Digital Commons Network^™

To Bee Or Not To Bee?, Shimon Edelman, Roy Moyal, Tomer Fekete

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s (2016) (K & B’s) case for insect consciousness is a welcome development in an area that, in all of the science and philosophy of mind, is probably the most anthropocentric. In this commentary, we seek to strengthen K & B’s side of the argument by appealing not just to putative neural mechanisms but also to computational theory that supports it (section 1). We also offer some remarks on three distinctions that are relevant to K & B’s thesis and are central to phenomenal awareness: between the capacity for awareness and its contents (section 2); between …

No Proof For Subjective Experience In Insects, Holk Cruse, Malte Schilling

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron (2016) provide an inspiring review collecting arguments that show quite related functions in humans and insects. Here we extend the comparison to robots, and formulate two critical objections. One concerns an epistemological question related to the phenomenon of subjective experience. The other questions whether insects need integrated spatiotemporal modeling for navigation.

Consciousness As Integrated Perception, Motivation, Cognition, And Action, Murray Shanahan

Animal Sentience

This commentary has two aims: first to clarify the behavioural grounds for the ascription of consciousness to non-human animals (including insects), and second to show how Klein & Barron’s views can be reconciled with the core claims of global workspace theory.

Evaluation Of A Modified Incidental Teaching Procedure To Increase Child Compliance, Corey M. Cohrs

Theses & Dissertations

Teaching noncompliant children to engage in compliant behavior has long been a goal for many parents, teachers, and therapists (Patterson, Shaw, & Ebner, 1969). This goal has driven the development of behavioral technology, including entire manualized treatment programs, specifically intended for the treatment of noncompliance (Forehand & McMahon, 1981; Hembree-Kigin & McNeil, 1995). These programs have typically included time-out based interventions that are associated with resistance to instruction (Roberts, 1982;Roberts, 1984). Given children’s frequent resistance to traditional approaches (e.g., timeout; Ducharme & Popynick, 1993), alternative interventions for the treatment of noncompliance are warranted.

A modified version of incidental teaching (Hart …

The Moral Dimension Of Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness, Susana Monsó

Animal Sentience

Rowlands offers a de-intellectualised account of personhood that is meant to secure the unity of a mental life. I argue that his characterisation also singles out a morally relevant feature of individuals. Along the same lines that the orthodox understanding of personhood reflects a fundamental precondition for moral agency, Rowlands’s notion provides a fundamental precondition for moral patienthood.

What Makes Us Conscious Is Not What Makes Us Human, Ezequiel Morsella, Erica B. Walker

Animal Sentience

Consistent with the promising proposal of Klein & Barron (K & B), we discuss how what makes us conscious appears to be distinct from and more widespread in the animal kingdom than what distinguishes us from other species. Many of the abilities that do distinguish humans from other species (e.g., syntax and co-articulation in speech production) can be mediated unconsciously. The kind of functional architecture proposed by K & B may engender an “action selection bottleneck” in both humans and nonhuman species. As noted by K & B, this bottleneck is intimately related to conscious processing.

Introspection And Anecdotes Won’T Prove What Animals Are Thinking And Feeling, Michael Colombo, Melissa Johnston

Animal Sentience

We review Part Three, “Whines and Pet Peeves,” of Safina’s book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. Part Three is concerned mainly with the evidence for Theory of Mind in nonhuman animals. Like Safina, we believe that animals have a Theory of Mind, and like Safina, we question the utility of such concepts. There are many studies that Safina could have used to support his argument, and although some are mentioned, he prefers to make his point mainly by relying on anecdotes and introspection. The end result, we believe, is to devalue the scientific process.

