Successful social functioning requires quick and accurate processing of emotion and generation of appropriate reactions. In typical individuals, these skills are supported by embodied processing, recruiting central and peripheral mechanisms. However, emotional processing is atypical in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Individuals with ASD show deficits in recognition of briefly presented emotional expressions. They tend to recognize expressions using rule-based, rather than template, strategies. Individuals with ASD also do not spontaneously and quickly mimic emotional expressions, unless the task encourages (...) engagement. When processing emotional scenes, ASD individuals show atypical basic motivational responses, despite intact ability to verbally determine stimulus valence. We discuss how these findings highlight the contribution of both embodied and disembodied mechanisms to typical and atypical emotional functioning. (shrink)

We challenge the idea that a cognitive perspective on therapeutic change concerns only memory processes. We argue that inclusion of impairments in more generative cognitive processes is necessary for complete understanding of cases such as depression. In such cases what is identified in the target article as an “integrative memory structure” is crucially supported by processes of mental model construction.

Do the nonverbal signals used to make social judgements differ depending on the type of judgement being made and what other nonverbal signals are visible? Experiment 1 investigated how nonverbal signals across three channels (face: angry/fearful, posture: expanded/contracted, lean: forward/backward), when viewed together, were used for judgements of emotion, threat, and status. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 and explored how use of the body channels differed in making social judgements when the face channel was obscured. Both experiments found facial anger (...) linked to high anger, threat, and status ratings; facial fear was linked to low ratings. Expanded body posture increased threat and status judgements, while backward lean decreased anger and threat. With the face channel blocked (Experiment 2B), the influence of body posture increased across emotion, threat, and status judgements, while body lean was more consistent. Findings demonstrate that despite the face’s importance across types of social judgements, the body channels differentially contribute to judgements of emotion, threat and status. Further, they are differentially affected by the absence of facial information. How much face and body-related channels are used in social judgements is moderated by the type of judgement being made and the availability of other (particularly facial) channel information. (shrink)

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, stay-at-home orders disrupted normal research operations. Principal investigators (PIs) had to make decisions about conducting and staffing essential research under unprecedented, rapidly changing conditions. These decisions also had to be made amid other substantial work and life stressors, like pressures to be productive and staying healthy. Using survey methods, we asked PIs funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (N = 930) to rate how (...) they prioritized different considerations, such as personal risks, risks to research personnel, and career consequences, when making decisions. They also reported how difficult they found these choices and associated symptoms of stress. Using a checklist, PIs indicated those factors in their research environments that made their decisions easier (i.e., facilitators) or more difficult (i.e., barriers) to make. Finally, PIs also indicated how satisfied they were with their decisions and management of research during the disruption. Descriptive statistics summarize PIs’ responses and inferential tests explore whether responses varied by academic rank or gender. PIs overall reported prioritizing the well-being and perspectives of research personnel, and they perceived more facilitators than barriers. Early-career faculty, however, rated concerns about their careers and productivity as higher priorities compared to their senior counterparts. Early-career faculty also perceived greater difficulty and stress, more barriers, fewer facilitators, and had less satisfaction with their decisions. Women rated several interpersonal concerns about their research personnel more highly than men and reported greater stress. The experience and perceptions of researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic can inform policies and practices when planning for future crises and recovering from the pandemic. (shrink)

By appeal to the phenomenon of presupposition accommodation, Rae Langton and others have proposed that speakers can gain genuine authority over their audiences when they implicitly claim such autho...

Courts and jurors sometimes refuse to assign liability to defendants on the basis of statistics alone, despite their apparent reliability. I argue that this refusal is best understood as a recognition of defendants’ right to security. Understood as a robust good in Philip Pettit’s sense, security requires that someone risking harm to others’ protected interests adopt a disposition of concern that controls against wrongfully harming them. Since trials risk harm, the state must adopt such a disposition. Statistics leave open the (...) possibility of innocence and so wrongful harm in a way that the state cannot ignore; if it does use such statistics, it makes defendants wrongfully insecure. This explanation of the problem of bare statistical evidence is especially apt because security grounds the right to a fair trial and judicial procedural rights more generally. (shrink)

Savīyahʹhā-yi maʻrifatʹāfarīn-i nafs -- Falsafah-yi Ṣadrā -- Falsafahʹī barā-yi zīstan-i safar-i ʻishq.

