In this paper we show how a student can learn the basics of the system databases using (W3school CSS) which was built as intelligent tutoring educational system by using the authoring tool called (ITSB). The learning material contains CSS and HTML. We divided the material in a group of lessons for novice learner which combines relational system and lessons in the process of learning. The student can learn using example of CSS, and types of CSS color. Furthermore, the intelligent tutoring (...) system supports not only lessons; but exercises of different difficult levels for each lesson. When a student finish successfully the first difficulty level in a lesson, the student is allowed to move to the next difficulty level of the exercises of the lesson. (shrink)

Contra la nación y la patria : Guillén de Lampart, rey de México -- Labios azules -- Cronotopía del oasis.

This research suggests a comparison between two tasks to evaluate oral communication strategies (CSs) through storytelling and interview and to compare the use of CSs between high and low proficient students. The results of the storytelling and oral interview are compared to check if CSs vary with the task and what tasks are better for each of the selected CSs. A number of 60 Spanish learners of English participated in this investigation, and a total of 232 protocols were analysed to (...) obtain the results. The main results are that CSs vary to adapt to task demands and that the frequency and type of CSs used by the students are affected by the level of proficiency of the students. This highlights the importance of selecting the appropriate task for the evaluation to be significant and the necessity to adapt the syllabus to include elements that introduce some productive CSs. (shrink)

The article concentrates on the analysis of the Enlightenment periods vision of science by Josef Sołtykowicz. His theories are examples of philosophical reflection of the Cracow Science Society. The starting point was the outline of the political and scientific situation from the second part of the XVII century to the first part of the XIX century also referring to the author’s biography. The main part of the article is the analysis of two Dissertations by Sołtykowicz published by the Cracow Science (...) Society their yearly publication, in 1818 and 1820. The following points were taken into account: The roots of the society’s activities, the relationship between science and faith, popularizing knowledge, criticism of Rousseau and anthropological analysis of the roots, of the negative view of knowledge. These theories are worth analysing, unfortunately so far the philosophical thought of the members of CSS, has not encouraged work on them as they deserved. At the same time we can expect that the work of the scientists from the CSS significantly impacted on the progress of the philosophical reflection in Cracow, and also the wider picture of modern polish scientific culture. (shrink)

I compare a ‘realist’ with a ‘social–relational’ perspective on our judgments of the moral status of artificial agents (AAs). I develop a realist position according to which the moral status of a being—particularly in relation to moral patiency attribution—is closely bound up with that being’s ability to experience states of conscious satisfaction or suffering (CSS). For a realist, both moral status and experiential capacity are objective properties of agents. A social relationist denies the existence of any such objective properties in (...) the case of either moral status or consciousness, suggesting that the determination of such properties rests solely upon social attribution or consensus. A wide variety of social interactions between us and various kinds of artificial agent will no doubt proliferate in future generations, and the social–relational view may well be right that the appearance of CSS features in such artificial beings will make moral role attribution socially prevalent in human–AA relations. But there is still the question of what actual CSS states a given AA is capable of undergoing, independently of the appearances. This is not just a matter of changes in the structure of social existence that seem inevitable as human–AA interaction becomes more prevalent. The social world is itself enabled and constrained by the physical world, and by the biological features of living social participants. Properties analogous to certain key features in biological CSS are what need to be present for nonbiological CSS. Working out the details of such features will be an objective scientific inquiry. (shrink)

How come we can represent Bigfoot even though Bigfoot does not exist, given that representing something involves bearing a relation to it and we cannot bear relations to what does not exist? This is the problem of intentional inexistence. This paper develops a two-step solution to this problem, involving an adverbial account of conscious representation, or phenomenal intentionality, and the thesis that all representation derives from conscious representation. The solution is correspondingly two-part: we can consciously represent Bigfoot because consciously representing (...) Bigfoot does not involve bearing a relation to Bigfoot, but rather instantiating a certain non-relational property of representing Bigfoot-wise; and we can non-consciously represent Bigfoot because non-consciously representing Bigfoot does not involve bearing a relation to Bigfoot, but rather bearing a relation to conscious representations of Bigfoot. (shrink)

