bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Hemispheric laterality in animals and the effects of early experience
Authors: Denenberg Victor H. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractA review of research with chicks, songbirds, rodents, and nonhuman primates indicates that the brain is lateralized for a number of behavioral functions. These findings can be understood in terms of three hypothetical brain processes derived from a brain model based on general systems theory: hemispheric activation, interhemispheric inhibition, and interhemispheric coupling.Left-hemisphere activation occurs in songbirds and nonhuman primates in response to salient auditory or visual input, or when a communicative output is required. The right hemisphere is activated in rats when spatial performance is required, and in chicks when they are placed in an emotion-provoking situation. In rats and chicks interhemispheric activation and inhibition occur when there is an affective component in the environment (novelty, aversive conditioning) or when an emotional response is emitted (copulation, attack, killing). An interhemispheric coupling (correlation) found in rats and rabbits implies that the hemispheres are two major components in a control system with a negative feedback loop. Early-experience variables in rats can induce laterality in a symmetric brain or facilitate its development in an already biased brain.It is predicted that functional lateralization, when present, will be similar across species: the left hemisphere will tend to be involved in communicative functions while the right hemisphere will respond to spatial and affective information; both hemispheres will often interact via activation-inhibition mechanisms when affective or emotional processes are involved. Homologous brain areas and their connecting callosal fibers must be intact at birth and must remain intact throughout development for lateralization to reach its maximum level. Injury to any portion of this unit will result in hemispheric redundancy rather than specialization. One major function of early experience is to provide stimulation during development, which acts to enhance the growth and development of the corpus callosum, thereby giving rise to a more specialized brain.
The case for mental duality: Evidence from split-brain data and other considerations
Authors: Puccetti Roland 
Published: February 2010

AbstractContrary to received opinion among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, conscious duality as a principle of brain organization is neither incoherent nor demonstrably false. The present paper begins by reviewing the history of the theory and its anatomical basis and defending it against the claim that it rests upon an arbitrary decision as to what constitutes the biological substratum of mind or person.It then moves on to provide a dynamic model for double consciousness in vertebrate brain organization, giving an evolutionary account that explains why, although each of the two cerebral hemispheres benefits from sensory input from the other for representation of the ipsilateral half of corporeal and extracorporeal space, it was important that conscious experience be confined to each rather than spanning the two. This interhemispheric duplication effect for sensory representation has been known for years but hitherto considered mysterious, or ignored on grounds that integration must be achieved at a higher level of processing.The paper then attempts to resolve a puzzle about split-brain patients in testing situations, namely why it is that in spite of the speaking hemisphere's denial of any independent perception and agency in the mute hemisphere, which would explain its role in cross-cuing, the latter never seems to resent this, but instead continues to be cooperative and helpful. It is suggested that on the hypothesis of mental duality this is understandable, for the nonverbal hemisphere would have known prior to the surgery that it is not generating linguistic behavior.Finally, the essay examines two kinds of bitemporal defects, one due to callosal and the other to chiasmal disruptions. On the present theory a bitemporal defect should be demonstrable in the former case when both eyes are open, because in the absence of a corpus callosum and other forebrain commissures the interhemispheric duplication effect is abolished; in the latter case interhemispheric duplication is preserved, and so the defect should be demonstrable only by testing each eye independently. This is indeed what the evidence indicates, so it appears that, contrary to the prevalent view, the function of the corpus callosum is not to integrate and unify conscious experience between the hemispheres but to duplicate this, in accord with the model of mental duality.
Can human irrationality be experimentally demonstrated?
Authors: Cohen L. Jonathan 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe object of this paper is to show why recent research in the psychology of deductive and probabilistic reasoning does not have "bleak implications for human rationality," as has sometimes been supposed. The presence of fallacies in reasoning is evaluated by referring to normative criteria which ultimately derive their own credentials from a systematisation of the intuitions that agree with them. These normative criteria cannot be taken, as some have suggested, to constitute a part of natural science, nor can they be established by metamathematical proof. Since a theory of competence has to predict the very same intuitions, it must ascribe rationality to ordinary people.Accordingly, psychological research on this topic falls into four categories. In the first, experimenters investigate conditions under which their subjects suffer from genuine cognitive illusions. The search for explanations of such performance errors may then generate hypotheses about the ways in which the relevant information-processing mechanisms operate. In the second category, experimenters investigate circumstances in which their subjects exhibit mathematical or scientific ignorance: these are tests of the subjects' intelligence or education. In the third and fourth categories, experimenters impute a fallacy where none exists, either because they are applying the relevant normative criteria in an inappropriate way or because the normative criteria being applied are not the appropriate ones.
