Cogntive Psychology

Objective: We report three experiments evaluating the proposal that highlighting sec- tions of drug names using uppercase (“tall man”) lettering and/or color may reduce the confusability of similar drug names. Background: Medication errors commonly involve drug names that look or sound alike. One potential method of reducing these errors is to highlight sections of names on labels in order to emphasize the differences between similar products. Method: In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were timed as they decided whether similar name pairs were the same name or two different names. Experiment 3 was a recognition memory task. Results: Results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that highlighting sections of words using tall man lettering can make similar names easier to distinguish if participants are aware that this is the purpose of the intervention. Results from Experiment 3 suggested that tall man lettering and/or color does not make names less confusable in memory but that tall man letters may increase attention. Conclusion: These findings offer some support for the use of tall man letters in order to reduce errors caused by confusion between drug products with look-alike names. Application: The use of tall man letters could be applied in a vari- ety of visual presentations of drug names – for example, by manufacturers on packag- ing, labeling, and computer software, and in pharmacies on shelf labels. Additionally, this paper demonstrates two meaningful behavioral measures that can be used during product design to objectively assess confusability of packaging and labeling.

REVIEWS

"The text is engaging, well-crafted for an undergraduate audience, and is sure to inspire a generation of students."
--Michael J. Spivey, University of California, Merced

"This book is the most carefully written, thorough, up-to-date, and accessible single-author textbook on the theoretical issues of cognitive science I have read."
--John Douard, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University

"Bermudez presents here an approachable story of an integrated cognitive science that may well succeed where others have failed - defining the goals and ambitions of what an introductory course in cognitive science should try to do."
--Anthony Beavers, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, University of Evansville, Philosophical Psychology

"This book's breadth and depth of coverage is truly impressive. Bermudez explicates the science of the mind in a sophisticated yet understandable fashion, from its traditional roots in symbol processing to exciting new advances in dynamic, embodied, and situated cognition."
--Rob Goldstone, Professor of Psychology and Director, Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University

"The Bermudez text represents an accessible and thoughtful introduction to cognitive science."
--Karl Haberlandt, Professor of Psychology, Trinity College, Connecticut

"....The author does a good job reminding the reader why particular material is presented.... The author has a nice touch for providing just enough detail for the reader to understand examples.... The pedagogical aids are well designed in Cognitive Science.... Each chapter includes a brief summary and a checklist.... students will appreciate the brevity of the checklists, which are simply numbered lists of key points.... Bermúdez paints a coherent picture of the field and leaves us hopeful that we can actually understand something about the mind."
– David S. Kreiner, PsycCRITIQUES

"...The book does an admirable job of tackling its dual role as both text-book and monograph.... Bermúdez’s book is an outstanding work; it will prove to be of benefit to both students and their teachers and it makes many important contributions to several ongoing debates.
–Dr. Joel Walmsely, University College Cork, Ireland, Teorema

"...The book presents the main historical milestones of cognitive science and their particular methods, always with the aim to elucidate the connections and links between the different procedures and the whole project of understanding the mind from an information-processing point of view.... the book is highly pedagogical in the sense of preparing the reader with an overview, conveying the main discussion clearly and finally summarizing the main points. Another virtue of the book is the fact that the author indicates many internet recourses that the reader can use to continue her studies.... demonstrates how a philosopher could organize and make sense of many different ideas coming from very different domains.... it succeeds in providing a truly interdisciplinary overview that a specialized cognitive scientist could hardly supply; it is remarkable how Bermúdez moves from psychology to neuroscience, and then to robotics, mathematics or philosophy, demonstrating his general expertise in all these areas and proving to be a real cognitive scientist. This is an enlightening book which can be read with profit by all people interested in the scientific study of the mind...."
–Santiago Arango Muñoz, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Metapsychology

The role of emotional state on memory has been well established. How emotion provoking stimuli influence the cognitive processes is, however, not well understood. Our broad objective was to see the impact of emotion provoking visual stimulus on memory. Sixty images were generated using Indian version of the Geneva Affective Picture Database (GAPED). Four categories of images (child, adult, animal and landscape) were either pleasant or unpleasant in nature. These images were shown to thirty participants following a repeated measure design. Immediate free recall of the images was recorded to see the effect of type of image on recall. Bayesian inference was used to analyze the data. Results show evidence for effect of type of image on recall by 120:1 against the null. The model of image category was also preferred to the null by 35:1.

