In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Loopholes, Gaps, and What Is Held Fast”Lorraine Code (bio)Keywordsepistemology, incredulity, knowing other people, memory, testimonyNancy Potter’s compelling essay points to some of the limitations of the theoretical apparatus that the post-positivist empiricist epistemologies of the Anglo-American mainstream make available for evaluating experiential memory claims in general, and “false memory syndrome” in particular. The loopholes and gaps in these theories of knowledge push urgent questions about testimony, trust, (...) and the politics of knowledge into a prominent place on the agendas of successor epistemology projects. These politics are enacted in societies whose dominant rhetoric privileges eye-witness evidence and “knowledge by acquaintance” as sources of objective knowledge, yet whose practices of incredulity—of granting and withholding acknowledgement to testimonial knowledge claims—expose power-saturated structures of dominance and subordination and of arbitrarily uneven distributions of epistemic authority. 1For classical empiricists and their successors, perception, memory and testimony, hierarchically ordered with perception on top, count as the principal sources of empirical knowledge. This ordering maps the relative reliability of the processes, with perception ranking as most stable, reliable and secure, memory coming second on all of these scores, and testimony ranking a poor third, closer to opinion, hearsay and rumor than to the other more respectable sources. Perception, for these theories, is “immediate” in that it is direct, bare, uncontaminated either by the particularities of the perceiving subject or of the perceptual event: from its presumed (but contestable) immediacy, all the rest follows. Memory counts as perception at one remove, its reliability a function of the relative “vividness” of the perceptions it commemorates. The esteem commonly claimed for eye-witness testimony derives from this conception of memory, which is believed to ground the testimony because of its presumed proximity to “immediate” perception. Yet testimony, even in its restricted “knowledge by description” form, tends by contrast with perception and memory to be a shaky affair; and as the temporal distance between event and testimony increases, so knowledge of matters unavailable to direct observation fares less and less well in classical and post-positivist epistemologies. A distrust of testimony is at once understandable and odd, because so small a proportion both of communal and of “individual” knowledge indeed derives from first-hand observations and experiences: most of it comes from testimony in an extended sense that encompasses books, teachings, media reports, all of the sources and resources on which both secular and scholarly knowledge relies for much of its substance. This expanded construction of the term runs alongside [End Page 255] the first-personal “testimonial” sense that is more plainly operative in discussions of false memory syndrome which, despite its experiential source, is often likewise contested on grounds that discredit the “privileged access” status that these same epistemologies claim for experience at first hand.Epistemologists commonly assimilate testimony to monologic, observational knowledge, deriving its constitutive features from instances where a testimonial utterance can pose as another perception—this time an auditory one—in a personal set of knowledge-producing observations (e.g., Fricker 1987). Because the speaker may be lying or mistaken, the process may fail to transmit knowledge; but this failure can be read as a simple perceptual error or a misremembering. Such approaches ignore the constitutive function of an interpreter/listener in fostering or thwarting testimonial knowledge to subsume it, too, much under an observational model. Indeed, not only do they separate the knower from the known and the process of knowing, as Potter observes, they also separate the knower from other knowers to guard against their influencing (= contaminating) the knowledge-production process. Experiences where an interlocutor actually enables the production of knowledge do not figure in such analyses, 2 whose effect is to suggest that giving or hearing testimony invokes no more significant moral-political issues than do acts of perceiving tables and chairs: that hearing, like seeing, is believing. (Norman Malcolm’s analysis of memory, which Potter cites, would also underwrite such a view of testimony.) Yet standard empiricist and post-positivist epistemologies generate an inquisitorial model of eliciting testimony in which the more generalized “testimony” in the knowledge that people acquire from books, media reports, conversation, reference sources recedes from... (shrink)

