Why the “Hoax” Paper of Baldwin (2018) Should Be Reinstated

In 2018, a peer-reviewed article was published under the name of Richard Baldwin in which the author presented a critique of fat exclusion and advocated “fat bodybuilding” as a sport. Some months later, it became apparent that the article was intended as a hoax written to raise awareness to, or “expose”, a certain ideology promoted by some academics. As a result, the editors retracted the article. Using the principles of methodological behaviorism, and other hoax or hoax-like articles, I will argue that the thoughts and opinions held by any author are not important to the argument they present. I will also argue that this form of reflexive ethnography is too problematic to serve as a method of enquiry. I will therefore conclude that the Baldwin article should be reinstated

Gatecrashing the Visual Cocktail Party: How Visual and Semantic Similarity Modulate the Own Name Benefit in the Attentional Blink

The "visual cocktail party effect" refers to superior report of a participant's own name, under conditions of inattention. An early selection account suggests this advantage stems from enhanced visual processing (Treisman, 1960; Shapiro, Caldwell & Sorensen, 1997). A late selection account suggests the advantage occurs when semantic information allowing identification as ones own name is retrieved (Deutsch & Deutsch 1963; Mack & Rock 1998). In the context of Inattentional Blindness (IB) the advantage does not generalise to a minor modification of a participants own name, despite extensive visual similarity, supporting the late selection account (Mack & Rock 1998). The current study applied the name modification manipulation in the context of the Attentional Blink (AB). Participants were presented with rapid streams of names, and identifed a white target name, whilst also reporting the presence of one of two possible probes. The probe names appeared either close (the third item following the target: lag 3), or far in time from the target (the eight item following the target: lag 8). The results revealed a robust AB; reports of the probe were reduced at lag 3 relative to lag 8. The AB was also greatly reduced for the own name compared to another name; a visual cocktail party effect. In contrast to the findings of Mack and Rock for IB the reduced AB extended to the modified own name. The results suggest different loci for the visual cocktail party effect in the AB (word recognition) compared to IB (semantic processing)

Fear of Holes

Phobias are usually described as irrational and persistent fears of certain objects or situations, and causes of such fears are difficult to identify. We describe an unusual but common phobia (trypophobia), hitherto unreported in the scientific literature, in which sufferers are averse to images of holes. We performed a spectral analysis on a variety of images that induce trypophobia and found that the stimuli had a spectral composition typically associated with uncomfortable visual images, namely, high-contrast energy at midrange spatial frequencies. Critically, we found that a range of potentially dangerous animals also possess this spectral characteristic. We argue that although sufferers are not conscious of the association, the phobia arises in part because the inducing stimuli share basic visual characteristics with dangerous organisms, characteristics that are low level and easily computed, and therefore facilitate a rapid nonconscious response. </jats:p

Visual cognition during real social interaction

Laboratory studies of social visual cognition often simulate the critical aspects of joint attention by having participants interact with a computer-generated avatar. Recently, there has been a movement toward examining these processes during authentic social interaction. In this review, we will focus on attention to faces, attentional misdirection, and a phenomenon we have termed social inhibition of return (Social IOR), that have revealed aspects of social cognition that were hitherto unknown. We attribute these discoveries to the use of paradigms that allow for more realistic social interactions to take place. We also point to an area that has begun to attract a considerable amount of interest—that of Theory of Mind (ToM) and automatic perspective taking—and suggest that this too might benefit from adopting a similar approach

The Grievance Studies Affair; One Funeral at a Time: A Reply to Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian

In 2018, Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian published four “hoax” articles within a number of disciplines that rely on critical theory (e.g., gender studies, feminism). When revealing the project, the authors argued that they wanted to expose these fields as being primarily motivated by ideology and social justice rather than knowledge generation. Their method tested the hypothesis that editors and reviewers will support papers that advocate “ludicrous” ideas including “fat bodybuilding.” In the pages of this journal, I presented a critique of their procedure, and the authors have provided a commentary on my article. After discussing the issue of whether their project was a hoax or not, I will argue that the crux of the matter is whether the papers were ludicrous/absurd. I will show how the authors made a fundamental error in their method; they failed to assess whether their ideas were indeed ludicrous/absurd

The stroop task sex difference: Evolved inhibition or color naming?

