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)

It is arguably the case that olfactory system contains two senses that share the same type of stimuli, sensory transduction mechanism, and processing centers. Yet, orthonasal and retronasal olfaction differ in their types of perceptible objects as individuated by their sensory qualities. What will be explored in this paper is how the account of orthonasal smell developed in the Molecular Structure Theory of smell can be expanded for retronasal olfaction (Young, 2016, 2019a-b, 2020). By considering the object of olfactory (...) perception to be the molecular structure of chemical compounds composing odor plumes, Molecular Structure Theory provides a means for determining an odor’s olfactory quality, how odors can be identified and individuated, and how we perceive smellscapes. Surveying the differences between orthonasal and retronasal olfaction provides the basis for the central argument of the paper that the perceptible objects we refer to as smells and individuated on the basis of their olfactory qualities are only relative to orthonasal olfaction. Retronasal olfaction it is speculatively concluded might play an essential role in our perception of flavorful objects. (shrink)

Multiple versions of the Chinese Remote Associates Test have been developed. Thus far, all CRATs have employed verbal stimuli; other forms of stimuli have not yet been used. In this context, the present study compiled a Chinese Visual Remote Associates Test that conforms to the Chinese language and culture based on a picture naming database. The developed CVRAT has two versions, CVRAT-A and CVRAT-B, each comprising 20 test questions. A typical CVRAT question consists of three stimuli pictures, (...) requiring respondents to propose a target word that is semantically associated with all the pictures. When compiling the CVRAT, this study first selected target words, sifted through stimuli words and corresponding pictures, and analyzed pilot test questions. After compilation, their reliability and validity were examined. The results showed that the CVRAT had moderate internal consistency reliability, good criterion-related validity for the Chinese Word Remote Associates Test, Chinese Radical Remote Associates Test, Chinese Compound Remote Associates Test, insight problem-solving, as well as acceptable discriminant validity for fluency, flexibility, and originality of a divergent thinking test. In other words, CVRAT can effectively measure remote associative capability and provides a figural creativity test that facilitates the understanding of different kinds of remote associations. (shrink)

The ambiguous-cue task is composed of two-choice simultaneous discriminations involving three stimuli: positive (P), ambiguous (A) and negative (N). Two different trial types are presented: PA and NA. The ambiguous cue (A) served as an S- in PA trials, but as an S+ in NA trials. When using this procedure, it is typical to observe a less accurate performance in PA trials than in NA trials. This is called the ambiguous-cue effect. Recently, it was reported in starlings that the (...) ambiguous-cue effect decreases when the stimuli are presented on an angled (120°) panel. The hypothesis is that the angled panel facilitates that the two cues from each discrimination are perceived as a compound, precluding value transfer via a second-order conditioning mechanism. In this experiment, we used pigeons and a flat panel. Nevertheless, our data were quite similar to the previous data in starlings. We conclude that the form of the panel cannot explain the ambiguous-cue effect. Several alternatives to be explored in future experiments are suggested. The riddle of the ambiguous-cue problem still remains unsolved. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that women are disproportionately negatively affected by a variety of socio-economic hardships, many of which COVID-19 is making worse. In particular, because of gender roles, and because women’s jobs tend to be given lower priority than men’s (since they are more likely to be part-time, lower-income, and less secure), women assume the obligations of increased caregiving needs at a much higher rate. This unfairly renders women especially susceptible to short- and long-term economic insecurity and decreases in (...) wellbeing. Single-parent households, the majority of which are headed by single mothers, face even greater risks. These vulnerabilities are further compounded along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, class, and geography. Drawing upon the philosophical literature on political responsibility and structural injustice (specifically, the work of Iris Marion Young), I argue that while the state may not have had either foresight into, or control over, the disproportionate effect the pandemic would have on women, it can nonetheless be held responsible for mitigating these effects. In order to do so, it must first recognize the ways in which women have been affected by the outbreak. Specifically, policies must take into account the unpaid labor of care that falls on women. Moreover, given that this labor is particularly vital during a global health pandemic, the state ought to immediately prioritize the value of this work by providing financial stimuli directly to families, requiring employers to provide both sick leave and parental leave for at least as long as schools and daycares are inoperational, and providing subsidized emergency childcare. (shrink)

Our love for art is a compound byproduct of four different evolutionary events which attached reward to conscious experience itself, to the direction of attention to significant items in consciousness, to representations of scenarios in the brain's default mode network, and to the experience of novel stimuli. Aesthetic experiences contain varying amounts of these rewards, which helps to explain their diversity.

