Моральна свідомість та релігійна віра в перспективі філософії Іммануїла Канта

У статті розкриваються головні ідеї та логічна структура філософії релігії Іммануїла Канта у її зв’язку з практичною філософією. Обґрунтовано тезу про те, що розуміння Кантом головних релігійних ідей – особистого безсмертя та Бога − було дуже неортодоксальним і наближає його філософію до індійської релігійно-філософської традиції.В статье раскрываются главные идеи и логическая структура философии религии Иммануила Канта в связи с его практической философией. Обосновывается тезис о том, что понимание Кантом главных религиозных идей – личного бессмертия и Бога − было очень неортодоксальным и сближает его философию с индийской религиозно-философской традицией.The article explains main ideas and logical structure of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of religion in its connection with practical philosophy. It argues that Kant’s views of main religious ideas – personal immortality and God − were very unorthodox and congenial with Indian religious-philosophical tradition

Direct and indirect links between children’s socio-economic status and education: pathways via mental health, attitude, and cognition

AbstractA child’s socio-economic environment can profoundly affect their development. While existing literature focusses on simplified metrics and pair-wise relations between few variables, we aimed to capture complex interrelationships between several relevant domains using a broad assessment of 519 children aged 7–9 years. Our analyses comprised three multivariate techniques that complimented each other, and worked at different levels of granularity. First, an exploratory factor analysis (principal component analysis followed by varimax rotation) revealed that our sample varied along continuous dimensions of cognition, attitude and mental health (from parallel analysis); with potentially emerging dimensions speed and socio-economic status (passed Kaiser’s criterion). Second, k-means cluster analysis showed that children did not group into discrete phenotypes. Third, a network analysis on the basis of bootstrapped partial correlations (confirmed by both cross-validated LASSO and multiple comparisons correction of binarised connection probabilities) uncovered how our developmental measures interconnected: educational outcomes (reading and maths fluency) were directly related to cognition (short-term memory, number sense, processing speed, inhibition). By contrast, mental health (anxiety and depression symptoms) and attitudes (conscientiousness, grit, growth mindset) showed indirect relationships with educational outcomes via cognition. Finally, socio-economic factors (neighbourhood deprivation, family affluence) related directly to educational outcomes, cognition, mental health, and even grit. In sum, cognition is a central cog through which mental health and attitude relate to educational outcomes. However, through direct relations with all components of developmental outcomes, socio-economic status acts as a great ‘unequaliser’.</jats:p

The role of attention in working memory

Attention is usually defined as the ability to select a limited amount of information from the abundance that we are continuously faced with, and short-term memory is often described as a temporary storage for this selected information. However, this description does not do justice to the complexities of the interplay between attention and short-term memory. This thesis explores how attention acts in and on short-term memory. It describes how attentionally selected information flows into short-term memory, and finds that encoding of several items can occur in parallel. It also demonstrates that encoding can occur in a serial fashion too, with behaviourally relevant items being selected and encoded first, and other items second. This thesis not only investigates the initial allocation of these resources during encoding, but also the re-allocation of short-term memory resources during eye movements. Specifically, it fails to replicate the finding that resources are re-allocated to saccade targets, but it does find that the location of items is stored at a higher precision than items’ other features are. Finally, this thesis describes how cancellation tasks (multi-target visual search tasks in which participants have to find and cross out targets among distractors) can be used to measure spatial attention and short-term memory in healthy adults and patient groups. Data is presented to show that cancellation performance can potentially be improved in subtle ways in stroke patients with hemispatial neglect syndrome, using the noradrenergic agonist guanfacine. In sum, attention acts as a gateway to and (re-)allocator of shortterm memory resources, and is an important target for pharmacological interventions in sensitive groups.</p

PyGaze: an open-source, cross-platform toolbox for minimal-effort programming of eyetracking experiments.

