Abstract When animals explore a novel environment, they often aggregate in groups rather than staying isolated to reduce the risks of predation. This effect is known as ‘safety in numbers’ and has been widely reported in terrestrial and aquatic species. Jellyfish are often found to be clustered in the same areas in seas and oceans. Here, we asked whether one reason for such behavior might be the tendency to actively join other conspecifics when encountering novel environments. We observed moon jellyfish (Aurelia spp.) in a free-choice test measuring the proportion of time spent near conspecifics when they are inserted into an unfamiliar environment. We found evidence that jellyfish detect the presence of other conspecifics and use this information to actively direct their behavior in a given direction. Contrary to what was expected by the ‘safety in numbers’ effect, moon jellyfish have significantly distanced themselves from their social companions throughout the whole observation period. This result suggests that, although moon jellyfish are commonly observed in large aggregates in nature due to various environmental factors, they may exhibit limited social behavior in unfamiliar environments.
Anna Szala, Sławomir Wacewicz, Marek Placiński
et al.
Our study explores aspects of human conversation within the framework of evolutionary psychology, focusing on the proportion of ‘social’ to ‘non-social’ content in casual conversation. Building upon the seminal study by Dunbar et al. (1997, Human Nature, 8, 231–246), which posited that two-thirds of conversation gravitates around social matters, our findings indicate an even larger portion, approximately 85% being of a social nature. Additionally, we provide a nuanced categorisation of ‘social’ rooted in the principles of evolutionary psychology. Similarly to Dunbar et al.’s findings, our results support theories of human evolution that highlight the importance of social interactions and information exchange and the importance of the exchange of social information in human interactions across various contexts.
The first major laboratory studies of vigilance by Mackworth in 1948 and later revealed a decline in the probability of detecting brief targets as the time on task increases. Whether referred to as a vigilance decrement or something else (e.g., a failure of sustained attention), because such failures have great applied significance (e.g., in road safety, radiology, air-traffic control, civil defense, etc.), understanding the vigilance decrement and discovering ways to avoid it are important goals for psychological science. The purpose of this historical review is to provide a picture of the extensive scientific literature exploring the nature(s) of the vigilance decrement, with an emphasis, but not exclusionary focus, on the signal detection theory framework. Beginning in the early 1960s, researchers started to interpret this decline in target detections using signal detection theory, wherein a decrease in detections can be attributed to a decrease in sensitivity of the observer to the difference between targets and non-targets, a conservative shift in the observer's response criterion, or, of course, both. Some early investigators suggested that which of these two causes of the decline in detections is operating may depend on the rate at which events (targets and non-targets combined) are presented: When the event rate is slow, criterion shifts dominate detection failures, whereas declines in sensitivity become more pronounced as event rates increase. Nevertheless, the contribution of sensitivity declines has been recently challenged. One source of the challenge is the relatively low false-alarm rate in so many studies on the vigilance decrement. Another is the possibility that for a variety of reasons, the observer in a relatively long vigil may stop attending to the source of the task-relevant signals. Some recommendations are offered based on our reading of the ~75 years of vigilance research.
Ramón López-Higes, Sara M. Fernandes, Pedro F. S. Rodrigues
et al.