This paper deals with different forms of complexity in puzzle film, a recent trend in mainstream film that has appropriated complex storytelling devices from art-cinema, and slow cinema, a contemporary minimalistic trend in art house cinema that has its roots in post-war European art-cinema and experimental film.  This paper will attempt to answer the following questions: how can complexity be understood as a cognitive process; what different forms of complexity can a film play with; and lastly, what viewing strategies can viewers accordingly adopt?
The deficit of most existing accounts on the topic is that they lack a comprehensive definition of the phenomenon of complexity itself, because, it is argued in this paper, they overemphasis the formal-structural aspect over the felt experience of the viewer.  Case in point is William Brown’s argument, put forth in his contribution to Warren Buckland’s edited volume Hollywood Puzzle Films (2014), that ‘for all the complexity in and of Inception, […] the film is relatively ‘simple’, while for all of the apparent simplicity in and of Five, it is a deeply complex film’. This line of reasoning is problematic for both its conflation of different forms of complexity and for its underlying normative bias.
This paper adds to the debate a cognitive perspective on complexity, understood as a thwarting of the meaning making processes of the viewer (or the viewer’s understanding that is made difficult) on one or more of the following levels of: perception, comprehension and interpretation. By comparing comprehensive complexity in puzzle film, with Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) as a case study, with interpretive complexity in slow cinema, taking Five Dedicated to Ozu (Abbas Kiarostami, 2003) as a particularly interesting case, this paper contrasts different forms of complexity that pertain to different aspects of meaning making on the aforementioned levels.
The theoretical framework is derived from the adaptation of insights from the field of cognitive psychology to the field of film studies. The paper synthesizes cognitive theories of meaning with hermeneutic accounts of viewing strategies.
This paper thus seeks to bridge the gap between text-based approaches and viewer-centered approaches, because it is believed that disregarding either side of the equation will inevitably lead to inadequate or in the worst case invalid solutions to the issue of complexity. By doing so, it aims to get a better grip on the different cognitive challenges as well as pleasures that respectively puzzle film and slow cinema can afford. Ultimately, this is a necessary stepping stone for academia to get out of its normative trenches and move forward to more argumentatively humble, descriptive and explanatory plains.

This paper posits the need for a fourth component in the tripartite model of attitude. Attributions by spiritual persons differ from those of individualists and collectivists in that attributions of blame are dismissed (using forgiveness), and attributions of self-credit are ignored (credited instead to God). Arguments include the need to consider transcendence, the evolution of attitudinal models, unique concepts, cultural impact, and nonsecular attribution. Spirituality’s framework allows attributions to something other than people and situations, and attribution error avoidance using forgiveness and glory. Benefits include a fuller view of attitude, and applications to aid grief and family connectedness. Supported by previous developing research on attitude, the paper suggests adding a spiritual dimension to the existing affective, cognitive, and behavioral components.

El presente trabajo es una revisión y un análisis crítico de los principales hallazgos y propuestas de la investigación experimental sobre las creencias epistemológicas del estudiante y su mediación en el aprendizaje, señalando el estado actual del conocimiento en esta área y las implicaciones que tiene para la promoción de una mayor eficiencia en el aprendizaje escolar.
Se menciona la investigación realizada en torno de los estilos o preferencias de aprendizaje como antecedente al estudio de la epistemología personal y su diferencia. Se describe la influencia del trabajo inicial en las creencias del estudiante realizado por William Perry Jr., en 1968, el desarrollo de instrumentos de medición y la propuesta de paradigmas predictivos del desempeño académico.
La epistemología personal, de estudiante y profesor, aunada a las características de la tarea y del contexto educativo, influye sobre la perspectiva que el estudiante tiene de la tarea a realizar y sobre el tipo de estrategias de aprendizaje que selecciona, lo que implica una importancia potencial de su aprovechamiento para la planeación educativa. La revisión y el análisis que se presentan revisten gran importancia tanto para investigadores interesados en el área como para quienes tienen a su cargo la toma de decisiones educativas, y para aquellos que generan cotidianamente condiciones para facilitar el aprendizaje en sus estudiantes.
El trabajo aborda los problemas de estructura, naturaleza y desarrollo de la epistemología personal; señala algunas contradicciones surgidas para su comprensión y enfatiza la necesidad de contar con mejores instrumentos de medida en apoyo a la definición del constructo. Señala también implicaciones de las relaciones que el constructo tiene con aspectos del aprendizaje, tales como la motivación, la metacognición, el cambio conceptual y el aprendizaje autorregulado.