Orca Behavior And Subsequent Aggression Associated With Oceanarium Confinement, Robert Anderson, Robyn Waayers, Andrew Knight

Theory of Mind Collection

Based on neuroanatomical indices such as brain size and encephalization quotient, orcas are among the most intelligent animals on Earth. They display a range of complex behaviors indicative of social intelligence, but these are difficult to study in the open ocean where protective laws may apply, or in captivity, where access is constrained for commercial and safety reasons. From 1979 to 1980, however, we were able to interact with juvenile orcas in an unstructured way at San Diego’s SeaWorld facility. We observed in the animals what appeared to be pranks, tests of trust, limited use of tactical deception, emotional self-control, …

Insect Consciousness: Fine-Tuning The Hypothesis, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg

Animal Sentience

Although we are mostly supportive, we point out the strengths and weaknesses of Klein & Barron’s (2016) hypothesis that insects have the most basic form of consciousness. The strengths are in their application of Bjorn Merker’s vertebrate-derived ideas to arthropods, using their deep knowledge of insect brains. The weaknesses involve the controversial aspects of some of Merker’s ideas. We describe how the latter can be modified to strengthen the authors’ case for insect consciousness.

Poverty And Internalizing Symptoms: The Indirect Effect Of Middle Childhood Poverty On Internalizing Symptoms Via An Emotional Response Inhibition Pathway, Christian G. Capistrano, Hannah Bianco, Pilyoung Kim

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Childhood poverty is a pervasive problem that can alter mental health outcomes. Children from impoverished circumstances are more likely than their middle-income counterparts to develop internalizing problems such as depression and anxiety. To date, however, the emotional-cognitive control processes that link childhood poverty and internalizing symptoms remain largely unexplored. Using the Emotion Go/NoGo paradigm, we examined the association between poverty and emotional response inhibition in middle childhood. We further examined the role of emotional response inhibition in the link between middle childhood poverty and internalizing symptoms. Lower income was associated with emotional response inhibition difficulties (indexed by greater false alarm …

Feel Or Perspective?, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

The title of Klein & Barron’s well-argued and thought-provoking target article is, “Insects have the capacity for subjective experience.” However, they also frame their claim using the term “consciousness,” which they seem to take as equivalent to “subjective experience.” This assumed equivalence, I shall argue, is problematic in a way that might vitiate their central argument.

Genetic Risk For Increased Oxidative Stress In The Aging Brain:Implications For White Matter Integrity And Cognition, Lauren Salminen

Dissertations

Oxidative stress is a key mechanism of the aging process that can cause damage to brain white matter and cognitive functions. Allele variations of two polymorphisms (SOD2, CAT -262) have been associated with abnormalities in antioxidant enzyme activity, suggesting a risk for enhanced oxidative damage to brain white matter and cognition among older individuals with these genetic mutations. The present study utilized diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and neuropsychological assessment to compare differences in microstructural white matter integrity and cognitive performance among 96 older adults (age 50-85) with and without genetic risk factors of SOD2 (rs4880) and CAT -262 (rs1001179). Results …

The Normative Problem Of Shame, Timothy James Oakberg

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

What role should shame play in our lives? This is the normative problem of shame, and it is the focus of this dissertation. Through an examination of empirical research on shame and shame-proneness, I argue that shame should have only a very limited role in our lives. More specifically, we ought not cultivate shame, because a substantial amount of empirical literature points to the conclusion that shame-proneness is counterproductive at both an individual and a societal level. Expanding on this general answer to the normative problem of shame, I discuss in detail three proposals regarding shame from the realms of …

Universal Modes Of Awareness? A “Pre-Reflective” Premise, Uta M. Jürgens

Animal Sentience

Mark Rowlands holds that creatures endowed with pre-reflective awareness may qualify as persons: In pre-reflective awareness, the self and the unity of mental life are implicit in the stream of experience. Rowlands generalizes from an introspective analysis of pre-reflective consciousness in humans to pre-reflective awareness in general. I describe three examples of empirical findings that corroborate the assumption that animal minds have some of the same basic modes of pre-reflective awareness as human minds.

