks at the prevalent view of time in the history of Western philosophy and science and then contrasts it with the emerging new vision of time as ontologically constructive. Throughout Western history, philosophers and scientists attempted to marginalize and anesthetize the role of time by prioritizing being over becoming. But beginning with the Darwinian revolution in biology, the West could no longer deny the constructive role of time in bringing forth new ontological orders. While the 20th century witnessed the split between the reversible time of physics and the developmental time of biology, the time has now come for this divide to be reconciled. Twenty-first century science is already revealing the constructive role of time in cosmology with the likelihood of multiple universes. In conclusion, the authors speculate that our moment in human cultural development is ripe for a complex, multidimensional, and transdisciplinary understanding of time.     

Discrete Process Model for Quantum Systems of Matter and Mind

Attempts to create a coherent scientific picture of the world as a whole on the basis of quantum physics has sped up at the turn of the millennium. There particularly seem to be expectations that the development of a new kind of quantum mechanics could make it possible to describe both matter and consciousness in one frame of reference (“dual aspect approach”). These ideas are often results of brilliant intuitive visions but as yet not able to produce testable hypotheses. Maybe “wave mechanics” is not very suitable in the study of consciousness from the quantum mechanical point of view. The aim of this article is to show how both the matter and the mind systems can be described with one coherent mathematical model if we assume both space and time to be discrete.     

The face of fluency: Semantic coherence automatically elicits a specific pattern of facial muscle reactions

This study shows that high conceptual fluency induced by hidden semantic coherence automatically triggers a specific pattern of facial expressions. In the present study, word triads that either had or had not a common remote associate were read by individuals while automatic facial responses were recorded. Although participants were ignorant about the underlying semantic structure, participants’ faces showed an activation of the smiling muscle zygomaticus major (indicating increased positive affect), a relaxation of the frowning muscle corrugator supercilii (indicating decreased negative affect and mental effort), and a relaxation of the forehead muscle frontalis (indicating increased familiarity) after reading coherent compared to incoherent word triads. Implications for intuitive judgements of semantic coherence are discussed.     

Delayed reconfiguration of a non-emotional task set through reactivation of an emotional task set in task switching: an ageing study

ABSTRACT

In our everyday life, we frequently switch between different tasks, a faculty that changes with age. However, it is still not understood how emotion impacts on age-related changes in task switching. Using faces with emotional and neutral expressions, Experiment 1 investigated younger (n?=?29; 18–38 years old) and older adults’ (n?=?32; 61–80 years old) ability to switch between an emotional and a non-emotional task (i.e. responding to the face's expression vs. age). In Experiment 2, younger and older adults also viewed emotional and neutral faces, but switched between two non-emotional tasks (i.e. responding to the face's age vs. gender). Data from Experiment 1 demonstrated that switching from an emotional to a non-emotional task was slower when the expression of the new face was emotional rather than neutral. This impairment was observed in both age groups. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that neither younger nor older adults were affected by block-wise irrelevant emotion when switching between two non-emotional tasks. Overall, the findings suggest that task-irrelevant emotion can impair task switching through reactivation of the competing emotional task set. They also suggest that this effect and the ability to shield task-switching performance from block-wise irrelevant emotion are preserved in ageing.     

Gender of the expresser moderates the effect of emotional faces on the startle reflex

It has been suggested that the impact of emotional expressions on the startle reflex is influenced by the intention communicated by the expression (e.g., the intention to attack). However, we propose that the meaning of an emotional expression is not only based on the intention, but is also influenced by characteristics of the expresser such as gender: since men are typically seen as more dominant than women, anger expressed by men should be perceived as particularly threatening, thus amplifying the startle response. We compared the influence of anger, fear and neutral expressions shown by men and women on the startle reaction. Startle reactions were measured using electromyography. As predicted, we found stronger startle reactions after the presentation of anger expressed by men compared to fearful and neutral expressions shown by men. For female expressers, the startle response was not affected by expression type.     