Maximization theory in behavioral psychology
Authors: Rachlin Howard , Battalio Ray , Kagel John , Green Leonard 
Published: February 2010

AbstractMaximization theory, which is borrowed from economics, provides techniques for predicing the behavior of animals - including humans. A theoretical behavioral space is constructed in which each point represents a given combination of various behavioral alternatives. With two alternatives - behavior A and behavior B - each point within the space represents a certain amount of time spent performing behavior A and a certain amount of time spent performing behavior B. A particular environmental situation can be described as a constraint on available points (a circumscribed area) within the space. Maximization theory assumes that animals always choose the available point with the highest numerical value. The task of maximization theory is to assign to points in the behavioral space values that remain constant across various environmental situations; as those situations change, the point actually chosen is always the one with the highest assigned value.Maximization theory is an alternative to reinforcement theory as a description of steady-state behavior. Situations to which reinforcement theory has been directly applied (such as reinforcement of rats pressing levers and pigeons pecking keys in Skinner boxes) and situations to which reinforcement theory has occasionally been extended (such as human economic behavior and human self-control) can be described by maximization theory. This approach views behavior as a quantitative outcome of the interaction of the putative instrumental response, the reinforcer, and the other activities available in the situation. It provides new insight into these situations and, because it takes context into account, has greater predictive power than reinforcement theory.
Is there a schizophrenic language?
Authors: Schwartz Steven 
Published: February 2010

AbstractAmong the many peculiarities of schizophrenics perhaps the most obvious is their tendency to say odd things. Indeed, for most clinicians, the hallmark of schizophrenia is “thought disorder” (which is usually defined tautologically as incoherent speech). Decades of clinical observations, experimental research, and linguistic analyses have produced many hypotheses about what, precisely, is wrong with schizophrenic speech and language. These hypotheses range from assertions that schizophrenics have peculiar word association hierarchies to the notion that schizophrenics are suffering from an intermittent form of aphasia. In this article, several popular hypotheses (and the observations on which they are based) are critically assessed. Work in the area turns out to be flawed by errors in experimental method, faulty observations, tautological reasoning, and theoretical models that ignore the complexities of both speech and language. This does not mean that schizophrenics are indistinguishable from nonschizophrenics. They are clearly deviant in many situations. Their problem, however, appears to be in processing information and in selective attention, not in language itself.
The defense motivation system: A theory of avoidance behavior
Authors: Masterson Fred A. , Crawford Mary 
Published: February 2010

AbstractA motivational system approach to avoidance behavior is presented. According to this approach, a motivational state increases the probability of relevant response patterns and establishes the appropriate or “ideal” consummatory stimuli as positive reinforcers. In the case of feeding motivation, for example, hungry rats are likely to explore and gnaw, and to learn to persist in activities correlated with the reception of consummatory stimuli produced by ingestion of palatable substances. In the case of defense motivation, fearful rats are likely to flee or freeze, and to learn to persist in activities correlated with consummatory stimuli produced by flight from a dangerous place. Defense system activation is distinct from alarm reactions. The latter prepare the animal for probable noxious events, involve relatively intense negative affect and extinguish rapidly in situations where the noxious event no longer occurs. In contrast, defense system activation potentiates innate and modified defense reactions, thus preparing the animal for possible, but not necessarily probable, noxious events; it involves little or no negative affect and extinguishes very slowly when the noxious event no longer occurs. With these assumptions and the resulting model we attempt to resolve several long-standing problems in avoidance learning, including the low correlation between negative affect and avoidance performance, differential rates of extinction for avoidance performance and conditioned emotional responses, and evidence that some avoidance responses are much more easily learned than others. In addition, the model has implications for the study of parallels between appetitive and aversive motivation, sign tracking in aversive conditioning, and orientation of flight responses. Historical antecedents and alternative approaches are discussed.