Are Prompts Provided By Electronic Books As Effective For Teaching Preschoolers A Biological Concept As Those Provided By Adults?, Gabrielle Strouse, Patricia Ganea

School of Education Faculty Publications

Research Findings: Prior research indicates that shared book reading is an effective method for teaching biological concepts to young children. Adult questioning during reading enhances children’s comprehension. We investigated whether adult prompting during the reading of an electronic book enhanced children’s understanding of a biological concept. Ninety-one 4-year-olds read about camouflage in 3 conditions. We varied how prompts were provided: (a) read by the book, (b) read by a researcher, or (c) given face to face by the researcher. There was an interaction between children’s initial vocabulary level and condition. Children with low vocabulary scores gave fewer camouflage responses …

Examining The Role Of Executive Functions In Focal Processing Of Event-Based Prospective Memory, Tatsuya T. Shigeta

Theses and Dissertations

Prospective Memory (PM) refers to remembering an intention to be acted upon in the future. Such a memory may be triggered by an event (i.e., Event-based PM) where a specific cue reminds one of the previously encoded intention. PM can be assessed in a lab-setting by having subjects learn a baseline task, subsequently receiving a PM instruction, completing a distractor task, and then going through a test phase where the PM task (i.e., responding to PM cues) is embedded within the ongoing task. The multiprocess view (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000) posits that PM can be retrieved primarily using two different …

What If Klein & Barron Are Right About Insect Sentience?, Bob Fischer

Animal Sentience

If Klein & Barron are right, then insects may well be able to feel pain. If they can, then the standard approach to animal ethics generates some implausible results. Philosophers need to develop alternatives to this framework to avoid them.

Subjective Experience And Moral Standing, Andy Lamey

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s analysis focuses on the capacity for any subjective experience at all. It does not seek to demonstrate that insects can experience pleasure and pain in particular. This would be something of which insects have not traditionally been thought capable. If further research were to demonstrate that one or more insect species turn out to be conscious, yet incapable of experiencing pleasure and pain, it would give rise to a philosophical question that ethicists have yet to answer: Would a creature that is conscious, but lacks the capacity to feel pain, have moral standing?

Exposing The “Shadow Side”: Female-Female Competition In Jane Austen’S Emma, Melissa M. Lyman

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Many critics have examined the shifting nature of female friendship in Jane Austen’s Emma from cultural and historical angles. However, a comprehensive scientific analysis of female-female alliance and competition in the novel remains incomplete. The Literary Darwinist approach considers the motivations of fictional characters from an evolutionary perspective, focusing primarily on human cognition and behaviors linked to reproductive success, social control, and survival. While overt physical displays of male competition are conspicuous in the actions of the human species and those of their closest primate relatives, female aggression is often brandished psychologically and indirectly, which makes for a much more …

Inducing Application Of Interdisciplinary Frameworks: Experiences From The Domains Of Information Literacy And Responsible Conduct Of Research, Anne E. Leonard, Jean E. Hillstrom

Publications and Research

Constructivist frameworks for information literacy and research ethics can be developed and nurtured in the context of an interdisciplinary course. Using the frameworks of two disciplines, students went on an experiential journey in support of ethics foundations through guest lectures and active learning exercises. This study describes the development and content of the responsible conduct of research and information literacy modules and discusses the role of each in an interdisciplinary course. Learning goals for both modules were evaluated by examining student responses in a free-writing exercise at the end of the semester, concluding with a discussion of the structural and …

Is Cortex Necessary?, Sean Allen-Hermanson

Animal Sentience

A key contention of Klein & Barron (2016) is that consciousness does not depend on cortical structures. A critical appraisal suggests they have overestimated the strength of their evidence.

Who Is A Person? Whoever You Want It To Be, Gwen J. Broude

Animal Sentience

Rowlands provides an expanded definition of personhood that preserves the requirement of unity of mental life from the orthodox definition but argues that implicit unity of mind is sufficient for conferring personhood. This allows more or all animals to be considered persons. Implicit unity of mind may be a bridge too far for those who endorse the orthodox account of personhood, and for good reasons. More fundamentally, who gets to decide what personhood entails or that personhood per se matters to such other issues as who receives legal or moral status and consideration? Perhaps we should worry less about definitions …

Are Insects Sentient?, Michael Tye

Animal Sentience

I comment on the methodology used by Klein & Barron for dealing with the question of insect sentience and I briefly make a proposal of my own. Once it is granted that insects are sentient, a further question arises: which insects are subject to which states of sentience? Do insects feel pain, for example? If so, which ones? On the further question, I note, Klein & Barron have nothing to say.

