Unitary Phenomenon Research Articles

The history of episodic memory.

Over the course of his research, Endel Tulving offered a number of somewhat different characterizations of episodic memory. Do they indicate that he changed his mind over time as to what episodic memory is, or did his core understanding of the nature of episodic memory stay the same? In this article, we offer some support for the latter claim, and in particular for thinking that, throughout his life, Tulving took as a defining feature of episodic memory the distinctive awareness of the self in time it involves. We argue that it is easier to see the continuities rather than the discontinuities in Tulving's writings once their historical context is taken into account, where this involves both the authors who influenced his thinking, as well as the intellectual climate at the different times he was writing. We also discuss two recent bodies of work on episodic memory that take aspects of Tulving's writings as their point of departure, but try to factor out into separate ingredients what he arguably saw as a unitary phenomenon. Considering aspects of the dialectic between them and Tulving's view might shed further light on some of the motivations behind the latter.This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'.

Distributional analyses reveal the polymorphic nature of the Stroop interference effect: It's about (response) time.

The study addressed the still-open issue of whether semantic (in addition to response) conflict does indeed contribute to Stroop interference (which along with facilitation contributes to the overall Stroop effect also known as Congruency effect). To this end, semantic conflict was examined across the entire response time (RT) distribution (as opposed to mean RTs). Three (out of four) reported experiments, along with cross-experimental analyses, revealed that semantic conflict was absent in the participants' faster responses. This result characterizes Stroop interference as a unitary phenomenon (i.e., driven uniquely by response conflict). When the same participants' responses were slower, Stroop interference became a composite phenomenon with an additional contribution of semantic conflict that was statistically independent of both response conflict and facilitation. While the present findings allow us to account for the fact that semantic conflict has not been consistently found in past studies, further empirical and theoretical efforts are still needed to explain why exactly it is restricted to longer responses. Indeed, since neither unitary nor composite models can account for this polymorphic nature of Stroop interference on their own, the implications for the current state of theory are outlined.

Unravelling horizontal direct effect in EU law: the case of the fundamental right to paid annual leave between ‘myth’ and ‘practice’

Abstract It is rather trendy to talk about the ‘horizontal effect’ of fundamental rights in a society where the dividing line between public and private power is increasingly blurred. However, as soon as one tries to define the exact meaning of horizontal effect and its conditions, several issues swiftly arise. This article explores the past, the present, and the future of the horizontal direct effect in the European Union (EU) legal order, by focusing on the application of this doctrine to the fundamental labour rights today protected in the Charter of fundamental rights. Most notably, with the approaching of the fifth birthday of Bauer and Max-Planck, by looking at the case of the fundamental right to paid annual leave under Article 31(2) of the Charter, this article aims at unravelling the actual meaning of the conditions for the horizontal direct effect of the EU fundamental rights and the actual perimeter of this direct effect. Although the effectiveness of minimum labour rights mandatorily enhanced by this case law should be welcomed, it is argued that the doctrine of the horizontal direct effect of EU fundamental rights seems still stuck between being a proper constitutional doctrine and a mere type of direct effect. It is also claimed, first, that horizontal direct effect is not a unitary phenomenon in EU law. In spite of the continuity in the ECJ’s technical reasoning, there is indeed a striking contrast between the language of ‘perfect equalisation’ of the Charter to the treaties and its actual approach to the assessment of the horizontal direct effect of fundamental (labour) rights. The ECJ’s case law analysis on the fundamental right to paid annual leave will prove this point. Secondly, it is suggested that horizontal direct effect can be defined as a sui generis, on-call, subsidiary, corollary, and ‘amputee’ doctrine, and we will offer some considerations on each of these features by reference to the Court’s practice under investigation. Thirdly, we suggest that the horizontal direct effect of fundamental (labour) rights relies more on the history and trajectory of the EU regulation of that specific right in the EU legal order rather than on the wording of the Charter’s provision or other technicalities.