The phrase “statements of fact” has a clear, unequivocal ring. It speaks of a stable place untouchable by contests in epistemology and in more secular places, around questions of constructivism, subjectivism, and the politics of knowledge. It offers fixity, a locus of constancy in a shifting landscape where traditional certainties have ceased to hold, maintains a vantage point outside the fray, where knowledge-seekers can continue to believe in some degree of “correspondence” between items of knowledge and events in the world. (...) Within the social institutions and practices where knowledge is an issue, it designates a secure starting place for deliberation, a way of ensuring that processes of decision-making remain cognizant of the “realities” they have to address.In the institutions of knowledge production and knowledgeable practice that generate the examples I appeal to in this essay – medicine and law – “statements of fact” appear to comprise an incontestable core around which interpretive strategies may indeed have to be enlisted, but which itself functions as a kind of interpretation-exempt zone. There are good reasons for its retaining that status, for resisting the instabilities and sheer whimsicalities that would follow from dislodging it. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account (...) for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data. Key Words: action planning; binding; common coding; event coding; feature integration; perception; perception-action interface. (shrink)

Like the Theory of Event Coding (TEC), theories of executive functions depict cognition as a flexible and goal-directed system rather than a reflex-like one. Research on task-switching, a dominant paradigm in executive control, has revealed complex and some apparently counterintuitive results. Many of these are readily explained by assuming, like TEC, that cognitive control is based on selecting information from commensurate representations of stimuli and actions.

We commend the argument that perception and action are tightly coupled. We claim that the argument is not new, that uniting stimulus and response codes is not a problem for a cognitive system, only for psychologists who assume them, and that the Theory of Event Coding (TEC)'s event-codes are arbitrary and ungrounded. Affordances and information offer the common basis for perception-action (and even for event-codes).

The claim that perception and action are commonly coded because they are indistinguishable at the distal level is crucial for theories of cognition. However, the consequences of this claim run deep, and the Theory of Event Coding (TEC) is not up to the challenge it poses. We illustrate why through a brief review of the evidence that led to the motor theory of speech perception.

The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) is a new framework for understanding interactions between perception and action. We are concerned that the theory is underspecified, showing that it can easily be used to make exactly opposite predictions. Precise specification of the time course of activation and binding is needed to make the theory useful for understanding the perception-action interface.

Viewing emotion from an evolutionary perspective, researchers have argued that simple responses to affective stimuli can be triggered without mediation of cognitive processes. Indeed, findings suggest that positively and negatively valenced stimuli trigger approach and avoidance movements automatically. However, affective stimulus–response compatibility phenomena share so many central characteristics with nonaffective stimulus–response compatibility phenomena that one may doubt whether the underlying mechanisms differ. We suggest an “affectively enriched” version of the theory of event coding (TEC) that is able to (...) account for both affective and nonaffective compatibility, and that can account for the observation that both types of compatibility seem to be modulated by goals and intentions. Predictions from the model are tested in an experiment where participants carried out approach and avoidance responses to either the valence or the orientation of emotionally charged pictures. Under affective instruction the positive-approach/negative-avoid mapping yielded faster responses than the positive-avoid/negative-approach mapping, but no such effect was observed under spatial instruction. Conversely, spatial compatibility effects were obtained under spatial, but not under affective instruction. We conclude that affective and nonaffective compatibility effects reflect the same mechanism. (shrink)

Hommel et al. propose that action planning and perception utilize common resources. This implies perception should have intention-relative content. Data supporting this implication are presented. These findings challenge the notion of perception as “seeing.” An alternative is suggested (i.e., perception as distal control) that may provide a means of integrating representational and ecological approaches to the study of organism-environment coordination.

That perception and action share abstract representations is a key insight into the organization of intelligence. However, organizing behavior requires additional representations and processes which are not “early” sensing or “late” motion: structures for sequencing actions and arbitrating between behavior subsystems. These systems are described as a supplement to the Theory of Event Coding (TEC).

Recent computational models of motor planning have relied heavily on anticipating the consequences of motor acts. Such anticipation is vital for dealing with the redundancy problem of motor control (i.e., the problem of selecting a particular motor solution when more than one is possible to achieve a goal). Computational approaches to motor planning support the Theory of Event Coding (TEC).

Elman (2009) proposed that the traditional role of the mental lexicon in language processing can largely be replaced by a theoretical model of schematic event knowledge founded on dynamic context-dependent variables. We evaluate Elman’s approach and propose an alternative view, based on dual coding theory and evidence that modality-specific cognitive representations contribute strongly to word meaning and language performance across diverse contexts which also have effects predictable from dual coding theory.