Depersonalization consists in a deep modification of the way things appear to a subject, leading him to feel estranged from his body, his actions, his thoughts, and his mind, and even from himself. Even though, when it was discovered at the end of the 19th century, this psychiatric condition was widely used to probe certain aspects of bodily awareness, and more specifically the sense of bodily ownership (SBO), it has been strangely neglected in contemporary debates. In this chapter, I argue (...) that because of three specific features, depersonalization raises some important challenges for current theories of the SBO. The first feature — call it “generality” — is that depersonalization does not only affect the sense of bodily ownership but also, typically, the sense of ``mental ownership’’ (SMO), the sense of agency or ``action ownership’’ (SOA), and the subject’s core sense of herself (CSS), that is, her awareness of herself as an I. The second feature is that except for the symptoms of depersonalization, depersonalized patients are hard to distinguish, psychologically, from normal subjects. This makes it hard to find psychological features that might explain their condition. The last feature, call it “fundamentality” is that the psychological features that do seem abnormal among depersonalized patients seem more likely to be explained by depersonalization than to explain it. These three features raise three challenges — the centrality challenge, the dissociation challenge, and the grounding challenge. Taken together, I will argue, these challenges suggest that the SBO depends on a form of phenomenal “mineness” that would mark my mental states as mine and that cannot be accounted for in sensorimotor, cognitive, or even affective terms. A phenomenal mineness that indeed seems to be psychologically primitive, and only accountable in neurophysiological terms. (shrink)

The question of where, between theory and experiment, computer simulations (CSs) locate on the methodological map is one of the central questions in the epistemology of simulation (cf. Saam Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 48, 293–309, 2017). The two extremes on the map have them either be a kind of experiment in their own right (e.g. Barberousse et al. Synthese, 169, 557–574, 2009; Morgan 2002, 2003, Journal of Economic Methodology, 12(2), 317–329, 2005; Morrison Philosophical Studies, 143, 33–57, 2009; Morrison (...) 2015; Massimi and Bhimji Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 51, 71–81, 2015; Parker Synthese, 169, 483–496, 2009) or just an argument executed with the aid of a computer (e.g. Beisbart European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 2, 395–434, 2012; Beisbart and Norton International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 26, 403–422, 2012). There exist multiple versions of the first kind of position, whereas the latter is rather unified. I will argue that, while many claims about the ‘experimental’ status of CSs seem unjustified, there is a variant of the first position that seems preferable. In particular I will argue that while CSs respect the logic of (deductively valid) arguments, they neither agree with their pragmatics nor their epistemology. I will then lay out in what sense CSs can fruitfully be seen as experiments, and what features set them apart from traditional experiments nonetheless. I conclude that they should be seen as surrogate experiments, i.e. experiments executed consciously on the wrong kind of system, but with an exploitable connection to the system of interest. Finally, I contrast my view with that of Beisbart (European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 8, 171–204, 2018), according to which CSs are surrogates for experiments, arguing that this introduces an arbitrary split between CSs and other kinds of simulations. (shrink)

Large scale experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider rely heavily on computer simulations, a fact that has recently caught philosophers’ attention. CSs obviously require appropriate modeling, and it is a common assumption among philosophers that the relevant models can be ordered into hierarchical structures. Focusing on LHC’s ATLAS experiment, we will establish three central results here: with some distinct modifications, individual components of ATLAS’ overall simulation infrastructure can be ordered into hierarchical structures. Hence, to a good degree of approximation, hierarchical (...) accounts remain valid at least as descriptive accounts of initial modeling steps. In order to perform the epistemic function Winsberg Model-based reasoning in scientific discovery. Kluwer Academic/plenum Publishers, New York, pp 255–269, 1999) assigns to models in simulation—generate knowledge through a sequence of skillful but non-deductive transformations—ATLAS’ simulation models have to be considered part of a network rather than a hierarchy, in turn making the associated simulation modeling messy rather than motley. Deriving knowledge-claims from this ‘mess’ requires two sources of justification: holistic validation :253–262, 2010; in Carrier M, Nordmann A Science in the context of application. Springer, Berlin, pp 115–130, 2011), and model coherence. As it turns out, the degree of model coherence sets HEP apart from other messy, simulation-intensive disciplines such as climate science, and the reasons for this are to be sought in the historical, empirical and theoretical foundations of the respective discipline. (shrink)