Annotation for computational argumentation analysis: Issues and perspectives

AbstractArgumentation has long been studied in a number of disciplines, including several branches of linguistics. In recent years, computational processing of argumentation has been added to the list, reflecting a general interest from the field of natural language processing (NLP) in building natural language understanding systems for increasingly intricate language phenomena. Computational argumentation analysis – referred to as argumentation mining in the NLP literature – requires large amounts of real‐world text with manually analyzed argumentation. This process is known as annotation in the NLP literature and such annotated datasets are used both as “gold standards” for assessing the quality of NLP applications and as training data for the machine learning algorithms underlying most state of the art approaches to NLP. Argumentation annotation turns out to be complex, both because argumentation can be complex in itself and because it does not come across as a unitary phenomenon in the literature. In this survey we review how argumentation has been studied in other fields, how it has been annotated in NLP and what has been achieved so far. We conclude with describing some important current and future issues to be resolved.

Anodyne Privatization

Privatization of state services has been a flashpoint for political conflict over the past several decades. The goal of this paper is to explain why someone who is a supporter of the welfare state might also support the privatization of certain state services, in certain cases. Recent philosophical literature has focused on the most problematic privatization initiatives, especially the introduction of private prisons and military contractors. As a counterpoint, this paper describes a set of anodyne privatizations, understood as privatizations that no reasonable person could object to. The key step in this analysis involves showing that privatization is not a unitary phenomenon. There are different types of privatization, different degrees of privatization, and also different motives for privatization. There are also important normative differences between these initiatives, which might lead a reasonable person to support some but not others.

An exploratory study on emotional consequents of visceral food pleasure

Purpose This study aims to explore the phenomenon of visceral food pleasure, described as a unitary experience that, after an initial sense of pleasure and relief generated by the satisfaction of eating impulses, is followed by negative feelings – such as guilt and worry – linked to the consumption of hedonic or unhealthy foods. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory approach has been adopted. In particular, the critical incident technique among 87 individuals has been used to extract insights about visceral food pleasure. Findings Contrary to previous research results, this study shows that viscearl food pleasure is not a unitary phenomenon, identifying four types of different facets, two of which have a negative valence in terms of felt emotions post-consumption and psychological well-being (i.e. the “greedy” and the “maladaptive” experiences). More importantly, the other two facets are associated with positive consequences in terms of emotions felt post-consumption and perceived psychological well-being (i.e. the “social” and the “fair sin” experiences). Practical implications Companies that provide food experiences can prime meanings that influence consumers’ perceptions of the episode to elicit positive emotions post-consumption and psychological well-being. Social implications Promoting a more holistic view of food consumption and psychological well-being can free consumers from negative emotions during food consumption episodes. Priming a particular meaning can be a way to do that. However, as visceral experience can still lead to health issues, this must be combined with an education process that makes consumers aware of their food habits. Originality/value This research challenges the idea that visceral food experiences are always negative. Indeed, when associated with particular meanings (i.e. social and reward), they have a positive valence post-consumption.

Language games: the gendered politics of the speech act in Ben Lerner's The Topeka School

ABSTRACT R.W. Connell argues that masculinity is not a unitary phenomenon; rather, that masculinities emerge out of situationally specific choices drawn from a ‘cultural repertoire’ of so-called masculine behaviour that result in a particular ‘configuration of practice’. Ben Lerner's novel The Topeka School (2019) calls attention to this process by focussing on the coding of particular speech-acts as masculine in the context of mid-nineties, small-town Kansas; moreover, he contextualises these particular speech-acts as the cultural precursors to the political rise of the alt-right, leading to Trump's presidency. In The Topeka School, then, speech-acts are not simply gendered but shown to have significant political ramifications. In this paper I argue that while Lerner dissects the genealogy of this particular construction of masculinity, he also presents alternative models of gendered speech-acts that subvert what Hélène Cixous calls the libidinal and cultural masculine economy, and that he explicitly links each of these models to the figure of the mother. Lerner thus suggests a gender-inclusive speaking-back against the dominant masculinist order, with the mother acting as a key locus of political dissent, resistance, and change – he suggests, too, what Connell would call a necessary reconfiguration of masculine practice.