The first part of the essay, Rationality of Improvisation, is developed through two complementary directions. On the one hand it traces the plot through which a specific determination of Western rationality has marked the art music tradition of modernity. On the other hand, it identifies a specific alternative cognitive modality, defined audiotactile, which is inherent to the formative creative practices in real time, showing how its constitutive incompatibility with the structural epistemic logic of Western rationality has led to the modern eclipse of the ex tempore creativity, and to its resurgence today. In the second part, Improvisation of Rationality, are discussed in a pragmatic perspective such aesthetic issues as improvisational freedom, the situational and stylistic conditioning and their relationship with the authenticity and with the aesthetic truth, and whether it is possible to identify prospects for a normativity in improvisation.

Dual-system models of reasoning attribute errors of
judgment to two failures: the automatic operations of
a ‘System 1’ generate a faulty intuition, which the controlled
operations of a ‘System 2’ fail to detect and
correct. We identify System 1 with the automatic operations
of associative memory and draw on research in
the priming paradigm to describe how it operates. We
explain how three features of associative memory –
associative coherence, attribute substitution and processing
fluency – give rise to major biases of intuitive
judgment. Our article highlights both the ability of System
1 to create complex and skilled judgments and the
role of the system as a source of judgment errors.

Cognitive Enhancement, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (Fall 2018) course research paper on consciousness and meditation. Cognitive science has shown that sleep optimizes memory consolidation, in opposition to the action of the waking brain which theoretically only presents the encoding of memories (Rasch and Born, 2013).

This paper explores whether the waking brain during mindfulness meditation can also be of optimal use in consolidating memory and enhancing the process of working memory. Immink’s research results “provide the first demonstration of meditation-based promotion of motor memory consolidation in a wakeful period” (Immink, 2016), while there is little to no neurocognitive research fathoming the occurrence of memory consolidation during meditation.


Forward: This paper lacks proper structure, and may be challenging to follow through my anatomical and biochemical theory. These concepts are new to me, but I tried to make it as clear as possible at the time this was written.

Luke, D., Lungu, L., Friday, R., & Terhune, D. (2021, June 28). The chemical induction of synaesthesia. PsyArXiv, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/s6eh3

Objective Preliminary research suggests that experiences resembling synaesthesia are frequently reported under the influence of a diverse range of chemical substances although the incidence, chemical specificity, and characteristics of these effects are poorly understood. Methods Here we surveyed recreational drug users and self-reported developmental synaesthetes regarding their use of 28 psychoactive drugs comprising 12 different drug classes and whether they had experienced synaesthesia under the influence of these substances. Results The drug class tryptamines exhibited the highest incidence rates of drug-induced synaesthesia in controls and induction rates of novel forms of synaesthesia in developmental synaesthetes. Induction incidence rates in controls were strongly correlated with the corresponding induction and enhancement rates in developmental synaesthetes. In addition, the use of LSD was the strongest predictor of drug-induced synaesthesia in both controls and developmental synaesthetes. Clear evidence was observed for a clustering of synaesthesiainduction rates as a function of drug class in both groups, denoting non-random incidence rates within drug classes. Sound-colour synaesthesia was the most commonly observed type of induced synaesthesia. Further analyses suggest the presence of synaesthesia-prone individuals, who were more likely to experience drug-induced synaesthesia with multiple drugs. Conclusions These data corroborate the hypothesized link between drug-induced synaesthesia and serotoninergic activity, but also suggest the possibility of alternative neurochemical pathways involved in the induction of synaesthesia. They further suggest that the induction and modulation of synaesthesia in controls and developmental synaesthetes share overlapping mechanisms and that certain individuals may be more susceptible to experiencing induced synaesthesia with different drugs.