Verbal fluency (VF) tasks are used in cognitive assessments to detect early signs of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. This study aimed to assess the contribution of VF tasks with varying executive processing loads to the early identification of cognitive impairment in the preclinical stage of subjective cognitive decline (SCD). A total of 97 older adults were classified into three groups: healthy controls (HC), SCD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Participants completed phonemic, semantic, alternating and orthographic VF tasks. Education level significantly affected VF performance, with gender differences being inconsistent. The HC and SCD groups performed similarly in phonemic and semantic tasks but differed significantly in high-executive-load tasks, where SCD participants performed worse. MCI patients showed lower performance across all VF tasks. Discriminant and ROC analyses identified alternating and orthographic VF tasks as effective markers for distinguishing cognitive status, supporting their potential for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
Recent studies showed that the presence of the experimenter hinders executive functions. Belletier and Camos (2018) extended these findings to working memory, reporting a detrimental effect of the experimenter presence only when participants performed an aloud concurrent articulation during maintenance. Under such a condition, participants likely relied on an attentional maintenance mechanism rather that an articulatory mechanism, supporting the account of a capture of attention by the social presence. However, other results using the Stroop Task demonstrate an improvement on executive functions (Garcia-Marques & Fernandes, 2024, for a meta-analysis). Thus, the present study aimed at reassessing the impact of experimenter’s presence reported by Belletier and Camos (2018) on a larger sample, with a within-subject manipulation of concurrent articulation, a variation in the secondary task, and the addition of another type of concurrent articulation. In the present study, participants alone or in the presence of the experimenter performed a Brown-Peterson task in which they maintained letters during a 12-second interval, during which they either stayed silent, uttered aloud, or whispered non-sense syllables. They had also to perform either no secondary task, a parity or a location judgement task. Results confirmed Belletier and Camos’ (2018) findings, showing that the experimenter presence hindered memory performance when participants performed a secondary task under any type of concurrent articulation. A silent context or the absence of secondary task preserved recall from the effect of experimenter’s presence.
The present study investigates cross-linguistic differences in the description of motion events using Holistic Spatial Semantics (HSS) as a theoretical framework. In this study, six short video stimuli featuring various motion situations were used to elicit narratives from 35 speakers of French and 29 speakers of Swedish. The proportions of semantic category Path linguistically expressed did not vary significantly between the groups. However, the French narratives had significantly less Manner and Direction expression. Furthermore, they included significantly more unbounded non-translocative events compared to the Swedish narratives. Partly, this was due to the tendency within the Swedish group to construe situations as bounded events that were clearly shown as unbounded in the stimuli. There was also a tendency within the French group to distribute the information about the same situation over two clauses. These findings lend further support to the relevance of distinguishing between the Path and Direction categories, as well as other key features of the HSS framework, such as the distinction between non-verbal motion situations and their linguistic construals.
This article presents a conceptual and methodological framework that focuses on the interactivity, creativity, and variability of Holocaust images in digital media. Our argument unfolds in three stages. First, we introduce the concept of playful images: historical images that undergo recontextualisation, serving memetic, personal, and interactive engagements in and by digital media. Secondly, drawing on pivotal scholarship in digital methods, anthropology, sociology, and visual analysis, we identify a lacuna in contemporary methodologies and provide a rationale for an innovative approach to visual memory analysis in digital media that considers both digital media affordances and the appropriation of visual and historical materials in digital media. For that purpose, we thirdly outline a visual walkthrough method (VWM), a pragmatic performance of our approach tailored for analysing interactive digital experiences featuring playful images. By examining the playful appropriation of historical images in the video game Call of Duty: WWII (2017), we demonstrate how the interactive experience of playful images can be analysed with the help of the VWM. We conclude by discussing the position of our proposed conceptual and methodological framework within media and memory studies in the digital age.
Communication. Mass media, Consciousness. Cognition
Keertana Ganesan, Claire R. Smid, Abigail Thompson
et al.
Childhood cognitive control is an important predictor for positive development, yet interventions seeking to improve it have provided mixed results. This is partly due to lack of clarity surrounding mechanisms of cognitive control, notably the role of inhibition and context monitoring. Here we use a randomized controlled trial to causally test the contributions of inhibition and context monitoring to cognitive control in childhood. Sixty children aged 6 to 9-years were assigned to three groups training either inhibition, context monitoring group or response speed using a gamified, highly variable and maximally adaptive training protocol. Whereas all children improved in the targeted cognitive functions over the course of training, pre-post data show that only the inhibition group improved on cognitive control. These findings serve as a first step in demonstrating the promise inhibition-based cognitive control interventions may hold.
