Adaptation to right-shifting prisms improves left neglect for mental number line bisection. This study examined whether adaptation affects the mental number line in normal participants. Thirty-six participants completed a mental number line task before and after adaptation to either: left-shifting prisms, right-shifting prisms or control spectacles that did not shift the visual scene. Participants viewed number triplets (e.g. 16, 36, 55) and determined whether the numerical distance was greater on the left or right side of the inner number. Participants demonstrated (...) a leftward bias (i.e. overestimated the length occupied by numbers located on the left side of the number line) that was consistent with the effect of pseudoneglect. The leftward bias was corrected by a short period of visuomotor adaptation to left-shifting prisms, but remained unaffected by adaptation to right-shifting prisms and control spectacles. The findings demonstrate that a simple visuomotor task alters the representation of space on the mental number line in normal participants. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

This study presents a theory of causally complex configurations of antecedent conditions influencing the adoption versus non-adoption of international supplier ethical certification-standards. Using objective measures of antecedents and outcomes, a large-scale study of exporting firms in the cut-flower industry in two South American countries supports the theory. The theory includes the following and additional propositions. No single -antecedent condition is sufficient for accurately predicting a high membership score in outcome conditions; the outcome conditions include a firm’s adoption or rejection of (...) a product certification. No single -antecedent condition is necessary for accurately predicting high scores in the outcome condition. A few complex antecedent conditions are sufficient but the occurrence of each is not necessary for accurately predicting high scores in an outcome condition. Causal asymmetry of antecedent conditions indicating adoption versus non-adoption of specific ethical standards occurs—that is, causal conditions leading to rejection are not the mirror opposites of causal conditions leading to adoption. (shrink)

_Bioethics, Public Moral Argument, and Social Responsibility_ explores the role of democratically oriented argument in promoting public understanding and discussion of the benefits and burdens of biotechnological progress. The contributors examine moral and policy controversies surrounding biomedical technologies and their place in American society, beginning with an examination of discourse and moral authority in democracy, and addressing a set of issues that include: dignity in health care; the social responsibilities of scientists, journalists, and scholars; and the language of genetics and (...) moral responsibility. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge and technological expertise continue to evolve rapidly. Such innovation gives rise to new benefits as well as risks, at an ever-increasing pace. Within this context, regulatory regimes must function in order to address policymakers’ objectives. Innovation, though, can challenge the functioning and effectiveness of regulatory regimes. Questions over fit, effectiveness, and capacity of these regimes to ensure the safe entry of such technologies, and their products, onto the market will be asked in parallel to their development. With this (...) in mind, this article examines the strengths and weaknesses of current regulatory frameworks, including those designed for biotechnology, cosmetics, novel organisms, and foods, in order to inform and help shape Australia’s regulatory landscape around innovation. By focusing on Australia, the article illustrates the need to assess future changes to regulatory frameworks using a careful balancing of key factors. These include, for example, horizon scanning and monitoring, availability of appropriate data, existing health, safety, environmental, ethical, and social risks and impacts, and regulatory capacity. The article argues that rather than using one of these factors in isolation, a careful assessment of where each factor stands can lead regulators to an approach that properly manages the potential risks of emerging technologies. (shrink)

We evaluate several significant objections to the possibility of group belief. These incredulity objections urge that the very concept of group belief is suspect or incoherent. Although many other...

