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

Mantra: an open method for object and movement tracking

Mantra is a free and open-source software package for object tracking. It is specifically designed to be used as a tool for response collection in psychological experiments and requires only a computer and a camera (a webcam is sufficient). Mantra is compatible with widely used software for creating psychological experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, we validated the spatial and temporal precision of Mantra in realistic experimental settings. In Experiments 3 and 4, we validated the spatial precision and accuracy of Mantra more rigorously by tracking a computer controlled physical stimulus and stimuli presented on a computer screen

The quest for the genuine visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): Event-related potential indications of deviance detection for low-level visual features

Research shows that the visual system monitors the environment for changes. For example, a left‐tilted bar, a deviant, that appears after several presentations of a right‐tilted bar, standards, elicits a classic visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): greater negativity for deviants than standards in event‐related potentials (ERPs) between 100 and 300 ms after onset of the deviant. The classic vMMN is contributed to by adaptation; it can be distinguished from the genuine vMMN that, through use of control conditions, compares standards and deviants that are equally adapted and physically identical. To determine whether the vMMN follows similar principles to the auditory mismatch negativity (MMN), in two experiments we searched for a genuine vMMN from simple, physiologically plausible stimuli that change in fundamental dimensions: orientation, contrast, phase, and spatial frequency. We carefully controlled for attention and eye movements. We found no evidence for the genuine vMMN, despite adequate statistical power. We conclude that either the genuine vMMN is a rather unstable phenomenon that depends on still‐to‐be‐identified experimental parameters, or it is confined to visual stimuli for which monitoring across time is more natural than monitoring over space, such as for high‐level features. We also observed an early deviant‐related positivity that we propose might reflect earlier predictive processing

The role of plasma concentrations and drug characteristics of beta-blockers in fall risk of older persons

Beta-blocker usage is inconsistently associated with increased fall risk in the literature. However, due to age-related changes and interindividual heterogeneity in pharmacokinetics and dynamics, it is difficult to predict which older adults are more at risk for falls. Therefore, we wanted to explore whether elevated plasma concentrations of selective and nonselective beta-blockers are associated with an increased risk of falls in older beta-blocker users. To answer our research question, we analyzed samples of selective (metoprolol, n = 316) and nonselective beta-blockers (sotalol, timolol, propranolol, and carvedilol, n = 179) users from the B-PROOF cohort. The associations between the beta-blocker concentration and time to first fall were assessed using Cox proportional hazard models. Change of concentration over time in relation to fall risk was assessed with logistic regression models. Models were adjusted for potential confounders. Our results showed that above the median concentration of metoprolol was associated with an increased fall risk (HR 1.55 [1.11–2.16], p =.01). No association was found for nonselective beta-blocker concentrations. Also, changes in concentration over time were not associated with increased fall risk. To conclude, metoprolol plasma concentrations were associated with an increased risk of falls in metoprolol users while no associations were found for nonselective beta-blockers users. This might be caused by a decreased β1-selectivity in high plasma concentrations. In the future, beta-blocker concentrations could potentially help clinicians estimate fall risk in older beta-blockers users and personalize treatment.</p

Is it really search or just matching? The influence of goodness, number of stimuli and presentation sequence in same-different tasks

The Goodness of Garner dot patterns has been shown to influence same-different response times in a specific way, which has led to the formulation of a memory search model of pattern comparison. In this model, the space of possible variations of each pattern is searched separately for each pattern in the comparison, resulting in faster response times for patterns that have fewer alternatives. Compared to an alternative explanation based on stimulus encoding plus mental rotation, however, the existing data strongly favor this explanation. To obtain a more constraining set of data to distinguish between the two possible accounts, we extended the original paradigm to a situation in which participants needed to compare three, rather than two patterns and varied the way the stimuli were presented (simultaneously or sequentially). Our findings suggest that neither the memory search nor the encoding plus mental rotation model provides a complete description of the data, and that the effects of Goodness must be understood in a combination of both mechanisms, or in terms of cascades processing

QRTEngine: An easy solution for running online reaction time experiments using Qualtrics

Performing online behavioral research is gaining increased popularity among researchers in psychological and cognitive science. However, the currently available methods for conducting online reaction time experiments are often complicated and typically require advanced technical skills. In this article, we introduce the Qualtrics Reaction Time Engine (QRTEngine), an open-source JavaScript engine that can be embedded in the online survey development environment Qualtrics. The QRTEngine can be used to easily develop browser-based online reaction time experiments with accurate timing within current browser capabilities, and it requires only minimal programming skills. After introducing the QRTEngine, we briefly discuss how to create and distribute a Stroop task. Next, we describe a study in which we investigated the timing accuracy of the engine under different processor loads using external chronometry. Finally, we show that the QRTEngine can be used to reproduce classic behavioral effects in three reaction time paradigms: a Stroop task, an attentional blink task, and a masked-priming task. These findings demonstrate that QRTEngine can be used as a tool for conducting online behavioral research even when this requires accurate stimulus presentation times

Spatial constancy of attention across eye movements is mediated by the presence of visual objects

Recent studies have shown that attentional facilitation lingers at the retinotopic coordinates of a previously attended position after an eye movement. These results are intriguing, because the retinotopic location becomes behaviorally irrelevant once the eyes have moved. Critically, in these studies participants were asked to maintain attention on a blank location of the screen. In the present study, we examined whether the continuing presence of a visual object at the cued location could affect the allocation of attention across eye movements. We used a trans-saccadic cueing paradigm in which the relevant positions could be defined or not by visual objects (simple square outlines). We find an attentional benefit at the spatiotopic location of the cue only when the object (the placeholder) has been continuously present at that location. We conclude that the presence of an object at the attended location is a critical factor for the maintenance of spatial constancy of attention across eye movements, a finding that helps to reconcile previous conflicting results

Evidence for the predictive remapping of visual attention

When attending an object in visual space, perception of the object remains stable despite frequent eye movements. It is assumed that visual stability is due to the process of remapping, in which retinotopically organized maps are updated to compensate for the retinal shifts caused by eye movements. Remapping is predictive when it starts before the actual eye movement. Until now, most evidence for predictive remapping has been obtained in single cell studies involving monkeys. Here, we report that predictive remapping affects visual attention prior to an eye movement. Immediately following a saccade, we show that attention has partly shifted with the saccade (Experiment 1). Importantly, we show that remapping is predictive and affects the locus of attention prior to saccade execution (Experiments 2 and 3): before the saccade was executed, there was attentional facilitation at the location which, after the saccade, would retinotopically match the attended location