The global precedence effect, originally referring to processing hierarchical visual stimuli composed of letters, is characterised by both global advantage and global interference. We present herein a study of how this effect is modulated by the variables letter and sex. The Navon task, using the letters “H” and “S,” was administered to 78 males and 168 females. No interaction occurred between the letter and sex variables, but significant main effects arose from each of these. Reaction times revealed that the (...) letter “H” was identified more rapidly in the congruent condition both in the global and the local task, and the letter “S” in the incongruent condition for the local task. Also, although RTs showed a GPE in both males and females, males displayed shorter reaction times in both global and local tasks. Furthermore, luteal women showed higher d’ index in the congruent condition for the local task than both follicular women and hormonal contraceptive users, as well as longer exploration time of the irrelevant level during the global task than males. We conclude that, according to the linear periodicity law, the GPE is enhanced for compound letters with straight vs. curved strokes, whereas it is stronger in males than in females. Relevantly, luteal phase of the menstrual cycle seems to tilt women to rely on finer grained information, thus exhibiting an analytical processing style in global/local visual processing. (shrink)

Background: This study developed a photo and video database of 4-to-6-year-olds expressing the seven induced and posed universal emotions and a neutral expression. Children participated in photo and video sessions designed to elicit the emotions, and the resulting images were further assessed by independent judges in two rounds. Methods: In the first round, two independent judges, experts in the Facial Action Coding System, firstly analysed 3,668 emotions facial expressions stimuli from 132 children. Both judges reached 100% agreement regarding 1,985 (...) stimuli, which were then selected for a second round of analysis between judges 3 and 4. Results: The result was 1,985 stimuli were produced from 124 participants. A Kappa index of 0.70 and an accuracy of 73% between experts were observed. Lower accuracy was found for emotional expression by 4-year-olds than 6-year-olds. Happiness, disgust and contempt had the highest agreement. After a sub-analysis evaluation of all four judges, 100% agreement was reached for 1,381 stimuli which compound the ChildEFES database with 124 participants and 51% induced photographs. The number of stimuli of each emotion were: 87 for neutrality, 363 for happiness, 170 for disgust, 104 for surprise, 152 for fear, 144 for sadness, 157 for anger 157, and 183 for contempt. Conclusions: The findings show that this photo and video database can facilitate research on the mechanisms involved in early childhood recognition of facial emotions in children, contributing to the understanding of facial emotion recognition deficits which characterise several neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Miller first examines the New Critics’ theory of metaphor, then presents his own views. There is one chapter on Hulme and Richards, one on Empson, Tate, Ransom and Brooks, and a third on Wimsatt, Wheelwright, and Krieger. Chapter Four contains Miller’s position and applies it to some metaphors from the metaphysical poets, and Chapter Five examines the problem of the objective status of a work of verbal art. Miller uses Richards’ distinction between the tenor and vehicle of a metaphor; in (...) "My love is a red, red rose," "love" is the tenor and "rose" the vehicle, and a metaphor occurs only in the tense convergence of tenor and vehicle. With this formal scheme he defines surface and submerged metaphors—the former having both elements stated, the latter having the tenor unstated but implied; Miller distinguishes these from moribund metaphors, like the "foot" of a mountain, in which the appropriate tenors are forgotten, not submerged. He distinguishes positive and negative metaphor, depending upon the emphasis the metaphor places on either the fusion or the resistance between tenor and vehicle, for both forces must operate within a lively metaphor. He distinguishes simple, complex and compound metaphors, to the extent that tenor and vehicle are either simple terms or else contain, each or both of them, metaphors inside themselves. In the case of compound metaphors, sometimes the vehicle can be submerged, and if the critic can find what the vehicle is, the poetic passage acquires a more condensed and unified logical form. Miller’s application of these schemes to concrete instances of metaphor are carried out to good effect. His treatment of the epistemology and ontology of a work of verbal art is less successful; he wishes to accommodate both subjective and objective aspects, but tends to consider a manifestation of a poem as the poem itself. He considers the written documentation of a poem to be marks on a surface which serve as stimuli to the reader’s awareness; but units of documentation are written words, not marks, and the process of reading is not, as he claims, a process of decoding. He distinguishes between oral documentation and performance, but seems to think records, tapes and films are instances of the former; would not memory, or perhaps even recitation by rote, be better examples of oral documentation? He considers Saussurian langue as an example of a "cultural object" which finds manifestation in parole; but if this is so, how can there ever be intermediate cultural objects like poems or stories? Langue would be the only verbal cultural object there is. It would be better to consider poems and stories as cultural objects, and language as a potential matrix for them, much as matter is a matrix for substances. Miller objects to the metaphor of "organism" for a poem, because, he says, when we take a poem apart in critical analysis, we do not kill it; therefore the metaphor of "machine" is better—something that can be taken apart and put together again. But surely the correction here is not to replace organism by machine, but to change one’s understanding of what it is to take apart. The critic takes apart in thought, the way a mathematician does, and not like a butcher. Miller’s book is extremely interesting, asks many good questions, and should be read with profit and delight by philosophers interested in language.—R. S. (shrink)

