Many studies showed that comprehenders monitor changes in protagonists’ emotions and actions. This article reports two experiments that explored how focusing comprehenders’ attention on a particular property of the protagonist dimension affects the accessibility of information about target objects mentioned in the sentence. Furthermore, the present research examined whether participants’ attitudes toward the issues described in the sentence can modulate comprehension processes. To this end, we asked participants to read sentences about environmental issues that focused comprehenders’ attention on different mental (...) and physical attributes of the same entities and then self-report their own thoughts on the topic of environment by responding to the items assessing their environmental awareness. Importantly, we manipulated the task requirements across two experiments by administering a self-report task, which required the participants to rate the seriousness and the frequency of the problem mentioned in a sentence; and administering a sentence-picture verification paradigm, which required the participants to merely indicate if the object depicted in the picture was mentioned in the preceding sentence. The results of these experiments suggest that the focus of a sentence on the environmental problem enhances the accessibility of information about environmental issues ; that the comprehender’s level of environmental awareness influences one’s attention during sentence processing; and that comprehender characteristics significantly modulate comprehension processes only when the measures tap into explicit processes. (shrink)

Background The number of medical lawsuits in Japan was between 14 and 21 each year before 1998, but increased to 24 to 35 per year after 1999. There were 210 lawsuits during this 10-year period. There is a need for skills and knowledge related to ethics, which is as fundamental to the practice of medicine as basic sciences or clinical skills. in Japan education in ethics is relatively rare and its importance is not yet recognized. Establishing ethics education using legal (...) precedents, which has already been achieved in Western countries, will be a very important issue in Japan. In the present study, a questionnaire survey was conducted among graduate intern doctors, in order to investigate whether ethics education using precedents might have a positive effect in Japan. Methods In 2002, a questionnaire survey entitled Physicians' Clinical Ethics was carried out in a compulsory orientation lecture given to trainees before they started clinical practice in our hospital. The attendees at this lecture were trainees who came from colleges in various districts of Japan. During the lecture, 102 questionnaires were distributed, completed by attendees and collected. The recovery rate was 100%. The questionnaire consisted of 22 questions (in three categories), of which 20 were answered by multiple choices, and the other two were answered by description. The time required to complete the questionnaire was about 10 minutes. Results The recovered questionnaires were analyzed using statistical analysis software (SPSS for Windows, Release 10.07J-1/June/2000), in addition to simple statistical analysis. answers using multiple choices for the 20 questions in the questionnaire were input into SPSS. The principal component analysis was performed for each question. As a result, the item that came to the fore was "legal precedent". Since many intern doctors were interested in understanding laws and precedents, learning about ethical considerations through education using precedents might better meet with their needs and interests. Conclusion We applied a new method in which the results of principal component analysis and frequencies of answers to other questions were combined. From this we deduced that the precedent education used in Western countries was useful to help doctors acquire ethical sensitivity and was not against their will. A relationship was found between reading precedents and the influence of lawsuits, and it was thought that student participation-type precedent education would be useful for doctors in order to acquire ethical sensitivity. (shrink)

The growth in demand for corporate social responsibility information raises the question of how various CSR disclosure items are used by investors, an important stakeholder group driven by instrumental, moral, and relational motives. Prior research examines the instrumental motive to maximize individual shareholder wealth and the moral motive to actualize personal stewardship interests. We contribute to the literature by examining investors’ relational motive to realize positive stakeholder relationships within and between organizations and communities. The relational motive arises when investors look (...) at a company’s treatment of other stakeholder groups as a heuristic to form a perception of how fairly they will also be treated by that company in the future, and thus invest in the company they perceive as fair. Fair treatment in the future matters to the investor who purchases stock from the company or via the capital markets in exchange for becoming a shareholder and thus a residual claimant of the company. As such, the investor expects future cash flows from holding and/or reselling the stock and expects to be treated fairly by the company in the future. We propose that investors, use as a fairness heuristic, CSR disclosure items—CSR investment level or CSR assurance—that represent the company’s commitment to its stakeholders, and that the resulting fairness perception affects the extent to which the CSR disclosure items influence their investment decision. Using responses from 113 investors in an online experiment, we find that fairness perceptions are higher when CSR investment is above the industry average, and that fairness perceptions partially mediate the impact of the CSR investment level on investment amount allocations. We do not find that the presence of CSR assurance is used by investors as a fairness heuristic. Our results are robust to controlling for preferences for financial performance and hence investors’ instrumental motive, and to controlling for individual environmental attitudes, and hence investors’ moral motive. Implications for future research and public policy are discussed. (shrink)

Vox pops, interviews with ordinary people on the street, are one of the most common ways to represent public opinion in television news. Research found that they influence audience judgments more than static base-rate information such as poll results. However, little research has compared vox pops with vivified base-rate information. Most research studying vox pops assumed they are included in the news because of their apparent attractiveness and trustworthiness to audiences. Using a television news experiment comparing statistical base-rate information (...) vivified by an expert with vox pop statements, this study shows that news items containing vox pop statements are perceived as being less attractive and trustworthy than items containing the expert statement. No difference is found between the two types of public opinion information in their influence on perceived public opinion, but vox pops do influence audiences’ personal opinion more strongly. (shrink)

In the present study, we examine the interactive effect of vowels on Mandarin fricative sibilants using a passive oddball paradigm to determine whether theHEIGHTfeatures of vowels can spread on the surface and influence preceding consonants with unspecified features. The stimuli are two pairs of Mandarin words ([sa] ∼ [ʂa] and [su] ∼ [ʂu]) contrasting in vowelHEIGHT([LOW] vs. [HIGH]). Each word in the same pair was presented both as standard and deviant, resulting in four conditions (/standard/[deviant]: /sa/[ʂa]∼ /ʂa/[sa]and /su/[ʂu]∼ (...) /ʂu/[su]). In line with the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL) model, asymmetric patterns of processing were found in the [su] ∼ [ʂu] word pair where both the MMN (mismatch negativity) and LDN (late discriminative negativity) components were more negative in /su/[ʂu](mismatch) than in /ʂu/[su](no mismatch), suggesting the spreading of the feature [HIGH] from the vowel [u] to [ʂ] on the surface. In the [sa] ∼ [ʂa] pair, however, symmetric negativities (for both MMN and LDN) were observed as there is no conflict between the surface feature [LOW] from [a] to [ʂ] and the underlying specified feature [LOW] of [s]. These results confirm that not all features are fully specified in the mental lexicon: features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence surrounding unspecified segments. (shrink)