Infusing contemporary critical terrorism studies (CTS) with concepts and methodologies from philosophy and critical theory via a Baradian posthumanist agential realist perspective and (counter)terrorist cases and vignettes, this chapter argues for a retheorisation of (counter)terrorism. It does so, firstly, by reconceptualising terrorism and counterterrorism as complex assemblages consisting not only of discursive-material components – an entanglement now largely accepted within CTS and critical security studies (CSS) – but also of affective layers and more-than-human phenomena. Secondly, by analysing European urban (counter)terrorist (...) cases from the UK, Germany, France, and Spain, together with these cases’ surprising spacetime-jumping interlinkages underwriting what we here conceptualise as queer(ing) spacetimematterings, this chapter zooms in on the intra-actions taking place between human and more-than-human agential phenomena and their risk-managed urban environments. Lastly, extra analytical attention is paid to how, in this neoliberal day and age – here rephrased as control society-driven ‘situationscaping times’ – very specific macro- and micropolitical violence-preventing measures and efforts are employed in the fight against various manifestations of urban terror and terrorism. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the resistance to extinction obtained in evaluative conditioning (EC) studies implies that EC is a qualitatively distinct form of classical conditioning (Baeyens, Eelen, & Crombez, 1995 Baeyens, F, Eelen, P, and Crombez, G, (1995a). Pavlovian associations are forever: On classical conditioning and extinction, Journal of Psychophysiology 9 ((1995a)), pp. 127–141.[Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]a) or whether it is the result of an nonassociative artefact (Field & Davey, 1997 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (...) (1997). Conceptual conditioning: Evidence for an artifactual account of evaluative learning, Learning and Motivation 25 ((1997)), pp. 446–464.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1998 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1998). Evaluative conditioning: Arti‐fact or ‐fiction?‐ A reply to Baeyens, De Houwer, Vansteenwegen, and Eelen (1998), Learning and Motivation 29 ((1998)), pp. 475–491.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). Both experiments included between‐subjects control groups in addition to standard within‐subjects control conditions. In Experiment 1, only verbal ratings were measured in order to evaluate the effect of postacquisition CS‐only exposures on EC whereas in Experiment 2, verbal ratings and postextinction priming effects were measured. The results showed that the EC effects are demonstrable in a between‐subjects design and that the extinction procedure did not have any influence on the acquired evaluative value of CSs regardless of whether the verbal ratings or the priming effects were used as dependent variables. The present results provide evidence that EC is resistant to extinction and suggest an interpretation of EC as a qualitatively distinct form of associative learning. (shrink)

Two experiments are described that investigate the effects of attention in moderating evaluative conditioning (EC) effects in a picture‐picture paradigm in which previously discovered experimental artifacts (e.g., Field & Davey, 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) were overcome by counterbalancing conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs) (...) across participants. Conditioned responses for individuals who had attention enhanced were compared against a control group and groups for whom attention was impeded using a distracter task. In a second experiment the effects of attention were dissociated from those of contingency awareness by using backward‐masked US presentations. The results of these experiments indicate that although associative EC effects may not be disrupted by a lack of contingency awareness, attention is an important factor in establishing conditioning. These results shed some light onto the possible boundary conditions that could explain past inconsistencies in obtaining EC effects in the visual paradigm. (shrink)

In spite of an overwhelming importance of business groups in the economic development of many countries, systematic inquiry on how the BGs and their affiliated firms approach and contribute to shared value creation and sustainable development is rare. In this paper we address this research gap by investigating two related questions—do BG-affiliated firms differ from non-BG firms in their corporate sustainability strategy and how does BG affiliation influence the relationship between stock of fungible resources and CSS of firms? Drawing from (...) the BG literature we theorize that BG-affiliated firms tend to adopt of both environmental and social sustainability strategies more than non-BG firms. We also argue that although according to resource-based view, the stock of fungible resources of firms positively influences CSS, BG affiliation negatively moderates the relationship between stock of fungible resources and CSS of firms. Stock of fungible resources matters less for BG-affiliated firms in undertaking CSS as they have access to resources of the BG network. We test our theoretical predictions using a proprietary data set of 163 Indian publicly listed firms, out of which 76 are BG-affiliated firms belonging to 74 BGs. The data for corporate environmental and social sustainability strategies have been obtained by administering a survey instrument among the top level executives of the participating firms. We find support for our theoretical predictions that signify that BGs and their affiliates make important contributions to shared value creation and sustainable development in emerging economies like India. (shrink)