The PyGaze toolbox is an open-source software package for Python, a high-level programming language. It is designed for creating eyetracking experiments in Python syntax with the least possible effort, and it offers programming ease and script readability without constraining functionality and flexibility. PyGaze can be used for visual and auditory stimulus presentation; for response collection via keyboard, mouse, joystick, and other external hardware; and for the online detection of eye movements using a custom algorithm. A wide range of eyetrackers of different brands (EyeLink, SMI, and Tobii systems) are supported. The novelty of PyGaze lies in providing an easy-to-use layer on top of the many different software libraries that are required for implementing eyetracking experiments. Essentially, PyGaze is a software bridge for eyetracking research

Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures

The Olympics are the world’s largest sporting events, attracting billions of viewers worldwide. Important parts are racing sports, such as running, swimming and speed skating. In these sports, athletes compete against each other in different heats to determine who wins the gold, or who is granted a place in the final. Of course, the gold goes to whoever is the most talented and has trained the hardest. Or does it? Here we argue that subtle differences between athletes’ starts can bias the competition, and demonstrate this in the results of speed skating at the 2010 Winter Olympics. This bias could be removed by simple alterations to current starting procedures. The proposed change would greatly improve racing sport fairness, which currently suffers from an injustice that disadvantages not only athletes, but entire nations rooting for them

The graded fate of unattended stimulus representations in visuospatial working memory

As in visual perception, information can be selected for prioritized processing at the expense of unattended representations in visual working memory (VWM). However, what is not clear is whether and how this prioritization degrades the unattended representations. We addressed two hypotheses. First, the representational quality of unattended items could be degraded as a function of the spatial distance to attended information in VWM. Second, the strength with which an item is bound to its location is degraded as a function of the spatial distance to attended information in VWM. To disentangle these possibilities, we designed an experiment in which participants performed a continuous production task in which they memorized a visual array with colored discs, one of which was spatially retro-cued, informing the target location of an impending probe that was to be recalled (Experiment 1). We systematically varied the spatial distance between the cued and probed locations and obtained model-based estimates of the representational quality and binding strengths at varying cue-probe distances. Although the representational quality of the unattended representations remained unaffected by the cue-probe distance, spatially graded binding strengths were observed, as reflected in more spatial confusions at smaller cue-probe distances. These graded binding strengths were further replicated with a model-free approach in a categorical version of the production task in which stimuli and responses consisted of easily discriminable colors (Experiment 2). These results demonstrate that unattended representations are prone to spatial confusions due to spatial degradation of binding strengths in WM, even though they are stored with the same representational quality

Subjective SES is associated with children’s neurophysiological response to auditory oddballs

Language and reading acquisition are strongly associated with a child’s socioeconomic environment (SES). There are a number of potential explanations for this relationship. We explore one potential explanation—a child’s SES is associated with how children discriminate word-like sounds (i.e., phonological processing), a foundational skill for reading acquisition. Magnetoencephalography data from a sample of 71 children (aged 6 years 11 months—12 years 3 months), during a passive auditory oddball task containing word and non-word deviants, were used to test where (which sensors) and when (at what time) any association may occur. We also investigated associations between cognition, education, and this neurophysiological response. We report differences in the neural processing of word and non-word deviant tones at an early N200 component (likely representing early sensory processing) and a later P300 component (likely representing attentional and/or semantic processing). More interestingly we found Parental Subjective SES (the parents rating of their own relative affluence) was convincingly associated with later responses, but there were no significant associations with equivalised income. This suggests that the socioeconomic environment as rated by their parents, is associated with underlying phonological detection skills. Furthermore, this correlation likely occurs at a later time-point in information processing, associated with semantic and attentional processes. In contrast, household income is not significantly associated with these skills. One possibility is that the subjective assessment of SES is more impactful on neural mechanisms of phonological processing than the less complex and more objective measure of household income

CancellationTools: All-in-one software for administration and analysis of cancellation tasks

In a cancellation task, a participant is required to search for and cross out ("cancel") targets, which are usually embedded among distractor stimuli. The number of cancelled targets and their location can be used to diagnose the neglect syndrome after stroke. In addition, the organization of search provides a potentially useful way to measure executive control over multitarget search. Although many useful cancellation measures have been introduced, most fail to make their way into research studies and clinical practice due to the practical difficulty of acquiring such parameters from traditional pen-and-paper measures. Here we present new, open-source software that is freely available to all. It allows researchers and clinicians to flexibly administer computerized cancellation tasks using stimuli of their choice, and to directly analyze the data in a convenient manner. The automated analysis suite provides output that includes almost all of the currently existing measures, as well as several new ones introduced here. All tasks can be performed using either a computer mouse or a touchscreen as an input device, and an online version of the task runtime is available for tablet devices. A summary of the results is produced in a single A4-sized PDF document, including high quality data visualizations. For research purposes, batch analysis of large datasets is possible. In sum, CancellationTools allows users to employ a flexible, computerized cancellation task, which provides extensive benefits and ease of use