The new approach in cognitive science largely known as “4E cognition” (embodied/embedded/enactive/extended cognition), which sheds new light on the complex dynamics of human consciousness, seems to revive some of Aristotle's views. For instance, the concept of “nature” (phusis) and the discussion on “active intellect” (nous poiêtikos) may be particularly relevant in this respect. Out of the various definitions of “nature” in Aristotle's Physics, On the Parts of Animals and Second Analytics, I will concentrate on nature defined as an inner impulse to movement, neither entirely “corporeal,” nor entirely “incorporeal,” and neither entirely “substantial,” nor entirely “accidental.” Related to that, I will consider the distinction in On the Soul between the “active” and the “passive” intellect, which Aristotle asserted as generally present in “nature” itself. By offering a conceptual and historical analysis of these views, I intend to show how the mind–body problem, which is essential for the explanation of consciousness, could be somewhat either eluded or transcended by both ancients and contemporaries on the basis of a subtle account of causation. While not attempting to diminish the impact of the Cartesian paradigm, which led to the so-called “hard problem of consciousness,” I suggest that the most recent neuroscience discoveries on the neurophysiological phenomena related to human consciousness could be better explained and understood if interpreted within a 4E cognition paradigm, inspired by some Aristotelian views.
Abstract Face masks occlude parts of the face which hinders social communication and emotion recognition. Since sign language users are known to process facial information not only perceptually but also linguistically, examining face processing in deaf signers may reveal how linguistic aspects add to perceptual information. In general, signers could be born deaf or acquire hearing loss later in life. For this study, we focused on signers who were born deaf. Specifically, we analyzed data from a sample of 59 signers who were born deaf and investigated the impacts of face masks on non-linguistic characteristics of the face. Signers rated still-image faces with and without face masks for the following characteristics: arousal and valence of three facial expressions (happy, neutral, sad), invariant characteristics (DV:sex, age), and trait-like characteristics (attractiveness, trustworthiness, approachability). Results indicated that, when compared to masked faces, signers rated no-masked faces with stronger valence intensity across all expressions. Masked faces also appeared older, albeit a tendency to look more approachable. This experiment was a repeat of a previous study conducted on hearing participants, and a post hoc comparison was performed to assess rating differences between signers and hearing people. From this comparison, signers exhibited a larger tendency to rate facial expressions more intensely than hearing people. This suggests that deaf people perceive more intense information from facial expressions and face masks are more inhibiting for deaf people than hearing people. We speculate that deaf people found face masks more approachable due to societal norms when interacting with people wearing masks. Other factors like age and face database’s legitimacy are discussed.
Bethany Growns, Alice Towler, James D. Dunn
et al.
Abstract Forensic science practitioners compare visual evidence samples (e.g. fingerprints) and decide if they originate from the same person or different people (i.e. fingerprint ‘matching’). These tasks are perceptually and cognitively complex—even practising professionals can make errors—and what limited research exists suggests that existing professional training is ineffective. This paper presents three experiments that demonstrate the benefit of perceptual training derived from mathematical theories that suggest statistically rare features have diagnostic utility in visual comparison tasks. Across three studies (N = 551), we demonstrate that a brief module training participants to focus on statistically rare fingerprint features improves fingerprint-matching performance in both novices and experienced fingerprint examiners. These results have applied importance for improving the professional performance of practising fingerprint examiners, and even other domains where this technique may also be helpful (e.g. radiology or banknote security).
Lucas‐Michael Halbmayer, Markus Kofler, Gabriel Hitzenberger
et al.
