Previously published studies have reported that 150 min of short-term monocular deprivation temporarily changes perceptual eye dominance. However, the possible mechanisms underlying monocular deprivation-induced perceptual eye dominance plasticity remain unclear. Using a binocular phase and contrast co-measurement task and a multi-pathway contrast-gain control model, we studied the effect of 150 min of monocular pattern deprivation in normal adult subjects. The perceived phase and contrast varied significantly with the interocular contrast ratio, and after MPD, the patched eye became dominant. Most importantly, (...) we focused on the potential mechanisms of the deprivation effect. The data of an averaged subject was best fitted by a model, which assumed a monocular signal enhancement of the PE after the MPD. The present findings might have important implications for investigations of binocular vision in both normal and amblyopic populations. (shrink)

With only two to five slots of visual working memory (VWM), humans are able to quickly solve complex visual problems to near optimal solutions. To explain the paradox between tightly constrained VWM and impressively complex human visual problem‐solving ability, we propose several principles for dynamic VWM allocation. In particular, we propose that complex visual information is represented in a temporal manner using only a few slots of VWM that include global and local visual chunks. We built a model of human (...) traveling salesman problem solving based on these principles of VWM allocation and tested the model with eye‐movement data. Exactly as the model predicted, human eye movements during traveling salesman problem solving have precise quantitative regularities with regard to both the general statistical pattern of attentional fixations and how they vary across individuals with different VWM capacities. Even though VWM capacity is very limited, eye movements dynamically allocate VWM resources to both local and global information, enabling attention to fine details without loss of the big picture. (shrink)

Background: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing [EMDR] is an innovative, evidence-based and effective psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]. As with other psychotherapies, the effectiveness of EMDR contrasts with a limited knowledge of its underlying mechanism of action. In its relatively short life as a therapeutic option, EMDR has not been without controversy, in particular regarding the role of the bilateral stimulation as an active component of the therapy. The high prevalence of EMDR in clinical practice and the dramatic (...) increase in EMDR research in recent years, with more than 26 randomized controlled trials published to date, highlight the need for a better understanding of its mechanism of action. Methods: We conducted a thorough systematic search of studies published until October 2017, using PubMed, ScienceDirect, Web of Knowledge and Scopus databases that examined the mechanism of action of EMDR or provided conclusions within the framework of current theoretical models of EMDR functioning. Results: Seventy-five studies were selected for review and classified into three overarching models; (i) psychological models (ii) psychophysiological models and (iii) neurobiological models. The evidence available from each study was analysed and discussed. Results demonstrated a reasonable empirical support for the working memory hypothesis and for the physiological changes associated with successful EMDR therapy. Recently, more sophisticated structural and functional neuroimaging studies using high resolution structural and temporal techniques are starting to provide preliminary evidence into the neuronal correlates before, during and after EMDR therapy. Discussion: Despite the increasing number of studies that published in recent years, the research into the mechanisms underlying EDMR therapy are still in its infancy. Studies in well-defined clinical and non-clinical populations, larger sample sizes and tighter methodological control are further needed in order to establish firm conclusions. (shrink)

Eye contact plays a critical role in many aspects of face processing, including the processing of smiles. We propose that this is achieved by a subcortical route, which is activated by eye contact and modulates the cortical areas involve in social cognition, including the processing of facial expression. This mechanism could be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

E-Z Reader fits key parameters from one corpus of eye movement data, but has not really been tested with new data sets. More critically, it is argued that the key mechanism driving eye movements – a serial process involving a proportion of word recognition time – is implausible on the basis of a broad range of experimental findings.

In the recent literature on explanation in biology, increasing attention is being paid to the connection between design explanation and mechanistic explanation, viz. the role of design principles and heuristics for mechanism discovery and mechanistic explanation. In this paper we extend the connection between design explanation and mechanism discovery by prizing apart two different types of design explanation and by elaborating novel heuristics that one specific type offers for mechanism discovery across species. We illustrate our claims in (...) terms of two lines of biological research on the biological advantages of organismal traits, one on the eye-size of giant squid, the other on foraging habits of specific bat species. We argue that this research illustrates useful heuristics for mechanism discovery across species, viz. reasoning strategies to infer likely mechanisms for a certain biological role based on assessments of the environmental conditions in which the role is performed efficiently and less or in-efficiently. We bring out the novel features of our analysis in terms of a comparison with mechanistic approaches to mechanism discovery, amongst which graph-theoretical ones, and by comparing the different types of design explanation and the discovery heuristics they support. (shrink)

Existing research shows that people can improve their decision skills by learning what experts paid attention to when faced with the same problem. However, in domains like financial education, effective instruction requires frequent, personalized feedback given at the point of decision, which makes it time‐consuming for experts to provide and thus, prohibitively costly. We address this by demonstrating an automated feedback mechanism that allows amateur decision‐makers to learn what information to attend to from one another, rather than from an (...) expert. In the first experiment, eye movements of N = 100 subjects were recorded while they repeatedly performed a standard behavioral finance investment task. Consistent with previous studies, we found that a significant proportion of subjects were affected by decision bias. In the second experiment, a different group of N = 100 subjects faced the same task but, after each choice, they received individual, machine learning‐generated feedback on whether their pre‐decision eye movements resembled those made by Experiment 1 subjects prior to good decisions. As a result, Experiment 2 subjects learned to analyze information similarly to their successful peers, which in turn reduced their decision bias. Furthermore, subjects with low Cognitive Reflection Test scores gained more from the proposed form of process feedback than from standard behavioral feedback based on decision outcomes. (shrink)

