Next SectionThis short paper argues that predictive expressions (will, gonna) are modals. In section 1, I provide three empirical arguments for a treatment of predictive expressions as modals: (i) they behave like modals in that they can occur in overt and covert conditionals in a way that non-modal operators cannot; (ii) they have morphological variants which show displacement behaviors, i.e., nonveridicality; (iii) like modals, they obviate the personal experience requirement on predicates of personal taste. In section (...) 2, I specifically rebut arguments by Kissine (2008) that will is not a modal. In section 3 I conclude. (shrink)

Source code is a form of human communication, albeit one where the information shared between the programmers reading and writing the code is constrained by the requirement that the code executes correctly. Programming languages are more syntactically constrained than natural languages, but they are also very expressive, allowing a great many different ways to express even very simple computations. Still, code written by developers is highly predictable, and many programming tools have taken advantage of this phenomenon, relying on language model (...) surprisal as a guiding mechanism. While surprisal has been validated as a measure of cognitive load in natural language, its relation to human cognitive processes in code is still poorly understood. In this paper, we explore the relationship between surprisal and programmer preference at a small granularity—do programmers prefer more predictable expressions in code? Using meaning‐preserving transformations, we produce equivalent alternatives to developer‐written code expressions and run a corpus study on Java and Python projects. In general, language models rate the code expressions developers choose to write as more predictable than these transformed alternatives. Then, we perform two human subject studies asking participants to choose between two equivalent snippets of Java code with different surprisal scores (one original and transformed). We find that programmers do prefer more predictable variants, and that stronger language models like the transformer align more often and more consistently with these preferences. (shrink)

In an application of the personality dynamics framework, we advance understanding on the relationship between baseline leader humility and team psychological safety by exploring the roles of humility variability and attractor strength. Specifically, we examine how the consistency of leader-expressed humility across team members operates as a boundary condition in the relationship between leader-expressed humility and team psychological safety. We also explore how the agreement between leader self-reported humility and leader-expressed humility operates as an attractor to predict such a consistency. (...) We test the hypothesized model through a sample of 85 teams, rated by 354 team members. The findings suggest that consistency reinforces, while inconsistency weakens, the effect of leader-expressed humility on team psychological safety. The findings also reveal that SOA relates to the consistency of leader-expressed humility, depending on the level at which the agreement occurs. We conclude that to better understand the outcomes of humble leadership, it is necessary to take into account not only the baseline of humility expressed by the leader, but also his/her humility variability and the strength of the attractor. (shrink)

Previous research has demonstrated how emotion resembling cues in the face help shape impression formation. Perhaps most notable in the literature to date, has been work suggesting that gender-related appearance cues are visually confounded with certain stereotypic expressive cues. Only a couple studies to date have used computer vision to directly map out and test facial structural resemblance to emotion expressions using facial landmark coordinates to estimate face shape. In one study using a Bayesian network classifier trained to detect (...) emotional expressions structural resemblance to a specific expression on a non-expressive face was found to influence trait impressions of others. In another study, a connectionist model trained to detect emotional expressions found different emotion-resembling cues in male vs. female faces. Despite this seminal work, direct evidence confirming the theoretical assertion that humans likewise utilize these emotion-resembling cues when forming impressions has been lacking. Across four studies, we replicate and extend these prior findings using new advances in computer vision to examine gender-related, emotion-resembling structure, color, and texture and their impact on gender-stereotypic impression formation. We show that all three are meaningfully related to human impressions of emotionally neutral faces. Further when applying the computer vision algorithms to experimentally manipulate faces, we show that humans derive similar impressions from them as did the computer. (shrink)

Arousal is one of the dimensions of core affect and frequently used to describe experienced or observed emotional states. While arousal ratings of facial expressions are collected in many studies it is not well understood how arousal is displayed in or interpreted from facial expressions. In the context of socioemotional disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, this poses the question of a differential use of facial information for arousal perception. In this study, we demonstrate how automated face-tracking tools (...) can be used to extract predictors of arousal judgments. We find moderate to strong correlations among all measures of static information on one hand and all measures of dynamic information on the other. Based on these results, we tested two measures, average distance to the neutral face and average facial movement speed, within and between neurotypical individuals and individuals with autism. Distance to the neutral face was predictive of arousal in both groups. Lower mean arousal ratings were found for the autistic group, but no difference in correlation of the measures and arousal ratings could be found between groups. Results were replicated in an high autistic traits group. The findings suggest a qualitatively similar perception of arousal for individuals with and without autism. No correlations between valence ratings and any of the measures could be found, emphasizing the specificity of our tested measures. Distance and speed predictors share variability and thus speed should not be discarded as a predictor of arousal ratings. (shrink)