Terhune, D. B., Luke, D. P., Kaelen, M., Bolstridge, M., Feilding, A., Nutt, D., Carhart-Harris, R., Ward, J. (2016). A placebo-controlled investigation of synaesthesia-like experiences under LSD. Neuropsychologia, 88, 28-34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.04.005

Who was Jesus in real life? What inspired his ideas? What did he aim to achieve? What drew his disciples to him? How was he influenced by them? Unlike the many “quests for the historical Jesus”, as a  psychologist, Wernik answers these questions from the perspectives of psychology and the social sciences.
This book’s central axis is the theme of the father. It looks at the family
constellation into which Jesus was born, where he was raised by a stepfather. It also investigates the relationship he develops with God, his father in heaven; and examines how he became a father figure to his disciples and followers. It is hoped that readers will also think about their own father when reading, the one usually called “dad”.
Jesus and His Two Fathers sees Jesus’ love of peace and appeasement doctrine, as well as his difficulty with anger control, in the context of his upbringing and family constellation. Wernik offers a solution to the problem of the “missing years” which were unaccounted in the New Testament. He examines the internal conflicts in Jesus’ movement, and the tensions with the religious establishment, which led to his death. Jesus did not see himself as the Messiah, and Wernik shows him in fact as a great reformer of Judaism, who changed the notions of righteousness, the relation of the believers to God, and the
status of the commandments.

C. S. Peirce is often credited as a forerunner of the verificationist theory of meaning. In his early pragmatist papers, Peirce did say that if we want to make our ideas clear(er), then we should look downstream to their actual and future effects. For many who work in philosophy of mind, this is enough to endorse functionalism and dismiss the whole topic of qualia. It complexifies matters, however, to consider that the term qualia was introduced by the founder of pragmatism himself. Peirce was adamant that only triadic relations can support language and cognition. Even so, he insisted on purely logical grounds that, when we analyze triadic signs all the way, we are left with a qualitative residue he called Firstness. Such an isolated relatum could never be studied experimentally. Yet, given that this primitive state can be confirmed by means of a formal or prescissive distinction, I believe the Peircean account can do justice to many of the intuitions that generate the so-called hard problem of consciousness. My goal, then, is to show that Peirce's semiotic commitment to qualia is compatible with his foundational statements about pragmatism.

Tailor Press PO Box 18310 Beverly Hills, California 90209-4310 ... Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-90196 ... Printed in the United States of America ... P REFACE .................... ............................................................................ ix 1 - H ERE W E G O !............................................. ...

The present paper approaches Facebook as a cultural carnivalesque phenomenon. If we follow Mikhail Bakhtin’s view - it shares a number of defining features: excess, play, derision, ambivalence, multiple „voices” and a clearcut opposition to official Power. This opposition is not the expression of a clear message issued by a single author. It is mainly a reversal of the discourse of the o Other and the expression of freedom of views. As a play of masks Facebook allows its user to adopt an avatar considered to be immune of responsibility : it is what one can call an “public intimate” channel of communication. It is private but nonetheless expressed for a community of users. As a narrative it lacks a single author. Any user is author and lector; actor and audience. It represents a narrative without a closure and has family resemblance to play and performance.
As a social mechanism Facebook seeks affiliation as cooperation and competition as domination. A lot of Facebook elicit an emotional approach. Emotion is a construal – action readiness - based on the appraisal of a situation in virtue of current goals and concerns of the individual. A lot of Facebook testimonials display a personal experience that is undisputable “true” (lyrical and ego centred). As such Facebook is a constant conversion mechanism that transforms emotion into reasons for beliefs and an invitation to action readiness – either in the mode of cooperation or participation or in the mode of domination and competition. „I like” is the minimal expression of emotion that creates the gateway to belief conversion and action.
Keywords: Facebook, carnival, emotion, conversion, belief, action, narrative