Eye gaze is a ubiquitous cue in child–caregiver interactions, and infants are highly attentive to eye gaze from very early on. However, the question of why infants show gaze-sensitive behavior, and what role this sensitivity to gaze plays in their language development, is not yet well-understood. To gain a better understanding of the role of eye gaze in infants' language learning, we conducted a broad systematic review of the developmental literature for all studies that investigate the role of eye gaze (...) in infants' language development. Across 77 peer-reviewed articles containing data from typically developing human infants in the domain of language development, we identified two broad themes. The first tracked the effect of eye gaze on four developmental domains: vocabulary development, word–object mapping, object processing, and speech processing. Overall, there is considerable evidence that infants learn more about objects and are more likely to form word–object mappings in the presence of eye gaze cues, both of which are necessary for learning words. In addition, there is good evidence for longitudinal relationships between infants' gaze following abilities and later receptive and expressive vocabulary. However, many domains are understudied; further work is needed to decide whether gaze effects are specific to tasks, such as word–object mapping or whether they reflect a general learning enhancement mechanism. The second theme explored the reasons why eye gaze might be facilitative for learning, addressing the question of whether eye gaze is treated by infants as a specialized socio-cognitive cue. We concluded that the balance of evidence supports the idea that eye gaze facilitates infants' learning by enhancing their arousal, memory, and attentional capacities to a greater extent than other low-level attentional cues. However, as yet, there are too few studies that directly compare the effect of eye gaze cues and non-social, attentional cues for strong conclusions to be drawn. We also suggest that there might be a developmental effect, with eye gaze, over the course of the first 2 years of life, developing into a truly ostensive cue that enhances language learning across the board. (shrink)

In the recent literature on explanation in biology, increasing attention is being paid to the connection between design explanation and mechanistic explanation, viz. the role of design principles and heuristics for mechanism discovery and mechanistic explanation. In this paper we extend the connection between design explanation and mechanism discovery by prizing apart two different types of design explanation and by elaborating novel heuristics that one specific type offers for mechanism discovery across species. We illustrate our claims in (...) terms of two lines of biological research on the biological advantages of organismal traits, one on the eye-size of giant squid, the other on foraging habits of specific bat species. We argue that this research illustrates useful heuristics for mechanism discovery across species, viz. reasoning strategies to infer likely mechanisms for a certain biological role based on assessments of the environmental conditions in which the role is performed efficiently and less or in-efficiently. We bring out the novel features of our analysis in terms of a comparison with mechanistic approaches to mechanism discovery, amongst which graph-theoretical ones, and by comparing the different types of design explanation and the discovery heuristics they support. (shrink)

Reichle et al. argue that the mechanism that determines where to fixate the eyes is controlled mostly by low-level processes. Therefore, unlike other competing models (e.g., the SWIFT model), the E-Z Reader model cannot account for “global” regressions as a result of linguistic difficulties. We argue that the model needs to be extended to account for regressive saccades.

The time taken to react voluntarily to a stimulus is far longer than can be accounted for by ordinary processes of nerve conduction and synaptic delay, and varies unpredictably from trial to trial. Though random, the distribution of reaction times usually follows a relatively simple law, which in turn can be explained by the LATER model, in which a decision signal, representing belief in the existence of the target, rises in response to incoming sensory evidence from an initial value to (...) a criterion level at which action is initiated. But the rate of rise fluctuates randomly from trial, to an extent that cannot be explained by sensory noise at the input. These conclusions, confirmed by recording from neurons in the frontal eye fields, suggest that the randomness of reaction time is due to a deliberate, gratuitous, neural process which confers certain biological advantages as well as having implications for general ideas about the nature of ‘free will'. (shrink)

One of the dominant behavioral markers of visual-expert search strategy, Holistic Visual Processing (HVP), suggests that experts process information from a larger region of space in conjunction with a more focused gaze pattern in order to improve search speed and accuracy. To date, extant literature suggests that visual search expertise is domain specific, including HVP and its associated behaviors. The current study is the first to use eye tracking to directly measure the HVP strategies of two expert groups, radiologists and (...) architects, in comparison to one another and a novice control. In doing so, we replicated and extended this prior research: visual expertise is domain specific. However, our eye tracking data indicate that contrary to this prior work, HVP strategies are transferable across domains. Yet, despite the transfer of HVP strategies, there is neither reduced search time nor greater accuracy in visual search outside of an expert’s domain. Therefore, our data suggest that HVP behaviors are a particular form of visual search mechanism that, outside of an expert’s native search-ecology, are not necessarily conducive to more general visual search success. It is in addition to explicit knowledge of an expert’s domain, how to search, and where to search, that HVP strategies are their most effective for visual search success. (shrink)

Observing averted eye gaze results in the automatic allocation of attention to the gazed-at location. The role of the orientation of the face that produces the gaze cue was investigated. The eyes in the face could look left or right in a head-centred frame, but the face itself could be oriented 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise such that the eyes were gazing up or down. Significant cueing effects to targets presented to the left or right of the screen were found (...) in these head orientation conditions. This suggests that attention was directed to the side to which the eyes would have been looking towards, had the face been presented upright. This finding provides evidence that head orientation can affect gaze following, even when the head orientation alone is not a social cue. It also shows that the mechanism responsible for the allocation of attention following a gaze cue can be influenced by intrinsic object-based (i.e. head-centred) properties of the task-irrelevant cue. (shrink)

In this single-blind within-subject study, autonomic and EEG variables were compared during 10-min, order-balanced eyes-closed rest and Transcendental Meditation (TM) sessions. TM sessions were distinguished by (1) lower breath rates, (2) lower skin conductance levels, (3) higher respiratory sinus arrhythmia levels, and (4) higher alpha anterior-posterior and frontal EEG coherence. Alpha power was not significantly different between conditions. These results were seen in the first minute and were maintained throughout the 10-min sessions. TM practice appears to (1) lead to a (...) state fundamentally different than eyes-closed rest; (2) result in a cascade of events in the central and autonomic nervous systems, leading to a rapid change in state (within a minute) that was maintained throughout the TM session; and (3) be best distinguished from other conditions through autonomic and EEG alpha coherence patterns rather than alpha power. Two neural networks that may mediate these effects are suggested. The rapid shift in physiological functioning within the first minute might be mediated by a ''neural switch'' in prefrontal areas inhibiting activity in specific and nonspecific thalamocortical circuits. The resulting ''restfully alert'' state might be sustained by a basal ganglia-corticothalamic threshold regulation mechanism automatically maintaining lower levels of cortical excitability. (shrink)

Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension have shown greater difficulty to parse sentences that present a word order that does not respect the order of participants of the verb's lexico-semantic structure, irrespective to whether the sentences follow the canonical word order of the language or not. This (...) difficulty has been accounted as the cognitive cost related to the miscomputation of prominence status of the argument that precedes the verb. Nonetheless, the authors only analyzed the use of alternative word orders in isolated sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic motivation of word order alternation. By means of an eye-tracking task, the current study provides further evidence about the role of information structure for the comprehension of sentences with alternative word order and verb type, and sheds light on the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. We analyzed both “early” and “late” eye-movement measures as well as accuracy and response times to comprehension questions. Results showed an overall influence of information structure reflected in a modulation of late eye-movement measures as well as offline measures like total reading time and questions response time. However, effects related to the miscomputation of prominence status did not fade away when sentences were preceded by a context that led to non-canonical word order of constituents, showing that prominence computation is a core mechanism for argument interpretation, even in sentences preceded by context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 87-92 [Access article in PDF] Christian Prayer Seen from the Eye of a Buddhist Kenneth K. Tanaka Musashino Women's University, Tokyo When I think about Christian prayer, the image I get is that of a young girl of about eight years old with long brown hair. Wearing a nightgown, she is kneeling next to her bed with her hands clasped and her head bowed. I (...) have often queried myself about the source of this image. This is an interesting question in itself. I personally don't know of anyone who fits that description or who has actually witnessed someone like her in prayer. Nevertheless, it is interesting how a Buddhist raised in a predominately Christian society comes to form his image of Christian prayer.Working further with this image, I see this little girl—let's call her Megan—doing two things in her evening prayer. One is that she is giving thanks to God for the benefits she has received. She thanks him for her food, clothing, friends, and family. Then, she also makes a request. In this petitionary element of her prayer, she is asking God to make her sick father get well soon. As she does so, her expression turns more serious, and she clasps her hands more firmly and brings them closer to her chest. She then looks up toward the ceiling, expressing her heartfelt wish for her father's early recovery. What is noteworthy is that Megan's prayers are spoken aloud as in a human conversation.I realize that this image does not do justice to a topic as enormous as "Christian prayer," but I believe that it provides a glimpse into how one Buddhist imagines the topic. I have a number of questions about Megan's prayer, particularly as I try to understand what may be going on inside of her. I wonder first and foremost, what God looks like to her. Is God a male or a female, or neither? I would think that even for her (in this gender-sensitive age), God is still a male. If so, does she see him as an elderly man with a long white beard, holding a cane and sitting in a throne? Next, where does God reside? If he is in heaven, what is heaven like to her? I wonder if heaven is located somewhere amidst the lofty, puffy clouds. In regards to her father's illness, how does she think God can make her father get well? What is the mechanism by which a personified God can heal? Perhaps I am being too analytical and overly rigorous with my questions about a spiritual act, and that of an eight-year-old at that.Perhaps I should, instead, turn the questions toward me, asking how I would [End Page 87] answer the same questions about a Buddhist girl "praying" before the Buddha or a bodhisattva for the same kind of wish? The image that immediately crops up in my mind is of a girl of about twelve and her mother whom I saw at a pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, a number of years ago. The girl is wearing a large, red fresh flower in her hair and has on traditional apparel. She sits with her mother on a marble floor of a spacious area in front of Buddha images that are several meters in height. She holds a bouquet of flowers held upright between the palms of hands in a gesture of reverence. She sits with her legs folded but thrown out to her side, a style common in her country as well as in Thailand. Her eyes appear closed, and her head is slightly bowed down toward the Buddha images. She stays in that posture for what seems like several minutes; her mother does the same. I don't know, of course, what is going on inside, but she is certainly not meditating.I believe this is an important point to make here, for Buddhists are stereotypically seen to only meditate. However, the vast majority of lay Buddhists... (shrink)

A classic problem in cognitive science concerns how listeners perceive and understand speech as comprised of discrete words. We propose a Syllable Inference account of spoken word recognition and segmentation, under which alternative hierarchical models of syllables, words, and phonemes are dynamically posited from cues that include current and past speech rate, with a goal of maximal prediction of sensory input. Three experiments using the Visual World eye‐tracking paradigm provide evidence supporting our proposal.

Stem cell tourism—the flow of patients from home countries to destination countries to obtain stem cell treatment—is a growing business in China. Many concerns have been raised regarding fraudsters that operate unsafe stem cell therapies and an officialdom that turns a blind eye to the questionable technology. The Chinese regulatory approach to stem cell research is based on Guidelines and Administrative Measures, rather than legislation, and may have no binding force on certain institutions, such as military hospitals. There is no (...) liability and traceability system and no visible set of penalties for non-compliance in the stem cell legal framework. In addition to the lack of safety and efficacy systems in the regulations, no specific expert authority has been established to monitor stem cell therapy to date. Recognizing the global nature of stem cell tourism, this article argues that resolving stem cell tourism issues may require not only the Chinese government but also an international mechanism for transparency and ethical oversight. A stringent set of international regulations that govern stem cell therapies can encourage China to improve stem cell regulation and enforcement to fulfill its obligations. Through an international consensus, a minimum standard for clinical stem cell research and a central enforcement system will be provided. As a result, rogue clinics that conduct unauthorized stem cell therapies can be penalized, and countries that are reluctant to implement the reconciled regulations should be sanctioned. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSocial attentional biases are a core component of social anxiety disorder, but research has not yet determined their direction due to methodological limitations. Here we present preliminary findings from a novel, dynamic eye-tracking paradigm allowing spatial–temporal measurement of attention and gaze-following, a mechanism previously unexplored in social anxiety. 105 participants took part, with those high and low in social anxiety traits entered into the analyses. Participants watched a video of an emotionally-neutral social scene, where two actors periodically shifted their (...) gaze towards the periphery. HSA participants looked more at the actors’ faces during the initial 2s than the LSA group but there were no group differences in proportion of first fixations to the face or latency to first fixate the face, although HSA individuals’ first fixations to the face were shorter. No further differences in eye movements were found, nor in gaze-following beha... (shrink)