Emotional Conducts: A Phenomenological Account

ABSTRACT Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, I contend that emotions should be regarded as emerging from our “vital communication” with the solicitations of our physical and social surroundings. My intention is to present emotions as unitary phenomena arising from an incessant flow of motivations that can be later articulated in terms of reasons (in cognitive theories of emotions) or in terms of causes (in affective neuroscience). I further suggest that emotions should be considered a specific kind of conducts, since the way in which a person acts out her emotions shapes their content, regulates their intensity and transforms the amorphous flow of felt motivations into a recognizable emotional stance for which she is held accountable. In conclusion, I put forward a series of arguments explaining why emotion tends toward its expression in conduct as if towards its completion.

Towards a Typology of wh-Doubling in Northern Italian Dialects

In this work we examine the distribution of wh-in-situ and short (i.e., clause internal) wh-doubling in Northern Italian dialects with the purpose of showing that wh-in-situ and wh-doubling are not unitary phenomena, since they are subject to different distributional properties across dialects. We show that wh-doubling cannot be reduced to a single analysis but rather corresponds to a family of phenomena which have in common the basic procedure of feature doubling, within which the copying mechanism applies to different subsets or packages of features and is constrained in different ways. Furthermore, some types of doubling correspond in their distribution with some types of wh-in-situ, which shows that the two phenomena must be related and that different types of wh-in-situ are the null counterpart of different types of wh-doubling. However, in the languages in which wh-in-situ is generalized, wh-in-situ has nothing to do with wh-doubling.

Graphemic and Semantic Pathways of Number-Color Synesthesia: A Dissociation of Conceptual Synesthesia Mechanisms.

Number–color synesthesia is a condition in which synesthetes perceive numbers with concurrent experience of specific, corresponding colors. It has been proposed that synesthetic association exists primarily between representations of Arabic digit graphemes and colors, and a secondary, semantic connection between numerosity and colors is built via repeated co-activation. However, this distinction between the graphemic and semantic pathways of synesthetic number–color connection has not been empirically tested. The current study aims to dissociate graphemic and semantic aspects of color activations in number–color synesthesia by comparing their time courses. We adopted a synesthetic priming paradigm with varied stimuli onset asynchronies (SOAs). A number (2–6, prime) was presented in one of three notations: digit, dice, or non-canonical dot pattern, and a color patch (target) appeared with an SOA of 0, 100, 300, 400, or 800 ms. Participants reported the color as quickly as possible. Using the congruency effect (i.e., shorter reaction time when target color matched the synesthetic color of number prime) as an index of synesthetic color activation level, we revealed that the effect from the graphemic pathway is quick and relatively persistent, while the effect from the semantic pathway unfolds at a later stage and is more transient. The dissociation between the graphemic and semantic pathways of synesthesia implies further functional distinction within “conceptual synesthesia”, which has been originally discussed as a unitary phenomenon. This distinction has been demonstrated by the differential time courses of synesthetic color activations, and suggested that a presumed, single type of synesthesia could involve multiple mechanisms.

How many cyberbullying(s)? A non-unitary perspective for offensive online behaviours.

Research has usually considered cyberbullying as a unitary phenomenon. Thus, it has been neglected to explore whether the specific online aggressive behaviours relate differentially to demographic features of the perpetrators of online aggressive actions, their personality characteristics, or to the ways in which they interact with the Internet. To bridge this gap, a study was conducted through a questionnaire administered online to 1228 Italian high-school students (Female: 61.1%; 14-15 yo: 48.%; 16-17 yo: 29.1%; 18-20 yo: 20.4%, 21-25 yo: 1.6%; Northern Italy: 4.1%; Central Italy: 59.2%; Southern Italy: 36.4%). The questionnaire, in addition to items about the use of social media, mechanisms of Moral Disengagement and personality characteristics of the participants in the study, also included a scale for the measurement of cyberbullying through the reference to six aggressive behaviours. The results indicate that cyberbullying can be considered as a non-unitary phenomenon in which the different aggressive behaviours can be related to different individual characteristics such as gender, personality traits and the different ways of interacting with social media. Moreover, the existence of two components of cyberbullying has been highlighted, one related to virtual offensive actions directly aimed at a victim, the other to indirect actions, more likely conducted involving bystanders. These findings open important perspectives for understanding, preventing, and mitigating cyberbullying among adolescents.

