scholarly journals Top-Down Modulation of Motor Priming by Belief About Animacy

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Liepelt ◽  
Marcel Brass
Keyword(s):  
Priming Effect ◽  
Stimulus Display ◽  
Human Hand ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Motor Priming ◽  
Priming Task ◽  
Contradictory Evidence ◽  
Intentional Agents ◽  
Open Question

There is recent evidence that we directly map observed actions of other agents onto our own motor repertoire, referred to as direct matching (Iacoboni et al., 1999). This was shown when we are actively engaged in joint action with others’ (Sebanz et al. 2003) and also when observing irrelevant movements while executing congruent or incongruent movements (Brass et al., 2000). However, an open question is whether direct matching in human beings is limited to the perception of intentional agents. Recent research provides contradictory evidence with respect to the question whether the direct matching system has a biological bias possibly emerging from perceptual differences of the stimulus display. In this study all participants performed a motor priming task observing the identical animation showing finger lifting movements of a hand in a leather glove. Before running the experiment we presented either a human hand or a wooden analog hand wearing the leather glove. We found a motor priming effect for both human and wooden hands. However, motor priming was larger when participants believed that they interacted with a human hand than when they believed to interact with a wooden hand. The stronger motor priming effect for the biological agent suggests that the “direct matching system” is tuned to represent actions of animate agents.

The cross-modal affective priming effect: Effects of the valence and arousal of primes

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (12) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Cheng Kang ◽  
Nan Ye ◽  
Fangwen Zhang ◽  
Yanwen Wu ◽  
Guichun Jin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Priming Effect ◽  
Affective Priming ◽  
Negative Valence ◽  
Priming Task ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Visual Targets ◽  
Positive And Negative Valence ◽  
Valence And Arousal ◽  
Affective Information

Although studies have investigated the influence of the emotionality of primes on the cross-modal affective priming effect, it is unclear whether this effect is due to the contribution of the arousal or the valence of primes. We explored how the valence and arousal of primes influenced the cross-modal affective priming effect. In Experiment 1 we manipulated the valence of primes (positive and negative) that were matched by arousal. In Experiments 2 and 3 we manipulated the arousal of primes under the conditions of positive and negative valence, respectively. Affective words were used as auditory primes and affective faces were used as visual targets in a priming task. The results suggest that the valence of primes modulated the cross-modal affective priming effect but that the arousal of primes did not influence the priming effect. Only when the priming stimuli were positive did the cross-modal affective priming effect occur, but negative primes did not produce a priming effect. In addition, for positive but not negative primes, the arousal of primes facilitated the processing of subsequent targets. Our findings have great significance for understanding the interaction of different modal affective information.

How to Argue for Law’s Full-Blooded Normativity

2019 ◽  
pp. 165-186
Author(s):  
George Letsas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Specific Practice ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter aims to make space for the view that law possesses full-blooded normativity in a top-down way. Here is the dialectic of the inquiry: What would have to be true of morality for the claim that some specific practice is full-bloodedly normative to be plausible? The chapter assumes that the practice of morality as a whole has full-blooded normativity in the sense that its requirements give one genuine reasons to act, irrespective of one’s subjective wants, desires, and beliefs. The focus is on what it means to say of a specific practice that it partakes of morality’s normativity. The reason is simple: it should be an open question whether this or that practice has full-blooded normativity. For if it is not possible for any particular practice to have full-blooded normativity, then the question of whether law has full-blooded normativity would make no sense from the get-go. The account put forward builds on the idea of obligations of role. A practice, has full-blooded normativity when it instantiates a distinct set of obligations, one that pertains to people in a particular capacity, such as friends, parents, doctors, or teachers. The proposition that there are distinct moral practices, which are not reducible to a single moral concern, is of course disputed territory in moral philosophy. But if this proposition is accepted, one can ask, by analogy, whether legal practice instantiates an obligation of role and, as a result, bears the attributes of full-blooded normativity. This way of proceeding perceives the relationship between law and metaethics differently: it shows that law’s claim to full-blooded normativity ultimately depends on contestable assumptions about the nature of morality as a whole.

The principle of ontological commitment in pre- and postmortem multiple agent tracking

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 466-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas J. Bullot
Keyword(s):  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Ontological Commitment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Multiple Agent ◽  
Intentional Agents

This commentary suggests that understanding the “Folk Psychology of Souls” requires studying a problem articulating ontology with psychology: How do human beings, both as perceivers and thinkers, track and refer to (1) living and dead intentional agents and (2) supernatural agents? The problem is discussed in the light of the principle of the ontological commitment in agent tracking.

Culture and Cognitive Development

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Human Adaptation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Learning Skills ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Intentional Agents ◽  
Human Ontogeny

Human beings are biologically adapted for culture in ways that other primates are not. The difference can be clearly seen when the social learning skills of humans and their nearest primate relatives are systematically compared. The human adaptation for culture begins to make itself manifest in human ontogeny at around 1 year of age as human infants come to understand other persons as intentional agents like the self and so engage in joint attentional interactions with them. This understanding then enables young children (a) to employ some uniquely powerful forms of cultural learning to acquire the accumulated wisdom of their cultures, especially as embodied in language, and also (b) to comprehend their worlds in some uniquely powerful ways involving perspectivally based symbolic representations.