The Einstellung effect occurs when the first idea that comes to mind, triggered by familiar features of a problem, prevents a better solution being found. It has been shown to affect both people facing novel problems and experts within their field of expertise. We show that it works by influencing mechanisms that determine what information is attended to. Having found one solution, expert chess players reported that they were looking for a better one. But their eye movements showed that they (...) continued to look at features of the problem related to the solution they had already thought of. The mechanism which allows the first schema activated by familiar aspects of a problem to control the subsequent direction of attention may contribute to a wide range of biases both in everyday and expert thought - from confirmation bias in hypothesis testing to the tendency of scientists to ignore results that do not fit their favoured theories. (shrink)

PurposeTo investigate spontaneous brain activity in patients with dry eye and healthy control using the fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation technique with the aim of elucidating the relationship between the clinical symptoms of DE and changes in brain function.Material and MethodsA total of 28 patients with DE and 28 matched healthy volunteers were enrolled. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans were performed in both groups. Then all subjects were required to complete a comprehensive Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Receiver (...) operating characteristic curve analysis was used to evaluate the differences in fALFF values between the two groups and their diagnostic value. Linear correlations between HADS and fALFF values in different brain regions of DE patients were analyzed using the Pearson correlation coefficient.ResultsPatients with DE had significantly higher fALFF values in the left calcarine sulcus than the HC group, while fALFF values in the bilateral middle frontal gyrus and right MFG/right inferior frontal gyrus were significantly lower in DE patients than in HC group. fALFF values had a high diagnostic value for differentiating patients with DE from the HC group. Right MFG and right MFG/IFG were significantly correlated with HADS values.ConclusionOur study found that DE mainly involved functional disorders in the brain areas of the left CS, bilateral MFG and right MFG/right IFG, which helped us to find possible clinical features of DE disease and reflected the potential pathological mechanism of DE. (shrink)

We explore the following two cognitive questions regarding crosslinguistic variation in lexical semantic systems: Why are some linguistic categories—that is, the associations between a term and a portion of the semantic space—harder to learn than others? How does learning a language‐specific set of lexical categories affect processing in that semantic domain? Using a computational word‐learner, and the domain of color as a testbed, we investigate these questions by modeling both child acquisition of color terms and adult behavior on a non‐verbal (...) color discrimination task. A further goal is to test an approach to lexical semantic representation based on the principle that the more languages label any two situations with the same word, the more conceptually similar those two situations are. We compare such a crosslinguistically based semantic space to one based on perceptual similarity. Our computational model suggests a mechanistic explanation for the interplay between term frequency and the semantic closeness of learned categories in developmental error patterns for color terms. Our model also indicates how linguistic relativity effects could arise from an acquisition mechanism that yields language‐specific topologies for the same semantic domain. Moreover, we find that the crosslinguistically inspired semantic space supports these results at least as well as—and in some aspects better than—the purely perceptual one, thus confirming our approach as a practical and principled method for lexical semantic representation in cognitive modeling. (shrink)

We discuss the role of synchrony of activationin higher-level cognitive processes. Inparticular, we analyze the question of whethersynchrony of activation provides a mechanismfor compositional representation in neuralsystems. We will argue that synchrony ofactivation does not provide a mechanism forcompositional representation in neural systems.At face value, one can identify a level ofcompositional representation in the models thatintroduce synchrony of activation for thispurpose. But behavior in these models isalways produced by means conjunctiverepresentations in the form of coincidencedetectors. Therefore, models that rely (...) onsynchrony of activation lack the systematicityand productivity of true compositional systems.As a result, they cannot distinguish betweentype and token representations, which resultsin misrepresentations of spatial relations andpropositions. Furthermore, higher-levelcognitive processes will likely integrateinformation from widely distributed areas inthe brain, which puts severe restrictions onthe underlying neural dynamics if synchrony ofactivation is to play a role in theseprocesses. We will briefly discuss theserestrictions in the case of feature binding invisual cognition. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the moral concept of harm in the context of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. This paper delineates between two concepts of wrongful harm: interactional versus architectural. It then examines these options with an eye toward developing a satisfactory normative approach for policy. While the interactional view of wrongful harm supports powerful arguments about moral responsibility, it has some clear limitations. This paper makes a case for the architectural view by underlining that (...) it is not only compatible with the features of the Paris Agreement but also supports a distinctive conception of justice. (shrink)

Determination of cell fate in the developing eye of Drosophila depends on a precise sequence of cellular interactions which generate the stereotypic array of ommatidia. In the eye imaginal disc, an initially unpatterned epithelial sheath of cells, the first step in this process may be the specification of R8 photoreceptor cells at regular intervals. Genes such as Notch and scabrous, known to be involved in bristle development, alos participate in this process, suggesting that the specification of ommatidial founder cells and (...) the formation of sensory organs in the adult epidermis may involve a similar mechanism, that of lateral inhibition. The subsequent steps of ommatidial assembly, following R8 assignment, involve a different mechanism: Undetermined cells read their position based on the contacts they make with neighbors that have already begun to differentiate. The development of the R7 photoreceptor cell, one of the eight photoreceptor cells in the ommatidium, is best understood. An important role seems to be played by sevenless, a receptor tyrosine kinase on the surface of the R7 precursor. It transmits the positional information– most likely encoded by the boss protein on the neighboring R8 cell membrane – into the cell via its tyrosine kinase, which activates a signal transduction cascade. Constitutive activation of the sevenless kinase by overexpression of an N‐terminally truncated form results in the diversion of other ommatidial cells into the R7 pathway suggesting that activation of the sevenless signalling pathway is sufficient to specify R7 development. Genetic dissection of this pathway should therefore identify components of a signalling cascade activated by a tyrosine kinase. (shrink)

