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115A Minimalist Approach to the Development of Episodic MemoryMind and Language 27 (1): 29-54. 2012.Episodic memory is usually regarded in a Conceptualist light, in the sense of its being dependent upon the grasp of concepts directly relevant to the act of episodic recollection itself, such as a concept of past times and of the self as an experiencer. Given this view, its development is typically timed as being in the early school-age years. We present a minimalist, Non-Conceptualist approach in opposition to this view, but one that also exists in clear contrast to the kind of minimalism espou…Read more
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141Emotion in human consciousness is built on core affectJournal of Consciousness Studies 12 (8-10): 26-42. 2005.This article explores the idea that Core Affect provides the emotional quality to any conscious state. Core Affect is the neurophysiological state always accessible as simply feeling good or bad, energized or enervated, even if it is not always the focus of attention. Core Affect, alone or more typically combined with other psychological processes, is found in the experiences of feeling, mood and emotion, including the subjective experiences of fear, anger and other so-called basic emotions whic…Read more
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26On the Invalidity of Neta and Kim's Argument That Surprise is Always ValencedEmotion Review 16 (1): 64-67. 2024.In a challenge to Basic Emotion theories, Ortony suggested in a recent article that the existence of affect-free surprise means that surprise is not necessarily valenced and therefore arguably not an emotion. In an article in response, Neta and Kim argued that surprise is always valenced and therefore is an emotion, with apparent cases of affect-free surprise actually being cases of the cognitive state of unexpectedness rather than surprise. We view Neta and Kim's position as resting on an idios…Read more
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17Purity is not a distinct moral domainBehavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.Purity violations overlap with other moral domains. They are not uniquely characterized by hypothesized markers of purity – the witness's emotion of disgust, taint to perpetrator's soul, or the diminished role of intention in moral judgment. Thus, Fitouchi et al.'s proposition that puritanical morality (a subset of violations in the purity domain) is part of cooperation-based morality is an important advance.
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41Do proposed facial expressions of contempt, shame, embarrassment, and compassion communicate the predicted emotion?Cognition and Emotion 25 (5): 898-906. 2011.
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39Children's and adults' understanding of the “disgust face”Cognition and Emotion 22 (8): 1513-1541. 2008.No abstract
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90Descriptive and Prescriptive Definitions of EmotionEmotion Review 2 (4): 377-378. 2010.Izard (2010) did not seek a descriptive definition of emotion—one that describes the concept as it is used by ordinary folk. Instead, he surveyed scientists’ prescriptive definitions—ones that prescribe how the concept should be used in theories of emotion. That survey showed a lack of agreement today and thus raised doubts about emotion as a useful scientific concept
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29In defense of a psychological constructionist account of emotion: Reply to ZacharJournal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 28 (2): 423-429. 2008.Comment on an article by Peter Zachar An account of emotion must include categories and dimensions. Categories because humans categorize reality, and a person's categorization of their own state influences aspects of that state. Dimensions because humans are always in some state of Core Affect, which varies by degree along dimensions of valence and activation . In Psychological Construction, Core Affect and a host of other "components" are separate on-going processes, always in some pattern. Occ…Read more
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120Episodic Memory as Re-Experiential Memory: Kantian, Developmental, and Neuroscientific CurrentsReview of Philosophy and Psychology 5 (3): 391-411. 2014.Recent work on the early development of episodic memory in my laboratory has been fuelled by the following assumption: if episodic memory is re-experiential memory then Kant’s analysis of the spatiotemporal nature of experience should constrain and positively influence theories of episodic memory development. The idea is that re-experiential memory will “inherit” these spatiotemporal features. On the basis of this assumption, Russell and Hanna (Mind and Language 27(1):29–54, 2012) proposed that …Read more
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79Emotion, core affect, and psychological constructionCognition and Emotion 23 (7): 1259-1283. 2009.As an alternative to using the concepts of emotion, fear, anger, and the like as scientific tools, this article advocates an approach based on the concepts of core affect and psychological construction, expanding the domain of inquiry beyond “emotion”. Core affect is a neurophysiological state that underlies simply feeling good or bad, drowsy or energised. Psychological construction is not one process but an umbrella term for the various processes that produce: (a) a particular emotional episode…Read more
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21Emotions Are Not ModulesCanadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (sup1): 53-71. 2006.Jane is calmly strolling through the forest one lovely day. Suddenly, a large spider drops in front of her face. She immediately freezes; her heart races; her hands tremble; her face broadcasts “fear.” She screams and runs away. Both before and after, she concedes that spiders in this forest are harmless.Jane's reaction to the spider contrasts greatly with the way she normally reacts to events. Normally, or so the story goes, Jane weighs her options thoughtfully, choosing a course of action cons…Read more
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27Emotions are not modulesIn Luc Faucher & Christine Tappolet (eds.), The modularity of emotions, University of Calgary Press. pp. 53-71. 2008.