Nowadays, higher education worldwide is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected students’ attendance in the universities and causes universities to close down in more than 190 countries. On the other hand, novice engineers studied only a few lectures related to highway engineering. Their lectures have included very little knowledge about asphalt pavement construction as highway engineering consists of many areas that are not studied in detail during their studying years subject to their traditional education. Due to all mentioned, (...) a new drive to promote online learning paves the way to evaluate our future approach to curriculum development and delivery of educational materials for engineering courses. However, experts can offer solutions to these problems using their past experience. Hence, a system that allows experts to share their experience with other engineers after completing a project is needed. Nevertheless, the web-based expert system for maintaining flexible pavement problems in tropical regions designed in this study is a novel concept. Prior to developing this system, the need for such a system was determined through literature review and validated through a questionnaire survey. Experts were interviewed, and a questionnaire survey was conducted to construct the knowledge base of the system. Knowledge was presented as rules and coded in software through PHP programming. Web pages that support the user interface were designed using a framework that consists of CSS, HTML, and J-Query. Furthermore, the system was tested by an array of users engaged in highway engineering, namely, experts, teaching experts, novice engineers, and students. The mean values of the overall system evaluation performed by 20 users using a five-point Likert scale were 4, 4.5, 3.75, 4.25, 5, 4, and 3.5. Expert and user satisfaction prove the effectiveness of the proposed system. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'Galileo gambit'. Perhaps the best way to describe the fallacy is as an association fallacy or a faulty analogy. The Galileo gambit fallacy is committed by those theories that contradict the mainstream scientific consensus. The Galileo gambit is often used to suggest that science is not open to criticism, but nothing could be further from the truth. No one is more open to criticism than the scientist; that (...) is how we make sure we are not wrong and get closer to the truth. Persons who are making the Galileo gambit in recent times are Rupert Sheldrake and his morphic resonance/fields, Bigfoot believers, UFO enthusiasts, creationists, conspiracy theorists of all stripes, and people who deny climate change. (shrink)

Additional support is presented for the necessity of awareness of the CS-US relation in human autonomic conditioning. However, possible limitations and exceptions regarding this general rule are discussed. Limitations include the lack of relationship between conditioned response (CR) strength and degree of awareness, and an important exception may be the finding of conditioning with backwardly masked CSs of a biologically prepared nature.

Anxiety patients over-generalize fear, possibly because of an incapacity to discriminate threat and safety signals. Discrimination trainings are promising approaches for reducing such fear over-generalization. Here we investigated the efficacy of a fear-relevant vs. a fear-irrelevant discrimination training on fear generalization and whether the effects are increased with feedback during training. Eighty participants underwent two fear acquisition blocks, during which one face, but not another face, was associated with a female scream. During two generalization blocks, both CSs plus four morphs (...) were presented. Between these generalization blocks, half of the participants underwent a fear-relevant discrimination training with or without feedback and the other half a fear-irrelevant discrimination training with or without feedback. US expectancy, arousal, valence ratings, and skin conductance responses indicated successful fear acquisition. Importantly, fear-relevant vs. fear-irrelevant discrimination trainings and feedback vs. no feedback reduced generalization as reflected in US expectancy ratings independently from one another. No effects of training condition were found for arousal and valence ratings or SCR. In summary, this is a first indication that fear-relevant discrimination training and feedback can improve the discrimination between threat and safety signals in healthy individuals, at least for learning-related evaluations, but not evaluations of valence or arousal. (shrink)

Keyword extraction refers to the process of selecting most significant, relevant, and descriptive terms as keywords, which are present inside a single document. Keyword extraction has major applications in the information retrieval domain, such as analysis, summarization, indexing, and search, of documents. In this paper, we present a novel supervised technique for extraction of keywords from medium-sized documents, namely Corpus-based Contextual Semantic Smoothing. CCSS extends the concept of Contextual Semantic Smoothing, which considers term usage patterns in similar texts to improve (...) term relevance information. We introduce four more features beyond CSS as our novel contributions in this work. We systematically compare the performance of CCSS with other techniques, when implemented over INSPEC dataset, where CCSS outperforms all state-of-the-art keyphrase extraction techniques presented in the literature. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAvoidance towards innocuous cues is a key diagnostic criterion across anxiety-related disorders. Importantly, the most effective intervention for anxiety-related disorders, exposure therapy with response prevention, sometimes does not prevent the relapse of anxiety's symptomatology. We tested whether extinction effects, the experimental proxy of exposure, are enhanced by increasing the discrepancy between the prediction of an unpleasant event happening, and the actual event. Forty-eight individuals first saw pictures of three stimuli. Two pictures were followed by a shock and one was not. (...) Next, participants learned to avoid the US by pressing a computer key. An extinction and response prevention procedure followed. In the first part of it, participants saw unreinforced presentations of all CSs. In the second part, the single group saw unreinforced presentations of the CSA and CS-. The compound group encountered compound unreinforced prese... (shrink)