Linguists and philosophers of language have shown increasing interest in the expressions that refer to quantifiers: determiners like ‘every’ and ‘many’, in addition to determiner phrases like ‘some king’ and ‘no cat’. This thesis addresses several puzzles where the way we understand quantifier expressions depends on features that go beyond standard truth conditional semantic meaning. One puzzle concerns the fact that it is often natural to understand ‘Every king is in the yard’ as being true if all of (...) the kings at the party are in the yard, even though the standard truth conditions predict it to be true if and only if every king in the universe is in the yard. Another puzzle emerges from the observation that ‘Every American king is in the yard’ sounds odd relative to contexts where there are no American kings, even though the standard truth conditions predict it to be trivially true. These puzzles have been widely discussed within linguistics and philosophy of language, and have implications for topics as diverse as the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and the ontological commitments of ordinary individuals. Yet few attempts have been made to incorporate discussions from the linguistics literature into the philosophical literature. This thesis argues that attending to the linguistics literature helps to address these puzzles. In particular, my solutions to these puzzles rely on notions from work on information structure, an often overlooked area of linguistics. I will use these notions to develop a new theory of the pragmatics of ordinary discourse, in the process of resolving the puzzles. In the first two chapters, I provide accessible overviews of key notions from the literature on quantifier expressions and information structure. In the third chapter, I discuss the problem of contextual domain restriction. In the fourth chapter, I consider the problems posed by empty restrictors. In the final chapter, I tackle the issue of category mistakes. (shrink)

Making a prediction is essentially expressing a belief about the future. It is therefore natural to interpret later predictions as revisions of earlier ones and to investigate the notion of belief revision in this context. We study, both semantically and syntactically, the following principle of minimum revision of prediction: “as long as there are no surprises, that is, as long as what actually occurs had been predicted to occur, then everything which was predicted in the past, if still possible, should (...) continue to be predicted, and no new predictions should be added.”. (shrink)

this paper we argue that the formalism can also be applied to modelling the hierarchical structure of physical mechanisms. The resulting network contains quantitative information about probabilities, as well as qualitative information about mechanistic structure and causal relations. Since information about probabilities, mechanisms and causal relations are vital for prediction, explanation and control respectively, a recursive Bayesian net can be applied to all these tasks. We show how a Recursive Bayesian Net can be used to model mechanisms in cancer science. (...) The highest level of the proposed model will contain variables at the clinical level, while a middle level will map the structure of the DNA damage response mechanism and the lowest level will contain information about gene expression. (shrink)

Modelling the semantic behaviour of expressives in such a way that one be in a position to predict some, at least, of their distinctive properties is the purpose of any theory aiming at accounting for so-called expressive meaning. In this paper, we review a semantic framework coined by its author the Theory of Bias. We show that the two-tiered account of the meaning of expressives (notably, sentential interjections and pejorative epithets) favored by this framework has the resources to provide a (...) consistent explanation of their semantic behaviour in prima facie awkward statements such as ‘alas, I am unfavorably disposed towards something’ or ‘that stupid Trump isn’t stupid’. On the critical side, we argue that, not being intended to account for the meaning of expressives alone, the theory has hard times explaining the unshiftability of their bias, as opposed to the shiftability of the bias of discourse particles —a further member, according to some authors, of the category of expressives lato sensu— and that it fails to pinpoint unpluggability as the crucial test for expressive content. We conclude that, in spite of its merits, the theory need be theoretically enhanced and methodologically sharpened. (shrink)

Parts of the genome of a single individual can have conflicting interests, depending on which parent they were inherited from. One mechanism by which these conflicts are expressed in some taxa, including mammals, is genomic imprinting, which modulates the level of expression of some genes depending on their parent of origin. Imprinted gene expression is known to affect body size, brain size, and the relative development of various tissues in mammals. A high fraction of imprinted gene expression occurs in the (...) brain. Biologists including Hamilton, Trivers and Haig have proposed that this may explain some intrapersonal conflict in humans. This speculation amounts to an inference from conflict within the genome to conflict within the brain or mind. This is a provocative proposal, which deserves serious attention. In this paper I assess aspects of Haig’s version of the proposal. I argue, first, that the notion that intragenomic conflict predicts personal inconsistency should be rejected. Second, while it is unlikely that it credibly predicts sub-personal agents representing conflicting genetic interests, it is plausible that it predicts that the division of cognitive labour could be exploited to turn sub-systems into proxies for conflicting interests. (shrink)

After a vertebrate dies, many of its organ systems, tissues, and cells remain functional while its body no longer works as a whole. We define this state as the “twilight of death” − the transition from a living body to a decomposed corpse. We claim that the study of the twilight of death is important to ethical, legal and medical science. We examined gene expression at the twilight of death in the zebrafish and mouse reaching the conclusion that apparently thousands (...) of transcripts significantly increase in abundance from life to several hours/days postmortem relative to live controls. Transcript dynamics of different genes provided “proof-of-principle” that models accurately predict an individual's elapsed-time-of-death. While many transcripts were associated with survival and stress compensation, others were associated with epigenetic factors, developmental control, and cancer. Future studies are needed to determine whether the high incidence of cancer in transplant recipients is due to the postmortem processes in donor organs. In organismal death, some organ systems, tissues and cells remain functional while the body no longer works as a whole. In the “twilight of death” − the transition from a living body to a decomposed corpse − thousands of gene transcripts increase in abundance relative to live controls. (shrink)