Did Alcidamas invent the story of the contest of Homer and Hesiod? Martin West has argued that he did , 433 ff.). I believe that there are a number of reasons for thinking this improbable. The stories of the deaths of Homer and Hesiod were traditional before Alcidamas. Heraclitus knew the legend of the riddle of the lice and Homer's death , and the story of Hesiod's death was well known by Thucydides’ time . The first attempt to record information (...) about Homer's life is ascribed to Theagenes of Rhegium, in the late sixth century b.c. . By that time it seems likely that there was already a considerable body of legends about the early poets. The pieces of hexameter verse in the Herodotean Life of Homer, some of which show detailed knowledge of the area around Smyrna in the archaic period, probably date from before 500 b.c. In relating the stories of the poets’ deaths Alcidamas is recording the results of στορα, and this is what he implies in Michigan papyrus 2754 . West's theory requires one to assume that he has incorporated with these traditions his own fiction of the contest. This seems to me to go against what we know in general about the activity of sophists such as Alcidamas. Although they were capable of inventing myths , there is no evidence that they created such stories about earlier historical figures, rather than collecting popular legends about them, and using these for their own purposes. It is true that Critias used the evidence of Archilochus’ own poetry to draw conclusions about his life . But this is not the same as inventing a story virtually from scratch. Hesiod's own testimony about his poetic victory , the original starting-point for the legend of the contest with Homer, did not on its own provide a basis from which such inferences could be drawn. It seems more likely that the legend is the product of earlier popular embroidery, at a time when speculation about these early poets’ lives was becoming common. (shrink)

The question to be discussed in this paper can be put in simple terms: at what date were the collections of scholia on classical Greek authors compiled? Scholars have given two conflicting answers. The first was put forward by J. W. White in his edition of the scholia to Aristophanes' Birds. Developing an opinion of Dindorf, he suggested that the archetype of the scholia was a large parchment codex of the fourth or fifth century, which contained in the margins a (...) commentary drawn from several sources. A very similar view has been expressed about the scholia to Apollonius Rhodius and Pindar. (shrink)

The relation of the special and the general principle of relativity to the principle of covariance, the principle of equivalence and Mach's principle, is discussed. In particular, the connection between Lorentz covariance and the special principle of relativity is illustrated by giving Lorentz covariant formulations of laws that violate the special principle of relativity: Ohm's law and what we call “Aristotle's first and second laws.” An “Aristotelian” universe in which all motion is relative to “absolute space” is considered. The first (...) law: a free particle is at rest. The second law: force is proportional to velocity. Ohm's law: the current density is proportional to the electrical field strength. Neither of these laws fulfills the principle of relativity. The examples illustrate, in the context of Lorentz covariance and special relativity, Kretschmann's critique of founding Einstein's general principle of relativity on the principle of general covariance. A modification of the principle of covariance is suggested, which may serve as a restricted criterium for a physical law to satisfy Einstein's general principle of relativity. Other objections that have been raised to the validity of Einstein's general principle of relativity are based upon the preferred state of inertial frames in the general, as well as in the special theory, the existence of tidal effects in “true” gravitational fields, doubts as to the validity of Mach's principle, whether electromagnetic phenomena obey the principle, and, finally, the anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation. These objections are reviewed and discussed. (shrink)

Aproximación al pensamiento de Rodolfo Kusch -- Canto e identidad en el Martín Fierro según Carlos Astrada y Rodolfo Kusch -- Donde el barro se subleva -- La rehabilitación del saber seminal como camino hacia una mística popular -- Kusch y el impulso social de nuestra época -- La barbarización de la civilización, una grieta de antaño -- ¿De dónde pensarnos?