In the seventeenth century the new science was introduced through the works of Bacon, Hooke, Boyle, Power, and others. The advocates of the new science promised to divulge the inner workings of nature and to help man overcome his painful fallen state by means of controlling nature. The new sciences of mechanism and corpuscularism were to be based on objective experiments that would reveal the secret inner natures of minerals, vegetables, animals, the sun, moon, and stars. These experiments were (...) done with new and improved telescopes and microscope with magnifications of up to 100 times. One early critic of the new science was Margaret Cavendish. Cavendish was skeptical of the ambitious claims, methodology, instruments, and institutions of the new science. In her work, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, Cavendish argued against “experimental and dioptrical writers,” provided her own account of the natural world, investigated aspects of chemistry, medicine, and the nature of heat and color, as well as many other topics in natural philosophy (OEP 10). While many think Cavendish landed on the wrong side of history with respect to her skepticism regarding microscopes and telescopes, her criticisms of the new science were wide ranging and she was by no means the only one to question the value of such experiments and instruments. While several commentators, like Eve Keller (1997), have argued that Cavendish was against all things experimental, several recent commentators, Emma Wilkins (2014) and Deborah Boyle (2018), have tried to show the much more complicated relationship between Cavendish and the Royal Society and medical studies, respectively. In addition, some commentators, such as Lisa Sarasohn (1984, 2010) and Eve Keller (1997), have argued that Cavendish’s criticisms of the new science are based on her belief that Nature, as a representation of the feminine, was under attack by the experimentalists desire to “penetrate” and “manipulate” her for their own ends. While it is certainly true that Cavendish and many of the experimentalists personified nature as a woman, and that Cavendish does portray the men as trying to make her into something she is not, I agree with Deborah Boyle (2004) that these descriptions are not the focus of her objections to experimentalism. Rather than hold that Cavendish is concerned with, as Sarasohn claims, “the sexual implications for both women and nature of the new philosophy” (2010: 147), it seems that Cavendish’s objections were largely based on her philosophical commitments. However, I believe there is one aspect of the new science that Cavendish does critique from a feminist perspective, and that is what she sees as its institutional nature and its exclusion of women on the basis of sex, and to this I will turn in the last section of the chapter.1 My aim is to address Cavendish’s three major critiques of the new science. The chapter is divided as follows: The first section provides a brief overview of Cavendish’s views on the nature of bodies and perception. The second regards her critique of the methods and aims of the new science as represented by Bacon and Boyle. The third section examines her critique of Hooke and the instruments of experimentalism. The final section lays out her feminist critique of the institution of the new science. (shrink)

This study investigated the impact of online product reviews on consumers purchasing decisions by using eye-tracking. The research methodology involved development of a conceptual framework of online product review and purchasing intention through the moderation role of gender and visual attention in comments, and empirical investigation into the region of interest analysis of consumers fixation during the purchase decision process and behavioral analysis. The results showed that consumers’ attention to negative comments was significantly greater than that to positive comments, especially (...) for female consumers. Furthermore, the study identified a significant correlation between the visual browsing behavior of consumers and their purchase intention. It also found that consumers were not able to identify false comments. The current study provides a deep understanding of the underlying mechanism of how online reviews influence shopping behavior, reveals the effect of gender on this effect for the first time and explains it from the perspective of attentional bias, which is essential for the theory of online consumer behavior. Specifically, the different effects of consumers’ attention to negative comments seem to be moderated through gender with female consumers’ attention to negative comments being significantly greater than to positive ones. These findings suggest that practitioners need to pay particular attention to negative comments and resolve them promptly through the customization of product/service information, taking into consideration consumer characteristics, including gender. (shrink)

Time preference reversals refers to systematic inconsistencies between preferences and valuations in intertemporal choice. When faced with a pair of intertemporal options, people preferred the smaller-sooner option but assign a higher price to the larger-later one. Different hypotheses postulate that the differences in evaluation scale or output format between the choice and the bid tasks cause the preference reversal. However, these hypotheses have not been distinguished. In the present study, we conducted a hybrid task, which shares the same evaluation scale (...) with the bid task and shares the same output format with the choice task. By comparing these three tasks, we can figure out the key reason for time preference reversal. The eye-tracking measures reflecting attention allocation, cognitive effort and information search pattern were examined. Results showed that participants' time preference and eye-tracking measures in the hybrid task were similar to those in the choice task, but different from those in the bid task. Our findings suggest that the output format is the core reason for time preference reversal and may deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie time preference reversal. (shrink)

In ‘Minds, Machines and Gödel’, 1961, J. R. Lucas proposed that Godel's theorem made possible a refutation of mechanism—the thesis that mind is wholly comprehensible as a consistent, rule-governed machine. A sympathetic reading of Lucas's argument might run something as follows: ‘If I am a machine then it will be possible in principle to give a specification of the consistent formal system, L, that represents me. If this formal system were handed to me, I would be able to prove (...) a Gödel sentence, G, which L could not generate—that is, L could not model my proving G. But since I have proved G, L is inadequate as a model of my cognitive process.’. (shrink)

In ‘Minds, Machines and Gödel’, 1961, J. R. Lucas proposed that Godel's theorem made possible a refutation of mechanism—the thesis that mind is wholly comprehensible as a consistent, rule-governed machine. A sympathetic reading of Lucas's argument might run something as follows: ‘If I am a machine then it will be possible in principle to give a specification of the consistent formal system, L, that represents me. If this formal system were handed to me, I would be able to prove (...) a Gödel sentence, G, which L could not generate—that is, L could not model my proving G. But since I have proved G, L is inadequate as a model of my cognitive process.’. (shrink)