Beliefs like the Gambler's Fallacy and the Hot Hand have interested cognitive scientists, economists, and philosophers for centuries. We propose that these judgment patterns arise from the observer's mental models of the sequence-generating mechanism, moderated by the strength of belief in an a priori base rate. In six behavioral experiments, participants observed one of three mechanisms generating sequences of eight binary events: a random mechanical device, an intentional goal-directed actor, and a financial market. We systematically manipulated participants’ beliefs about the (...) base rate probabilities at which different outcomes were generated by each mechanism. Participants judged 18 sequences of outcomes produced by a mechanism with either an unknown base rate, a specified distribution of three equiprobable base rates, or a precise, fixed base rate. Six target sequences ended in streaks of between two and seven identical outcomes. The most common predictions for subsequent events were best described as pragmatic belief updating, expressed as an increasingly strong expectation that a streak of identical signals would repeat as the length of that streak increased. The exception to this pattern was for sequences generated by a random mechanical device with a fixed base rate of.50. Under this specific condition, participants exhibited a bias toward reversal of streaks, and this bias was larger when participants were asked to make a dichotomous choice versus a numerical probability rating. We review alternate accounts for the anomalous judgments of sequences and conclude with our favored interpretation that is based on Rabin's version of Tversky & Kahneman's Law of Small Numbers. (shrink)

Experimental studies have suggested that variables such as aptness or conventionality are predictors of people’s preference for expressing a particular topic–vehicle pair as either a metaphor or a simile. In the present study, we investigated if such variables would also be predictive within a more naturalistic context, where other variables, such as the intention to include an explanation, may also influence people’s decision. Specifically, we investigated the production of metaphor and simile expressions on the Internet via the Google (...) search engine and checked for accompanying explanations, as well as the properties they expressed, to examine whether ratings such as aptness, conventionality, as well as participants’ own stated preference or the intention to produce an explanation, would predict which topic–vehicle pairs appeared more often as metaphor. We found that participants’ stated preference predicted metaphor dominance on the Internet, and that apt topic–vehicles occurred more often as metaphors. The explanations collected, however, occurred 82% of the time after similes, and familiar expressions were the most explained. Finally, comparing the properties expressed in these explanations to normed property lists, we found that simile explanations typically expressed a novel conception of the topic–vehicle relationship. Therefore, we found that Internet posters use metaphors to convey an apt relationship, as found in previous laboratory studies, but prefer using a simile frame when they want to express a relationship that readers will find novel. (shrink)

Research on facial emotion expression has mostly focused on emotion recognition, assuming that a small number of discrete emotions is elicited and expressed via prototypical facial muscle configurations as captured in still photographs. These are expected to be recognized by observers, presumably via template matching. In contrast, appraisal theories of emotion propose a more dynamic approach, suggesting that specific elements of facial expressions are directly produced by the result of certain appraisals and predicting the facial patterns to be expected (...) for certain appraisal configurations. This approach has recently been extended to emotion perception, claiming that observers first infer individual appraisals and only then make categorical emotion judgments based on the estimated appraisal patterns, using semantic inference rules. Here we report two related studies to empirically investigate the facial action unit configurations that are used by actors to convey specific emotions in short affect bursts and to examine to what extent observers can infer a person’s emotions from the predicted facial expression configurations. The results show that 1) professional actors use many of the predicted facial action unit patterns to enact systematically specified appraisal outcomes in a realistic scenario setting, and 2) naïve observers infer the respective emotions based on highly similar facial movement configurations with a degree of accuracy comparable to earlier research findings. Based on estimates of underlying appraisal criteria for the different emotions we conclude that the patterns of facial action units identified in this research correspond largely to prior predictions and encourage further research on appraisal-driven expression and inference. (shrink)

Through the application of machine learning techniques, this paper aims to estimate the importance of messages with ideological load during the elections held in Spain on May 24th, 2015 posted by Twitter’s users, as well as other variables associated with the publication of these types of messages. Our study collected and analysed 24,900 tweets associated to two of the main trending topics’ hashtags used in the election day and build a predictive model to infer the ideological orientation for the (...) messages which made use of these hashtags during Election Day. This approach allows us to classify the ideological orientation of all collected tweets, instead of only tweets that explicitly express their ideological or partisan preferences in the messages. Using the ideological orientation for all tweets predicted by our model, it was possible to identify how messages with a defined ideological load were pushed forward by users with leftist tendencies. We also observed a relationship between these messages and the partisan orientation of those who published them. (shrink)

It is one of the central aims of the philosophy of science to elucidate the meanings of scientific terms and also to think critically about their application. The focus of this essay is the scientific term predict and whether there is credible evidence that animal models, especially in toxicology and pathophysiology, can be used to predict human outcomes. Whether animals can be used to predict human response to drugs and other chemicals is apparently a contentious issue. However, when one empirically (...) analyzes animal models using scientific tools they fall far short of being able to predict human responses. This is not surprising considering what we have learned from fields such evolutionary and developmental biology, gene regulation and expression, epigenetics, complexity theory, and comparative genomics. (shrink)