The genetic code appeared on Earth at the origin of life, and the codes of culture arrived almost four billion years later. For a long time it has been assumed that these are the only codes that exist in Nature, and if that were true we would have to conclude that codes are extraordinary exceptions that appeared only at the beginning and at the end of the history of life. In reality, various other organic codes have been discovered in the (...) past few decades and it is likely that more will come to light in the future. The existence of many organic codes in Nature is therefore an experimental fact, but also more than that. It is one of those facts that have extraordinary implications. In this book it is shown that the genetic code was a precondition for the origin of the first cells, the signal transduction codes divided the first cells into three primary kingdoms (Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya), the splicing codes were instrumental to the origin of the eukaryotic nucleus, the histone code provided a new regulation system in eukaryotic genomes, and the cytoskeleton codes allowed the Eukarya to perform internal movements, including those of mitosis and meiosis. It is shown, furthermore, that organic codes had a key role in multicellular life, in particular in the origin of animals, the origin of mind and the origin of language. The great events of macroevolution, in other words, were associated with the appearance of new organic codes, and we can easily understand why. The reason is that a new code brings into existence something that has never existed before because it creates arbitrary associations, relationships that are not determined by physical necessity. Another outstanding implication is the fact that codes involve meaning and we need therefore to introduce in biology, with the standard methods of science, not only the concept of biological information but also that of biological meaning. The research on biological codes, in conclusion, is bringing to light new mechanisms in evolution and new fundamental concepts in science. This research is the field of Code Biology, the study of all codes of life, from the genetic code to the codes of culture, from the origin of life to the origin of man. (shrink)

First, we discuss issues raised with respect to the Theory of Event Coding (TEC)'s scope, that is, its limitations and possible extensions. Then, we address the issue of specificity, that is, the widespread concern that TEC is too unspecified and, therefore, too vague in a number of important respects. Finally, we elaborate on our views about TEC's relations to other important frameworks and approaches in the field like stages models, ecological approaches, and the two-visual-pathways model. Footnotes1 We acknowledge (...) the precedence of both Freud¹s Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) and Neisser¹s Stimulus Information and Its Vicissitudes (a term Neisser borrowed from Freud for his monograph “Cognitive psychology,” 1967). (shrink)

Butz, Achimova, Bilkey, and Knott provide a topic overview and discuss whether the special issue contributions may imply that event‐predictive abilities constitute a root for conceptual human thought, because they enable complex, mutually beneficial, but also intricately competitive, social interactions and language communication.

Butz, Achimova, Bilkey, and Knott provide a topic overview and discuss whether the special issue contributions may imply that event‐predictive abilities constitute a root for conceptual human thought, because they enable complex, mutually beneficial, but also intricately competitive, social interactions and language communication.

The integration of perceived events with appropriate action usually requires more flexibility to result in adaptive responses than Hommel et al. report in their selective review. The need for hierarchies of function that can intervene and the existence of diverse mediating brain mechanisms can be illustrated by the non-adaptive expression in psychiatric illness of negative priming, blocking, and affective responses.

A common code for integrating perceptions and actions was relevant for simple behavioral guidance well before the evolution of cognitive abilities. We review proposals that representation of to-be-produced events played important roles in early behavior, and evidence that the neural mechanisms supporting such rudimentary sensory predictions have been elaborated through evolution to support the cognitive codes addressed by TEC.