The University of Tehran English Proficiency Test (UTEPT) is a high-stakes entrance examination taken by more than 10,000 master’s degree holders annually. The examinees’ scores have a significant influence on the final decisions concerning admission to the University of Tehran Ph.D. programs. As a test validation investigation, the present study, which is a bias detection research in nature, utilized multistep logistic regression (LR) procedure to examine the presence of gender differential item functioning (DIF) in the UTEPT with a (...) sample of 6,555 examinees who took the test in November 2006. Specifically, the LR DIF two-degree of freedom Chi-squared test of significance was employed to test the significance of DIF. Following what has been recently suggested in the literature, the test of significance for DIF was accompanied by a measure of magnitude, namely the R-squared effect size for LR DIF, for the interpretation of which the two widely accepted classification schemes were used comparatively. The results reveal that 39 of the 100 items in the test display significant gender differences. However, these group differences are viewed as “negligible” based on both of the schemes. Accordingly, it could be argued that the UTEPT is a gender DIF-free test, though the Reading Comprehension section of the test remains in need of further analysis as it seems that the general trend of DIF indices at the item level may hint at an inclination towards males. (shrink)

An increasing amount of research has examined the management of competing logics, and possible tensions arising between them, within “hybrid organizations.” However, the ways in which the relationships of hybrids with other organizations shape the conciliation of these logics and tensions have received limited attention so far. In this theoretical paper, we examine how hybrid organizations deal with interorganizational collaboration, in particular whether and how their hybridity can be maintained when they partner with “dominant-logic organizations.” Drawing on empirical literature on (...) social enterprise–corporate collaborations, we develop a framework and several propositions on how competing logics and their balancing within hybrid organizations may be affected by interactions with organizations underpinned by one dominant logic. We suggest that influences will mostly depend on the type of collaboration pursued. A collaboration based on a lower level of engagement and interaction between the two partners is likely to give precedence to one logic over the other, reducing inter-logic tensions but possibly compromising organizational hybridity. By contrast, a collaboration featuring numerous interactions and mission compatibility may facilitate sustained hybridity if tensions are acknowledged and managed. Our propositions contribute to the literatures on hybrid organizations, interorganizational collaboration, and social enterprise. (shrink)

Repetition learning is an efficient way to enhance memory performance in our daily lives and educational practice. However, it is unclear to what extent repetition or multiple exposures modulate different types of memory over time. The inconsistent findings on it may be associated with encoding strategy. In this study, participants were presented with pairs of pictures once or three times and were asked to make a same/similar/different judgment. By this, an elaborative encoding is more required for the “same” and “similar” (...) conditions than the “different” condition. Then after intervals of 10 min, 1 day, and 1 week, they were asked to perform a recognition test to discriminate a repeated and a similar picture, followed by a remember/know/guess assessment and a contextual judgment. The results showed that after learning the objects three times, both item memory and contextual memory improved. Multiple exposures enhanced the hit rate for the “same” and “similar” conditions, but did not change the false alarm rate significantly. The recollection, rather than the familiarity, contributed to the repetition effect. In addition, the memory enhancement was manifested in each encoding condition and retention interval, especially for the “same” condition and at 10-min and 1-day intervals. These results clarify how repetition influences item and contextual memories during discriminative learning and suggest that multiple exposures render the details more vividly remembered and retained over time when elaborative encoding is emphasized. (shrink)

The experience of a reward appears to enhance memory for recent prior events, adaptively making that information more available to guide future decision-making. Here, we tested whether reward enhances memory for associative item-location information and also whether the effect of reward spreads to other categorically-related but unrewarded items. Participants earned either points (Experiment 1) or money (Experiment 2) through a time-estimation reward task, during which stimuli-location pairings around a 2D-ring were shown followed by either high-value or low-value rewards. All (...) stimuli were then tested for location memory or recognition (yes/no), immediately and after a 24-hour delay. Across both experiments (combined analysis), there was a robust improvement in location memory following high-value rewards, even though evidence supporting this effect was reliable in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 1. The memory-enhancing effect of reward was observed on both the immediate and delayed location-memory tests. Reward-enhanced memory for both directly rewarded stimuli and categorically related stimuli that were not directly rewarded. No reliable effect of reward value on yes/no recognition-memory performance was observed in either experiment. We hypothesise that reward enhances the consolidation of recent experience and conceptually related memories to make these more available for future decisions. (shrink)

We show that cast shadows can have a significant influence on the speed of visual search. In particular, we find that search based on the shape of a region is affected when the region is darker than the background and corresponds to a shadow formed by lighting from above. Results support the proposal that an early-level system rapidly identifies regions as shadows and then discounts them, making their shapes more difficult to access. Several constraints used by this system are (...) mapped out, including constraints on the luminance and texture of the shadow region, and on the nature of the item casting the shadow. Among other things, this system is found to distinguish between line elements (items containing only edges) and surface elements (items containing visible surfaces), with only the latter deemed capable of casting a shadow. (shrink)

The study examines, in the context of Crawford's (1970) study items, the influence of non-anonymity deriving from feedback of research results on marketing professionals' research ethics judgements, particularly that of response patterns (social desirability of responses) and item omissions. The results indicate that such non-anonymity does not significantly influence the social desirability of responses or item omissions — thus suggesting the appropriateness of its use to stimulate research ethics responses.