Emotional creativity refers to cognitive abilities and personality traits related to the originality of emotional experience and expression. Previous studies have found that the COVID-19 epidemic and the restrictions imposed increased the levels of negative emotions, which obstructed adaptation. This research suggests that EC predicts the motivation for innovative adaptive behavior under the restrictions of COVID-19. In the case study of university professors, we show that EC predicts the motivation to creatively capitalize on the imposed online teaching in looking for (...) innovative research and personal development. Methodologically, we rely on the Emotional Creativity Inventory administered to a sample of 463 university professors from the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, and Russia. The indicators for motivation for innovative performance included motivations to use distant methods of scientific research, to look for partners for conducting scientific research in other cities or abroad, to conduct interdisciplinary research, starting distance learning to enhance qualifications, and the perception that due to online teaching, there is more time for personal development. We employ a set of ordinal regression analyses controlling for age, gender, position, type of science, and country. The results suggest that Emotional Creativity and its three components predict the motivation of university professors to creatively capitalize on the imposed online teaching in looking for innovative research and personal development under the conditions of COVID-19. Furthermore, our results confirmed the gender and age differences in EC. The differences in EC according to position and type of science were not statistically significant. These results compel us to be aware of the importance of the emotional side of creativity to optimize stress-related behavior under the conditions of limited abilities to continue as usual. More space devoted to the manifestation of all the aspects of emotional creativity would improve adaptation to challenging circumstances and even allow one to capitalize on new opportunities. Moreover, we suggest that if personal intrinsic Emotional Creativity is high, the crises, such as the COVID-19 epidemic, may improve adaptation and trigger creative outcomes. (shrink)

Clark expresses reservations about Friston's reductive interpretation of action-oriented predictive processing (AOPP) models of cognition, but he doesn't link these reservations to specific alternatives. Neuroeconomic models of sub-cognitive reward valuation, which, like AOPP, integrate attention with action based on prediction error, are such an alternative. They interpret reward valuation as an input to neocortical processing instead of reducing it.

The aim of this review is to show the fruitfulness of using images of facial expressions as experimental stimuli in order to study how neural systems support biologically relevant learning as it relates to social interactions. Here we consider facial expressions as naturally conditioned stimuli which, when presented in experimental paradigms, evoke activation in amygdala–prefrontal neural circuits that serve to decipher the predictive meaning of the expressions. Facial expressions offer a relatively innocuous strategy with which (...) to investigate these normal variations in affective information processing, as well as the promise of elucidating what role the aberrance of such processing might play in emotional disorders. (shrink)

Orienting biases for speech may provide a foundation for language development. Although human infants show a bias for listening to speech from birth, the relation of a speech bias to later language development has not been established. Here, we examine whether infants' attention to speech directly predicts expressive vocabulary. Infants listened to speech or non-speech in a preferential listening procedure. Results show that infants' attention to speech at 12 months significantly predicted expressive vocabulary at 18 months, while indices of general (...) development did not. No predictive relationships were found for infants' attention to non-speech, or overall attention to sounds, suggesting that the relationship between speech and expressive vocabulary was not a function of infants' general attentiveness. Potentially ancient evolutionary perceptual capacities such as biases for conspecific vocalizations may provide a foundation for proficiency in formal systems such language, much like the approximate number sense may provide a foundation for formal mathematics. (shrink)

A substantial amount of recent work in natural language generation has focused on the generation of ‘‘one-shot’’ referring expressions whose only aim is to identify a target referent. Dale and Reiter's Incremental Algorithm (IA) is often thought to be the best algorithm for maximizing the similarity to referring expressions produced by people. We test this hypothesis by eliciting referring expressions from human subjects and computing the similarity between the expressions elicited and the ones generated by algorithms. (...) It turns out that the success of the IA depends substantially on the ‘‘preference order’’ (PO) employed by the IA, particularly in complex domains. While some POs cause the IA to produce referring expressions that are very similar to expressions produced by human subjects, others cause the IA to perform worse than its main competitors; moreover, it turns out to be difficult to predict the success of a PO on the basis of existing psycholinguistic findings or frequencies in corpora. We also examine the computational complexity of the algorithms in question and argue that there are no compelling reasons for preferring the IA over some of its main competitors on these grounds. We conclude that future research on the generation of referring expressions should explore alternatives to the IA, focusing on algorithms, inspired by the Greedy Algorithm, which do not work with a fixed PO. (shrink)