The objective of the study was to translate and validate the COVID Stress Scales into Spanish in Peru. Around 1,424 people, selected through a non-probabilistic sampling, participated in the study. Factor analysis confirmed an initial six-dimensional factorial structure of the CSS-36. Reliability by internal consistency was good for the dimensions of fear of danger, socioeconomic consequences, xenophobia, fear of contamination, traumatic stress, and compulsive control. In addition, the factorial structure of scale has been shown be strictly invariant for both males (...) and females. The Spanish version of the CSS-36 has evidence of validity, reliability, and invariance to measure COVID-19 stress in a Peruvian sample. (shrink)

Conceptual generalisation occurs when conditional responses generalise to novel stimuli from the same category. Past research demonstrates that physiological fear responses generalise across categories, however, conceptual generalisation of stimulus valence evaluations during fear conditioning has not been examined. We investigated whether conceptual generalisation, as indexed by electrodermal responses and stimulus evaluations, would occur, and differ after training with single or multiple conditional stimuli (CSs). Stimuli from two of four categories (vegetables, farm animals, clothing, and office supplies) were used as the (...) CS+ (followed by an electric stimulus) or CS- (presented alone). Generalisation was assessed by presenting novel stimuli from the CS categories after acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement. One category exemplar was used as the CS+ and CS- in the single group, whereas three exemplars were used as the CS+ and CS- in the multiple group. Electrodermal responses generalised in acquisition and extinction but did not differ between groups. In the multiple group, CS evaluations generalised in acquisition and extinction, whereas generalisation was not evident in the single group. Training with multiple CSs also resulted in the extinction of stimulus valence. The current findings have implications for future research examining the generalisation of valence and for exposure-based treatments of anxiety. (shrink)

Summary Physical anthropologist Grover Krantz (1931–2002) spent his career arguing that the anomalous North American primate called Sasquatch was a living animal. He attempted to prove the creature's existence by applying to the problem the techniques of physical anthropology: methodologies and theoretical models that were outside the experience of the amateur enthusiasts who dominated the field of anomalous primate studies. For his efforts, he was dismissed or ignored by academics who viewed the Sasquatch, also commonly called Bigfoot, as at best (...) a relic of folklore and at worst a hoax, and Krantz's project as having dubious value. Krantz also received a negative reaction from amateur Sasquatch researchers, some of whom threatened and abused him. His career is best situated therefore as part of the discussion about the historical relationship between amateur naturalists and professional scientists. The literature on this relationship articulates a combining/displacement process: when a knowledge domain that has potential for contributions to science is created by amateurs, it will eventually combine with and then be taken over by professionals, with the result that amateur leadership is displaced. This paper contributes to that discussion by showing the process at work in Krantz's failed attempt to legitimize Bigfoot research by removing it from the amateur sphere and repositioning it in the professional world of anthropology. (shrink)

How can we use what cognitive science has taught us about perception to improve the critical thinking skills of our students? What, for instance, does it tell us about subjects who think they’ve seen Bigfoot, ghosts, and other “weird things”? I explore two approaches for giving students some empirically based tools for examining cases like these. The first, which I call the “we see what we want to see” approach, focuses the idea that beliefs and desires can shape our visual (...) experiences. This approach, however, encourages students to view subjects who report weird experiences as being cognitively irresponsible and worthy of derision. The second approach, which I call the “we see what our evolutionary ancestors needed to see” approach, asserts these experiences are the result of evolutionarily designed perceptual mechanisms that specialize in representing human-like qualities. Fortunately, the second approach does not create the same problematic attitude in students as the first. (shrink)

The Sasquatch pastoral attempts to define the parameters of why mythic accounts of wild-men are so common. As a concept, it is a critically useful way of understanding how Sasquatch, Bigfoot, the Yeti, and other cryptozoological accounts fulfill a deep-seated and seemingly universal desire to understand humanity's own mythic origins. Whether such accounts have any veracity or not, the Sasquatch pastoral provides a theoretical vocabulary for conceptualizing the archetypal attractions of such accounts.