In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity. In light of these benefits to employees and their organizations, organizational scholars are increasingly interested in understanding the factors that contribute to meaningful work, such as the design of jobs, interpersonal relationships, and organizational missions and cultures. In a separate line of inquiry, scholars of business ethics (...) have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights. In this article, we examine contemporary developments in both disciplines about the nature, causes, and consequences of meaningful work; we explore linkages between these disciplines; and we offer conclusions and research opportunities regarding the interface of ethical and organizational perspectives on performing and providing meaningful work. (shrink)

While standard forms of discrimination are widely considered morally wrong, philosophers disagree about what makes them so. Two accounts have risen to prominence in this debate: One stressing how wrongful discrimination disrespects the discriminatee, the other how the harms involved make discrimination wrong. While these accounts are based on carefully constructed thought experiments, proponents of both sides see their positions as in line with and, in part, supported by the folk theory of the moral wrongness of discrimination. This article presents (...) a vignette-based experiment to test empirically what, in the eyes of “folks”, makes discrimination wrong. Interestingly, we find that, according to folks, both disrespect and harm make discrimination wrong. Our findings offer some support for a pluralistic account of the wrongness of discrimination over both monist respect-based and monist harm-based accounts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's ‘Rhetoric’ to Modern Brain ScienceMichael J. HydeThe Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's ‘Rhetoric’ to Modern Brain Science. Daniel M. Gross. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. x + 194. $35.00, Hardcover.The twofold goal of this book is clearly stated by its author: "to reconstitute by way of critical intellectual history a deeply nuanced, rhetorical understanding of emotion that prevailed (...) until the triumph of psychophysiology; second, to show by way of literary and philosophical example how this rhetorical perspective helps us read anew the emotional complex of modernity, whether early or late" (8). Gross' appreciation of the function of emotion emphasizes a phenomenological orientation that is inspired by Martin Heidegger's unpublished 1924 lecture course on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Gross recently co-edited with Ansgar Kemmann a book of original essays dedicated to a critical assessment of this lecture course (Gross and Kemmann 2006). In concluding her contribution to the book, the well-known Renaissance scholar Nancy S. Struever maintains that the course "remains, arguably, the best twentieth-century reading of Aristotle's Rhetoric" (Struever 2006: 127). Gross advances this reading with his creative and insightful assessment of his topic.This advance unfolds as Gross, abiding by phenomenology's well-known critique of the matter, takes issue with the reductive psychophysiology of emotion that Descartes first proposed and that informs latter-day sciences of the mind and the brain. Gross turns to the research program of the distinguished cognitive scientist Antonio Damasio as a way of arguing "how brain science of emotion goes awry when it blunders into social fact" (29). The reductionism of science, in other words, misses the forest for the trees. Admitting that Damasio is open to inquiries outside the boundaries of neurobiology, Gross nevertheless takes particular issue with Damasio's model for such a project: Edward O. Wilson's, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Indeed, Wilson never gives rhetoric a nod when he acknowledges the worth of the humanities in his book.This slight, coming from Wilson, Damasio, and other scientists, fuels Gross's enthusiasm for turning to Aristotle's analysis of the pathe in book two of the Rhetoric. With Aristotle's discussion of "anger" in mind, for example, Gross emphasizes how we live in "a contoured world of emotional investments, where some people have significantly more liabilities than others" (3). [End Page 326]The point warrants elaboration: "The contours of our emotional world have been shaped by institutions such as slavery and poverty that simply afford some people greater emotional range than others, as they are shaped by publicity that has nothing to do with the inherent values of each human life and everything to do with technologies of social recognition and blindness" (4). Gross links this Aristotelian based social-psychological insight with such early modern philosophers, psychologists, and cultural critics as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, William Perfect, and then with such contemporary intellectuals as Judith Butler. Gross' discussion of this linkage enables him to argue a key point in his overall project: the constitutive power of emotions depends not on how the social passions originate in a moral sense equally shared by all, but rather on the "uneven distribution" of these passions in our social and political lives.Gross makes much of how the rhetoric of this uneven distribution is at work in such particular cases as Aristotle's apathetic slave, Seneca's angry tyrant, Hobbes's resentful preacher, Sarah Fielding's humble hero, and Adam Smith's compassionate spectator. Gross's intellectual acumen shines as he weaves together these cases and expands on their implications for developing a rhetorical understanding of emotion. For example, in chapter three ("Virtues of Passivity in the English Civil War"), Gross offers a critical assessment of Michael Walzer's classic The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics in order to show how the emotional makeup of passivity, too often "relegated to a diminished femininity" (87), not only informs the virtue of humility, but also helps it serve rhetorically "the most dramatic revolutionary ends" (110). Additional extended case studies emphasize the specific emotions of apathy, pride, pity... (shrink)