Davis (2014) called for "extreme caution" in the use of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) to treat neurological disorders in children, due to gaps in scientific knowledge. We are sympathetic to his position. However, we must also address the ethical implications of applying this technology to minors. Compensatory trade-offs associated with NIBS present a challenge to its use in children, insofar as these trade-offs have the effect of limiting the child's future options. The distinction between treatment and enhancement has some normative force here. As the intervention moves away from being a treatment toward being an enhancement—and thus toward a more uncertain weighing of the benefits, risks, and costs—considerations of the child’s best interests (as judged by the parents) diminish, and the need to protect the child's (future) autonomy looms larger. NIBS for enhancement involving trade- offs should therefore be delayed, if possible, until the child reaches a state of maturity and can make an informed, personal decision. NIBS for treatment, by contrast, is permissible insofar as it can be shown to be at least as safe and effective as currently approved treatments, which are (themselves) justified on a best interests standard.

This paper reviews current research in the field of Specific Reading Difficulties in order to explore the implications that arise when applying a framework to define developmental disorders. I used Morton’s causal model to show how different components, underlying language incompetence, interact with each other and result in the behavioral aspects of dyslexia. The strong and weak points of such an approach are discussed and a combination of a causal with a more developmental model is proposed; the proposal is extended to intervention plans in dyslexia. Longitudinal studies in future will clarify the degree to which a model can cover the diverse aspects of developmental dyslexia and how this can be utilized by pedagogy.

Music is not a concept that emerged recently, in the past century or even centuries, but rather a big part of the human culture.  Music has found its place in many aspects of our everyday lives, from communication, to health, to therapy and so many others. The effect of music plays a role in the way in which people behave; some genres of music have been associated with negative behavior such as teenage alcohol consumption, teen-pregnancy, and poor academic performance. In the past half of a century many studies have been conducted in relation to music and its effect on cognitive performance. Some studies have found out that music does have an effect on the cognitive abilities of an individual, while other studies oppose this notion.  Does music have an effect on learning and academic performance? This study with the aid of surveys examined the difference in GPA between students that listened to some genres of music while studying and those that did not listen to any music and found no overall significant differences. The genre of music that is listened to has no effect on GPA of a student.

Mindfulness has been associated with enhanced performance monitoring, however, little is known about the processes driving this apparent neurocognitive benefit. Here, we tested if focusing present-moment awareness towards the non-judgmental experience of emotion facilitates the rapid neural responses to negative performance outcomes (i.e., mistakes). In particular, we compared whether directing present-moment awareness towards emotions or thoughts would enhance the neurophysiological correlates of performance monitoring: the error-related negativity (ERN) and the error positivity (Pe). Participants were randomly assigned to either a thought-focused or emotion-focused group, and first completed a pre-induction go/no-go task. Subsequently groups followed inductions that promoted mindful attention towards either thoughts or emotions, before completing a final post-induction go/no-go session. Results indicate that emotion-focused participants demonstrated higher neural sensitivity to errors in the time-course of the ERN, whereas focusing on thoughts had no effect on performance monitoring. In contrast, neither induction procedure altered the amplitude of the later Pe component. While our manipulations also induced changes in behaviour, the ERN effects remained significant after controlling for performance. Thus, our results suggest that mindfulness meditation boosts early neural performance monitoring (ERN amplitude) specifically through meditation’s influence on affective processing.

The most well know attribution of different brain regions to different psychological functions (types of thinking, types of memory, levels of consciousness) is that of hemispheric specialization. ‘Left Brain’ and ‘Right Brain’ is common parlance in both psychology and education. However, a number of writers have suggested that the popularized notion of hemispheric specialisation may be a ‘neuromyth’  (McCrone, 2000; Corbalis, 2012; Tokuma-Espinosa, 2011).This paper explores research on the lateralisation of function within the brain, not just in terms of the traditional ‘cerebral hemispheres’ perspective, but in terms the total brain, that is, including the cerebellum and brain stem. Rather than seeing hemispheric specialisation as a complete myth, this paper presents a more up to date and more realistically complex picture.