Individuals’ coping strategies have a profound effect on how well they respond to negative life events. Despite this, most coping strategies instruments that are available currently have been developed exclusively in Western contexts. In the present study, a Coping Strategies Scale for use with Chinese participants was developed and validated based on responses from 734 Chinese university students. Results supported a seven-factor structure for the CSS, which included the dimensions of Withdrawal, Positive Adaptation, Problem-solving, Disengagement, Prosocial Focus, Seeking Emotional Support, (...) and Self-regulation. The results supported the validity of the seven-factor CSS in terms of its content, associated response processes, internal structure, and relationships with other variables. Based on these results, the CSS provides a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing the coping strategies used by Chinese adults in confronting potentially adverse psychological events. (shrink)

This paper proposes an extensionalist analysis of computer simulations (CSs). It puts the emphasis not on languages nor on models, but on symbols, on their extensions, and on their various ways of referring. It shows that chains of reference of symbols in CSs are multiple and of different kinds. As they are distinct and diverse, these chains enable different kinds of remoteness of reference and different kinds of validation for CSs. Although some methodological papers have already underlined the role of (...) these various relationships of reference in CSs and of cross-validations, this diversity is still overlooked in the epistemological literature on CSs. As a consequence, a particular outcome of this analytical view is an ability to classify existing epistemological theses on CSs according to what their authors choose to select and put at the forefront: either the extensions of symbols, or the symbol-types, or the symbol-tokens, or the internal denotational hierarchies of the CS or the reference of these hierarchies to external denotational hierarchies. Through the adoption of this extensionalist view, it also becomes possible to explain more precisely the reasons why some complete reduction of CSs to classical epistemic paradigms such as “experiment” or “theoretical argument” remains doubtful. On this last point, in particular, this paper is in agreement with what many epistemologists already have acknowledged. (shrink)

If I see, hear, or touch a sparrow, the sparrow seems real to me. Unlike Bigfoot or Santa Claus, it seems to exist; I will therefore judge that it does indeed exist. The “sense of existence” refers to the kind of awareness that typically grounds such ordinary judgments of existence or “reality.” The sense of existence has been invoked by Humeans, Kantians, Ideologists, and the phenomenological tradition to make substantial philosophical claims. However, it is extremely controversial; its very existence has (...) been called into question. This paper aims to clarify the nature and reality of the sense of existence by studying a psychiatric condition in which the sense appears to be disrupted: depersonalization disorder (DPD). (shrink)

Recital 33 GDPR has often been interpreted as referring to ‘broad consent’. This version of informed consent was intended to allow data subjects to provide their consent for certain areas of research, or parts of research projects, conditional to the research being in line with ‘recognised ethical standards’. In this article, we argue that broad consent is applicable in the emerging field of Computational Social Science (CSS), which lies at the intersection of data science and social science. However, the lack (...) of recognised ethical standards specific to CSS poses a practical barrier to the use of broad consent in this field and other fields that lack recognised ethical standards. Upon examining existing research ethics standards in social science and data science, we argue that they are insufficient for CSS. We further contend that the fragmentation of European Union (EU) law and research ethics sources makes it challenging to establish universally recognised ethical standards for scientific research. As a result, CSS researchers and other researchers in emerging fields that lack recognised ethical standards are left without sufficient guidance on the use of broad consent as provided for in the GDPR. We conclude that responsible EU bodies should provide additional guidance to facilitate the use of broad consent in CSS research. (shrink)

The evaluative conditioning effect refers to the change in the liking of a neutral stimulus due to its pairing with another stimulus. We examined whether the extinction rate of the EC effect is moderated by feature-specific attention allocation. In two experiments, CSs were abstract Gabor patches varying along two orthogonal, perceptual dimensions. During the acquisition phase, one of these dimensions was predictive of the valence of the USs. During the extinction phase, CSs were presented alone and participants were asked to (...) categorise the CSs either according to their valence, the perceptual dimension that was task-relevant during the acquisition phase, or a perceptual dimension that was task-irrelevant during the acquisition phase. As predicted, explicit valence measures revealed a linear increase in the extinction rate of the EC effect as participants were encouraged to assign attention to non-evaluative stimulus information during the extinction phase. In Experiment 1, Affect Misattribution Paradigm data mimicked this pattern of results, although the effect just missed conventional levels of significance. In Experiment 2, the AMP data revealed an increase of the EC effect if attention was focused on evaluative stimulus information. Potential mechanisms to explain these findings are discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhether valence change during evaluative conditioning is mediated by a link between the conditional stimulus and the unconditional stimulus or between the CS and the unconditional response is a matter of continued debate. Changing the valence of the US after conditioning, known as US revaluation, can be used to dissociate these accounts. Changes in CS valence after US revaluation provide evidence for S-S learning but if CS valence does not change, evidence for S-R learning is found. Support for S-S learning (...) has been provided by most past revaluation studies, but typically the CS and US have been from the same stimulus category, the task instructions have suggested that judgements of the CS should be based on the US, and USs have been mildly valenced stimuli. These factors may bias the results in favour of S-S learning. We examined whether S-R learning would be evident when CSs and USs were taken from different categories, the task instructions were removed, a... (shrink)

