People judge positive information to be more alike than negative information. This good-bad asymmetry in similarity was argued to constitute a true property of the information ecology (Alves, H., Koch, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2017). Why good is more alike than bad: Processing implications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21, 69–79). Alternatively, the asymmetry may constitute a processing outcome itself, namely an influence of phasic affect on information processing. Because no research has yet tested whether phasic affect influences perceived similarity (...) among stimuli, we conducted 5 Experiments that also tested whether phasic affect can account for the higher judged similarity among positive compared to negative stimuli. In three experiments, we affectively charged pictures of different Pokemon by pairing them with monetary gains and losses (Exp. 1a, 1b) as well as positive and negative trait words (Exp. 2); yet, the evaluative charge did not differentially influence perceived similarity among the Pokemon. Experiment 3 replicated the basic similarity asymmetry among positive and negative words, and found that it was unaffected by externally induced phasic affect. Experiment 4 showed that phasic affect had no influence on perceived similarity of non-evaluative words either. We conclude that albeit a weak influence of phasic affect on perceived similarity of stimuli cannot be ruled out entirely, it can most likely not account for the typically medium to large sized asymmetry in similarity among positive and negative stimuli. (shrink)

It is traditionally believed that cerebral activation (the presence of low voltage fast electrical activity in the neocortex and rhythmical slow activity in the hippocampus) is correlated with arousal, while deactivation (the presence of large amplitude irregular slow waves or spindles in both the neocortex and the hippocampus) is correlated with sleep or coma. However, since there are many exceptions, these generalizations have only limited validity. Activated patterns occur in normal sleep (active or paradoxical sleep) and during states of anesthesia (...) and coma. Deactivated patterns occur, at times, during normal waking, or during behavior in awake animals treated with atropinic drugs. Also, the fact that patterns characteristic of sleep, arousal, and waking behavior continue in decorticate animals indicates that reticulo-cortical mechanisms are not essential for these aspects of behavior. (shrink)

In orthodox quantum mechanics, it has virtually become the custom to identify properties of a physical system with operationally testable propositions about the system. The causes and consequences of this practice are explored mathematically in this paper. Among other things, it is found that such an identification imposes severe constraints on the admissible states of the physical system.