Russellianism (also called `neo-Russellianism, `Millianism, and `thenaive theory') entails that substitution of co-referring names inattitude ascriptions preserves truth value and proposition expressed.Thus, on this view, if Lucy wants Twain to autograph her book, thenshe also wants Clemens to autograph her book, even if she says ``I donot want Clemens to autograph my book''. Some philosophers (includingMichael Devitt and Mark Richard) claim that attitude ascriptions canbe used to predict behavior, but argue that if Russellianism weretrue, then this would not be so. (...) They conclude that Russellianism isfalse. I defend Russellianism from this objection. I present severalanalyses of ``sentence S can be used to predict event E''. I arguethat, on each of these analyses, attitude ascriptions can be used topredict behavior, even if Russellianism is true. Furthermore, if myarguments are incorrect, and attitude ascriptions cannot be used topredict behavior under Russellianism, then Russellians can explainaway the intuition that they can be so used. (shrink)

In their “social contextual view” of emotional mimicry, authors Hess and Fischer (2022) put forward emotional mimicry as a social regulator, considering it a social act, bound to certain affiliative contexts or goals. In this commentary, we argue that the core function of mimicry is to ease predicting conspecifics’ behaviours and the environment, and that as a consequence, this often smoothens social interactions. Accordingly, we make three main points. First, we argue that there is no good reason to believe that (...) the mimicry of negative expressions is fundamentally different than the mimicry of positive or ambiguous or autonomic expressions. Second, we give examples of empirical evidence that mimicry is not always a social act. Third, we show that mimicry has primary benefits for the mimicker. As such, we will briefly summarise and elaborate on the relevant findings in these respects, and propose a comparative, multi-method and ecologically valid approach which can explain the multifaceted character of the phenomenon. (shrink)

I probe the judgments of the agreeable that we make about food and drink. I first separate different concerns that we might have with food and drink. After that, I address expressive language by first sketching an evolutionary language-game-theoretic approach for referential language. I then try to extend it to expressive language, showing how expressive signaling might be likely to evolve. Given an account of expressive prediction, and its point, I turn to the Frege-Geach problem for the agreeable. I show (...) how a proper understanding of what expression is, in the evolutionary language-game-theoretic framework, allows us to side-step a central aspect the problem. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss an intriguing and relatively little studied symptomatic expression of schizophrenia known as experiences of activity in which patients form the delusion that they can control some external events by the sole means of their mind. I argue that experiences of activity result from patients being prone to aberrantly infer causal relations between unrelated events in a retrospective way owing to widespread predictive deficits. Moreover, I suggest that such deficits may, in addition, lead to an (...) aberrant intentional binding effect i.e., the subjective compression of the temporal interval between an intentional action and its external effects. In particular, it might be that patient’s thoughts are bound to the external events they aimed to control producing, arguably, a temporal contiguity between these two components. Such temporal contiguity would reinforce or sustain the feeling that the patient mind is directly causally efficient. (shrink)

The aim of this paper was to contribute to a broader understanding of the cognitive consequences of expressive suppression. Specifically, we examined whether the deteriorating effect of expressive suppression on cognitive functioning is caused by tense arousal enhanced by suppression. Two experiments were performed in order to test this prediction. In both studies we tested the effect of expressive suppression on working memory, as measured with a backwards digit-span task and anagram problem-solving task. In addition, in Study 2 we tested (...) whether expressive suppression degrades memory of the events that emerged during the period of expressive suppression. Both studies were conducted in a similar design: Participants watched a film clip which evoked negative emotions under the instruction to suppress those negative emotions or to simply watch the film. The results of these experiments lead to three conclusions. First, the results reveal that expressive suppression degrades memory of the events that emerged during the period of expressive suppression and leads to poorer performance on working memory tasks, as measured with a backwards digit-span task and anagram problem-solving task. Second, the results indicate that expressive suppression leads to a significant increase in subjective tense arousal. Third, the results support our prediction that expressive suppression decreases cognitive performance through its effects on subjective tense arousal. The results of the Study 1 show that tense arousal activated during expressive suppression of disgust fully mediates the negative effect of suppression on working memory as measured with a backwards digit-span task. The results of Study 2 reveal that subjective tense arousal elicited while suppressing sadness and anxiety mediates both the effect of suppression on working memory - as measured with the anagram task - and memory of the events that occurred during the period of suppression. (shrink)

The experience of pain appears to be associated, from early infancy and across pain stimuli, with a consistent facial expression in humans. A social function is proposed for this: the communication of pain and the need for help to observers, to whom information about danger is of value, and who may provide help within a kin or cooperative relationship. Some commentators have asserted that the evidence is insufficient to account for the consistency of the face, as judged by technical means (...) or in the perceptions of observers, or that facial expression is epiphenomenal to a gross behavioural defensive response to pain. The major criticism is that it is unnecessary to invoke evolutionary mechanisms beyond the emergence of an unconditioned facial response to pain in neonates, subsequently shaped and maintained by instrumental and social reinforcement throughout life. These criticisms are addressed, acknowledging the need for further data to address some, and elaborating the areas in which evolutionary and operant mechanisms would predict different behavioural interactions, rather than acting synergistically. Several supportive commentaries propose extending evolutionarily-based hypotheses to sex differences, the complexities of others' responses within the social relationship, and the role of empathy. A number of commentators provided valuable suggestions for experimental paradigms or methodological issues. Overall, addressing these issues indicates the need for further conceptual development and for collection of data specifically in relation to these hypotheses. (shrink)