Howard Adelmann’s majestic five volume Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology was published nearly 50 years ago. A mix of paraphrase and translation, as well as extended commentary, Adelmann described Malpighi as “one of the cardinal figures in the history of biology. As we look back over the three centuries that separate him from us, he may, for all his towering stature, at first glance seem a distant figure. And yet he and his work are not so remote after (...) all” . Much has changed in the history of biology since Adelmann’s groundbreaking work, and among the many lessons to be taken from Domenico Bertoloni-Meli’s carefully researched, persuasive and, at times, beautifully rendered book is that the life sciences in the early modern period must be studied with an eye to the history of science, medicine and philosophy—i.e., calling Malpighi simply a “biologist” is very liable to mislead. This point, though only implicit in Meli’s choice to study Malpighi “in relati .. (shrink)

We recorded participants' eye movements while they read sentences containing verb‐phrase coordination. Results showed evidence of immediate processing disruption when a reflexive pronoun embedded in the conjoined verb phrase mismatched the sentence subject. We argue that this result is incompatible with models of human parsing that employ only bottom‐up parsing procedures, even when flexible constituency is employed. Models need to incorporate a mechanism similar to the adjoining operation in Tree‐Adjoining Grammar, in which one structure is inserted into another.

In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye-detector mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are “watched” by images of a robot presented on their computer screen. The robot—named Kismet and invented at MIT—is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent with (...) existing economic models of preferences, either self- or other-regarding. Subjects who are “watched” by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet. (shrink)

The mechanism by which humans perceive others differs greatly from how humans perceive inanimate objects. Unlike inanimate objects, humans have the distinct property of being “like me” in the eyes of the observer. This allows us to use the same systems that process knowledge about self-performed actions, self-conceived thoughts, and self-experienced emotions to understand actions, thoughts, and emotions in others. The authors propose that internal simulation mechanisms, such as the mirror neuron system, are necessary for normal development of recognition, (...) imitation, theory of mind, empathy, and language. Additionally, the authors suggest that dysfunctional simulation mechanisms may underlie the social and communicative deficits seen in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. (shrink)

This study investigated eye-movement patterns during emotion perception for children with hearing aids and hearing children. Seventy-eight participants aged from 3 to 7 were asked to watch videos with a facial expression followed by an oral statement, and these two cues were either consistent or inconsistent in emotional valence. Results showed that while normal-hearing children paid more attention to the upper part of the face, children with hearing aids paid more attention to the lower face after the oral statement was (...) presented. When there was an inconsistency between the visual and auditory cues, children with hearing aids were likely to increase attention to the upper face. The results revealed the underlying mechanism of deficits in emotion perception for hearing-impaired children. (shrink)

As a complement to his version of Euclid’s Optics, the Portuguese mathematician Francisco the Melo (1490-1536) wrote a short treatise on the principles of vision that also included a summary description of the components of the eye. Combining arguments of geometric and anatomical nature, that text helps us to understand some of the conflicting ideas of the Renaissance period, before Kepler, but it also invites us to reread the contributions of a number of authors from the Middle Ages, with a (...) particular focus on Alhacen and Witelo. Although Melo's theory of vision cannot be classified as exactly groundbreaking, it presents many interesting and singular peculiarities. In particular the way in which Melo justifies the existence of rays emitted by the eye while incorporating, at the same time, some elements of the intromission theories, and the clear steps he gives to single out the perpendicular ray in the mechanism behind a faithful and distinct vision. (shrink)

To describe phenomena that occur at different time scales, computational models of the brain must incorporate different levels of abstraction. At time scales of approximately 1/3 of a second, orienting movements of the body play a crucial role in cognition and form a useful computational level embodiment level,” the constraints of the physical system determine the nature of cognitive operations. The key synergy is that at time scales of about 1/3 of a second, the natural sequentiality of body movements can (...) be matched to the natural computational economies of sequential decision systems through a system of implicit reference called deictic in which pointing movements are used to bind objects in the world to cognitive programs. This target article focuses on how deictic bindings make it possible to perform natural tasks. Deictic computation provides a mechanism for representing the essential features that link external sensory data with internal cognitive programs and motor actions. One of the central features of cognition, working memory, can be related to moment-by-moment dispositions of body features such as eye movements and hand movements. (shrink)

In this thesis, I give a metascientific account of causality in medicine. I begin with two historical cases of causal discovery. These are the discovery of the causation of Burkitt’s lymphoma by the Epstein-Barr virus, and of the various viral causes suggested for cervical cancer. These historical cases then support a philosophical discussion of causality in medicine. This begins with an introduction to the Russo- Williamson thesis (RWT), and discussion of a range of counter-arguments against it. Despite these, I argue (...) that the RWT is historically workable, given a small number of modifications. I then expand Russo and Williamson’s account. I first develop their suggestion that causal relationships in medicine require some kind of evidence of mechanism. I begin with a number of accounts of mechanisms and produce a range of consensus features of them. I then develop this consensus position by reference to the two historical case studies with an eye to their operational competence. In particular, I suggest that it is mechanistic models and their representations which we are concerned with in medicine, rather than the mechanism as it exists in the world. -/- I then employ these mechanistic models to give an account of the sorts of evidence used in formulating and evaluating causal claims. Again, I use the two human viral oncogenesis cases to give this account. I characterise and distinguish evidence of mechanism from evidence of difference-making, and relate this to mechanistic models. I then suggest the relationship between types of evidence presents us with a means of tackling the reference-class problem. This sets the scene for the final chapter. Here, I suggest the manner in which these two different classes of evidence become integrated is also reflected in the way that developing research programmes change as their associated causal claims develop. (shrink)