Evidence for Attenuated Affective Processing in Obesity

2008 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingo Wegener ◽  
Astrid Wawrzyniak ◽  
Katrin Imbierowicz ◽  
Rupert Conrad ◽  
Jochen Musch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Weight Loss ◽  
Weight Gain ◽  
Priming Effect ◽  
Normal Weight ◽  
Weight Loss Program ◽  
Affective Priming ◽  
Affective Processing ◽  
Verbal Stimuli ◽  
Priming Task ◽  
Affective Priming Task

Attenuated affective processing is hypothesized to play a role in the development and maintenance of obesity. Using an affective priming task measuring automatic affective processing of verbal stimuli, a group of 30 obese participants in a weight-loss program at the Psychosomatic University Clinic Bonn ( M age = 48.3, SD = 10.7) was compared with a group of 25 participants of normal weight ( M age = 43.6, SD= 12.5). A smaller affective priming effect was observed for participants with obesity, indicating less pronounced reactions to valenced adjectives. The generally reduced affective processing in obese participants was discussed as a possible factor in the etiology of obesity. Individuals who generally show less pronounced affective reactions to a given stimulus may also react with less negative affect when confronted with weight gain or less positive affect when weight is lost. Consequently, they could be expected to be less motivated to stop overeating or to engage in dieting and will have a higher risk of becoming or staying obese.

Martin Luther and Ontology

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Bielfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
The Real ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Summum Bonum ◽  
Real Presence ◽  
God's Love ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Trinity

Although many have interpreted Luther as “anti-metaphysical” and therefore unconcerned with the question of being, careful scrutiny of his texts shows otherwise. Trained at Erfurt to read Aristotle in the via moderna tradition, Luther did have ontological and semantic convictions that are displayed throughout his work, but especially in his disputations dealing with Trinitarian, Christological and soteriological issues. While rejecting as idolatrous the human attempt to grasp the summum bonum through natural reason, Luther nonetheless assumed that God’s revelation in Christ has ontological implications. The Finnish School of Luther interpretation, founded by Tuomo Mannermaa, has done a great service for Luther research by highlighting the motifs in Luther of Christ’s real presence in the justified believer and the presence of God’s love in faith. Although the Aristotelian categories available to Luther were inadequate for conceiving the paradoxical presence of the infinite in the finite, Luther did not thereby adopt a relational ontology more characteristic of the late 19th century than of his own time. Instead, he simply regarded as true what his philosophical categories could not fully conceive: just as God became a human being while remaining God, so too do humans become God while remaining human. While the Finnish scholarship highlights Luther’s use of participatio in speaking of the presence of the divine in the justified believer, Luther did not mean thereby that human beings are essentially transformed into God, but rather that they are, in faith, profoundly interpenetrated by the divine. Luther’s discussion of the nova lingua of theology connects to the “real-ontic” presence of Christ in the believer. As a good nominalist, Luther understood that sentential truth presupposes ontology. While everyday language, the language of philosophy generally, has truth conditions that can be articulated in terms of the existence of particular substances and their particular qualities, things are not so clear for the language of theology that speaks of the Trinity, incarnation, and the presence of God in the world and particularly in the life of the believer. How is this language constituted so that the real presence of the divine can be spoken with meaning and truth? While Luther assumes the extensionalism of nominalism when speaking philosophically, it is not clear that this is the case when he speaks theologically. Luther understands that language itself must be profoundly changed in order to grasp and state the reality of the infinite in the finite. Whether this change can be understood on the horizon of an extensionalist semantics is an open question.

scholarly journals Quantitative Electroencephalography and Behavioural Correlates of Daytime Sleepiness in Chronic Stroke

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Herron ◽  
Derk-Jan Dijk ◽  
Philip Dean ◽  
Ellen Seiss ◽  
Annette Sterr
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Demand ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Chronic Stroke ◽  
Quantitative Electroencephalography ◽  
Stroke Patients ◽  
Test Protocol ◽  
Frequency Bands ◽  
Motor Priming ◽  
Priming Task ◽  
Subjective Sleepiness

Sleepiness is common after stroke, but in contrast to its importance for rehabilitation, existing studies focus primarily on the acute state and often use subjective sleepiness measures only. We used quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) to extract physiological sleepiness, as well as subjective reports, in response to motor-cognitive demand in stroke patients and controls. We hypothesised that (a) slowing of the EEG is chronically sustained after stroke; (b) increased power in lower frequencies and increased sleepiness are associated; and (c) sleepiness is modulated by motor-cognitive demand. QEEGs were recorded in 32 chronic stroke patients and 20 controls using a Karolinska Drowsiness Test protocol administered before and after a motor priming task. Subjective sleepiness was measured using the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale. The findings showed that power density was significantly increased in delta and theta frequency bands over both hemispheres in patients which were not associated with subjective sleepiness ratings. This effect was not observed in controls. The motor priming task induced differential hemispheric effects with greater increase in low-frequency bands and presumably compensatory increases in higher frequency bands. The results indicate sustained slowing in the qEEG in chronic stroke, but in contrast to healthy controls, these changes are not related to perceived sleepiness.

The brain as an organ of the person

2017 ◽  
pp. 173-208
Author(s):  
Thomas Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
First Year ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Resonance System ◽  
Child Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intentional Agents ◽  
First Year Of Life ◽  
Mother Child Relationship ◽  
The Brain

‘The brain as an organ of the person’ examines the socially and culturally scaffolded development of the human brain, especially in early childhood. Beginning with early intersubjectivity and intercorporeality in the mother–child relationship, it first focuses on interactive forms of implicit memory. As a neurological basis of this development, the attachment system and the social resonance system (‘mirror neurons’) are discussed. Secondary intersubjectivity manifests itself towards the end of the first year of life, among others, in the development of joint attention. Understanding others as intentional agents lays the foundation for later perspective-taking and thus for the ‘eccentric position’ of human beings. On this basis, language acquisition is examined as the anchoring of an embodied interpersonal practice, connected with the biological resonance system of mirror neurons.

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