A substantial portion of the knowledge base of psychology is based on subjective reports with a risk of information bias. The objective of the present study was to elucidate one contextual source of variance and potential bias in subjective reports: the influence of affective state at the time of responding to questionnaires. Employees were subjected to mood-induction procedures in the laboratory. Neutral, positive, and negative moods were induced by combinations of pictures from the international affective picture set and music. (...) The subjects responded to questions on visual analog scales in order to optimize sensitivity and attenuate short-term memory effects. Most subjects exhibited significant affective-state inductions with no change in arousal. The analyses took affective response to the manipulation into account. Only four of 20 questions were somewhat influenced by induced affective state: job overload, social support from co-workers, satisfaction with getting to develop personally, and an item measuring agreeableness. In general, responding to questions of work that were phrased for valence was little or insignificantly influenced by induced affective state. (shrink)

A general practice of precedent is one that can plausibly apply to any well-functioning legal system. This practice, which can be grounded in the Rule of Law, needs to make it the case that courts always have a legal reason for following relevant precedent – even if the precedent is morally suboptimal, so long as it is not evil. Without this reason, a precedent may be treated as having no legal influence for the later court (‘the Null Model’), and (...) this runs counter to the Rule of Law. On top of this reason, courts may have a general legal obligation to follow precedent – stare decisis – but this risks entrenching morally bad decisions in the law. We need, therefore, a type of reason that lies in between the Null Model and stare decisis as a necessary step for any future justification of stare decisis. But how can courts have a legal reason for following morally suboptimal precedent? They can have that reason, I argue, in virtue of a specific judicial duty, positively laid down in a legal source, which aims to advance the Rule of Law in an institutionalised way. In this article, I aim to explain and justify that judicial duty. (shrink)

Increasing rates of obesity have fueled interest in the factors underlying food choice. While epidemiological studies report that disadvantaged social groups exhibit a higher incidence of obesity, causal evidence for an effect of social contexts on food choice remains scarce. To further our knowledge, we experimentally investigated the effect of disadvantageous social context on food choice in healthy, non-dieting participants. We used three established experimental methods to generate social contexts of different valence in controlled laboratory settings: (i) receiving varying amounts (...) of money in a Dictator Game (DG; n = 40), (ii) being included or excluded in a Cyberball Game (CBG; n = 35), and (iii) performing well, average, or poorly in a response time ranking task (RTR; n = 81). Following exposure to a particular social context, participants made pairwise choices between food items that involved a conflict between perceived taste and health attributes. In line with previous research, stronger dispositional self-control, greater cognitive control of eating behavior, and lower external eating (all assessed via questionnaires) were associated with healthier food choices. As expected, being treated unfairly in the DG, being excluded in the CBG, and performing poorly in the RTR led to negative emotions. However, we did not find an effect of the induced social context on food choice in any of the experiments, even when taking into account individual differences in participants' responses to the social context. Our results suggest that-at least in controlled laboratory environments-the influence of disadvantageous social contexts on food choice is limited. (shrink)

Visual working memory (VWM) refers to the temporary storage and manipulation of visual information. Although visually different, objects we view and remember can share the same higher-level category information, such as an apple, orange, and banana all being classified as fruit. We study the influence of category information on VWM, focusing on the question of whether stimulus category coherence (i.e., whether all to-be-remembered items belong to the same semantic category) influences VWM performance. This question is addressed in two behavioral (...) experiments using a change-detection paradigm and a rational analysis using an ideal observer based on a Bayesian model. Both experimental participants and the ideal observer often, but not always, performed numerically better on coherent trials (i.e., when all stimuli belonged to the same category). We hypothesize that the influence of category coherence information on VWM may be task-dependent and/or stimulus-dependent. In conditions when category coherence information is highly valuable for task performance, as indicated by the ideal observer, then participants tended to make use of it. However, when the ideal observer suggested this information was not crucial to performance, participants did not. In addition, both participants and the ideal observer showed a bias toward responding “same,” and often showed a stronger influence of category coherence on change trials. The consistencies between participant and ideal observer responses suggest participants often behaved as they did because these behaviors are optimal (or approximately so) for maximizing task performance. This may help explain conflicting results reported in the scientific literature. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate some factors which may influence moral decision-making in psychiatric nursing practice. The Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire, a 30-item, seven-point Likert scale, measures six dimensions that are assumed to be related to moral sensitivity. In scoring, the test is divided into six categories: interpersonal orientation, structuring moral meaning, expressing benevolence, modifying autonomy, experiencing conflict, and reliance on medical authority. Seventy-nine nurses, employed in the same psychiatric district, were included in the sample. Significant (...) differences were found for some items in five of the six categories regarding gender, post-basic nursing education, experience as a mental care worker and type of clinical setting. Le but de cette étude était d'investiguer quelques éléments qui pourraient influencer les décisions morales dans la pratique infirmière psychiatrique. Le Questionnaire de Sensibilité Morale de 30 questions, sept points échelle Likert, mesure six dimensions qu'on assume d'être lié à la sensibilité morale. En marquant les points, le test est divisé entre les six catégories: orientation interpersonnelle, structurant un sens moral, l'expression de bénévolence, la modification de l'autonomie, l'expérience de conflit et dépendance de l'autorité médicale. Soixante-dix neuf infirmiers/ères, employé(e)s dans le même rayon de psychiatrie, ont participé dans l'étude. On a trouvé des différences considérables pour quelques questions dans cinq des six catégories en ce qui concerne le genre, l'éducation avancée, l'expérience d'infirmier/ère psychiatrique et type de cadre clinique. Das Ziel dieser Studie war die Untersuchung einiger Faktoren, die Einfluss haben auf die moralische Entscheidungsfindung in der psychiatrischen Krankenpflege. Der Fragebogen zur 'Moralischen Einfühlsamkeit' ist eine sieben-Punk Likert Skala für 30 Sachaspekte und misst sechs Dimensionen, von denen man annimmt, daß sie zur moralischer Einfühlsamkeit gehören. Für die Auswertung ist der Test in sechs Kategorien eingeteilt: Orientierung zu andem Personen, das Strukturieren moralischer Bedeutungselemente, Wohlwollen ausdrücken, Modifizierung von Selbstbestimmung. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning (...) experiment, we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