The experience of pain appears to be associated, from early infancy and across pain stimuli, with a consistent facial expression in humans. A social function is proposed for this: the communication of pain and the need for help to observers, to whom information about danger is of value, and who may provide help within a kin or cooperative relationship. Some commentators have asserted that the evidence is insufficient to account for the consistency of the face, as judged by technical means (...) or in the perceptions of observers, or that facial expression is epiphenomenal to a gross behavioural defensive response to pain. The major criticism is that it is unnecessary to invoke evolutionary mechanisms beyond the emergence of an unconditioned facial response to pain in neonates, subsequently shaped and maintained by instrumental and social reinforcement throughout life. These criticisms are addressed, acknowledging the need for further data to address some, and elaborating the areas in which evolutionary and operant mechanisms would predict different behavioural interactions, rather than acting synergistically. Several supportive commentaries propose extending evolutionarily-based hypotheses to sex differences, the complexities of others' responses within the social relationship, and the role of empathy. A number of commentators provided valuable suggestions for experimental paradigms or methodological issues. Overall, addressing these issues indicates the need for further conceptual development and for collection of data specifically in relation to these hypotheses. (shrink)

Research on intergroup emotions has largely focused on the experience of emotions and surprisingly little attention has been given to the expression of emotions. Drawing on the social-functional approach to emotions, we argue that in the context of intergroup conflicts, outgroup members’ expression of disappointment with one’s ingroup induces the complementary emotion of collective guilt and correspondingly a collective action protesting ingroup actions against the outgroup. In Study 1 conducted immediately after the 2014 Gaza war, Jewish-Israeli participants received information about (...) outgroup’s expression of emotions. As predicted, outgroup’s expression of disappointment increased collective guilt and willingness to participate in collective action, but only among those who saw the intergroup situation as illegitimate. Moreover, collective guilt mediated the relationship between disappointment expression and collective action, moderated, again, by legitimacy perception. In Study 2, we replicated these results in the context of racial tension between Black and White Americans in the US. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of the findings. (shrink)

Do basic emotions produce their predicted facial expressions in nonlaboratory settings? Available studies in naturalistic settings rarely test causation, but do show a surprisingly weak correlation between emotions and their predicted facial expressions. This evidence from field studies is more consistent with facial behavior having many causes, functions, and meanings, as opposed to their being fixed signals of basic emotion.

Kinetic demixing in quaternary mixed oxides has not been investigated previously, either theoretically or experimentally. In this theoretical study, we derive simple and exact analytical expressions that describe the steady-state cation concentration profiles resulting from kinetic demixing in mixed oxides of the O type. The concentration profiles are expressed in terms of cation-vacancy exchange frequency ratios. We assume a random distribution of cations and make use of the Moleko-Allnatt exact sum-rule expression relating the phenomenological coefficients in the ternary random (...) alloy to the vacancy mechanism operative. We employ Monte Carlo simulation of kinetic demixing to verify the result of the analysis. We discuss how kinetic demixing profiles can be processed to obtain atom-vacancy exchange frequency ratios. We also discuss how atom-vacancy exchange frequencies themselves might be obtained from available diffusivities in the quaternary oxide. (shrink)

Many apparently complex mechanisms in biology, especially in embryology and molecular biology, can be explained easily by reasoning at the level of the “efficient cause” of the observed phenomenology: the mechanism can then be explained by a simple geometrical argument or a variational principle, leading to the solution of an optimization problem, for example, via the co-existence of a minimization and a maximization problem . Passing from a microscopic level to the macroscopic level often involves an averaging effect that gives (...) birth to a global functional feature . We will illustrate these general principles by building in four different domains of application “a minima” models and showing the main properties of their solutions: extraction of a minimal RNA structure functioning as the first “peptidic machine,” a kind of ancestral ribosome; study of a genetic regulatory network of Drosophila centred on Engrailed gene and expressing successively two genes inside a limit cycle; study of a genetic network regulating neural activity and proliferation in mammals; and study of a simple geometric model of epiboly in zebrafish. (shrink)

Perhaps because both explanation and prediction are key components to understanding, philosophers and psychologists often portray these two abilities as though they arise from the same competence, and sometimes they are taken to be the same competence. When explanation and prediction are associated in this way, they are taken to be two expressions of a single cognitive capacity that differ from one another only pragmatically. If the difference between prediction and explanation of human behavior is merely pragmatic, then anytime (...) I predict someone’s future behavior, I would at that moment also have an explanation of the behavior. I argue that advocates of both the theory theory and the simulation theory accept the symmetry of psychological prediction and explanation. However, there is very good reason to believe that this hypothesis is false. Just as we can predict the occurrence of some physical phenomena that we have no explanation for, we are also able to make accurate predictions of intentional behavior without having an explanation. Rather than requiring mental state attribution, I argue that the prediction of human behavior is most often accomplished by statistical induction rather than through an appeal to mental states. However, explanations are not given in these terms. (shrink)