This thought-provoking book initiates a dialogue among scholars in rhetoric and hermeneutics in many areas of the humanities. Twenty leading thinkers explore the ways these two powerful disciplines inform each other and influence a wide variety of intellectual fields. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde organize pivotal topics in rhetoric and hermeneutics with originality and coherence, dividing their book into four sections: Locating the Disciplines; Inventions and Applications; Arguments and Narratives; and Civic Discourse and Critical Theory. Contributors to (...) this volume include Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Gerald L. Bruns, Charles Altieri, Richard E. Palmer, Calvin O. Schrag,.Victoria Kahn, Eugene Garver, Michael Leff, Nancy S. Streuver, Wendy Olmsted, David Tracy, Donald G. Marshall, Allen Scult, Rita Copeland, William Rehg, and Steven Mailloux. For readers across the humanities, the book demonstrates the usefulness of rhetorical and hermeneutic approaches in literary, philosophical, legal, religious, and political thinking. With its stimulating new perspectives on the revival and interrelation of both rhetoric and hermeneutics, this collection is sure to serve as a benchmark for years to come. (shrink)

A child’s death is a profound loss for mothers and affects hundreds of thousands of women. Mothers report inconsolable and progressive grief that is distinct from depression and impacts daily emotions and functions. The brain mechanisms responsible for this relatively common and profound mental health problem are unclear, hampering its clinical recognition and care. In an initial exploration of this condition, we used resting state functional MRI (fMRI) scans to examine functional connectivity in key circuits, and task-based fMRI to examine (...) brain network activity in grieving mothers in response to pictures of their deceased child and as well as recognizable deceased celebrities and unfamiliar individuals. We compared nine mothers who had lost an adult child and aged-matched control mothers with a living child of a similar age. Additionally, we collected diffusion imaging scans to probe structural connectivity and complemented the imaging studies with neuropsychological assessments. Increased functional activation in Ventral Attention/Salience Networks accompanied by a reduced activation in the medial prefrontal cortex in response to the deceased child’s picture robustly distinguished the grieving mothers from controls. Heightened resting-state functional connectivity between the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) and the amygdala distinguished the grieving mothers from the controls and correlated with subjective grief severity. Structurally, maternal grief and its severity were associated with alterations in corticolimbic white matter tracts. Finally, grieving mothers performed worse than controls on neuropsychological tests of learning, memory, and executive function, linked with grief severity. Reduced activation in cortical regions inhibiting emotions and changes in the PVT circuitry—a region involved in long-term emotional memories and decision making under conflict—distinguish grieving mothers from controls. Notably, the magnitude of neurobiological changes correlates with the subjective severity of grief. Together, these new discoveries delineate a prevalent and under-recognized mental health syndrome and chart a path for its appreciation and care. (shrink)

Edited by Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch & Christopher Zurn. This volume collects original, cutting-edge essays on the philosophy of recognition by international scholars eminent in the field. By considering the topic of recognition as addressed by both classical and contemporary authors, the volume explores the connections between historical and contemporary recognition research and makes substantive contributions to the further development of contemporary theories of recognition.