Following the catastrophic events of the 2008 global financial crisis, an anonymous hacker released Bitcoin to claw back power from commercial and central banks. Its underlying architecture, blockchain, is now championed for delivering a decentralised global economy--a world free from hierarchy and control. Money Code Space shatters these emancipatory claims by revealing acute geographies of power that lie behind blockchain networks. Drawing on first-hand experience in cryptocurrency communities and start-up companies from Silicon Valley to London, Jack Parkin untangles the complex (...) web of culture, politics, and economics that truly drive decentralisation. (shrink)

This paper investigates the regulation of ethical behavior of professionals. Ethical perceptions of South African professionals operating in the business community (specifically accountants, lawyers and engineers) concerning their need for and awareness of professional codes, and the frequency and acceptability of peer contravention of such codes were sought. The existence of conflict between corporate codes and professional codes was also investigated. Results, based on 217 replies, indicated that the professionals believe that codes are necessary and are relatively aware of the (...) contents of such codes. Despite these ethical tendencies, respondents (particularly lawyers) believe that their peers contravene their professional codes relatively often. No significant differences in ethical tendencies between professionals consulting to and those working in business were found. Many respondents were regulated by more than one code of ethics, but few experienced conflict between such codes. In the events of conflict occurring professionals chose to adhere to their professional code above others. (shrink)

In the process of implementing an ethical code of conduct, a business organization uses formal methods. Of these, training, courses and means of enforcement are common and are also suitable for self-regulation. The USA is encouraging business corporations to self regulate with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (FSG). The Guidelines prescribe similar formal methods and specify that, unless such methods are used, the process of implementation will be considered ineffective, and the business will therefore not be considered to have complied with (...) the guidelines. Business organizations invest enormous funds on formal methods. However, recent events indicate that these are not, by themselves, yielding the desired results. Our study, based on a sample of 812 employees and conducted in an Israeli subsidiary of a leading multinational High-Tech corporation headquartered in the US, indicates that, of the methods used in the process of implementation, one of the informal methods (namely, the social norms of the organization) is perceived by employees to have the most influence on their conduct. This result, when examined against employee tenure, remains relatively stable over the years, and stands in contradistinction to the formalistic approach embedded in the FSG. We indirectly measure the effectiveness of the percieved most influential implementation process methods by analyzing their impact on employee attitudes (namely, personal ethical commitment and employees'' commitment to organizational values). Our results indicate that the informal methods (manager sets an example or social norms of the organization) are likely to yield greater commitment with respect to both employee attitudes than the formal method (training and courses on the subject of ethics). The personal control method (my own personal values) differs significantly from all the other methods in that it yields the highest degree of personal ethical commitment and the lowest degree of employees'' commitment to organizational values. (shrink)

Abstract: The following is an outline of an emerging foundation for science that begins to explain living forms and their patterns of movement beyond the sphere of mechanistic interactions. Employing an event ontology based on a convergence of quantum physics and Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, coupled with the controversial yet promising theory of formative causation, this development will explore possible influences on the outcomes of events beyond any combination of external forces, laws of Nature, and chance. If it (...) turns out there are no such additional influences--beyond mechanistic causes--it is difficult to see how agency or free will could exist. Assuming agency exists, as Whitehead apparently does, while committing to an event ontology in which process is fundamental leads to interesting questions about the natures of any entities that might participate in events. Furthermore, what might the purposes and agendas of such entities be based upon, beyond memory traces or DNA code? This ontological model, recognizing processes as fundamental, leads to a revised cosmology where the trajectory of a series of events may be due to more than rearrangement of material bits according to external forces and where goal-directed, recurring processes and the emergence of mind are not so surprising. Just as special relativity reduces to classical treatment when speeds slow down, this scientific model for a living world reduces to mechanistic materialism whenever conditions are more limited. Though this development is based on a philosophy of process, there are some dissimilarities with respect to Whitehead’s particular version. (shrink)

The most important scientific events of the 20th century were the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and the discovery of the genetic code. The most important engineering events were nuclear energy, which insures adequate energy for a billion years, the computer, micro-electronics, the green revolution, and the beginnings of genetic engineering. The general development of technology permits worldwide high standards of living.