Abstract Background Occasionally, patients show dramatic recovery from disorders of consciousness (DOC) under intrathecal baclofen (ITB), an established treatment option for severe supraspinal spasticity. Anecdotal explanations for ITB‐related recovery of cognition include modulation of afferent impulses at the spinal level, thereby reducing spasticity‐related proprioceptive information overload within cortico–thalamo–cortical connections. Objective In this retrospective patient chart analysis, we assessed whether a reduction in spasticity would be associated with an increase in Coma Recovery Scale revised (CRS‐R) scores in a larger sample of patients than previously published. Methods From a hospital‐based ITB treatment register, we extracted data from 26 patients with DOC and severe supraspinal spasticity who improved by >2 points on the Coma Recovery Scale revised (CRS‐R) within 6 months after ITB treatment initiation. We assessed Modified Ashworth scale (MAS) scores and CRS‐R scores on admission (PRE) and 3 and 6 months after initiation of ITB treatment (3M, 6M). We performed correlation analysis of the scores and their respective changes (PRE to 3M, 3M to 6M). We also correlated the time from acute event until ITB initiation to CRS‐R scores at 3M and 6M. Results ITB led to significant improvement in spasticity based on MAS scores, which did not correlate to the improvements seen in CRS‐R total and subscale scores. Daily ITB dose did neither correlate to MAS scores nor to CRS‐total scores in the whole patient group, but after 3 months, ITB dose correlated to some CRS‐R subscale scores in some patient subgroups. Time until ITB treatment did not correlate to CRS‐R scores later on. Conclusions Our data confirm that ITB may exert beneficial effects in selected DOC patients with respect to improved cognitive functions, which, however, do not correlate to its antispastic effect. The lack of correlation between time to ITB and CRS‐R outcome, but significant CRS‐R improvements following pump implantation, renders spontaneous remissions unlikely and leaves room for alternative pharmacological mechanisms.
Jessica E. Brodsky, Patricia J. Brooks, Donna Scimeca
et al.
Abstract College students lack fact-checking skills, which may lead them to accept information at face value. We report findings from an institution participating in the Digital Polarization Initiative (DPI), a national effort to teach students lateral reading strategies used by expert fact-checkers to verify online information. Lateral reading requires users to leave the information (website) to find out whether someone has already fact-checked the claim, identify the original source, or learn more about the individuals or organizations making the claim. Instructor-matched sections of a general education civics course implemented the DPI curriculum (N = 136 students) or provided business-as-usual civics instruction (N = 94 students). At posttest, students in DPI sections were more likely to use lateral reading to fact-check and correctly evaluate the trustworthiness of information than controls. Aligning with the DPI’s emphasis on using Wikipedia to investigate sources, students in DPI sections reported greater use of Wikipedia at posttest than controls, but did not differ significantly in their trust of Wikipedia. In DPI sections, students who failed to read laterally at posttest reported higher trust of Wikipedia at pretest than students who read at least one problem laterally. Responsiveness to the curriculum was also linked to numbers of online assignments attempted, but unrelated to pretest media literacy knowledge, use of lateral reading, or self-reported use of lateral reading. Further research is needed to determine whether improvements in lateral reading are maintained over time and to explore other factors that might distinguish students whose skills improved after instruction from non-responders.
The point of this paper is to compare substitution from the perspective of Levinas and the replacement sympathy as two approaches in facing the other. Sympathy, as one of the moral issues, is a way of paying attention and understanding the anxiety, worry, or need of others, which occurs consciously and with the recognition and replacement of the other. The substitution from the perspective of Levinas is also in relation to the “other” and outlines the scope of the subject’s responsibility towards him. In the beginning, Levinas’ subject imperially reduces the other to himself, but in the face of the “other,” he pays attention to the irreducibility and dependence of the consistency of his nature on it. In this way, the infinite responsibility towards the “other” becomes apparent; a responsibility that is formed before any kind of consciousness and self-consciousness and in a more passive space than any passivity, and its scope extends to the substitution of the “other” and expiation of the “other.” In the shadow of this infinite responsibility, substitution is distinguished from sympathetic and empathetic replacement. Sympathy, which has been described as a virtue in many moral systems, is a form of altruism through which an actor, by entering into the worries and sufferings of others, replaces himself in a scene of their pain. This replacement is based on knowing the other and imagining his position and ultimately transforming the other into another me. Accordingly, some have introduced sympathy and benevolence as the basis of morality (see Hume, 2009, 499-500) and by emphasizing the essential role of compassion in human moral life, an argument is made on compassion as a pillar of morality. (Schopenhauer, 1903, 171). Levinas also speaks of substitution in several places in his work, which is defined as a replacement in sympathy in relation to another. In other words, replacement in sympathy is the product of the relation between the actor and the other, and substitution in Levinas is based on subjectivity, which is itself based on the relation between the subject and the “other.” This paper wants to provide a comparative analysis of the subject’s substitution in Levinas with the concept of replacement on sympathy.Of course, although the concept of “other” in Levinas’s thought is different from the other in sympathy, the relationship between ‘replacement’ (taking the place of) and ‘substitution’ in the two can be examined; for although in Levinas’s view the position of the “other” is defined beyond the essence of the subject and in sympathy after the stage of essence, substitution in Levinas can be proposed in terms of rank later than the stage of essence.‘Substituting the other’ in Levinas, unlike “replacing the other” in sympathy, while excluding cognition, changes from another level of understanding the other to the position of expiation of the other, and such a change is justified by the explanation of subjectivity.No independent research has been done on the relationship between the replacement in sympathy and substitution with the “other” in Levinas, and no analysis has been provided in this regard. This paper, in order to analyze the relation of replacement as one of the principles of sympathy and substitution proposed in Levinas, first defines sympathy and examines the other’s place in it, and then in order to achieve the concept of substitution in Levinas’s thought, examines concepts such as subject, saying, said and responsibility from his point of view.