This research assessed how the performance and team skills of three-person teams working with an Intelligent Team Tutoring System on a virtual military surveillance task were affected by feedback privacy, participant role, task experience, prior team experience, and teammate familiarity. Previous work in Intelligent Tutoring Systems has focused on outcomes for task skill training for individual learners. As research extends into intelligent tutoring for teams, both task skills and team skills are necessary for good team performance. This work includes a (...) brief review of previous research on ITTSs, feedback, teams, and teamwork, including the recounting of two categories of a framework of teamwork performance, Communication and Cognition, which are relevant to the present study. This research examines the effects of an intelligent agent, as well as features of the team, its members, and the task being undertaken, on team communication and team situation awareness. Thirty-seven teams of three participants, each at their own computer running a multiplayer surveillance simulation, were given just-in-time private or public performance feedback during four 5-min trials. In the fourth trial, two of the three participants switched roles. Feedback type, teamwork experience, and teammate familiarity had no statistically significant effect on communication or team situation awareness. However, higher levels of role experience and task experience showed significant and medium-sized effects on communication performance. Results, based on performance data and structured interview responses, also revealed areas of improvement in future feedback design and a potential benchmark for feedback frequency in an action-oriented serious game-based ITTS. Among the conclusions are six design objectives for future ITTSs, establishing a foundation for future research on designing effective ITTSs that train interpersonal skills to nascent teams. (shrink)

Is there really an ethical crisis? We propose that the situation is not as bad as many would have us believe. We have attempted to present an alternative explanation for some earlier reports of an ethical crisis. This has resulted in a number of research propositions. We are optimistic that there are, in spite of reports to the contrary, an overwhelming majority of ethical people populating our business community.

The author evaluates susan haack's criticisms of michael dummett's logical intuitionism and concludes that haack fails to discredit dummett's position. Haack argues that dummett's version fails since (1) he rejects inductive evidence; (2) cannot distinguish ultimately between truth- and assertibility-Conditions; and (3) recognizes that his arguments, Regrettably, Establish antirealism (i.E., Subjective idealism) for all areas. The author shows that dummett accepts inductive evidence for the set of decidable cases, Distinguishes between truth- and assertibility-Conditions by accepting that a sentence may (...) be assertible but not true, And that haack's conclusion regarding (3) rests on her misreading. ((please note that an important quote was omitted on p. 338 and the errata appears in a later issue of "philosophical studies".(). (shrink)

Anecdotal evidence has long lamented the status of social studies in elementary classrooms as observed by preservice teachers. As standardized testing has risen for mathematics and language arts, social studies has been pushed aside. In the aftermath of accountability legislation such as No Child Left Behind, research indicates that social studies is less visible in elementary classrooms due to an instructional focus on tested content areas (e.g. math, language arts, reading). In this study, approximately 90 elementary preservice teachers enrolled in (...) a social studies methods course responded to a survey and indicated the frequency and quality of lessons they observed over the course of a single semester. Findings report that preservice elementary teachers witnessed few, if any, lessons in social studies in the elementary classroom. Implications for teacher education are discussed. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Poor ethical decision–making costs industry billions of dollars a year and damages the images of corporations. Thus, by answering the question ‘Why do individuals behave as they do when confronted with ethical issues?’ ethical theory can provide businesses with a means to create a more ethical climate and a more successful operation. This study tested the Ethical Decision–Making Model with accountability (Beu & Buckley 2001), which uses theory that suggests that ethical behavior is influenced by the individual, the issue, social (...) relationships (accountability), and the organization in which the employee is embedded (Brass, Butterfield & Skaggs 1988; Frink & Klimoski 1998). The results showed that individuals’ thought processes (cognitive moral development), personalities (locus of control, hostility and aggression, Machiavellianism), and gender influence how they respond to ethical dilemmas, as well as the salience of the moral issue (moral intensity) and the environmental context (work/school). (shrink)