Rapid development of e-learning courses for ethics-and-compliance programs led to substantial success in producing engaging multimedia training toolkits aimed at breaking through barriers of indifference and distrust by combining learning with fun. However, a pleasant training experience is no guarantee of its ultimate success in improving organizational ethics. Drawing on Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory, this paper presents a model for evaluating multimedia learning from a moral viewpoint. The main argument advanced in the paper is that entertaining multimedia training modules, (...) as commonly offered in the business world, may deliver an unintended message which runs counter to the very goal of ethics training. The Rocked or Shocked? videogame—a multimedia-based ethics training module—will serve as a case study for detecting the complicated role of entertainment in ethics training and examining the ethical meanings conveyed through the pictorial/event channel. The paper concludes with recommendations for the design of multimedia ethics training. (shrink)

Rapid development of e-learning courses for ethics-and-compliance programs led to substantial success in producing engaging multimedia training toolkits aimed at breaking through barriers of indifference and distrust by combining learning with fun. However, a pleasant training experience is no guarantee of its ultimate success in improving organizational ethics. Drawing on Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory, this paper presents a model for evaluating multimedia learning from a moral viewpoint. The main argument advanced in the paper is that entertaining multimedia training modules, (...) as commonly offered in the business world, may deliver an unintended message which runs counter to the very goal of ethics training. The Rocked or Shocked? videogame—a multimedia-based ethics training module—will serve as a case study for detecting the complicated role of entertainment in ethics training and examining the ethical meanings conveyed through the pictorial/event channel. The paper concludes with recommendations for the design of multimedia ethics training. (shrink)

A major, but too-little-considered problem for Software Engineering is a lack of consensus concerning Computer Science and how this relates to developing unpredictable computing technology. We consider some implications for SE of computer systems differing scientific basis, exemplified with the International Standard Organisations Open Systems Interconnection layered architectural model. An architectural view allows comparison of computing technology components facilitating a view of computing as a continuum. For example, at one layer of computer architecture, components written in Turing-complete machine language can (...) be seen as deterministic and consistent with a theoretical paradigm of CS. At another layer, components closer to the human sphere have been seen as non-deterministic and inconsistent with theoretical CS. We compare unpredictable development of computing technology against the cyclic legacy of technological advance and scientific discovery, and suggest that SE indicates an enabling cycle, discernible in previous scientific revolution, is stalled or possibly hidden. The CS consequence of divorcing technological advance from scientific consensus is particularly concerning. For example human/computing events could be seen as unpredictable virtual phenomena that somehow extend the ontology of CS. Our approach challenges practical and philosophical boundaries by investigating if applying scientific method resolves any SE/Science dichotomy. (shrink)

Abuse of authority is an unsolved problem in the new institutional theory of the firm. This paper attempts a double attack to this problem by developing a contractarian view of corporate codes of ethics. From the ex-ante standpoint the paper elaborates on the idea of a Social Contract based on Co-operative Bargaining Games and deduces from it the fair/efficient 'Constitution' of the firm endorsed by means of a well-devised corporate code of ethics. From the ex-post standpoint, codes of ethics are (...) proved to be self-enforcing norms, by showing how they put at work the mechanism of a Repeated Game of Reputation within hierarchical transactions (firms) characterised by incomplete contracts and unforeseen events. To accomplish this task a theory of rationality in the face of unforeseen contingencies is sketched by working out the idea that the domain of a principle of ethics defines a fuzzy event, i.e. an event to which also the ex-ante unforeseen, unimaginable states of the world belong to a certain degree. (shrink)

This paper presents evidence for a psychological coding process that meets the criteria that define such processes in organic nature and culture. The recognition of these previously unknown encoding sequences is derived from the recent formulation of an adaptive mental module of the mind—the emotion processing mind—that has evolved to cope with traumatic events and the unique, language derived, explicit human awareness of personal mortality. The emergent awareness of death has served as a selection factor for the evolution of (...) a two-system, emotion-processing mind, with conscious and unconscious components, an arrangement that allows for the invocation of conscious denial, which in turn has fostered the use of encoding when faced with death-related traumas. The paper offers several ways in which evolved mental adaptations have features that are shared with those that are biological. Many aspects of these mental adaptive efforts are comparable to attempts at defense that are carried out by the immune system. In addition, the adaptive approach has been the foundation for the discovery of laws of communication, and thus of the mind, that are on a parallel with those found through mathematical models drawn from Newtonian physics. (shrink)