This second volume of ReConFort, published open access, addresses the decisive role of constitutional normativity, and focuses on discourses concerning the legal role of constitutional norms. Taken together with ReConFort I (National Sovereignty), it calls for an innovative reassessment of constitutional history drawing on key categories to convey the legal nature of the constitution itself (national sovereignty, precedence, justiciability of power, judiciary as constituted power). In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, constitutional normativity began to complete the legal fixation (...) of the entire political order. This juridification in one constitutional text resulted in a conceptual differentiation from ordinary law, which extends to alterability and justiciability. The early expressions of this 'new order of the ages' suggest an unprecedented and irremediable break with European legal tradition, be it with British colonial governance or the French ancien régime. In fact, while the shift to constitutions as a hierarchically 'higher' form of positive law was a revolutionary change, it also drew upon old liberties. The American constitutional discourse, which was itself heavily influenced by British common law, in turn served as an inspiration for a variety of constitutional experiments - from the French Revolution to Napoleon's downfall, in the halls of the Frankfurt Assembly, on the road to a unified Italy, and in the later theoretical discourse of twentieth-century Austria. If the constitution states the legal rules for the law-making process, then its Kelsian primacy is mandatory. Also included in this volume are the French originals and English translations of two vital documents. The first - Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès' Du Jury Constitutionnaire (1795) - highlights an early attempt to reconcile the democratic values of the French Revolution with the pragmatic need to legally protect the Revolution. The second - the 1812 draft of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland - presents the 'constitutional propaganda' of the Russian Tsar Alexander I to bargain for the support of the Lithuanian and Polish nobility. These documents open new avenues of research into Europe's constitutional history: one replete with diverse contexts and national experiences, but above all an overarching motif of constitutional decisiveness that served to complete the juridification of sovereignty. (www.reconfort.eu). (shrink)

The aim of the study was to assess the effects of visual aesthetic perception on event-related potentials . Eight subjects assigned an aesthetic judgment and a 10-step beauty estimation to the target stimuli, consisting of famous artistic pictures and geometric shapes. In a further task, the subjects performed a motor response to the previously judged pictures and geometric shapes. ERPs were recorded through 54 scalp electrodes during both tasks. The P3b amplitude was increased during the categorization of the geometric shapes (...) compared to the artistic figures and during the vision of the beautiful targets preceding the motor response. The categorization of the aesthetic qualities of geometrical shapes seems to induce a higher level of attention, while a higher arousal variation was elicited by the recognition of beauty, in any form that was presented. (shrink)

_The present study delves into the sentiment analysis of Pakistani youth towards TikTok influencers, employing a mixed-methods research design. The data for the present study was collected using a questionnaire consisting of both open-ended and closed-ended items. The data was collected from Pakistani youth ranging from 15 to 30 years of age (timespan was from February 2023 to September 2023). The sample of the study were 300 Pakistani youth, comprising 41.1% males and 58.9% females. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS-v20) (...) was employed for descriptive statistics and Chi-Square test on quantitative data. While for sentiment analysis of qualitative data Azure Machine Learning add-on was used in Microsoft Excel for polarity categorization of sentiments. Chi-Square statistics revealed that the relationship between age group and following TikTok influencers was statistically significant (p=0.010) while there was no significant correlation between gender and following TikTok influencers (p= 0.421). While the qualitative analysis of the data i.e., content analysis revealed a wide spectrum of emotions and sentiments among the respondents, showcasing a varied significance of the TikTok influencers in shaping their thoughts, perceptions, and worldviews. The study offers both qualitative and quantitative insights to inform ongoing research in the realm of digital culture._. (shrink)

Focusing on Hangzhou, a famous tourist city in China, in this study, four regression models were constructed through four items of tourist loyalty to investigate the influence of tourist perceptions and characteristics on male and female tourist loyalty to shared bicycles. A questionnaire survey and ordered logistic regression model techniques were used. Survey data from 467 tourists indicated that there were significant differences between male and female tourists. For male tourists, their willingness to reuse shared bicycles was positively correlated (...) with ease of access to cycles, environmental awareness, psychological benefit, and management provision; however, their willingness to recommend shared bicycles was only affected by environmental awareness, psychological benefit, and management provision. Among female tourists, willingness to reuse shared bicycles was affected by ease of access to cycles, environmental awareness, and rule adherence, while their willingness to recommend shared bicycles was affected by ease of access to cycles, environmental awareness, psychological benefit, and managerial provision. In addition, female tourists’ socio-demographic and behavioral characteristics had a significant impact on their loyalty, among which length of stay in Hangzhou and education were significant in the four regression models, and number of visits to Hangzhou had a positive impact on female tourists’ willingness to reuse. In addition, female tourists who used Hellobike had higher willingness to reuse and recommend than those who used Mobike. For male tourists, only length of stay in Hangzhou had a significant impact on their reuse intention. The current study extends the theory of attribution to explore the factors which may affect tourist’s loyalty to bicycle-sharing from the perspectives of tourists’ perceptions. It will provide further support to decision makers in the development of new shared-bicycle systems at Chinese tourist destinations, with the aim of strengthening tourist loyalty to shared-bicycle programs. (shrink)