Previous research shows that women outperform men in the classic Stroop task, but it is not known why this difference occurs. There are currently two main hypotheses: (1) women have enhanced verbal abilities, and (2) women show greater inhibition. In two Stroop experiments, we examined the Inhibition hypothesis by adopting a procedure, often used in visual cognition paradigms, that induces a particular inhibitory component. So-called Negative Priming occurs when a distracting non-target stimulus on one trial becomes the target on the following trial. Results from our experiments showed that the degree to which this type of inhibition occurs within the Stroop effect is no different for men and women. This was the case irrespective of whether participants made a vocal response (Experiment 1; n = 64, 32 men and 32 women) or a manual response (Experiment 2; n = 64, 32 men and 32 women). These results do not therefore support the Inhibition hypothesis. We additionally review findings from a range of paradigms that can be seen as indexing the different components required for the Stroop task (e.g., distractor suppression). This review suggests that the sex effect is due to superior color naming ability in women.publishedVersio

Two independent sources of difficulty in Perspective-taking/theory of mind tasks

Many perspective-taking and theory of mind tasks require participants to pass over the answer that is optimal from the self-perspective. For instance, in the classic change-of-location (false belief) task participants are required to ignore where they know the object to be, and in the Director task participants are required to ignore the best match for the instruction the other, less knowledgeable agent gives them (e.g. ‘the top cup’). However, a second but equally critical requirement in such tasks is the ability to select a response which is wrong from the self-perspective; where the object is not, or an object that does not match the instruction (e.g. the middle cup instead of the top cup from one’s own perspective). We present the results of an experiment that teases apart these two effects and demonstrate that both contribute independently to the difficulty in taking other perspectives to our own. Re-analyses of data from previous experiments confirm this dual effect. These results suggest a revision of our understanding of egocentricity and difficulty in perspective-taking generally

Audit of walk-in access for members of the public to online resources at higher education and further education libraries in the South West of England

This SWRLS-funded project aims to analyse and evaluate the extent to which Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) libraries across the South West region of the United Kingdom provide walk-in access to electronic resources.The information presented within this report is derived from the findings of a survey questionnaire of librarians from across the South West region. Findings of the survey reveal that in the majority of the six institutions that provide walk-in access, the service is not actively promoted. Potential audiences are not actively identified. Information about walk-in services and which resources are available to use within HE or FE in the region is currently hard to discover. There does appear to be some desire to provide walk-in access but the report identifies IT difficulties and legal issues over licences as particular barriers to implementation

Visual perspective taking without visual perspective taking

What happens when an observer takes an agent’s visual perspective of a scene? We conducted a series of experiments designed to measure what proportion of adults take a stimulus-centered rather than agent-centered approach to a visual perspective taking task. Adults were presented with images of an agent looking at a number (69). From the perspective of the viewer, the number appeared upside down. We then asked participants what number the agent saw. An agent-centered approach, i.e., one that takes into account the other’s visual experience, should produce the correct answer '69'. Even an egocentric error (i.e., the participant's own perspective) would provide the same correct response. We were interested in what proportion of participants would give the incorrect answer '96', which is best explained by a stimulus-centered rather than agent-centered strategy, namely 'flipping' each digit one at a time from left to right. Crucially, such a strategy ignores the alternative visual perspective. We found that, on average, 12-21% of participants made this error. We discuss this finding in the context of the key questions around representation, content, and Theory of Mind in visual perspective taking

Trypophobia: Heart rate, heart rate variability and cortical haemodynamic response

Background: Trypophobia is a common condition in which sufferers are averse to images of small holes arranged in clusters. Methods: We used photo-plethysmography to examine cardiovascular correlates and near infrared spectroscopy to examine cortical correlates of the phenomenon in order to validate the Trypophobia Questionnaire and explore the several interlinked explanations of the disorder. Results: Trypophobic images were found to increase heart rate and heart rate variability, but only in individuals with high scores on the Trypophobia Questionnaire. Trypophobic images were also found to elicit larger haemodynamic responses in posterior cortical areas, but again only in individuals with high scores. Limitations: The results are consistent with a contribution from both parasympathetic and sympathetic systems. Conclusion: The data demonstrate the validity of the Trypophobia Questionnaire and show an involvement not only ofthe autonomic system but cortical mechanisms including cortical hyperexcitability