This article analyses a specific piece of computer code, the Linux operating system kernel, as an example of how technical operationality figures in contemporary culture. The analysis works at two levels. First of all, it attempts to account for the increasing visibility and significance of code or software-related events. Second, it seeks to extend familiar concepts of performativity to include cultural processes in which the creation of meaning is not central, and in which processes of circulation play a primary role. (...) The analysis concentrates on the practices and patterns of circulation of Linux through versions, distributions, clones and reconfigurations. It argues that technical ‘culture-objects’ such as Linux take on a social existence within contemporary technological cultures because of the authorizing contexts in which the reading, writing and execution of code occur. The ‘force’ or performance of certain technical objects, their operationality, can be understood more as the stabilized nexus of diverse social practices, rules and personae than as a formal property of the objects themselves. (shrink)

As Macnamara (1978) once asked, how can we talk about what we see? We report on a study manipulating realistic dynamic scenes and sentences aiming to understand the interaction between linguistic and visual representations in real-world situations. Specifically, we monitored participants’ eye movements as they watched video clips of everyday scenes while listening to sentences describing these scenes. We manipulated two main variables. The first was the semantic class of the verb in the sentence and the second was the action/motion (...) of the agent in the unfolding event. The sentences employed two verb classes—causatives (e.g., break) and perception/psychological (e.g., notice)—which impose different constraints on the nouns that serve as their grammatical complements. The scenes depicted events in which agents either moved towards a target object (always the referent of the verb-complement noun), away from it, or remained neutral performing a given activity (such as cooking). Scenes and sentences were synchronized such that the verb onset corresponded to the first video frame of the agent motion towards or away from the object. Results show effects of agent motion but weak verb-semantic restrictions: causatives draw more attention to potential referents of their grammatical complements than perception verbs only when the agent moves towards the target object. Crucially, we found no anticipatory verb-driven eye movements toward the target object, contrary to studies using non-naturalistic and static scenes. We propose a model in which linguistic and visual computations in real-world situations occur largely independent of each other during the early moments of perceptual input, but rapidly interact at a central, conceptual system using a common, propositional code. Implications for language use in real world contexts are discussed. (shrink)

Synchronizing oscillations may be just one case of integration and/or coding, one which explains associations by concurrence. Understanding the sequencing of neural/behavioral events requires a clock mechanism that imposes structure behind mere associations, and may be best served by dissociating oscillations and synchronization in terms of physiologic and computational mechanisms.

Space and time have been explained not in terms of physical entities but in terms of practice, that is, based on communication, which includes spacetime code in the A-series, B-series, and E-series. Each code has a unique grammar, and it progresses through boundary operation, i.e., setting the limit and transgressing it, but in each distinct way. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the notion of event matching to elucidate the mechanism of meaning-making through boundary operations. Biological spacetime (...) production is an incessant effort after meaning in the adaptive process, where the dia-metric scale in the E-series necessitates anticipatory (retrocausal) actions in the steps of interaction. This paper suggests that the three terms — event matching, meaning making, and spacetime production — are synonymous with each other in biological worlds. Evidence-based examples are provided to support the arguments. (shrink)

We note two important problems in the Theory of Event Coding. First, because the representational format of features and events is unspecified, the theory is difficult to test. Second, the theory lacks a mechanism for the integration of features into an event code when the features are shared by different events. Possible ways of solving these problems are suggested.

A breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind (...) a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness. (shrink)