BackgroundCommunity engagement within biomedical research is broadly defined as a collaborative relationship between a research team and a group of individuals targeted for research. A Community Advisory Board is one mechanism of engaging the community. Within genomics research CABs may be particularly relevant due to the potential implications of research findings drawn from individual participants on the larger communities they represent. Within such research, CABs seek to meet instrumental goals such as protecting research participants and their community from research-related risks, (...) as well as intrinsic goals such as promoting the respect of participants and their community. However, successful community engagement depends on the degree to which CABs legitimately represent and engage with communities targeted for research. Currently, there is little literature describing the use of CABs in genomics research taking place in developing countries, and even less in the field of genomics research relating to mental illness. The aim of this article is to describe and consider the contributions made by a researcher-driven, population-specific CAB in a genomics of schizophrenia research project taking place in South Africa, from the perspective of the research team.DiscussionFour broad discussion topics emerged during the CAB meetings namely: 1) informed consent procedures, 2) recruitment strategies, 3) patient illness beliefs and stigma experiences, and 4) specific ethical concerns relating to the project. The authors consider these discussions in terms of their contributions to instrumental and intrinsic goals of community engagement.SummaryThe CAB gave valuable input on the consent processes and materials, recruitment strategies and suggested ways of minimizing the potential for stigma and discrimination. All of these contributions were of an instrumental nature, and helped improve the way in which the research took place. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, the CAB made a unique and important contribution relating to intrinsic functions such as promoting the respect and dignity of research participants and their community. This was particularly evident in ensuring sensitivity and respect of the community’s traditional beliefs about schizophrenia and its treatment, and in this way promoting a respectful relationship between the research team and the participants. (shrink)

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

This present study takes a new look at the essayist Michel de Montaigne and the philosopher Rene Descartes and attempts to show a new interrelationship between the two. Previous studies have linked the latter's Discours de la m,thode to the Essais and have noted general similarities, but no major study to date has examined the pair from the standpoint of Descartes' Trait, des passions and Montaigne's Essais.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists. All rights reserved.Cell walls of grasses, including cereal crops and biofuel grasses, comprise the majority of plant biomass and intimately influence plant growth, development and physiology. However, the functions of many cell wall synthesis genes, and the relationships among and the functions of cell wall components remain obscure. To better understand the patterns of cell wall accumulation and identify genes that act in grass (...) cell wall biosynthesis, we characterized 30 samples from aerial organs of rice at 10 developmental time points, 3-100 d post-germination. Within these samples, we measured 15 cell wall chemical components, enzymatic digestibility and 18 cell wall polysaccharide epitopes/ligands. We also used quantitative reverse transcription-PCR to measure expression of 50 glycosyltransferases, 15 acyltransferases and eight phenylpropanoid genes, many of which had previously been identified as being highly expressed in rice. Most cell wall components vary significantly during development, and correlations among them support current understanding of cell walls. We identified 92 significant correlations between cell wall components and gene expression and establish nine strong hypotheses for genes that synthesize xylans, mixed linkage glucan and pectin components. This work provides an extensive analysis of cell wall composition throughout rice development, identifies genes likely to synthesize grass cell walls, and provides a framework for development of genetically improved grasses for use in lignocellulosic biofuel production and agriculture. (shrink)

Poor ethical decision–making costs industry billions of dollars a year and damages the images of corporations. Thus, by answering the question ‘Why do individuals behave as they do when confronted with ethical issues?’ ethical theory can provide businesses with a means to create a more ethical climate and a more successful operation. This study tested the Ethical Decision–Making Model with accountability (Beu & Buckley 2001), which uses theory that suggests that ethical behavior is influenced by the individual, the issue, social (...) relationships (accountability), and the organization in which the employee is embedded (Brass, Butterfield & Skaggs 1988; Frink & Klimoski 1998). The results showed that individuals’ thought processes (cognitive moral development), personalities (locus of control, hostility and aggression, Machiavellianism), and gender influence how they respond to ethical dilemmas, as well as the salience of the moral issue (moral intensity) and the environmental context (work/school). (shrink)

We consider Sussman et al. 's suggestion that auditory biases for processing low-noise relationships among pairs of acoustic variables is a preadaptation for human speech processing. Data from other animal communication systems, especially those involving sexual selection, also suggest that neural biases in the receiver system can generate strong selection on the form of communication signals.