Enhanced probing of attentional bias: The independence of anxiety-linked selectivity in attentional engagement with and disengagement from negative information

Cognitive models of anxiety posit that an attentional bias to negative information plays a causal role in elevated anxiety vulnerability and dysfunction. There has been considerable recent interest in determining whether this attentional bias reflects facilitated attentional engagement with and/or impaired attentional disengagement from negative information. We concur with the claim of investigators who have noted that the methodologies previously employed to dissociate engagement and disengagement biases are not optimal for this purpose. In the present study, we employ a novel methodology, the Attentional Response to Distal vs. Proximal Emotional Information (ARDPEI) task, which enables the discrete assessment of these two types of attentional selectivity. The findings demonstrate that facilitated attentional engagement with and impaired attentional disengagement from negative information both characterise elevated anxiety vulnerability. Further, these biases represent distinctive facets of anxiety-linked attentional selectivity. We discuss the potentially differing roles that engagement and disengagement biases may play in the development and/or maintenance of anxiety vulnerability and dysfunction.     

Emotion processing facilitates working memory performance

The effect of emotional stimulus content on working memory performance has been investigated with conflicting results, as both emotion-dependent facilitation and impairments are reported in the literature. To clarify this issue, 52 adult participants performed a modified visual 2-back task with highly arousing positive stimuli (sexual scenes), highly arousing negative stimuli (violent death) and low-arousal neutral stimuli. Emotional stimulus processing was found to facilitate task performance relative to that of neutral stimuli, both in regards to response accuracy and reaction times. No emotion-dependent differences in false-alarm rates were found. These results indicate that emotional information can have a facilitating effect on working memory maintenance and processing of information.     

Direct and indirect measures of spider fear predict unique variance in children's fear-related behaviour

This study investigated whether direct and indirect measures predict unique variance components of fearful behaviour in children. One hundred eighty-nine children aged between 9 and 12 performed a pictorial version of the emotional Stroop task (EST), filled out the Spider Anxiety and Disgust Screening for Children (SADS-C), the Spider Phobia Questionnaire for Children (SPQ-C), and took part in a Behavioural Assessment Test (BAT). The EST did not correlate with self-reports. Correlations of the self-reports and the BAT remained significant after partialling out EST performance. Likewise, the EST and the BAT still correlated significantly with each other when controlling for the self-reports. This indicates that both direct and indirect measures are useful for predicting unique variance components of fearful behaviour in children. Moreover, it may explain why some previous studies have not found a relationship between self-reported fear and EST performance.     

The future is here: A review of foresight systems in anxiety and depression

Cognitive models of anxiety and depression have long suggested a central role for future-oriented thinking in these disorders. Experimental studies suggest that anxiety and depression are characterised by distinct future-oriented thinking profiles, and that these profiles are markedly different from those of asymptomatic adults. In this paper, we review these profiles and propose two explanatory models marked by two different neurocognitive systems. The Reconstructive Memory Model emphasises a role for emotionally driven learning and retrieval in episodic foresight (i.e., the construction of future-oriented scenarios), and the Valuation Model proposes that an overweighing of risk and uncertainty estimates can be invoked to explain the future-oriented thought patterns. We consider the effectiveness of interventions aimed at altering such thought patterns. We suggest that future research aimed at elucidating the neurobiological underpinnings of future-oriented thinking in anxiety and depression can play an important role in advancing development of effective biological and psychosocial interventions for these disorders.     

Stopping anger and anxiety: Evidence that inhibitory ability predicts negative emotional responding

Research has begun to suggest that cognitive ability contributes to emotional processes and responses. The present study sought novel evidence for this hypothesis by examining the relationship between individual differences in the capacity for inhibitory control and responses to a common emotion-induction procedure involving autobiographical memories. Participants first completed a stop-signal task to measure inhibitory control and then underwent an anger, anxiety, or neutral emotion induction. Performance on the stop-signal task predicted emotional responses such that participants with poorer inhibitory control reported larger increases in anger following the anger induction and larger increases in anxiety across emotion induction conditions, relative to better inhibitors. These results suggest that individual differences in cognitive ability may influence the intensity of emotional states induced by common laboratory methods of emotion induction.