Background:Evidence indicates that the processing of facial stimuli may be influenced by incidental factors, and these influences are particularly powerful when facial expressions are ambiguous, such as neutral faces. However, limited research investigated whether emotional contextual information presented in a preceding and unrelated experiment could be pervasively carried over to another experiment to modulate neutral face processing.Objective:The present study aims to investigate whether an emotional text presented in a first experiment could generate negative emotion toward neutral faces in a (...) second experiment unrelated to the previous experiment.Methods:Ninety-nine students (all women) were randomly assigned to read and evaluate a negative text (negative context) or a neutral text (neutral text) in the first experiment. In the subsequent second experiment, the participants performed the following two tasks: (1) an attentional task in which neutral faces were presented as distractors and (2) a task involving the emotional judgment of neutral faces.Results:The results show that compared to the neutral context, in the negative context, the participants rated more faces as negative. No significant result was found in the attentional task.Conclusion:Our study demonstrates that incidental emotional information available in a previous experiment can increase participants’ propensity to interpret neutral faces as more negative when emotional information is directly evaluated. Therefore, the present study adds important evidence to the literature suggesting that our behavior and actions are modulated by previous information in an incidental or low perceived way similar to what occurs in everyday life, thereby modulating our judgments and emotions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Influence of Anxiety and Literature's Panglossian NoseMichael AustinIScheherazade may be the protagonist of The Thousand and One Nights, but her stories are the heroes. Her audience for these stories consists only of her sister and her husband, the great sultan Shahryar, who three years earlier had vowed to avenge his wife's infidelity by marrying a new woman each night and executing her the following morning. With the (...) supply of virgins in the kingdom running short, Scheherazade forces her father, the royal vizier, to allow her to marry the Sultan, assuring him that she has a plan to end his bloody practice. Her plan is simple: every night, Scheherazade tells Shahryar a piece of a story. Many of these stories are overtly didactic, and some are even thinly veiled allegories of Shahryar's own situation, but Scheherazade aims to do more than simply rehabilitate the sultan with pedagogically sound morality tales. She weaves her stories together, often using multiple frames and levels of embedded narrative, to make sure that the night always ends in the middle of at least one story, and, each morning, the Sultan postpones his sentence of death one day so he can hear the conclusion.Scheherazade's gambit succeeds—with the Sultan and with readers everywhere—because it taps into a very deep human need for literature, which, broadly defined, includes folk tales, songs, oral epics, and other forms of narrative expression. Stories have been a source of pleasure for human beings for a long time—much longer than there have been writing systems to record them. And, during all this time, as Paul Hernadi writes, "the pleasure of succumbing to literary seduction has long served as a psychological reward for what was once and perhaps still is [End Page 215] a biologically advantageous thing to do."1 Scheherazade's stories give Shahryar pleasure—more pleasure, arguably, than the sexual encounters that precede them. In more than a thousand marriages (assuming three full years since he began the practice), sexual pleasure never entices the sultan to suspend his vow. With an entire kingdom full of potential wives, of course, he need never fear an end to such pleasures. The pool of wives who can bring the pleasure of narrative to the marriage bed is much smaller indeed.But pleasure alone cannot explain Scheherazade's success; if it could, she would not have to end each night in the middle of a story. By doing so, she combines the pleasure of narrative with the anxiety of incompleteness. Scheherazade's cliffhangers work on Shahryar for the same reason that they work on us today: we expect to find out what happens in a story, and we experience anxiety when this expectation is frustrated. This anxiety is just as deeply rooted in biology and natural selection as the "pleasure of succumbing to literary seduction." Most of the things that produce great anxiety in people—such as snakes, spiders, fire, high places, large bodies of water, contaminated surfaces, and unknown social situations—constitute very real threats to our survival. Anxiety is nature's way of telling us to pay extra attention around potentially dangerous things or to take steps to avoid such things whenever possible. Pleasure and anxiety work hand in hand, as carrot and stick, to encourage, or discourage, the same fitness-enhancing behaviors. Eating when we are hungry gives us pleasure; wondering where our next meal is coming from gives us anxiety.The pleasure and anxiety that we experience in literature are neurologically indistinguishable from the same responses that we experience in the life-or-death situations for which they were designed. According to John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, "fictional worlds engage emotion systems while disengaging action systems.... An absorbing series of fictional events will draw out of our mental mechanisms a rich array of emotional responses—the same responses that would be appropriate to those same events and persons if they were real."2 The ability to respond in this way appears to be unique to human beings, but it also appears to be a universal element of human nature. People everywhere tell and respond to stories, and many people devote considerable... (shrink)

The relationship between reason and faith is one of the most important topics in the philosophy of religion. This issue has been investigated from several aspects. One of these aspects is the relationship between action and religious belief. John Cottingham, a contemporary analytical philosopher, emphasizes the primacy of religious practice over belief, as well as the involuntary nature of belief. In his opinion, the factor that causes people to become religious is not intellectual discussions about God but the internal aspects (...) of religion itself and the transforming power of religious practices in human life and experiences. In the present work, a critique has been made of his point of view with an explanatory-critical method. Criticisms that his point of view includes: First, the belief resulting from the course of action is only psychological certainty and such certainty is beyond the logic of verification. Secondly, knowledge of God and the practical system is a condition for entering it and precedes it. The third criticism is the problem of the plurality of religions and practical systems which causes people to mistrust reasons of the heart. The fourth criticism is that entering into a practical system is a confirmation of its benefits and anyone who does not believe this would have no reason to enter such a system. Introduction John Cottingham is a contemporary English philosopher, and one of the contemporary theorists in the field of the relationship between reason and faith. The relationship between reason and religious faith can be examined from four aspects: 1) The relationship between reason and the epistemological area of faith, 2) the relationship between reason and the practical area of faith, 3) the relationship between reason and the commitment area of faith, and 4) the relationship between reason and the area of faith. Explanation of Cottingham’s view Cottingham’s view can be presented in seven steps: -/- Criticism of the current situation in analytical philosophy; Changing the topic of discussion from the religious field to the spiritual field in order to expand the topic of discussion to non-religious spiritual fields; Comparison of spiritual practice with devotional orders in the past philosophical tradition; Understanding religion is based on practical participation in it; -/- This introduction is expressed according to Pascal’s point of view. According to Pascal, faith should be acquired in the atmosphere of a living tradition of practical religious worship, not through discussion and analysis in a seminar room. The basis of this view is that issues related to the nature and existence of God are beyond the reach of reason. -/- The role of emotions in human understanding; -/- Using Nussbaum’s point of view, Cottingham says: There are types of truth that the intellectual effort to obtain is equivalent to not reaching them. Religious truth is also a part of these truths. Because religious truths are beyond the direct understanding of humans and trying to understand them through logical analysis is moving away from them. -/- Involuntary belief; -/- Human belief, whether religious or otherwise, is not optional and there is a kind of passivity in all human perceptions. According to Cottingham, this point is shared by philosophers such as Hume and Descartes. Cottingham is also influenced by Pascal in this introduction. According to Pascal, although belief in God is not optional, there are indirect ways such as participating in religious activities to realize it, which are available to humans. The role of these ways in the formation of belief is a preliminary role and creating the ability to accept. -/- The necessity of trusting the witnesses of the heart; -/- According to Cottingham, such a thing is necessary for the human condition, and this issue exists in all fields of human knowledge, as well as in human daily life. For example, to go to work, a person must believe that when he turns the switch on the car, the car will not explode, even if such a belief is not the result of checking the car’s electrical system, you still have to trust this article or you will lose your job. Cottingham’s conclusion from the seven premises is that the factor that causes people to become religious is not intellectual discussions about God but the internal aspects of religion itself and the transformative power of religious practices in human life and experiences. Accordingly, faith in God is a product of trust and participation in a living community of faith. When the truth of religion is obtained through faith, and faith depends on a practical religious tradition, then there will be no other choice but to enter into the practical system of religion. Of course, he emphasizes that entering the life of faith does not mean abandoning the critical method in content analysis, and the previous reasons resulting from religious practice must be supplemented or regularized by subsequent intellectual reflections. According to Cottingham, worship precedes rational theory in four ways: 1) temporally; 2) heuristically; 3) psychologically; 4) morally Critical Review In the following, I will do a critical review of Cottingham’s view. His view on the priority of action over religious belief and that the understanding of religion is based on practical participation faces criticisms: First, the belief resulting from participation in religious actions is only psychological certainty and such certainty is beyond the logic of confirmation. Secondly, knowing God and the practical system is a condition for entering this system and has precedence over it. The third criticism is the problem of the plurality of religions and practical systems which causes people to mistrust reasons of the heart. The fourth criticism is that entry into a practical system is a confirmation of its benefits and anyone who does not believe this would have no reason to enter such a system. Therefore, at this stage as well, it is necessary to have a rational way to confirm the usefulness of this path. His view on Doxastic voluntarism is also under the involuntary approach of indirect belief, which is Pascal’s view. This component is also present in the opinions of Allamah Tabatabai. The difference between Cottingham and Allameh’s points of view is that Cottingham and Pascal consider rational arguments to be inefficient in the realization of belief and scientific verification, and they consider a practical commitment to be necessary for the realization of such verification, but Allameh Tabatabai considers scientific premises and rational proof to be the necessary conditions for faith. Conclusion Although the theory of the precedence of action over belief is faced with numerous criticisms, it is an undeniable matter. Paying attention to different levels of religious faith makes the value of theoretical discussions as well as paying attention to practical refinement and participation in spiritual actions be considered together. (shrink)