This paper introduces a novel perspective on Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar (AgCCxG) by examining the intricate interplay between mind and language through the lens of both Active Inference and Peircean semiotics. AgCCxG emphasizes the impact of intention and purpose on linguistic choices as a cognitive imperative to balance the symbolic Self (Intelligent Agent) with the dynamics of the environment. Among other things, the paper posits that linguistic constructions, particularly Constructional Attachment Patterns (CAPs), like argument structure constructions, embody experienced interactions with (...) the world through reenactment routines via the integration of multisensory channels. Unlike traditional usage-based approaches (e.g., construction grammars), AgCCxG embraces a robust theory of signs that reveals human representation as a continuous process of semiotic hybridization for the creative prediction of uncertain scenarios. Importantly, the paper challenges the notion of the mind as a unified, rational, uncertainty-reducing machine by asserting that physical processes governing open biological systems profoundly influence the linguistic sign system. Intelligent agents’ adaptability in expressing incongruous realities thus highlights the role of semiotic hybridization in preserving an agent’s autonomy and semiotic boundary. (shrink)

Both patients and clinicians frequently report problems around communicating and assessing pain. Patients express dissatisfaction with their doctors and doctors often find exchanges with chronic pain patients difficult and frustrating. This chapter thus asks how we could improve pain communication and thereby enhance outcomes for chronic pain patients. We argue that improving matters will require a better appreciation of the complex meaning of pain terms and of the variability and flexibility in how individuals think about pain.We start by examining the (...) various accounts of the meaning of pain terms that have been suggested within philosophy and suggest that, while each of the accounts captures something important about our use of pain terms, none is completely satisfactory. We propose that pain terms should be viewed as communicating complex meanings, which may change across different communicative contexts, and this in turn suggests that we should view our ordinary thought about pain as similarly complex. We then sketch what a view taking seriously this variability in meaning and thought might look like, which we call the “polyeidic” view. According to this view, individuals tacitly occupy divergent stances across a range of different dimensions of pain, with one agent, for instance, thinking of pain in a much more “body-centric” kind of way, while another thinks of pain in a much more “mind-centric” way. The polyeidic view attempts to expand the multidimensionality recognised in, e.g., biopsychosocial models in two directions: first, it holds that the standard triumvirate—dividing sensory/cognitive/affective factors—needs to be enriched in order to capture important distinctions within the social and psychological dimensions. Second, the polyeidic view attempts to explain why modulation of experience by these social and psychological factors is possible in the first place. It does so by arguing that because the folk concept of pain is complex, different weightings of the different parts of the concept can modulate pain experience in a variety of ways. Finally, we argue that adopting a polyeidic approach to the meaning of pain would have a range of measurable clinical outcomes.Clinical Implications: First, by making a subject’s tacit beliefs about pain explicit it will be possible to create a more open, shared space for pain communication and support a move away from purely quantitative measures of pain towards more discursive pain narratives. Secondly, the polyeidic view might provide a mechanism for predicting who will do well or badly from cognitive interventions for pain management, allowing more efficient use of healthcare resources. Finally, the polyeidic approach might also contribute to the creation of more nuanced cognitive interventions by elucidating the pre-conscious beliefs that influence a subject’s experience of pain. (shrink)

This essay ties together some main strands of the author’s research spanning the last quarter-century. Because of its broad scope and space limitations, he prescinds from detailed arguments and instead intuitively motivates the general points which are supported more fully in other publications to which he provides references. After an initial delineation of several distinct notions of meaning, the author considers such a notion deriving from the evolutionary biology of communication that he terms ‘organic meaning’, and places it in the (...) context of evolutionary game theory. That provides a framework for a special type of organic meaning found in the phenomenon of expression, of which the author here offers an updated characterization while highlighting its wide philosophical interest. Expression in turn generalizes to a paradigmatic form of human communication—conversation—and section 4 provides a taxonomy of conversation-types while arguing that attention to such types helps to sharpen predictions of what speakers say rather than conversationally implicate. We close with a view of fictional discourse on which authors of fictional works are engaged in conversation with their readers, and can provide them with knowledge in spite of the fictional character of their conversation. Such knowledge includes knowledge of how an emotion feels and is thus a route to empathy. (shrink)

Co‐expression of two or more genes at the single‐cell level is usually associated with functional co‐regulation. While mRNA co‐expression—measured as the correlation in mRNA levels—can be influenced by both transcriptional and post‐transcriptional events, transcriptional regulation is typically considered dominant. We review and connect the literature describing transcriptional and post‐transcriptional regulation of co‐expression. To enhance our understanding, we integrate four datasets spanning single‐cell gene expression data, single‐cell promoter activity data and individual transcript half‐lives. Confirming expectations, we find that positive co‐expression necessitates (...) promoter coordination and similar mRNA half‐lives. Surprisingly, negative co‐expression is favored by differences in mRNA half‐lives, contrary to initial predictions from stochastic simulations. Notably, this association manifests specifically within clusters of genes. We further observe a striking compensation between promoter coordination and mRNA half‐lives, which additional stochastic simulations suggest might give rise to the observed co‐expression patterns. These findings raise intriguing questions about the functional advantages conferred by this compensation between distal kinetic steps. (shrink)