Many cognitive tasks have activated areas of the cingulate cortex. These include error detection, divided attention, conflict, and word generation tasks. However, the exact area of the cingulate found to be active has differed. This could be due to difference in subjects, laboratories, data analysis, or task conditions. The current study uses two very different tasks known to activate the cingulate and compares data from the same subjects and same trials to see whether there are temporal and spatial distinctions in cingulate activations. The tasks chosen were generation of the use of a noun and feedback that an error was made in the time window required for generation. Highdensity electrical recording was used to trace the time course of cingulate activation in the difference waves between correct and error feedback and between generate and repeat. Both tasks produced activity that is consistent with cingulate activation. However, the two tasks produced activity in different areas. These data are consistent with the idea that differences in areas of the cingulate activated differ between cognitive tasks and are not merely due to subject and laboratory differences. 1998 Academic Press

The paper presents an inferential model of explicit communication based on the speaker's interests and the addressee's beliefs. After the introduction, the paper sets out some notions concerning explicit communication within the frameworks of truth-conditional pragmatics and relevance theory. The third section describes the phenomenon of semantic underdeterminacy, and the fourth section introduces non-demonstrative inferences in communication. The fifth section presents the model. The main notions involved are the speaker's intended meaning and the addressee's intended meaning. The former notion is centered on the speaker's interest in situation: a speaker intends the meaning of an utterance on the basis of a partial order of preference with respect to a set of contextually plausible meanings. The latter notion is centered on the addressee's communicative inference, which is based on the addressee's belief about the speaker's interest. The paper takes the notion of interest from cognitive social theory, the notion of meaning from semantics, and the notion of explicit meaning from pragmatics; and it uses the notion of communicative inference for explicit meaning in partial accordance with relevance theory. In the sixth section, the paper argues in favor of the inferential approach compared with the associative approach in determination of " what is said. " The paper's method is conceptual analysis of declarative utterances used in communicative situations. The main finding of the paper has been to show that, in contextual underdeterminacy cases, speaker's interest is a determining factor in communicative processes.

Disagreement exists about how bilingual speakers select words, in particular, whether words in another language compete, or competition is restricted to a target language, or no competition occurs. Evidence that competition occurs but is restricted to a target language comes from response time (RT) effects obtained when speakers name pictures in one language while trying to ignore distractor words in another language. Compared to unrelated distractor words, RT is longer when the picture name and distractor are semantically related, but RT is shorter when the distractor is the translation of the name of the picture in the other language. These effects suggest that distractor words from another language do not compete themselves but activate their counterparts in the target language, thereby yielding the semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Here, we report an event-related brain potential (ERP) study testing the prediction that priming underlies both of these effects. The RTs showed semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Moreover, the picture-word stimuli yielded an N400 response, whose amplitude was smaller on semantic and translation trials than on unrelated trials, providing evidence that interference and facilitation priming underlie the RT effects. We present the results of computer simulations showing the utility of a within-language competition account of our findings.

Rationale/Course Objectives: In this course, we examine the exciting dynamics of communication encounters in human relationships.  Communication occurs in 4 ways in relationships; 1) intrapersonally in which we imagine in our heads encounters with a relational partner, 2) verbal interactions that are often scripted, 3) nonverbally (smiles, scowls, and silence) and 4) through e-mail in terms of cyber communication.  Many individuals believe that "communication" is so basic that it is taken for granted and not thought about.  Unfortunately, this myth tends to result in such things as misunderstandings, conflict, avoidance, and stereotyping.  We will examine the basic concepts, theories and research findings relevant to initiating, developing, maintaining, and terminating relationships.

The course consists of the following units: 1) Emotions, Imagination, and Physiology of Relationships, 2) Basis of Relational Scripts, 3) Scripts for the Development of Relationships, 4) Scripts Associated with Relationship Demise, 5) Relationship Scripts in Context, and 6) Cautions and Recommendations in terms of abusive relationships as well as guidelines for effective communication in relationships. Upon completion of this course, you should be able to understand the following:

 Types of intimacy and love
 Emotions and physiology in relationships
 Imagined interactions and how we maintain relationships in our minds
 Scripts for the rise and demise of romance
Benefits and Costs of Office Romance
Benefits and Costs of Online Relationship Networking
Abuse in Relationships
Skills for Improving Communication in interpersonal relationships