Establishing phonologically robust lexical representations in a second language is challenging, and even more so for words containing phones in phonological contrasts that are not part of the native language. This study presents a series of additional analyses of lexical decision data assessing the phonolexical encoding of English /ε/ and /æ/ by German learners of English in order to examine the influence of lexical frequency, phonological neighborhood density and the acoustics of the particular vowels on learners’ ability to reject (...) nonwords differing from real words in the confusable L2 phones only. Results showed that both the lexical properties of the target items and the acoustics of the critical vowels affected nonword rejection, albeit differently for items with /æ/ → [ε] and /ε/ → [æ] mispronunciations: For the former, lower lexical frequencies and higher neighborhood densities led to more accurate performance. For the latter, it was only the acoustics of the vowel that had a significant impact on learners’ accuracy. This suggests that the encoding of /ε/ and /æ/ may not only be asymmetric in that /ε/ is generally more robustly represented in the lexicon than /æ/, as previously reported, but also in the way in which this encoding takes place. Mainly, the encoding of /æ/ appears to be more dependent on the characteristics of the L2 vocabulary and on one’s experience with the L2 than that of its more dominant counterpart. (shrink)

Background The German Diagnosis-Related Groups (G-DRG) system has led to a revenue-orientated hospital financing system. This article examines the ethical implications and consequences of this system using the example of reconstructive measures (defect care) in patients with oral cavity carcinoma. At the same time, the interplay between the G‑DRG system and guideline development must also be scrutinized. This is preceded by introductory information on oral cavity carcinoma and the existing treatment options: conventional reconstruction techniques versus cost-intensive high-end surgery. Methods The (...) case scenario “treatment of medium-sized defects after tumor resection” forms the methodological basis and argumentative reference point of the study. Results and discussion The G‑DRG system and the economic incentives lead to far-reaching ethical implications concerning the demand-orientated treatment of patients and lead to multidimensional interactions. The existing tendency towards high-end surgery harbors the risk of overuse and misuse and, therefore, runs counter to the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence. The one-sided indication in favor of high-end surgery also suggests that patient information is given in a directive manner (violation of respect for patient autonomy). Moreover, costly high-end procedures counteract the principle of economic efficiency and, thus, touch on issues of distributive justice. Finally, the clinical favoring of high-end procedures also affects logic within medicine, namely the publication landscape (publication bias), the design of the relevant guidelines, and surgical expertise. Conclusions There is a need to raise the awareness of all those working in the field of surgery (surgeons, guideline experts, reviewers). (shrink)

Many consumers are motivated to attend Farmers’ Markets because of the opportunity to purchase fresh and local products. The subsequent interactions at FMs provide an important pathway for the direct exchange of information. While previous research suggests that people value local food and the FM shopping experience and that purchasing directly from producers can lead to transformative learning, little is known about exactly how the shopping experience at FMs can influence consumer purchasing behavior. This study examines the extent of (...) and mechanism for such “influencing.” Using data from surveys, observations, and interviews gathered at six FMs, we analyze the interactions between consumers and vendors, including the motivations and values of both parties. We explore the question, “How do farmers’ markets facilitate change in consumer purchasing behavior?” We propose that the dynamic of change in consumer purchasing behavior at FMs takes root in the exchange of information between consumers and vendors during interactions. Our results suggest that there are three specific characteristics shared by FM consumers and vendors that lead to these meaningful interactions at FMs: symmetry of motivations to attend FMs, shared values, and mutual dependence on interactions. Then, when a consumer learns new information from a FM vendor during an interaction, the consumer is more likely to make a change in their immediate purchase. Information about the products for sale and the modes of production of those items can especially impact consumers’ immediate purchases at FMs. We found that FM interactions can also impact long-term purchasing behavior, such as purchasing more organic or locally produced foods. Our results suggest that FM interactions may have significant implications for consumer health, local economies, and the environment. (shrink)