Eye-related movements such as blinks and microsaccades are modulated during bistable perceptual tasks. However, if they play an active role during internal perceptual switches is not known. We conducted two experiments involving an ambiguous plaid stimulus, wherein participants were asked to continuously report their percept, which could consist of either unidirectional coherent or bidirectional component movement. Our main results show that blinks and microsaccades did not facilitate perceptual switches. On the contrary, a reduction in eye movements preceded the perceptual switch. (...) Blanks, on the other hand, thought to mimic the retinal consequences of a blink, consistently led to a switch. Through the timing of the blank-introduced perceptual change, we were able to estimate the delay between the internal switch and the response. This delay further allowed us to evaluate that the reduction in blink probability co-occurred with the internal perceptual switch. Additionally, our results indicate that distinct internal processes underlie the switch to coherent vs. component percept. Blanks exclusively facilitated a switch to the coherent percept, and only the switch to coherent percept was followed by an increase in blink rate. In a second study, we largely replicated the findings and included a microsaccade analysis. Microsaccades only showed a weak relation with perceptual switches, but their direction was correlated with the perceived motion direction. Nevertheless, our data suggests an interaction between microsaccades and blinks by showing that microsaccades were differently modulated around blinks compared with blanks. This study shows that a reduction in eye movements precedes internal perceptual switches indicating that the rate of blinks can set the stage for a reinterpretation of sensory input. While a perceptual switch based on changed sensory input usually leads to an increase in blink rate, such an increase was only present after the perceptual switch to coherent motion but absent after the switch to component percept. This provides evidence of different underlying mechanism or internal consequence of the two perceptual switches and suggests that blinks can uncover differences in internal percept-related processes that are not evident from the percept itself. (shrink)

One of the central problems in the philosophy of action is to spell out the distinction between action and what merely happens, e.g., a wink versus an eye twitch. This essay proposes a theory of action offering an account of this distinction. The central claim of the theory is that action is movement that is controlled by the mover, where movement is understood capaciously and control is characterized by a trio of conditions consisting of an aim condition, a modal (...) condition, and an explanatory condition. Importantly, being controlled is shown to be a determinable property of movements, and its determination dimensions are isolated. Paired with the claim that action is movement that is controlled by the mover, this account of control as a determinable illuminates the diversity within the category of action. (shrink)

Posterior parietal cortex has traditionally been considered to be a sensory association area in which higher-order processing and intermodal integration of incoming sensory information occurs. In this paper, evidence from clinical reports and from lesion and behavioral-electrophysiological experiments using monkeys is reviewed and discussed in relation to the overall functional organization of posterior parietal association cortex, and particularly with respect to a proposed posterior parietal mechanism concerned with the initiation and control of certain classes of eye and limb movements. (...) Preliminary data from studies of the effects of posterior parietal lesions on oculomotor control in monkeys are reported.The behavioral effects of lesions of posterior parietal cortex in monkeys have been found to be similar to those which follow analogous damage of the minor hemisphere in humans, while behavioral-electrophysiological experiments have disclosed classes of neurons in this area which have functional properties closely related to the behavioral acts that are disrupted by lesions of the area. On the basis of current data from these areas of study, it is proposed that the sensory association model of posterior parietal function is inadequate to account for the complexities of the present evidence. Instead, it now appears that many diverse neural mechanisms are locatedin partin parietal cortex, that some of these mechanisms are involved in sensory processing and perceptual functions, but that others participate in motor control, and that still others are involved in attentional, motivational, or emotional processes. It is further proposed that the elementary units of these various neural mechanisms are distributed within posterior parietal cortex according to the columnar hypothesis of Mountcastle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Carolina Hotchandani 633 Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair Now it happened that Metis was going to have a daughter, and she sat inside Zeus’s head hammering out a helmet and weaving a splendid robe for the coming child. Soon Zeus began to suffer from pounding headaches and cried out in agony. All the gods came running to help him, and skilled Hephaestus grasped his tools and (...) split open his father’s skull. Out sprang Athena, wearing the robe and the helmet, her gray eyes flashing. Thunder roared and the gods stood in awe. —from “Athena,” in D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths, 1962 I’ve never met the doctor who happens to be on call when I go into labor. A sweet-smelling aftershave precedes him into the delivery room. We’re gonna get that baby right out of you, he says, pulling a latex glove over one hand and stretching the opening wide so it snaps back with a loud smack against his wrist. I want those hands nowhere near me. I imagine him coaching little league, tapping his baseball cap to send signals to tiny players in the outfield. He chews gum for the entirety of my labor. After I push with all my might for three and a half hours and the baby has still not moved, he says with a half-wink, Poor thing. You’ll be so sore when this is all over. The baby’s been out of me for a while now, but that man is still inside. I go over what happened again and again, desperate to find the angle through which he exits the scene and stays gone. He sees himself from the outside: a hero who enters the scene in medias res, scenting the room with sweet nectars. He will stop in, introduce himself, smile his neighborly smile, before he sets off on a journey through the hospital. Doors will open, doors to women splayed on beds. Women 634 Carolina Hotchandani writhe; women scream in pain. Some will be monstrous—Scyllas and Charybdises among them. Their wounds will gape. Their wombs will pull against his virile strength. They hold the center of the earth within them; theirs, the blood of the wine-dark sea. Do not waver; do not let their currents steer you. Skate above the dark waters. Wait to come through the door till they quake, till they halve. Stand back till they split in two. Then sew them up, and it’s you, it’s you who’s made them new! Pull that man right out of my head. Let me be Zeus on this hospital bed.... (shrink)

Perception is a first-person internal sensation induced within the nervous system at the time of arrival of sensory stimuli from objects in the environment. Lack of access to the first-person properties has limited viewing perception as an emergent property and it is currently being studied using third-person observed findings from various levels. One feasible approach to understand its mechanism is to build a hypothesis for the specific conditions and required circuit features of the nodal points where the mechanistic operation (...) of perception take place for one type of sensation in one species and to verify it for the presence of comparable circuit properties for perceiving a different sensation in a different species. The present work explains visual perception in mammalian nervous system from a first-person frame of reference and provides explanations for the homogeneity of perception of visual stimuli above flicker fusion frequency, the perception of objects at locations different from their actual position, the smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements, the perception of object borders, and perception of pressure phosphenes. Using results from temporal resolution studies and the known details of visual cortical circuitry, explanations are provided for (a) the perception of rapidly changing visual stimuli, (b) how the perception of objects occurs in the correct orientation even though, according to the third-person view, activity from the visual stimulus reaches the cortices in an inverted manner and (c) the functional significance of well-conserved columnar organization of the visual cortex. A comparable circuitry detected in a different nervous system in a remote species-the olfactory circuitry of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster-provides an opportunity to explore circuit functions using genetic manipulations, which, along with high-resolution microscopic techniques and lipid membrane interaction studies, will be able to verify the structure-function details of the presented mechanism of perception. (shrink)