Here, we used event-related potentials to test the predictions of two prominent accounts of code-switching in bilinguals: The Matrix Language Framework (MLF; Myers-Scotton, 1993) and an application of the Minimalist Program (MP; Cantone & MacSwan, 2009). We focused on the relative order of the noun with respect to the adjective in mixed Welsh-English nominal constructions given the clear contrast between pre- and post-nominal adjective position between Welsh and English. MP would predict that the language of the adjective should determine (...) felicitous word order (i.e., English adjectives should appear pre-nominally and Welsh adjectives post-nominally). In contrast, MLF contends that it is the language of the finite verb inflection rather than that of a particular word that governs felicitous word order. To assess the predictions of the two models, we constructed sentences featuring a code-switch between the adjective and the noun, that complied with either English or Welsh word-order. Highly proficient Welsh-English bilinguals made semantic acceptability judgements upon reading the last word of sentences which could violate MP assumptions, MLF assumptions, both assumptions, or neither. Behaviourally, MP violations had no significant effect, whereas MLF violations induced an average drop of 11% in acceptability judgements. Neurophysiologically, MP violations elicited a significant Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) modulation, whereas MLF violations modulated both P600 and LAN mean amplitudes. In addition, there was a significant interaction between MP and MLF status in the P600 range: When MP was violated, MLF status did not matter, and when MP criteria were met, MLF violations resulted in a P600 modulation. This interaction possibly reflects a general preference for noun over adjective insertions, and may provide support for MLF over MP at a global sentence processing level. Model predictions also manifested differently in each of the matrix languages: When the matrix language was Welsh, MP and MLF violations elicited greater P600 mean amplitudes than MP and MLF adherences, however this pattern was not observed when the matrix language was English. We discuss methodological considerations relating to the neuroscientific study of code-switching, and the extent to which our results shed light on adjective-noun code-switching beyond findings from production and experimental-behavioural studies. (shrink)

The Theory of Event Coding deals with brief events but has implications for longer, complex events, particularly goal-directed activities. Two of the theory's central claims are consistent with or assumed by theories of complex events. However, the claim that event codes arise from the rapid activation and integration of features presents challenges for scaling up to larger events.

Tactile exploration often involves sequential touches interspersed with stimulus-free durations. Whereas it is obvious that texture-related perceptual variables, irrespective of the encoding strategy, must be stored in memory for comparison, it is rather unclear which of those variables are held in memory. There are two established variables—“intensity” and “frequency”, which are “temporally global” variables because of the long stimulus integration interval required to average the signal or derive spectral components, respectively; on the other hand, a recently established third contender is (...) the “temporally local” variable that codes for kinematic profiles of very short, suprathreshold events in the vibrotactile signal. Here, we present the first psychophysical evidence that temporally local variables can be stored in memory. To that end, we asked participants to detect changes in pulsatile indentation stimuli at their fingertips with and without a gap of 1 s between stimulus presentations. The stimuli either contained global variables alone, or a mix of local and global variables. We found, first, that humans are much better at detecting a change in stimuli when local variables are available rather than global ones alone—as evident by the fact that 21 compared to only 6 participants out of 25 yielded a valid psychophysical curve, respectively. Second, this observation persists even when there is a gap between the stimuli, implying local variables must be stored in memory. Third, an extensive array of relevant intensity definitions failed to explain participants’ performance in any consistent manner, which implies that perceptual decisions were less likely to be driven by intensity coding. Taken together, our results suggest that humans perform pulsatile change detection utilizing local pulse shape, and to a lesser degree global pulse rate, and that both parameters can be stored in memory. (shrink)

This paper, located in the traditions of Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982) and Social Constructionism (Berger and Luckmann 1966), explores code-switching and identity practices amongst British-born Greek-Cypriots. The speakers, members of a Greek-Cypriot youth organization, are fluent in English and (with varying levels of fluency) speak the Greek-Cypriot Dialect. Qualitative analyses of recordings of natural speech during youth community meetings and a social event show how a new ‘third space’ becomes reified through code-switching practices. By skillfully manipulating languages and styles, (...) speakers draw on Greek-Cypriot cultural resources to accomplish two inter-related things. First, by displaying knowledge of familiar Greek-Cypriot cultural frames, they establish themselves as different from mainstream British society and establish solidarity as an in-group. Secondly, by using these frames in non-serious contexts, and at times mocking cultural attitudes and stereotypes, they challenge and re-appropriate their inherited Greek-Cypriot identity, thereby constructing the identity of British-born Greek-Cypriot youth. (shrink)

The Italian code of medical deontology recently approved stipulates that physicians have the duty to inform the patient of each unwanted event and its causes, and to identify, report and evaluate adverse events and errors. Thus the obligation to supply information continues to widen, in some way extending beyond the doctor-patient relationship to become an essential tool for improving the quality of professional services.