Animal Grieving And Human Mourning, Matteo Colombo

Animal Sentience

King’s How animals grieve beautifully describes several ways in which animals and humans show a similar capacity for grief. Yet this book does not sufficiently emphasise the language-empowered capacity to objectify thinking and sentiments about death, which makes human mourning unique. Here I put this capacity into focus and relate it to the social-normative aspect of human mourning that seems to be missing in other animals.

Insects Join The Consciousness Fray, Bjorn H. Merker

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron's review of recent insect neurobiology helps correct the impression that insect behavior is orchestrated without the benefit of central integrative mechanisms. Given their existence, the authors go on to ask whether these central mechanisms also feature the kind of integrative operations that support sentience, and propose that they do. Along the way they raise a number of conceptual and evidentiary issues of fundamental importance for the neuroscience of consciousness, allowing me to comment favorably on a number of them. I conclude by pointing to ways in which the conception of insect sentience they outline might be tested …

Insects Have Agency But Probably Not Sentience Because They Lack Social Bonding, J. H. Van Hateren

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron (2016) argue that insects have sentience because of functional similarities between the insect brain and vertebrate midbrain. Based on a recent theory of agency and consciousness, I argue that the functional similarities merely point to an advanced form of agency. Insects presumably lack the capacity for social bonding that may be required for subjective experiencing.

An Eeg Investigation Of A Depressive Self-Schema Related To Levels Of Processing In Individuals With High Depressive Symptomatology, Kellen C. Gandy

Psychology Dissertations - Archive

Individuals with high depressive symptomatology have better memory for negative events than positive events. The preferential processing of negative information supports the theory of a depressive self-schema in individuals diagnosed with depression (Beck, 1979). Processing information through a depressive self-schema (or mindset) can perpetuate negative rumination and worsen the symptoms related to depression. Although it is well established that individuals with high depressive symptomatology remember more unpleasant information than positive or neutral information, not as much is known about whether or not these individuals possess a selective bias for processing depression-related unpleasant information (i.e., words such as lonely, sadness, lethargy) …

The Effects Of Ketamine Exposure On Nmda Receptor Mediated Synaptic Transmission In The Developing Brain - A Mechanistic Study Of Ketamine-Induced Neuroapoptosis, Saurabh Kokane

Psychology Theses - Archive

Ketamine is a widely used pediatric anesthetic because of its high potency in pediatric patients. Side-effects produced by ketamine anesthesia in adults are also not seen in children after ketamine use. However, several preclinical studies have shown that prolonged or repeated exposure of neonates to ketamine resulted in widespread death of neurons (neuroapoptosis) in almost all areas of the neonatal brain (Brambrink et al, 2012; Hayashi et al, 2002; Ikonomidou et al, 1999; Scallet et al, 2004; Zou et al, 2009a, b). Increasing evidence shows that this neuroapoptosis affects prenatal and neonatal brain adversely, specifically in brain areas involved in …

Mechanisms Responsible For The Development Of Causal Perception In Infancy., Nicholas A. Holt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of the current dissertation was to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to the emergence of causal perception in infancy. Previous research suggests that the experience of self-produced causal action may be necessary to promote the development of causal perception (Rakison & Krogh, 2012). The goal of the current study was two-fold: (1) to further explore the roles of self-produced action, haptic, proprioceptive and visual information, and parental interaction on young infants’ understanding of causality. To assess the impact of these factors on infants’ causal learning, 4½-month-olds were randomly assigned to one four conditions. Three of the conditions (Active …

Neurobiological Correlates Of Stress And The Pathophysiology Of Depression: Associations Among Social Victimization, Il-6, Crp, And Bdnf Val66met, Allyson Antoinette Arana

Psychology Dissertations - Archive

Peer victimization, a common psychosocial stressor in adolescence, is linked to adverse health outcomes ranging from depression to changes in biological functioning. Social victimization is particularly harmful given the importance placed on peer relations and social status during this developmental period. This dissertation evaluated the associations among social victimization, physical health, psychological health, the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism, and inflammatory biomarkers (IL-6 and CRP) in a diverse sample of adolescents (N = 254). Social victimization was related to depressive symptoms, health problems, and inflammation, partially replicating a previous study. BDNF Val66Met moderated the link between social victimization and health outcomes, such …