This study compares cognitive and emotional responses to 360-degree vs. static (2D) videos in terms of visual attention, brand recognition, engagement of the prefrontal cortex, and emotions. Hypotheses are proposed based on the interactivity literature, cognitive overload, advertising response model and motivation, opportunity, and ability theoretical frameworks, and tested using neurophysiological tools: electroencephalography, eye-tracking, electrodermal activity, and facial coding. The results revealed that gaze view depends on ad content, visual attention paid being lower in 360-degree FMCG ads than in 2D (...) ads. Brand logo recognition is lower in 360-degree ads than in 2D video ads. Overall, 360-degree ads for durable products increase positive emotions, which carries the risk of non-exposure to some of the ad content. In testing four ads for durable goods and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) this research explains the mechanism through which 360-degree video ads outperform standard versions. (shrink)

Where does consciousness come from? For most scientists and laypeople, it is axiomatic that something in the substance of the brain - neurons, synapses and grey matter in just the right combination - create perception, self-awareness, and intentionality. Yet despite decades of neurological research, that ""something"" - the mechanism by which this process is said to occur - has remained frustratingly elusive. This is no accident, as the authors of this book argue, given that the evidence increasingly points to (...) a startling fact: consciousness may not, in fact, reside in the brain at all. In this wide-ranging and deeply scientific book, Imants Baruss and Julia Mossbridge utilise findings from special relativity and quantum mechanics, modern and ancient philosophers, and paranormal psychology to build a rigorous, detailed investigation into the origins and nature of human consciousness. Along the way, they examine the scientific literature on concepts including mediumship, out-of-body and near-death experiences, telekinesis, ""apparent"" versus ""deep time,"" and mind-to-mind communication, and introduce eye-opening ideas about our shared reality. The result is a revelatory tour of the ""post-materialist"" world, and a roadmap for consciousness research in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Images >> Visual Vertigo:Gaëlle Foray's Homage to the DiscardedAmber Bal (bio)Gaëlle Foray's artistic style invites renewed meditation upon the two human processes that surround the artwork: first, the metamorphosis of raw materials into aesthetic object at the hands of the artist, and second, the phenomenology of perceiving art. On the side of reception (in other words, the viewer's experience of Foray's works), the artworks demand first to be felt. (...) Only following an immediate visceral "strike" of abstract, unfocused perception, does the analytical eye proceed to examine these intricate works up close, parsing their immense and meticulous detail. On the side of artistic creation, Foray's methods elicit questions about the artist's relationship to Earth's finite materials, to the tension between environmental awareness and our own extractive practices. Foray's response to issues of waste and consumption at the heart of artistic endeavors is that she exclusively uses discarded materials; a form of recycling, gleaning, and/or foraging in the lived world. Yet, her approach is distinct from the well-established use of objet trouvés ("found objects") in modern art. Unlike "anti-artworks" such as Marcel Duchamp's 1917 Fontaine (a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt") or Piero Manzoni's 1961 Merda d'artista, both of which offer "common objects" in their original state for aesthetic contemplation, Foray's works are not "readymades." As opposed to what Steven Goldsmith describes as Duchamp's "subordinat[ion] of form to concept," Foray manipulates and defamiliarizes her recycled artistic material through processes of collage and bricolage.1 She describes the transformation of collected objects as a means of "paying homage to waste," from natural matter like animal bones, minerals, and fossils to synthetic waste such as long-discarded plastic toys or Tupperware containers, abandoned family photo albums, and démodé dinner party utensils from the eighties.2What emerges from the selection of Foray's works featured in this issue is a clash between the ephemerality of the human lifespan and planetary spatio-temporal dimensions. Her artistic process forces vertiginous acknowledgement of the fragility of human existence as it presses up against that which the human tries to capture through art: the world. What's more, Earth's monumental landscapes only ever figure as and in fragments. Two specific conflicts return across Foray's works to create this sense of vertigo. First is the contrast between the limited human lifespan and the eternity of the fossil; as the latter is often figured alongside photographs of humans or man-made materials in a manner that draws attention to this unfathomably large geological temporal scale. A secondary contrast arises from Foray's recurrent human-nature juxtaposition as the boundedness of human life continually knocks up against raw and unruly natural matter. Foray's recourse to diverse textures and materials heightens these oppositions—schist lies atop bone, the smooth veneer of a photograph envelops a human form but rests against the jagged edges of a stone. As we shall explore through ruminations on specific pieces, her method prompts inquiry into the relationship between these human [End Page 110] and geological timescales, attesting Foray's remarkable ability to capture brevity and limitlessness in tandem. Of equal note is Foray's repeated, self-reflexive wink to art's mediation of the world through a "framing effect," as she regularly makes the protective screen of a work or staging of an exhibition space integral to the artwork itself. This is her own means of drawing attention to the conditions in which the work of art is encountered, both exaggerating the distantiating function of the frame in classical art which "served to make [artwork] discontinuous with its surroundings" and building upon the "readymade" tradition's abolition of the barrier between viewer and artwork.3Foray's pieces, composed from an amalgam of natural matter and industrial or household waste, operate as self-contained ecosystems that are akin to stumbling upon a diorama that has escaped from its box, or a snowglobe whose glass sphere has been shattered and from which the liquid has drained away. In La Mer (see pages 34/35), the background's glitter and the iridescent blues... (shrink)