This study aims to alleviate the current tense employment situation and study the entrepreneurial situation of teachers and students in colleges and universities. Firstly, based on the educational concept of Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics, Ideological and Political Education is added to psychological capital to explore the effect of the combination of the two on entrepreneurial performance. An entrepreneurial performance impact model is constructed, and the questionnaire is set. Secondly, the influence of psychological capital combined with IPE on sports (...) morality is explored, and a sports morality questionnaire is designed. Finally, the questionnaire results are analyzed. The results showed that most of the participants in the survey are under the age of 25. The 25- to 29-year-olds are the smallest among those surveyed. The respondents who participated in the survey had the most undergraduate degrees, accounting for 43.4%. The 40 items on entrepreneurial performance this time obey a normal distribution, and the scale has good reliability and validity. The main factor analysis results obtained by principal component analysis include 6 factors. Their total explanatory power exceeds 67%, and the six factors screened out this time are well represented. The model tolerance is between 0.45 and 0.5, and the Variance Inflation Factor value is less than 10. The scale does not suffer from multi-collinearity issues. IPE significantly strengthens the effect of psychological capital on entrepreneurial performance. The influences of various sports on sportsmanship, bravery, self-confidence, and self-transcendence are significantly different, and the P value is less than 0.001. The difference in aggressiveness is less than 0.01, indicating that it is very significant. Different sports have significant differences in the cultivation of sports morality, and the P value is less than 0.05. The differences in self-discipline are also significant, and there are extremely significant differences in compliance with rules, and the P value here is less than 0.001. There are no significant differences in sporting qualities. IPE combined with psychological capital has a significant impact on entrepreneurial performance. These contents provide references for the entrepreneurship education of teachers and students in colleges and universities. The contribution lies in expanding the research on psychological capital in entrepreneurial performance and laying a foundation for the combination of psychological capital and IPE. (shrink)

The task of visual search is to determine as rapidly as possible whether a target item is present or absent in a display. Rapidly detected items are thought to contain features that correspond to primitive elements in the human visual system. In previous theories, it has been assumed that visual search is based on simple two-dimensional features in the image. However, visual search also has access to another level of representation, one that describes properties in the corresponding three-dimensional scene. (...) Among these properties are three dimensionality and the direction of lighting, but not viewing direction. These findings imply that the parallel processes of early vision are much more sophisticated than previously assumed. (shrink)

ArgumentThis study contributes to the discussion on the development of eugenics in Central-Eastern Europe by tracing the way that eugenic ideas entered into medical decision-making in Hungary. Through a case study that reviews the professional argumentation of the gynecological management of tuberculosis pregnancies, this paper shows that the subordination of individual reproductive rights to state interests was influenced by the ideas of eugenics, which had begun to enter into the professional public health discourse. A eugenically informed morality was envisioned, to (...) guide decision-making in the interest of the Hungarian “race.” This biopolitically important morality can be viewed as an early influence on the formulation of biological citizenship. Leading figures were divided on how to ensure such morality: some scholars argued that education is the key, others thought that the state, and state actors, should act radically in the interest of the population and decide on behalf of the individual. Radical methods, such as the termination of pregnancies and sterilization of women, were among the practices of gynecologists. Although abortion and sterilization were not widespread and never became official therapeutic solutions for tuberculosis pregnancies, they were nonetheless part of a discourse that preceded the eugenic institutions of the interwar years. (shrink)

We used a qualitative dissociation procedure to assess semantic priming from spatially attended and unattended masked words. Participants categorized target words that were preceded by parafoveal prime words belonging to either the same or the opposite category as the target. Using this paradigm, only non-strategic use of the prime would result in facilitation of the target responses in related trials. Primes were immediately masked or masked with a delay, while spatial attention was allocated to the primes’ location or away from (...) the primes’ location. Immediate masked, strongly related primes facilitated target responses irrespective of the spatial attention. Delayed masked, related primes led to reversed or facilitatory priming depending on whether they were cued or uncued. These findings demonstrate that perceiving a stimulus with or without awareness depends on both stimulus quality and attention orienting and that non-strategic priming can be observed from clear visible but spatially unattended words. (shrink)

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) show a protracted period of inconsistent use of tense/agreement morphemes. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether this inconsistent use could be attributed to the children's misinterpretations of particular syntactic structures in the input. In Study 1, preschool-aged children with SLI and typically developing peers heard sentences containing novel verbs preceded by auxiliarywasor sentences in which the novel verb formed part of a nonfinite subject-verb sequence within a larger syntactic structure (e.g.We saw (...) the dog relling). The children were then tested on their use of the novel verbs in contexts that obligated use of auxiliaryis. The children with SLI were less accurate than their peers and more likely to produce the novel verb withoutisif the verb had been heard in a nonfinite subject-verb sequence. In Study 2, children with SLI and typically developing peers were tested on their comprehension of sentences such asThe cow sees the horse eating. The children with SLI were less accurate than their peers and were disproportionately influenced by the nonfinite subject-verb clause at the end of the sentence. We interpret these findings within the framework of construction learning. (shrink)

A large literature suggests that the organization of words in semantic memory, reflecting meaningful relations among words and the concepts to which they refer, supports many cognitive processes, including memory encoding and retrieval, word learning, and inferential reasoning. The co‐activation of related items has been proposed as a mechanism by which semantic knowledge influences cognition, and contemporary accounts of semantic knowledge propose that this co‐activation is graded—that it depends on how strongly related the items are in semantic memory. Prior research (...) with adults yielded evidence supporting this prediction; however, there is currently no evidence of graded co‐activation early in development. This study provides the first evidence that in children the co‐activation of related items depends on their relational strength in semantic memory. Participants (N = 84, age range: 3–9 years) were asked to identify a target (e.g., bone) amid distractors. Children's responses were slowed down by the presence of a related distractor (e.g., puppy) relative to unrelated distractors (e.g., flower)—suggesting that children co‐activated related items upon hearing the name of the target. Importantly, the degree of this co‐activation was predicted by the strength of the target–distractor relation, such that distractors more strongly related to the targets slowed down children to a larger extent. These findings have important implications for understanding how organized semantic knowledge affects other cognitive processes across development. (shrink)

