Orienting of attention: Then and now

It is nearly 35 years since I gave the 7th Sir Frederick Bartlett lecture at Oxford University. This was published as a paper entitled “Orienting of attention in the quarterly journal”. The topic was then primarily in psychology, but now equally often in neuroscience. This paper summarizes the background of the reaction time methods used in the original paper and findings that emerged later on the sensory consequences of orienting, mainly in the visual system. It then discusses the brain network that is the source of the sensory amplification and other brain networks that are involved in attention. Next, it reviews studies of the development of attentional networks in early life. Finally, it indicates how the new tools available to explore the human brain can lead to further progress.     

Differential effects of driver sleepiness and sleep inertia on driving behavior

ObjectivesDriver sleepiness is one of the major safety issues in conventional driving and sleep inertia emerges as a driver state in automated driving. The aim of the present study was to assess the differential impacts of sleepiness and sleep inertia on driving behavior.Method61 participants completed a 10-min manual driving task during an otherwise automated drive. They completed the task (a) under an alert state, (b) under a sleepy state, and (c) after EEG-confirmed sleep. Driving performance was assessed with the parameters lane-keeping, speed choice, and speed-keeping. The eye-blink-based sleepiness measure PERCLOS (the proportion of time with eyes closed) was compared for the three driver states.ResultsLane- and speed-keeping performance were impaired under the sleepy state and after sleep, relative to the alert state. After sleep, lane-keeping behavior recovered rapidly and speed-keeping recovered by trend. Under the sleepy state, performance deteriorated. After sleep, the mean speed was lower than in the sleepy state and in the alert state. PERCLOS was increased after sleep and under the sleepy state, relative to the alert state.ConclusionsAlthough sleep inertia had detrimental effects on driving parameters similar to sleepiness, this effect rapidly vanished. Hence, while brief naps might be suitable to restore alertness in general, the minimal time needed to regain full capacity after napping should be a focus of future research.     

Accidentally True Beliefs and the Williamsonian Mental State of Knowing

In this paper, I will explore some philosophical implications of Williamson’s thesis that knowing is a state of mind (KSM). Using the fake barn case, I will introduce a way to evaluate Williamson’s KSM thesis and determine whether the Williamsonian mental state of knowing can be plausibly distinguished from certain other similar but epistemologically distinctive states of mind (i.e., accidentally true beliefs). Then, some tentative externalist accounts of the supposed differences between the Williamsonian mental state of knowing and accidentally true beliefs will be critically assessed, implying that the evaluated traditional versions of externalism in semantics and epistemology do not fit well with Williamson’s KSM thesis. Ultimately, I suggest that the extended-mind or extended-knower approach may be more promising, which indicates that active externalism would be called for by Williamson’s KSM thesis.     

Is personality stable in adolescence? Disentangling time-invariant and time-varying factors of personality in a trait–state–occasion model

This study applied trait–state–occasion (TSO) modelling to investigate the extent to which inter-individual differences in personality were accounted for by time-invariant and time-varying factors during adolescence. The participants were 753 high school students, and only 661 students were followed for 4 years. The mean age in the first year was 15.23 years and 52.8% were females. The results showed that the full TSO model had the best representation of adolescent personality, and the means of the proportions of variance explained by trait factors for the Big Five ranged between 56% and 83%, suggesting that inter-individual differences in personality are mainly accounted for by stable trait variance over the course of adolescence. Furthermore, the five dimensions of personality differed not only in the amounts of trait variance but also in the stability of time-varying factors. These findings have significant implications for personality research.     

Religion,Democracy and the ‘Dawla Madaniyya’ of the Arab Spring

The object of this article is to review and evaluate a debate that has been taking place among Muslim and Arab writers for some time now about the concept of ‘dawla madaniyya’ (‘civil state/government’), and the place of religion in democratic politics. More precisely, it will be suggested that the current popularity of the term ‘dawla madaniyya’ signifies only a partial meeting of minds between Islamists and their liberal and secular opponents. By and large, the concept seems to have an instrumental value as part of an on-going discursive struggle between various political orientations about the place of Islam in the social–political order. On the basis of our discussion of the terms of the debate, a new approach to conceptualizing the disagreement will be suggested. The goal of this is not to resolve the disagreement, but rather to sharpen it in a way that shows what is required to achieve significant progress. The final resolution of the disagreement must await a more radical convergence of ideas than currently exists – a convergence that touches not only on standards of reasonableness but also on substantive beliefs and values.     