Highlights-Cognitive bias modification (CBM) has been shown to change clinically relevant behavior in anxiety, depression and addiction-First neuroimaging studies suggest a role of the fronto-amygdalar circuitry in the efficacy of CBM in anxiety and addiction; and effects on connectivity between frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate and insula in depressive behavior

Evidence that competition occurs but is restricted to a target language comes from response time (RT) effects obtained when speakers name pictures in one language while trying to ignore distractor words in another language. Compared to unrelated distractor words, RT is longer when the picture name and distractor are semantically related, but RT is shorter when the distractor is the translation of the name of the picture in the other language. These effects suggest that distractor words from another language do not compete themselves but activate their counterparts in the target language, thereby yielding the semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Here, we report an event-related brain potential (ERP) study testing the prediction that priming underlies both of these effects. The RTs showed semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Moreover, the picture-word stimuli yielded an N400 response, whose amplitude was smaller on semantic and translation trials than on unrelated trials, providing evidence that interference and facilitation priming underlie the RT effects. We present the results of computer simulations showing the utility of a within-language competition account of our findings.

In response to criticism of latent fingerprint evidence from a variety of authoritative extra-legal inquiries and reports, this essay describes the first iteration of a guide designed to assist with the reporting and interpretation of latent fingerprint evidence. Sensitive to the recommendations of these reports, we have endeavoured to incorporate emerging empirical evidence about the matching performance of fingerprint examiners (i.e. indicative error rates) into their testimony. We outline a way of approaching fingerprint evidence that provides a more accurate—in the sense of empirically and theoretically justified—indi- cation of the value of fingerprint evidence than existing practice. It is an approach that could be introduced immediately. The proposal is intended to help non-experts understand the value of the evidence and improve its presentation and assessment in criminal investigations and proceedings. This first iteration accommodates existing empirical evidence and draws attention to the gap between the declaration of a match and positive identification (or individualization). Represented in this way, fingerprint evidence will be more consistent with its known value as well as the aims and conduct of the accusatorial trial.

Brexit, i.e. the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, is a major event in European and global politics. It has been debated from a multitude of social, economic, and cultural angles. This paper offers a cognitive linguistic perspective on Brexit, and investigates its metaphoric conceptualization on the first days after the 2016 referendum. That period seems especially important as, arguably, it was then that for many UK citizens, Brexit suddenly became more than just a hypothetical possibility. The investigation is quantitative and follows Socio-cognitive discourse studies principles. It registers frequencies of source-domain use in UK online media, and traces preferences as to general source-domain semantics. The findings strongly suggest the presence of negative source-domain preferences. This negative metaphoric construal comes in stark contrast with the 3-year par between the Leave and Remain stances in the UK. To explain that discrepancy, the paper argues in support of the importance of 'levels' in source-domain use. Admittedly, throughout Lakovian works (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999), conceptual metaphoric transfer has been argued to take place at what Rosch et al. postulate as basic-level categorization (1973). However, as the present paper suggests, Rosch's 'levels' in prototypology can be seen as functioning through conceptual metonymy. That, in its turn, combined with the all-pervasive cognitive mechanism of spreading activation (first introduced into linguistics by de Beaugrande and Dressler in 1981) suggests all semantic levels can be co-activated in the process of metaphorization, regardless of which level is currently being highlighted and drawn on. As a consequence, different semantic levels are believed here to have the potential to co-influence inferences and connotations resulting from conceptual metaphorization. Thus, the approach adopted in the present study also has the potential to explain why it has been so difficult for scholars to pinpoint and formulate metaphoric transfers. Importantly, the 'levels' proposed here should be differentiated from, although not interpreted as contradicting, the metaphor-relevant levels specified in Kövecses (2010).

There is extensive evidence that a cognitive unconscious operates on complex cognitive representations. In contrast, phenomenal consciousness cannot easily be shown to deal with complex cognitive operations such as those involved in language translation and creativity. A self-organising phenomenal consciousness that controls brain functions also runs into classical mind/body problems (well recognised in the consciousness studies literature) that Perruchet & Vinter must address.