Multiple Mental Health Literacies in a Traditional Temple Site in Kerala: The Intersection Between Beliefs, Spiritual and Healing Regimes.

The notion of 'mental health literacy' has been proposed as a way of improving mental health problem recognition, service utilisation and reducing stigma. Yet, the idea embodies a number of medical-model assumptions which are often at odds with diverse communities' spiritual traditions and local belief systems. Twenty participants were recruited to this study consisting of mental health service users (N = 7), family carers (N = 8) and community members (N = 5) in a temple town in Kerala, South India participated in semi-structured interviews exploring the variety of beliefs and practices relating to mental health. Our findings indicate that the issue may be better understood in terms of multiple mental health literacies which people deploy in different circumstances. Even those sceptical of traditional and spiritual approaches are knowledgeable about them, and the traditional practices themselves often involve detailed regimes of activities aimed at effecting an improvement in the person's mood or condition. Therefore, we argue it is appropriate to consider mental health literacy not as a unitary universal phenomenon but instead as a mosaic of different literacies which may be deployed in different settings and in line with different experiences and which may operate in synergy with each other to enable treatment but also facilitate a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Remote Working during the Covid-19 Global Pandemic and its Implications for Employee Motivation: Some Evidence from Nigeria through the Lens of Self-Determination Theory

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world took several safety measures, including enforced confinement to check the spread of the disease. These measures had economic, health, and psychosocial implications. On the other hand, the pandemic accelerated remote working and the deployment of technology to support this new way of working as businesses needed to continue functioning. Empirical research on the implication of these measures on the mental health, engagement, and motivation of employees abound in other jurisdictions, whereas it is limited in Nigeria. From a self-determination perspective, this study examines the mediating roles of organizational factors (OF) and employee’s individual situation (ES) on employee motivation during the pandemic. The study employed a survey research design while descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, and structural equation modelling were used to analyze the data. Remote working intensity (RW) during the pandemic had a significant positive impact on organizational factors. Employee’s Individual Situation had a significant positive impact on Employee Motivation (EM). The study concludes that as good as remote working may seem, the enforced confinement led to increased stress levels, more mental health challenges, and lower motivation. The moderation role of basic psychological needs (PN) satisfaction was confirmed. The findings showed that employees who could influence their work schedule were more motivated. Higher levels of support from employers that enabled individuals to achieve desired results amidst the uncertainties created by the pandemic were also associated with better levels of motivation. Employees in organizations that found innovative ways for social connection and had regular check-ins by managers were more engaged and motivated because employers’ support was found to be empowering, produced better psychological health, and helped employees feel self-determined. Even though the study shows the association between remote working, basic psychological needs satisfaction, and employee motivation, how motivation level changes after some point or the degree to which it would change in the post-pandemic era remains unclear and should be an area for further study since motivation is not a unitary phenomenon.

