William A. Hillix

Differentiation of deception using pupillary responses as an index of cognitive processing

The deception literature has predominantly focused on detection of guilty individuals using electrodermal measures. Little research has examined other psychophysiological measures or the mechanisms underlying deception. Therefore, the present study examined pupillary responses in a differentiation-of-deception paradigm. Twenty-four undergraduate participants answered the same questions twice, once truthfully and once deceptively, while pupillary responses were recorded. Questions were based on recently learned (episodic) information from scenarios or on general (semantic) knowledge from long-term memory. Task-evoked pupil dilation was significantly greater when participants confabulated responses than when they told the truth for both episodic and semantic memory questions. Previous research has demonstrated that pupil size increases with increased cognitive processing load. The present study suggested that generating deceptive recall was associated with increased pupil size and required greater cognitive processing than truthful recall.

Positive and negative schizotypal symptoms relate to different aspects of crossover reaction time task performance

Although the expressions of both positive and negative symptoms in schizophrenia spectrum illnesses can each occur with varying degrees of severity, researchers have often dichotomized patients as generally positive or negative subtypes. Studies of schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) have not typically controlled for the severity of the other symptom types when examining the relationship between positive and negative symptom subtypes and cognitive impairment. The present study investigated the relationship between the severity of both symptom types and reaction time crossover task performance in SPD in groups made equivalent on the severity of the other type of symptom. Fifty-eight out of 458 undergraduates were screened into one of four groups (high negative-high positive, low negative-low positive, high negative-low positive or low negative-high positive) by the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire and assessed with the reaction time crossover task. The results indicated that negative schizotypal symptoms were associated with the early crossover pattern, while positive schizotypal symptoms related to longer overall reaction time. Therefore, different cognitive mechanisms involved in crossover task performance appeared to be associated with different symptom subtypes.

Where do We Stand and Where Are We Going

Most of the scientific work on animal language has been crammed into the last 35 years. Others will be able to make a better assessment of this work after another 35 years have passed. Nevertheless, we are confident about some conclusions.

The Emergence of Reason, Intelligence, and Language in Humans and Animals

Emergence as an overarching paradigm requires an introductory analysis about the importance and types of causality. As L’Abate (2005) commented, there are at least three different types of causality or important principles necessary for theory construction: equifinality, when many courses lead to one single outcome, equipotentiality, one single cause can lead to many different outcomes, and multicausality, when many causes lead to many different outcomes.

The Role of Paradigms in Science and Theory Construction

The purpose of this introduction is to lay out the background for the chapters in this volume. The major issue discussed in this chapter, within the whole context of this volume, concerns the role of paradigms in the construction of any scientific or even artistic theory. What does it take to make a theory artistically and scientifically acceptable? Consequently, the first part of this chapter will cover how we should view the whole scientific enterprise. The second part will cover how paradigms need to be included within a hierarchical framework that clarifies how paradigms are related to theories, models, and dimensions (L’Abate, 2009a, 2009b).

A Chronology of Events in Animal Language Research

You may wish to skim this chronology to get a rapid overview of how research on trying to teach animals a human language has progressed. Interest in animal language is ancient, but its scientific study is strikingly modern.

Signs in Oklahoma and Ellensburg

When Roger and Deborah Fouts were married in 1964 they could not have known about the journey they were about to undertake. They were students at Long Beach State, and both of them wanted to work with children. However, 2 years later Roger found himself being interviewed by Allen Gardner at the University of Nevada in Reno, as a potential research assistant to work with the young Washoe while Roger pursued his Ph.D. in psychology.1 Roger was sure that the interview had been a disaster and that he had no chance to get the assistantship he had to have to survive—until Allen took him, as a kind of consolation prize, to see Washoe. She leapt into Roger’s arms and gave him a giant hug, something that Roger never again saw her do with a stranger. Washoe had hired Roger! More than 35 years later, she still has not fired him. That central fact has directed the Foutses’ lives.

Chimpanzees can Write with Plastic Symbols

The Premacks, Ann James and David, were interested in animal cognition and language very early, at least as early as 1954 (personal communication, David Premack, 1954) and started preparatory work with monkeys soon after that time. In 1964,1 the Premacks adopted two young female chimpanzees named Sarah and Gussie. Sarah proved to be an excellent student, but Gussie never learned a single word. The Premacks later worked on language training with several other animals, but none of them were as intelligent as Sarah. A characteristic of the Premacks’ work is that their primary interest was in the cognition of chimpanzees, with language regarded more as a window to the chimpanzee mind than as the center of their attention. David Premack’s discussion2 of the. relative problem-solving abilities of language-trained and non-language-trained chimpanzees makes that clear. He found striking individual differences in intelligence between chimpanzees in each group, whether language-trained or not: “We have...had both gifted and ungifted animals in each group. Sarah is a bright animal by any standards, but so is Jessie, one of the non-language-trained animals. The groups are also comparable at the other end of the continuum, Peony’s negative gifts being well matched by those of Luvy” (p. 125).

A Cultural Approach to Language Learning

The Language Research Center (LRC) where Drs. Duane Rumbaugh and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh work is a scatter of buildings on 50 acres of gorgeous Georgia pines within the boundaries of Decatur, Georgia. Decatur is a suburb of, and continuous with, the great southern city of Atlanta. Within these buildings are dispersed several chimpanzees, at least seven bonobos (formerly called pygmy chimpanzees) and several rhesus macaques. Up a rocky, sometimes muddy, road along the borders of this Georgia State University property is a wooden house that seems virtually to grow out of the trees that surround it. You always need a high clearance vehicle to get there, and when it rains you had better have a 4-wheel drive. Sue lives there, and Nyota, a 4-year-old bonobo, has been living there with Sue almost as often as with his bonobo mother, Panbanisha.

Evaluations of the Ape Language Research

Some criticisms have been applied to most, if not all, of the ape language research. Others apply only to one of the methods of circumventing the vocal channel or to a specific research project.