Evaluation of two short-term stress interventions in the context of mobility

ObjectivesIn our lives we experience different types of stress that emanate from a variety of situations. This stress can potentially spill over into unrelated situations, including the operation of a vehicle in a safe manner. It is not well known which types of countermeasures can actually mitigate such stress during driving. For this purpose, one needs valid stress intervention methods for the different types of stress that commonly occur during driving. In this study, it was therefore evaluated whether or not two stress interventions were effective in reducing stress. These two stress interventions were Positive Psychology–i.e., being an activity to reflect about thankful moments–and Biofeedback–i.e., being an activity aimed at continued relaxation based on the display of the participants own stress level.MethodsA study with 41 (n = 21 male) participants was conducted in a stationary vehicle to evaluate the effectiveness of Positive Psychology and Biofeedback on stress reduction. Stress was induced using the Stroop Task. During a Stroop Task high stress is caused by naming color words displayed in another, incongruent color. In the Baseline Condition, participants looked at neutral images, which were expected to have no effect on stress levels. These conditions were then compared.FindingsThe results revealed that participant stress levels were significantly higher during each stress induction period in comparison to each stress intervention period. This indicated that a reduction of stress is possible by administering stress interventions in a stationary setting. Yet, there was no difference between Positive Psychology, Biofeedback, and the Baseline Condition, supposedly due to the short administration, stress-reducing attributes of the Baseline Condition itself, or regression to the mean effects.NoveltyThe overall goal of this research is the development of stress interventions to target different types of stress that can occur in the context of mobility, an application context not yet investigated. These interventions are expected to improve well-being and safety inside the vehicle by improving concentration, attention, and psychomotor control, which can be reduced by high stress. The study took a first step to achieve this goal by developing and evaluating Positive Psychology and Biofeedback as stress intervention activities to mitigate stress in a stationary vehicle–a situation comparable to automated driving. The developed interventions showed stress-reducing effects in the stationary setting whereas looking at neutral pictures–although serving as the baseline–was similarly stress-reducing. This enables the next step–adding the task of manual driving to the interventions to look into both the effectiveness of the interventions during manual driving and driving safety at the same time.     

粗暴养育与中学生学习投入：状态焦虑与性别的作用

基于儿童学习投入的社会文化情境发展模型和动机与投入之轮理论,构建了一个有调节的中介模型,探讨了粗暴养育与学习投入的关系以及状态焦虑与性别的作用。对852名初中生进行问卷调查,结果发现：（1）粗暴养育与状态焦虑呈显著正相关,与学习投入呈显著负相关,状态焦虑与学习投入呈显著负相关;（2）状态焦虑在粗暴养育与学习投入之间起完全中介作用;性别调节了“粗暴养育→状态焦虑→学习投入”的前半段路径,相对于男性,粗暴养育与状态焦虑的正向联系在女性中更强。     

SSSR Presidential Address Public Religions and the Postsecular: Critical Reflections

The term “postsecular” is proliferating in the writings of scholars working in the humanities and social sciences. This article assesses the variety of meanings attributed to the term, groups them in six clusters of ideas, and raises questions about the tensions that exist between some of its different meanings. Taking the central idea that religions enjoy relatively high visibility in the public sphere of postsecular societies, the article then considers how well this applies to the case of Britain. It argues that the visibility of religion in Britain's public sphere—far from being postsecular in any of the current meanings of the term—is actually associated with the state's “interpellation” of selected religions as partners in the delivery of public policies for managing diversity, combating inequality, and promoting social enterprise.     

Infants infer intentions from prosody

Two studies were conducted to examine infants’ ability to discern intentions from lexical and prosodic cues. Two groups of 14-18-month-olds participated in these studies. In both studies, infants watched an adult perform a sequence of two-step actions on novel toys that produced an end-result. In the first study actions were marked intentionally with both lexical and prosodic cues. In the second study, the lexical markers of intention were presented in Greek, thus providing infants with prosodic but not lexical cues. In both studies, infants reproduced more intentional than accidental actions, suggesting that infants can infer intentions from prosodic cues.