In this exploratory research study, we developed an instrument to investigate people’s confidence in safeguarding measures [Confidence in Safeguards Scale ] and we adapted an instrument measuring perceived risk of coronavirus [perceived risk of coronavirus scale ] that was originally based on a perceived risk of HIV measure. We then explored the effect of public confidence in safeguarding measures designed to halt the spread of the coronavirus on perceived risk, controlling for related covariates. The sample consisted of N = 565 (...) respondents; 119 were males and 446 were females. Mean age was 35.42, range was 18–77 years. We used convenience sampling to gather the data at the end of March 2020 via social media in Slovakia. The CSS showed good reliability levels and a three-factor structure: Confidence in Institutions, Confidence in Personal and Family Behaviors, and Confidence in Others’ Behaviors. The PRCS showed good reliability levels and a two-factor structure: Fear of Contraction and Perceived Likelihood of Contraction. Participants with higher levels of Confidence in Others’ Behaviors perceived the spread of the coronavirus to be less threatening, both cognitively and affectively. This finding could be used when designing public health policy and emergency communication. Enhancing confidence in others’ behaviors could encourage individual responsibility, social responsibility, and solidarity through social bonds extending beyond the family. In future research we plan to replicate the data collection using the same instruments in different countries so the results are comparable across cultures and can be used to improve emergency communication. (shrink)

We all have questions about God. But very few of us get the answers we’re looking for–if those answers even exist! Do they? Where (in heaven’s name) do you go to find out? Eric Metaxas understands. That’s why he’s written this refreshingly down-to-earth take on the big questions everyone asks (but not always out loud). Finally a book that takes questions about God seriously enough to get silly (where appropriate). Wonderfully conversational and often very funny, this book joins you in (...) wondering: ·How can a good God create a world that has evil and suffering? ·Is God anti-sex? ·Doesn’t science make God obsolete? ·What’s the real story on miracles? ·If God is everywhere, why go to church? ·Don’t we already have God within us? ·Isn’t God too busy running the universe to care about the details of my day? ·What does the Bible say about things like UFOs, ESP, and the afterlife– and what about Bigfoot? These questions (and many more like them) get straight answers that don’t hide behind dull and confusing theological language. So get the lowdown on the big questions everyone asks–but please try not to laugh (because it’s a very serious topic). (shrink)

Chemosensory systems are complex regulatory pathways capable of perceiving external signals and translating them into different cellular behaviors such as motility and development. In the δ-proteobacterium Myxococcus xanthus, chemosensing allows groups of cells to orient themselves and aggregate into specialized multicellular biofilms termed fruiting bodies. M. xanthus contains eight predicted CSS and 21 chemoreceptors. In this work, we systematically deleted genes encoding components of each CSS and chemoreceptors and determined their effects on M. xanthus social behaviors. Then, to understand how (...) the 21 chemoreceptors are distributed among the eight CSS, we examined their phylogenetic distribution, genomic organization and subcellular localization. We found that, in vivo, receptors belonging to the same phylogenetic group colocalize and interact with CSS components of the respective phylogenetic group. Finally, we identified a large chemosensory module formed by three interconnected CSS and multiple chemoreceptors and showed that complex behaviors such as cell group motility and biofilm formation require regulatory apparatus composed of multiple interconnected Che-like systems. © 2014 Moine et al. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvaluative Conditioning is commonly defined as the change in liking of a stimulus due to its pairings with an affective unconditioned stimulus. In Experiment 1, we investigated effects of repeated stimulus pairings on affective responses, i.e. valence and arousal ratings, pupil size, and duration estimation. After repeatedly pairing the CSs with affective USs, a consistent pattern of affective responses emerged: The CSnegative was rated as being more negative and more arousing, resulted in larger pupils, and was temporally overestimated compared to (...) the CSneutral. In Experiment 2, the influence of a mere instruction about the contingency between a CS and US on affective responses was examined. After mere instruction about upcoming pairings between the CS and US, subjective ratings also changed, but there was neither evidence for differential pupillary responses nor for differential temporal processing. The results indicate that EC via pairings or instructions ca... (shrink)

This article asks whether an interdisciplinary "critical science studies" (CSS) is possible between a critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition, with its commitment to universal standards of reason, and relativistic sociologies of scientific knowledge (e.g., David Bloor's strong programme). It is argued that CSS is possible if its practitioners adopt the epistemological equivalent of Rawls's method of avoidance. A discriminating, public policy–relevant critique of science can then proceed on the basis of an argumentation theory that employs an immanent standard (...) of relevance, which is illustrated by drawing on Helen Longino's critique of behavioral theory. (shrink)

Ainslie advances Freud's and Skinner's theories of homunculi by basing their emergent complexity on the interaction of simple algorithms. The rules of competition and cooperation of these interests are underspecified, but they provide a new way of thinking about the basic elements of conditioning, particularly conditioned stimuli (CSs).