Miller first examines the New Critics’ theory of metaphor, then presents his own views. There is one chapter on Hulme and Richards, one on Empson, Tate, Ransom and Brooks, and a third on Wimsatt, Wheelwright, and Krieger. Chapter Four contains Miller’s position and applies it to some metaphors from the metaphysical poets, and Chapter Five examines the problem of the objective status of a work of verbal art. Miller uses Richards’ distinction between the tenor and vehicle of a metaphor; in (...) "My love is a red, red rose," "love" is the tenor and "rose" the vehicle, and a metaphor occurs only in the tense convergence of tenor and vehicle. With this formal scheme he defines surface and submerged metaphors—the former having both elements stated, the latter having the tenor unstated but implied; Miller distinguishes these from moribund metaphors, like the "foot" of a mountain, in which the appropriate tenors are forgotten, not submerged. He distinguishes positive and negative metaphor, depending upon the emphasis the metaphor places on either the fusion or the resistance between tenor and vehicle, for both forces must operate within a lively metaphor. He distinguishes simple, complex and compound metaphors, to the extent that tenor and vehicle are either simple terms or else contain, each or both of them, metaphors inside themselves. In the case of compound metaphors, sometimes the vehicle can be submerged, and if the critic can find what the vehicle is, the poetic passage acquires a more condensed and unified logical form. Miller’s application of these schemes to concrete instances of metaphor are carried out to good effect. His treatment of the epistemology and ontology of a work of verbal art is less successful; he wishes to accommodate both subjective and objective aspects, but tends to consider a manifestation of a poem as the poem itself. He considers the written documentation of a poem to be marks on a surface which serve as stimuli to the reader’s awareness; but units of documentation are written words, not marks, and the process of reading is not, as he claims, a process of decoding. He distinguishes between oral documentation and performance, but seems to think records, tapes and films are instances of the former; would not memory, or perhaps even recitation by rote, be better examples of oral documentation? He considers Saussurian langue as an example of a "cultural object" which finds manifestation in parole; but if this is so, how can there ever be intermediate cultural objects like poems or stories? Langue would be the only verbal cultural object there is. It would be better to consider poems and stories as cultural objects, and language as a potential matrix for them, much as matter is a matrix for substances. Miller objects to the metaphor of "organism" for a poem, because, he says, when we take a poem apart in critical analysis, we do not kill it; therefore the metaphor of "machine" is better—something that can be taken apart and put together again. But surely the correction here is not to replace organism by machine, but to change one’s understanding of what it is to take apart. The critic takes apart in thought, the way a mathematician does, and not like a butcher. Miller’s book is extremely interesting, asks many good questions, and should be read with profit and delight by philosophers interested in language.—R. S. (shrink)

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Snoeck, A. F. (1997) Analysing Complex Argumentation. The reconstruction of Multiple and Coordinatively Argumentation in a Critical Discussion.