Mixture-modeling approach reveals global and local processes in visual crowding

Crowding refers to the inability to recognize objects in clutter, setting a fundamental limit on various perceptual tasks such as reading and facial recognition. While prevailing models suggest that crowding is a unitary phenomenon occurring at an early level of processing, recent studies have shown that crowding might also occur at higher levels of representation. Here we investigated whether local and global crowding interference co-occurs within the same display. To do so, we tested the distinctive contribution of local flanker features and global configurations of the flankers on the pattern of crowding errors. Observers (n = 27) estimated the orientation of a target when presented alone or surrounded by flankers. Flankers were grouped into a global configuration, forming an illusory rectangle when aligned or a rectangular configuration when misaligned. We analyzed the error distributions by fitting probabilistic mixture models. Results showed that participants often misreported the orientation of a flanker instead of that of the target. Interestingly, in some trials the orientation of the global configuration was misreported. These results suggest that crowding occurs simultaneously across multiple levels of visual processing and crucially depends on the spatial configuration of the stimulus. Our results pose a challenge to models of crowding with an early single pooling stage and might be better explained by models which incorporate the possibility of multilevel crowding and account for complex target-flanker interactions.

Homosexuality in Cross-Cultural Perspective

In the American debate about sexuality, homosexuality is portrayed as an aberrance of choice by one side and as a natural outcome of biology by the other, sometimes with nuanced stances in between. Both sides tend to take for granted that the thing that they are talking about exists, and some argue that it is a unitary phenomenon found across cultures and through time. I question whether or not the English concept of homosexuality can serve as a scientific category for cross-cultural comparison. Similar practices identified in one culture area reveal that the characteristics of same-sex behavior and belief vary significantly, thus deconstructing American narratives. Those arguing for a more traditional perspective have too easily accepted the terms of the debate. Perhaps it is time to step back and take a broader view that includes the experiences and narratives of a full range of the world’s many cultures and many Christianities.

Objectivity and Rigor in Classical Italian Algebraic Geometry

The classification of algebraic surfaces by the Italian School of algebraic geometry is universally recognized as a breakthrough in 20th century mathematics. The methods by which it was achieved do not, however, meet the modern standard of rigor and therefore appear dubious from a contemporary viewpoint. In this article, we offer a glimpse into the mathematical practice of the three leading exponents of the Italian School of algebraic geometry: Castelnuovo, Enriques, and Severi. We then bring into focus their distinctive conception of rigor and intuition. Unlike what is often assumed today, from their perspective, rigor is neither opposed to intuition nor understood as a unitary phenomenon –Enriques distinguishes between small-scale rigor and large-scale rigor and Severi between formal rigor and substantial rigor. Finally, we turn to the notion of mathematical objectivity. We draw from our case study in order to advance a multi-dimensional analysis of objectivity. Specifically, we suggest that various types of rigor may be associated with different conceptions of objectivity: namely objectivity as faithfulness to facts and objectivity as intersubjectivity.

Visual speech differentially modulates beta, theta, and high gamma bands in auditory cortex.

Speech perception is a central component of social communication. Although principally an auditory process, accurate speech perception in everyday settings is supported by meaningful information extracted from visual cues. Visual speech modulates activity in cortical areas subserving auditory speech perception including the superior temporal gyrus (STG). However, it is unknown whether visual modulation of auditory processing is a unitary phenomenon or, rather, consists of multiple functionally distinct processes. To explore this question, we examined neural responses to audiovisual speech measured from intracranially implanted electrodes in 21 patients with epilepsy. We found that visual speech modulated auditory processes in the STG in multiple ways, eliciting temporally and spatially distinct patterns of activity that differed across frequency bands. In the theta band, visual speech suppressed the auditory response from before auditory speech onset to after auditory speech onset (-93 to 500 ms) most strongly in the posterior STG. In the beta band, suppression was seen in the anterior STG from -311 to -195 ms before auditory speech onset and in the middle STG from -195 to 235 ms after speech onset. In high gamma, visual speech enhanced the auditory response from -45 to 24 ms only in the posterior STG. We interpret the visual-induced changes prior to speech onset as reflecting crossmodal prediction of speech signals. In contrast, modulations after sound onset may reflect a decrease in sustained feedforward auditory activity. These results are consistent with models that posit multiple distinct mechanisms supporting audiovisual speech perception.

What Is the Trigger for Sexual Climax?