Davey suggests that increased resistance to extinction of CRs conditioned to fear-relevant stimuli may be due to more persistent expectancies of the UCS following these stimuli. However, this viewpoint is contradicted by existing empirical evidence that fear-relevant CRs survive an extinction trials series producing extinction of expectancies whereas CRs conditioned to non-fear-relevant CSs do not.

The Handbook of Computational Social Science is a comprehensive reference source for scholars across multiple disciplines. It outlines key debates in the field, showcasing novel statistical modeling and machine learning methods, and draws from specific case studies to demonstrate the opportunities and challenges in CSS approaches. The Handbook is divided into two volumes written by outstanding, internationally renowned scholars in the field. This first volume focuses on the scope of computational social science, ethics, and case studies. It covers a range (...) of key issues, including open science, formal modeling, and the social and behavioral sciences. This volume explores major debates, introduces digital trace data, reviews the changing survey landscape, and presents novel examples of computational social science research on sensing social interaction, social robots, bots, sentiment, manipulation, and extremism in social media. The volume not only makes major contributions to the consolidation of this growing research field, but also encourages growth into new directions. With its broad coverage of perspectives (theoretical, methodological, computational), international scope, and interdisciplinary approach, this important resource is integral reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers engaging with computational methods across the social sciences, as well as those within the scientific and engineering sectors. (shrink)

Psychological stress reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic are complex and multifaceted. Research provides evidence of a COVID Stress Syndrome, consisting of worry about the dangerousness of getting infected with SARSCoV2 and coming into contact with infected surfaces, worry concerning the personal socioeconomic consequences of COVID-19, xenophobic fears that SARSCOV2 is being spread by foreigners, COVID-19-related traumatic stress symptoms, and compulsive checking and reassurance-seeking about COVID-19. Little is known about how these symptoms are related to vulnerability and protective personality factors. Based (...) on data from 1,976 US and Canadian adults, we conducted a prospective network analysis in which personality factors were initially assessed at Time 1 and then symptoms of the CSS were assessed at Time 2, 2.5 months later. Results indicated that trait optimism and trait resilience were negatively associated with negative emotionality, suggesting a modulatory influence. Negative emotionality was positively linked to the narrower traits of intolerance of uncertainty and health anxiety proneness. These narrower traits, in turn, were prospectively linked to symptoms of the CSS. Results suggest that the effects of broad personality traits on symptoms of the CSS were mediated by narrower traits such as the intolerance of uncertainty. Treatment implications are discussed. (shrink)

Neurofeedback has been suggested as a potential complementary therapy to different psychiatric disorders. Of interest for this approach is the prediction of individual performance and outcomes. In this study, we applied functional connectivity-based modeling using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) modalities to (i) investigate whether resting-state connectivity predicts performance during an affective neurofeedback task and (ii) evaluate the extent to which predictive connectivity profiles are correlated across EEG and fNIRS techniques. The fNIRS oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin concentrations and the (...) EEG beta and gamma bands modulated by the alpha frequency band (beta-m-alpha and gamma-m-alpha, respectively) recorded over the frontal cortex of healthy subjects were used to estimate functional connectivity from each neuroimaging modality. For each connectivity matrix, relevant edges were selected in a leave-one-subject-out procedure, summed into “connectivity summary scores” (CSS), and submitted as inputs to a support vector regressor (SVR). Then, the performance of the left-out-subject was predicted using the trained SVR model. Linear relationships between the CSS across both modalities were evaluated using Pearson’s correlation. The predictive model showed a mean absolute error smaller than 20%, and the fNIRS oxyhemoglobin CSS was significantly correlated with the EEG gamma-m-alpha CSS (r = −0.456, p = 0.030). These results support that pre-task electrophysiological and hemodynamic resting-state connectivity are potential predictors of neurofeedback performance and are meaningfully coupled. This investigation motivates the use of joint EEG-fNIRS connectivity as outcome predictors, as well as a tool for functional connectivity coupling investigation. (shrink)