The scope of neuroethology
Authors: Hoyle Graham 
Published: February 2010

AbstractNeuroethology, an interdisciplinary subdivision of neuroscience, has emerged in recent years. Since 1976 there has been a regular session under this heading at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. In 1980 two introductory texts in English were published on the subject (Ewert 1980; Guthrie 1980), and a third (Camhi 1984) was published recently. There is widespread interest in neural mechanisms underlying behavior, but they encompass such a vast array of often unrelated topics that proponents do not share common goals. This article describes the emergence of ethology as a discipline, pointing out that its practitioners were successful because they confined their research to stereotyped, complex, nonlearned, innate behavioral acts. A limited number of profoundly significant principles emerged. Each of these is redefined. The major concepts of earlier ethology were embodied in a simple hydraulic model used by Konrad Lorenz in 1949 (Lorenz 1950). It is pointed out that this model implies the existence of common neurophysiological mechanisms and neuronal circuitry. This model has now been made obsolete by neurophysiological progress, but with appropriate modifications an updated version may still be useful in focusing attention on possible principles. The initial aim of neuroethology should be to examine the neurophysiological events in a variety of behaviors, exhibited by diverse animals from different phyla, which meet the criteria of innate behavioral acts. The behaviors should be sufficiently complex to interest ethologists, yet they should be addressable with neurophysiological methods down to the cellular level. In the case of vertebrates this may mean working with brain slices as well as whole animals, but for some invertebrates recording should be possible in the nearly intact animal during execution of the behavior. The work will be exacting and very difficult, and it is not likely to get done at all unless neuroethologists recognize that they should both train and discipline themselves and restrict their attention to welldefined goals.
Sensation seeking: A comparative approach to a human trait
Authors: Zuckerman Marvin 
Published: February 2010

AbstractA comparative method of studying the biological bases of personality compares human trait dimensions with likely animal models in terms of genetic determination and common biological correlates. The approach is applied to the trait of sensation seeking, which is defined on the human level by a questionnaire, reports of experience, and observations of behavior, and on the animal level by general activity, behavior in novel situations, and certain types of naturalistic behavior in animal colonies. Moderately high genetic determination has been found for human sensation seeking, and marked strain differences in rodents have been found in open-field behavior that may be related to basic differences in brain neurochemistry. Agonistic and sociable behaviors in both animals and humans and the trait measure of sensation seeking in humans have been related to certain common biological correlates such as gonadal hormones, monoamine oxidase (MAO), and augmenting of the cortical evoked potential.The monoamine systems in the rodent brain are involved in general activity, exploratory behavior, emotionality, socialization, dominance, sexual and consummately behaviors, and intracranial self-stimulation. Preliminary studies have related norepinephrine and enzymes involved in its production and degradation to human sensation seeking. A model is suggested that relates mood, behavioral activity, sociability, and clinical states to activity of the central catecholamine neurotransmitters and to neuroregulators and other transmitters that act in opposite ways on behavior or stabilize activity in the arousal systems. Stimulation and behavioral activity act on the catecholamine systems in a brain–behavior feedback loop. At optimal levels of catecholamine systems activity (CSA) mood is positive and activity and sociability are adaptive. At very low or very high levels of CSA mood is dysphoric, activity is restricted or stereotyped, and the organism is unsocial or aggressively antisocial. Novelty, in the absence of threat, may be rewarding through activation of noradrenergic neurons.
Précis ofThe Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique
Authors: Grünbaum Adolf 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThis book critically examines Freud's own detailed arguments for his major explanatory and therapeutic principles, the current neorevisionist versions of psychoanalysis, and the hermeneuticists' reconstruction of Freud's theory and therapy as an alternative to what they claim was a “scientistic” misconstrual of the psychoanalytic enterprise. The clinical case for Freud's cornerstone theory of repression – the claim that psychic conflict plays a causal role in producing neuroses, dreams, and bungled actions – turns out to be ill-founded for two main reasons: (a) Even if clinical data were valid, the method of free association has failed to support the psychoanalytic theory of unconscious motivation; (b) Clinical data tend in any case to be artifacts of the analyst's self-fulfilling expectations, thus losing much of their evidential value. The hypothesis that psychoanalytic treatment is in reality a placebo poses a serious challenge to the assumption that insight is a key causal factor when therapy is successful. This challenge has yet to be met by psychoanalysts. Similar conclusions undermine the neorevisionist versions of psychoanalysis. The most influential hermeneuticists, on the other hand, are shown to have imposed an alien philosophy on psychoanalysis, partly through their reliance on gross misconceptions of the natural sciences. Karl Popper's criticism of the Freudian corpus as empirically untestable has misjudged its evidential weaknesses, which are more subtle. If there exists empirical evidence for the principal psychoanalytic doctrines, it cannot be obtained without well-designed extraclinical studies of a kind that have for the most part yet to be attempted.