Company disclosures are often looked at as narrative rather than argumentative or directive texts. And yet “irrealis” statements – references to future or hypothetical processes – do play a role and contribute greatly to the construction of corporate identity. Combining a corpus and a discourse perspective, the paper looks at references to the future in a corpus of CSR reports. After a preliminary analysis of frequency data, a case study of markers of futurity is presented, focusing on ways of expressing (...) prediction or commitment, together with attitudinal values or evaluations of importance. Keywords and phraseology are studied to highlight how prediction and commitment statements are used to legitimize the company’s conduct. (shrink)

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) constitute an abundant family of 22‐nucleotide RNAs that base‐pair to target mRNAs and typically inhibit their expression. To assess the global impact of animal miRNAs on gene regulation, the expression of predicted targets and their cognate miRNAs was extensively analyzed in mammals and Drosophila.1,2 In general, targets are co‐expressed at relatively low or undetectable levels in the same tissues as the miRNAs predicted to regulate them. Additionally, genes that are highly co‐expressed with miRNAs usually lack target sites. The (...) authors conclude that many animal genes are under evolutionary pressure to maintain or avoid complementary sites to miRNAs.1,2 Thus, the miRNA pathway broadly contributes to the complex gene regulatory networks that shape animal tissue development and identity. BioEssays 28: 449–452, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTask-irrelevant emotional expressions are known to capture attention, with the extent of “emotional capture” varying with psychopathic traits in antisocial samples. We investigated whether this variation extends throughout the continuum of psychopathic traits in a community sample. Participants searched for a target face among facial distractors. As predicted, angry and fearful faces interfered with search, indicated by slower reaction times relative to neutral faces. When fear appeared as either target or distractor, diminished emotional capture was seen with increasing affective-interpersonal (...) psychopathic traits. However, moderation analyses revealed that this was only when lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were low, consistent with evidence suggesting that these two facets of psychopathic traits display opposing relationships with emotional reactivity. Anxiety did not show the predicted relationships with emotional capture effects. Findings show... (shrink)

Melody prediction is an important aspect of music listening. The success of prediction, i.e., whether the next note played in a song is the same as the one predicted by the listener, depends on various factors. In the paper, we present two studies, where we assess how music familiarity and music expertise influence melody prediction in human listeners, and, expressed in appropriate data/algorithmic ways, computational models. To gather data on human listeners, we designed a melody prediction user study, where familiarity (...) was controlled by two different music collections, while expertise was assessed by adapting the Music Sophistication Index instrument to Slovenian language. In the second study, we evaluated the melody prediction accuracy of computational melody prediction models. We evaluated two models, the SymCHM and the Implication-Realization model, which differ substantially in how they approach melody prediction. Our results show that both music familiarity and expertise affect the prediction accuracy of human listeners, as well as of computational models. (shrink)

Predictive medicine presents opportunities to consider later life under conditions of illness, such as dementia. This paper examines how family caregivers (N = 27) assess the opportunity of prediction and early diagnosis of dementia for oneself based on their particular experience. Furthermore, it compares their attitudes with laypersons’ attitudes (N = 43) towards genetic testing of APOE. By this, we elaborate how much personal experience impacts anticipation and affects, but also moral attitudes towards predictive medicine. Differences in our (...) settings do not allow for direct comparison, so our analysis focuses on multiple similarities in the assessments of predictive (non-genetic vs. genetic) testing. Groups’ reasoning showed also differences influenced mainly by personal experience. Family caregivers addressed more responsibility towards family and had more hopes into medical treatments. To cope with the disease, they expressed expectations to start with medicine and care decisions as early as possible. Laypersons, however, stressed self-determination more and expressed worries about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry by referring to unnecessary medication and, implicitly, the medicalization of aging. (shrink)

The turn of the 20th and the 21st century is a very interesting period. On the one hand, there is a growth of internationalist tendencies, which make us look for common values and universal culture, and on the other hand, the centrifugal tendencies lead to the revival of new forms of nationalism and national and religious conflicts. Integrative tendencies are an unquestioned fact of every aspect of societal life: economic, political, and in culture, which succumbs to a tendency to create (...) global and universal mass culture. It turns out, however, that neither international commerce, nor the blossoming systems of communication and transport, provide us with the common feeling of identity or belonging. At the same time the need for those does not cease to exist. As a result, “people rediscover or create new historical identity”, since they feel uprooted and “need new sources of identity and new forms of stable community, new systems of moral imperatives, which could give them a sense of meaningful and purpose life”. One of the most important forms of collective and cultural identity still turns out to be the national one. The prophecies of the end of the era of nations have not come true. “The strength of national sentiments – writes Jerzy Szacki – even if changeable in time and diverse in space, does not show any symptoms of clear decline, the era of nations keeps lasting and nothing predicts it will end soon.”. (shrink)