Several studies highlight the importance of the order of different instructional methods when designing learning environments. Correct but also erroneous worked examples are frequently used methods to foster students’ learning performance, especially in problem-solving. However, so far no study examined how the order of these example types affects learning. While the expertise reversal effect would suggest presenting correct examples first, the productive failure approach hypothesizes the reversed order to be learning-facilitating. In addition, congruency of subsequent exemplified problems was tested as (...) a moderator of the effect of order on learning. For example, with arithmetic tasks, congruent problems target exactly the same calculation while incongruent problems refer to different calculations. Following cascade theory, a model of cognitive skill acquisition, presenting correct examples first should be more effective when the subsequent exemplified problems are different. To test the hypotheses, 83 university students were assigned to one of the four conditions in a 2 × 2 between-subject design. Learners navigated through a slideshow on the topic of Vedic mathematics consisting of explicit instruction, worked examples differing in terms of the experimental condition, and transfer problems. Although no main or interaction effects were found regarding students’ learning performance, mediational analysis offered support for the expertise reversal effect, as it indicated that there is a significant indirect effect of order via mental load on learning. Presenting correct examples first and erroneous examples second resulted in a lower mental load, which in turn was associated with better learning performance. In contrast, presenting erroneous examples first and correct examples second resulted in a more accurate self-assessment of learning performance. These findings offer first insights into the question of how the presentation order of different example types impacts learning and provide practical recommendations for the design of educational media. Results are discussed in light of the ongoing debate regarding the question if less guided instructional methods should precede or succeed more guided methods. (shrink)

Objective: Evidence suggests people experience an oral size illusion and commonly perceive oral size inaccurately; however, the nature of the illusion remains unclear. The objectives of the present study were to confirm the presence of an oral size illusion, determine the magnitude (amount) and direction (underestimation or overestimation) of the illusion, and determine whether immediately prior crossmodal perceptual experiences affected the magnitude and direction. Design: Participants (N = 27) orally assessed 9 sizes of stainless steel spheres (1/16 in to 1/2 (...) in) categorized as small, medium, or big, and matched them with digital and visual reference sets. Each participant completed 20 matching tasks in 3 assessments. For control assessments, 6 oral spheres were matched with reference sets of same-sized spheres. For primer-control assessments, similar to control, 6 matching tasks were preceded by cross-modal experiences of the same-sized sphere. For experimental assessments, 8 matching tasks were preceded by a cross-modal experience of a differently sized sphere. Results: For control assessments, small and medium spheres were consistently underestimated, and big spheres were consistently overestimated. For experimental assessments, magnitude and direction of the oral size illusion varied according to the size of the sphere used in the cross-modal experience. Conclusion: Results seemed to confirm an oral size illusion, but direction of the illusion depended on the size of the object. Immediately prior cross-modal experiences influenced magnitude and direction of the illusion, suggesting that aspects of oral perceptual experience are dependent upon factors outside of oral perceptual anatomy and the properties of the oral stimulus. (shrink)

To reduce ambiguity across a conversation, interlocutors reach temporary conventions or referential precedents on how to refer to an entity. Despite their central role in communication, the cognitive underpinnings of the interpretation of precedents remain unclear, specifically the role and mechanisms by which information related to the speaker is integrated. We contrast predictions of one-stage, original two-stage, and extended two-stage models for the processing of speaker information and provide evidence favoring the latter: we show that both stages are sensitive to (...) speaker-specific information. Using an experimental paradigm based on visual-world eye tracking in the context of a referential communication task, we look at the moment-by-moment interpretation of precedents and focus on the temporal profile of the influence of the speaker and linguistic information when facing ambiguity. We find two clearly identifiable moments where speaker-specific information has its effects on reference resolution. We conclude that these two stages reflect two distinct cognitive mechanisms, with different timings, and rely on different representational formats for encoding and accessing information about the speaker: a cue-driven memory retrieval process that mediates language processing and an inferential mechanism based on perspective-taking abilities. (shrink)

Although previous studies showed that women’s menopause-related symptoms varied in different ethnic groups and countries, and were affected by specific social and cultural factors, few studies have been conducted to explore menopause-related symptoms and its influencing factors in middle-aged women among ethnic groups in China. This study aimed to explore the characteristics of menopause-related symptoms and its influencing factors among Mosuo, Yi, and Han women in Yongning area of Yunnan province, China. A cross-cultural design by snowball sampling method was used (...) to recruit 208 women aged 40–60 from Yongning Township, Ninglang County, Yunnan province, China. The 11-item Menopause Rating Scale was used to assess menopause-related symptoms. Compared with Yi and Han women, Mosuo women were accorded the highest family status. Multiple linear regression analyses showed that ethnicity, age, family support, and family decision-making patterns were associated with the severity of menopause-related symptoms. Yi and Han women had more severe menopause-related symptoms than Mosuo women. Among the three groups, women living in “female-dominated” and “co-deliberated” households had significantly lower scores of menopause-related symptoms than those in “male-dominated” households. This study indicates that menopause-related symptoms vary among middle-aged women in different ethnic groups. A higher level of female status in the family and family support may be protective factors of menopause-related symptoms in middle-aged women. (shrink)

This article aims to expound the principle of justice, as a fundamental value and as an immanent category of law, as well as one of the fundamental human rights, prescribed and guaranteed by a myriad of international instruments and documents. After a brief historical account, by focusing on Article 40 of the Magna Carta Libertatum, which states that: “To No One Will we Sell, To No One Will we refuse or delay, right or justice”, this article claims to show the (...) importance of incorporation of this principle in the provisions of the Magna Carta and its impact on the development of theory and legislation in the past and present. Moreover, the article intends to explore the extent of influence that the priciple of justice has on the functioning of the law in general. Since justice implicates the permanent and constant will to render each person his due, and this achieved through equality, it results that justice means being equal. In this context, the article will explore the concept of equality as a precondition of justice, as well as the conditions and modalities for its implementation. Having in mind that the principle of justice is closely linked to the principle of equity, because equity precedes justice, or more precisely, equity is considered a source of justice, this article seeks to articulate the essential distinctions between these two concepts by focusing on their methods, i.e. in their approach for putting the idea of equality into action. (shrink)