Nineteenth-century ideas on hemisphere differences and “duality of mind”
Authors: Harrington Anne 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIt is widely felt that the sorts of ideas current in modern laterality and split-brain research are largely without precedent in the behavioral and brain sciences. This paper not only challenges that view, but makes a first attempt to define the relevance of older concepts and data to present research programs.In the 19th century, there was a body of literature that held that many mental pathologies could be explained by supposing that each individual potentially had two conscious brains. Madness resulted when these begin to interfere with each other or otherwise functioned independently. The left-sided localization of language by Broca in the 1860s complicated matters by showing that the two brain halves functioned differently. Broca argued that functional asymmetry was a reflection of man's capacity to “perfect” himself; soon, the left hemisphere was transformed into the superior, uniquely human side of the brain. Considerable effort then went into seeing how far the functions of the right hemisphere complemented those of the left. The resulting dichotomies of mind and brain interacted—and sometimes also conflicted—with “duality of mind” theories. In the 1880s, the Paris school of neurology helped bring about a revival of interest in these theories with its startling metalloscopy and hemihypnosis experiments.A section of this target article is devoted to the views of Hughlings Jackson. Jackson's physiological/philosophical writings on hemisphere specialization and mental duality largely set him outside of the rest of the 19th-century tradition. The article concludes that at least some of the data gathered in the 19th century might prove useful or interesting to certain investigators today. More important, it asks how far an awareness of the “time-bound” nature of 19th-century concepts should change the way in which one surveys the laterality scene today.
Matrilineal inheritance: New theory and analysis
Authors: Hartung John 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIn most cultures, extramarital sex is highly restricted for women. In most of those cultures, men transfer wealth to their own sons (patrilineal inheritance). In some cultures extramarital sex is not highly restricted for women, and in most of those cultures, men transfer wealth to their sisters' sons (matrilineal inheritance). Inheritance to sisters' sons ensures a man's biological relatedness to his heirs, and matrilineal inheritance has been posited as a male accommodation to cuckoldry—a paternity strategy—at least since the 15th century. However, longitudinal analysis of the cumulative effect of female extramarital sex indicates that matrilineal inheritance is most advantageous for women and would be more accurately considered a grandmaternity strategy. That is, if the probability that men's putative children are their biological children (ρ = probability of paternity) is less than 1, the probabilistic degree of relatedness between a female and her matrilineal heirs is higher than her corresponding relatedness to her patrilineal heirs. The same holds true for men only if ρ is very low (< 0.46). The upshot is that for moderate levels of female extramarital sex, matrilineal inheritance, relative to patrilineal inheritance, is highly advantageous for women and disadvantageous for men. Consideration of female variance in reproductive success beyond the first generation, and of a man's network of obligation to the inclusive fitness of his relatives, suggests that although the establishment of matrilineal inheritance may require extremely high levels of female extramarital sex, once established, it is likely to be maintained at levels of ρ that reasonably characterize many societies in the ethnographic record. New analysis of previously published data shows a strong association between matrilineal inheritance and moderate to low probability of paternity, and an even stronger relationship between patrilineal inheritance and high probability of paternity.
Are there independent lexical and nonlexical routes in word processing? An evaluation of the dual-route theory of reading
Authors: Humphreys Glyn W. , Evett Lindsay J. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractOne of the most popular and influential theories of word processing, dual-route theory, proposes that there are two functionally independent means of processing words, one involving access to lexical knowledge and the other involving nonlexical grapheme-to-phoneme conversion. Three topics germane to this theory are the processing of nonwords, spelling regularity effects, and the manner in which reading may be impaired following selective damage to either route. This paper evaluates evidence on these topics, and in each case the claims of the theory for an independent nonlexical processing route are called into question. This conclusion is further supported by a discussion of the linguistic constraints that limit any nonlexical grapheme—phoneme conversion process. Some alternative approaches to visual word processing, which share the assumption that lexical knowledge can guide the assembly of phonological information, are discussed. It is argued that these approaches should direct future research.