A model is proposed to consider sexual climax in men, women, and animals as a unitary phenomenon. Sexual climax is a stereotyped rhythmic pattern of spinally generated neural activity in the autonomic and somatic nerves innervating pelvic organs. A column of neurons in the spinal cord of the male rat is strongly activated by ejaculation (sexual climax in the male). These neurons project to the thalamus and are therefore called lumbar spinothalamic cells (LSt cells). Comprehensive studies have demonstrated that the LSt cells constitute a central pattern generator of ejaculation. These findings have been extended to female animals. Further studies identified LSt cells in the lumbar spinal cord of men and women. Strong evidence indicates that the LSt cells mediate ejaculation in men. The climax model generalizes and extends these studies. It postulates that LSt cells in the lumbar spinal cord of humans and animals of both sexes generate climax. The LSt cells generate the neural activity driving the pelvic contractions and other responses of climax. The activity is transmitted to supraspinal sites to activate orgasm. The LSt cells receive excitatory and inhibitory projections from supraspinal sites. The descending projections reflect subjective arousal and inhibitions. Spinal sensory neurons from the genitals provide excitatory and inhibitory innervation to the LSt cells. These represent pleasurable and noxious sensations. The supraspinal and spinal excitatory and inhibitory inputs are integrated by the LSt. When the sum of the excitatory inputs, minus the sum of the inhibitory inputs reaches a threshold, the LSt cells generate sexual climax.

Exploring Male Multiple Orgasm in a Large Online Sample: Refining Our Understanding

The scientific literature on multiple orgasm in males is small. There is little consensus on a definition, and significant controversy about whether multiple orgasm is a unitary experience. This study has 2 goals: (i) describing the experience of male multiple orgasm; (ii) investigating whether there are different profiles of multiple orgasm in men. Data from a culturally diverse online convenience sample of 122 men reporting multiple orgasm were collected. Data reduction analyses were conducted using principal components analysis (PCA) on 13 variables of interest derived from theory and the existing literature. A K-means cluster analysis followed, from which a 4-cluster solution was retained. While the range of reported orgasms varied from 2 to 30, the majority (79.5%, N = 97) of participants experienced between 2 and 4 orgasms separated by a specific time interval during which further stimulation was required to achieve another orgasm. Most participants reported maintaining their erections throughout and ejaculating with every orgasm. Age was not a significant correlate of the multiple orgasm experience which occurred more frequently in a dyadic context. Four different profiles of multiorgasmic men were described. This study constitutes a rare attempt to collect systematic self-report data concerning the experience of multiple orgasm in a relatively large sample. Limitations include the lack of validated measures, memory bias associated with self-reported data and retrospective designs, the lack of a control group and of physiological measurement. Our study suggests that multiple orgasm in men is not a unitary phenomenon and sets the stage for future self-report and laboratory study.

THE LATE BRONZE AGE GÁVA POTTERY FROM THE LOWER MUREȘ

The widespread societal collapse that occurred in the Lower Mureș Basin in the Late Bronze Age following the destruction of mega-sites during the 13 th century BC is largely mirrored in the dwindling number of settlements, prestige goods, and metal finds. The same period is also associated with the spread of Gáva pottery. Apparently, the respective pottery style has been subject to thorough investigation; however, ceramic analyses and 14C data are quite scarce. We are publishing here a pottery assemblage from contexts located in the Lower Mureș Basin, where Gáva pottery style was discovered. Besides illustrating representative potsherds, we have analyzed their style and added 14C data when available. The results of the study proper and comparative analyses with other assemblages suggest a different perspective from certain approaches to Gáva culture as a unitary phenomenon. Starting from the stylistic features of the pottery, we have attempted at offering a regional perspective without overlooking the distinctive characteristics of a much wider area. Moreover, 14C data and previous studies on LBA II pottery enable us to argue that several well-known features of the Gáva pottery style can be identified, at least in the Lower Mureș Basin, as early as the 14 th -13 th century BC and even earlier, with some dating back to the 15 th century BC.