Affective States and Epistemic Immediacy

This article defends the view that an adequate response to some central epistemological problems requires us to find a role for emotions and other affective states in epistemic evaluation and also to invoke virtuous traits of character in order to explain how these affective evaluations are regulated. The argument is based on the need for some epistemic evaluations to possess a kind of immediacy, if we are not to face a worrying regress. The closing sections support the claim that epistemic evaluation depends upon appropriate character traits though a discussion of what is involved in being observant .     

The ‘mad scientists’: Psychoanalysis,dream and virtual reality2

The author explores the concept of reality‐testing as a means of assessing the relationship with reality that prevails in dream and in virtual reality. Based on a model developed by Jean Laplanche, she compares these activities in detail in order to determine their respective independence from the function of reality‐testing. By carefully examining the concept of hallucination in the writings of Freud and Daniel Dennett, the author seeks to pinpoint the specific modalities of interaction between perceptions, ideas, wishes and actions that converge in the ‘belief’ and in the ‘sense of reality’. The paper's main thesis consists of the distinction that it draws between immediacy‐testing and reality‐testing, with the further argument that this distinction not only dissipates the conceptual vagueness that generally surrounds the latter of the two concepts but also that it promotes a more precise analysis of the function of reality in dream and in virtual reality.     

风险决策和跨期决策的过程比较：以确定效应和即刻效应为例

风险决策和跨期决策与人类生存发展密切相关, 且两类决策在理论发展、行为效应及神经基础等方面具有相似性。为检验二者是否具有共同过程机制, 本研究以风险决策中的确定效应和跨期决策中的即刻效应为例, 采用眼动追踪技术比较了它们的局部、整体过程及模型拟合。辅以贝叶斯因子分析实验数据表明：二者的主要过程特征均相似, 且更符合非折扣模型假设; 二者在加工复杂程度等少数特征上有所不同; 确定和即刻信息在加工方向等特征上存在特异性。这表明二者可能具有共同的核心决策规则：两类决策更可能遵循非折扣模型预期的简捷、启发式规则, 而不是折扣模型所假设的补偿性、基于选项规则。本研究为建立两类决策的共同解释框架做出了有益尝试, 并为决策比较研究方法提供新的方向。     

中文句子阅读中语义信息对眼动预视效应的影响

采用句子为阅读材料,变化句子中一个单字词形成语义连贯与语义违背两种实验条件,通过两个眼动实验探讨中文句子阅读中预视效应的产生是否受语义信息的影响。实验一运用自然阅读范式,考察当语义连贯与违背两类信息被读者直接注视时,读者眼动模式的变化。结果发现,在语义连贯与违背两种条件下,读者的眼动模式在目标位置立即产生差异,违背条件下首次注视时间更长,说明中文句子理解中语义加工可以进行得十分即时。实验二运用边界技术,使实验一的语义连贯与违背两类关键字只呈现在预视位置上,当读者的注视点越过边界时,两类预视字均变为另一个与句子意义连贯的目标字。结果发现,语义违背预视条件下,读者对预视位置将进行更长时间的加工。上述结果表明,中文句子阅读过程中,语义信息可以对预视效应产生影响     

Effects on choice of reinforcement delay and conditioned reinforcement

Pigeons chose between fixed-interval schedules of different durations presented in the terminal links of concurrent-chains schedules. The pair of schedules was always in the ratio of 2:1, but the absolute duration of the fixed intervals varied. In one set of conditions, the different terminal-link schedules were associated with different keylight stimuli (cued conditions). In a second set of conditions, the different terminal-link schedules were associated with the same stimulus (uncued conditions). Results from the cued conditions replicated previous findings that preference for the shorter fixed-interval schedule increased with fixed-interval duration. Preferences in the uncued conditions were lower than in the corresponding cued conditions but also increased with fixed-interval length. In addition, the degree of control under the uncued conditions was correlated with the extent to which the schedule during the terminal link was discriminated immediately upon entry into the terminal link. The pattern of results in both conditions was inconsistent with the notion that choice behavior matches relative immediacy of reinforcement. Reanalysis of previous evidence for matching (Chung and Herrnstein, 1967) showed that matching in fact did not occur, as the preferences of their subjects for the shorter of two delays also increased with the absolute size of the delays.     

Two Objections to Moran’s Transparency Account

Abstract

Gareth Evans and others have argued that our intentional attitudes are transparent to facts in the world. This suggests we can know them by looking outwards to the world rather than inwards to our minds. Richard Moran uses this idea of transparency in his account of self-knowledge. Critics have objected to his account on several counts. For example, Jonathan Way has argued that irrational attitudes can give ordinary self-knowledge when they are not transparent and that there are rational attitudes that are not transparent. I argue here that these objections fail because Way does not fully consider the two different kinds of self-knowledge, ‘ordinary’ and evidence-based, that differentiate the two stances that Moran claims a subject can have towards his attitudes. It is the differences between these two stances and the implications of these that motivate Moran’s account, rather than whether the formed attitude is rational or irrational, as long as the subject avows it from the deliberative stance, focuses on the attitude’s object and conforms to the transparency condition as Moran sets this out.     

Affective States and Epistemic Immediacy

This article defends the view that an adequate response to some central epistemological problems requires us to find a role for emotions and other affective states in epistemic evaluation and also to invoke virtuous traits of character in order to explain how these affective evaluations are regulated. The argument is based on the need for some epistemic evaluations to possess a kind of immediacy, if we are not to face a worrying regress. The closing sections support the claim that epistemic evaluation depends upon appropriate character traits though a discussion of what is involved in being observant .     

Effects of Helper and Recipient Sex on the Experience and Outcomes of Comforting Messages: An Experimental Investigation

The purpose of this experimental study was to examine whether and in what ways the sex of the helper and the recipient moderate the effects of comforting messages in face-to-face interactions. A total of 216 participants disclosed an emotionally upsetting event to a confederate trained to display different levels of nonverbal immediacy and verbal person centeredness. Men and women responded very similarly to comforting messages that exhibited different levels of verbal person centeredness and nonverbal immediacy, and this response similarity was not moderated by the sex of the helper. Both men and women were most comforted by messages that exhibited high levels of person centeredness and nonverbal immediacy, and they were least comforted by messages that exhibited low levels of these qualities. Moreover, both sexes viewed highly person-centered and immediate messages as exhibiting the highest comforting quality, and, with one minor exception, both sexes viewed helpers who used these messages as the most competent.     

Choice between fixed-interval schedules: Graded versus step-like choice functions

Pigeons chose between two fixed-interval schedules of food reinforcement. A single peck on one of two lighted keys started the fixed-interval schedule correlated with that key. The schedule had to be completed before the next choice opportunity. The durations of the fixed intervals were varied over conditions from 15 s to 40 s. To maximize the rate of reinforcement, the pigeons had to choose exclusively the shorter of the two schedules. Nevertheless, choice was not all-or-none. Instead, relative choice, and the rates of producing the fixed intervals, varied in a graded fashion with the disparity between the two schedules. Choice ratios under this procedure (single response to choose) were highly sensitive to the ratios of the fixed-interval schedules.     

Choice and the relative immediacy of reinforcement

The relative immediacy of reinforcement in concurrent-chain schedules was varied while the relative reduction in the overall average time to reinforcement associated with terminal-link entry was held constant. For each of four pigeons, choice did not vary with relative immediacy of reinforcement. Subsequently, choice by the same subjects was shown to be sensitive to relative reduction in average time to reinforcement.