Philosophy of religion. Psychology of religion. Religion in relation to other subjects
Abstract The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has considerably heightened health and financial concerns for many individuals. Similar concerns, such as those associated with poverty, impair performance on cognitive control tasks. If ongoing concerns about COVID-19 substantially increase the tendency to mind wander in tasks requiring sustained attention, these worries could degrade performance on a wide range of tasks, leading, for example, to increased traffic accidents, diminished educational achievement, and lower workplace productivity. In two pre-registered experiments, we investigated the degree to which young adults’ concerns about COVID-19 correlated with their ability to sustain attention. Experiment 1 tested mainly European participants during an early phase of the pandemic. After completing a survey probing COVID-related concerns, participants engaged in a continuous performance task (CPT) over two, 4-min blocks, during which they responded to city scenes that occurred 90% of the time and withheld responses to mountain scenes that occurred 10% of the time. Despite large and stable individual differences, performance on the scene CPT did not significantly correlate with the severity of COVID-related concerns obtained from the survey. Experiment 2 tested US participants during a later phase of the pandemic. Once again, CPT performance did not significantly correlate with COVID concerns expressed in a pre-task survey. However, participants who had more task-unrelated thoughts performed more poorly on the CPT. These findings suggest that although COVID-19 increased anxiety in a broad swath of society, young adults are able to hold these concerns in a latent format, minimizing their impact on performance in a demanding sustained attention task.
Three broad organizing strategies have been used to study meditation practices: (1) consider meditation practices as using similar processes and so combine neural images across a wide range of practices to identify the common underlying brain patterns of meditation practice, (2) consider meditation practices as unique and so investigate individual practices, or (3) consider meditation practices as fitting into larger categories and explore brain patterns within and between categories. The first organizing strategy combines meditation practices defined as deep concentration, attention to external and internal stimuli, and letting go of thoughts. Brain patterns of different procedures would all contribute to the final averages, which may not be representative of any practice. The second organizing strategy generates a multitude of brain patterns as each practice is studied individually. The rich detail of individual differences within each practice makes it difficult to identify reliable patterns between practices. The third organizing principle has been applied in three ways: (1) grouping meditations by their origin—Indian or Buddhist practices, (2) grouping meditations by the procedures of each practice, or (3) grouping meditations by brain wave frequencies reported during each practice. Grouping meditations by their origin mixes practices whose procedures include concentration, mindfulness, or effortless awareness, again resulting in a confounded pattern. Grouping meditations by their described procedures yields defining neural imaging patterns within each category, and clear differences between categories. Grouping meditations by the EEG frequencies associated with their procedures yields an objective system to group meditations and allows practices to “move” into different categories as subjects’ meditation experiences change over time, which would be associated with different brain patterns. Exploring meditations within theoretically meaningful categories appears to yield the most reliable picture of meditation practices.