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29Comments on articles by frijda and by conway and bekerianCognition and Emotion 1 (2): 193-197. 1987.
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28Cognisance and cognitive science. Part two: Towards an empirical psychology of cognisancePhilosophical Psychology 2 (2): 165-201. 1989.Abstract In the first part of this essay (Russell, 1988a) I argued that ?cognisance? (roughly: a subject's knowledge of his relation to the physical world as an experiencer of it) cannot be explained in terms of a syntactic theory of mind, due to the ?referential? and ?holistic? nature of this knowledge. The syntactic account of the higher mental functions is immediately intelligible to us due to its derivation from computer technology, so this would not appear to be a happy result for scientifi…Read more
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105Core affect and the psychological construction of emotionPsychological Review 110 (1): 145-172. 2003.
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57The association between imitation recognition and socio-communicative competencies in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)Frontiers in Psychology 6 125377. 2015.Imitation recognition provides a viable platform from which advanced social cognitive skills may develop. Despite evidence that non-human primates are capable of imitation recognition, how this ability is related to social cognitive skills is unknown. In this study, we compared imitation recognition performance, as indicated by the production of testing behaviors, with performance on a series of tasks that assess social and physical cognition in 49 chimpanzees. In the initial analyses, we found …Read more
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25The Relative Dominance of Different Facial Expressions of Emotion under Conditions of Perceptual AmbiguityCognition and Emotion 6 (5): 339-356. 1992.
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25Neo-Vitalism in Affective ScienceEvolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture 6 (1): 49-52. 2022.
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23Space and time in episodic memoryIn L. Filipovic & K. M. Jaszczolt (eds.), Space and Time in Languages and Cultures: Language, culture, and cognition, John Benjamins. pp. 283. 2012.
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28The Psychological Construction of Emotion (edited book)Guilford Press. 2014.This volume presents cutting-edge theory and research on emotions as constructed events rather than fixed, essential entities. It provides a thorough introduction to the assumptions, hypotheses, and scientific methods that embody psychological constructionist approaches. Leading scholars examine the neurobiological, cognitive/perceptual, and social processes that give rise to the experiences Western cultures call sadness, anger, fear, and so on. The book explores such compelling questions as how…Read more
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21Four Perspectives on the Psychology of Emotion: An IntroductionEmotion Review 6 (4): 291-291. 2014.
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37Shame as a Culture-Specific Emotion ConceptJournal of Cognition and Culture 18 (3-4): 274-292. 2018.On the assumption that shame is a universal emotion, cross-cultural research on shame relies on translations assumed to be equivalent in meaning. Our studies here questioned that assumption. In three studies (Ns, 108, 120, 117),shamewas compared to its translations in Spanish (vergüenza) and in Malayalam (nanakedu). American English speakers usedshamefor the emotional reaction to moral failures and its use correlated positively withguilt, whereasvergüenzaandnanakeduwere used less for moral stori…Read more
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29The within-subjects design in the study of facial expressionsCognition and Emotion 27 (6): 1062-1072. 2013.
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47Mixed Emotions Viewed from the Psychological Constructionist PerspectiveEmotion Review 9 (2): 111-117. 2017.Feeling bad is one thing, judging something to be bad another. This hot/cold distinction helps resolve the debate between bipolar and bivariate accounts of affect. A typical affective reaction includes both core affect (feeling good or bad) and judgments of the affective qualities of various aspects of the stimulus situation (which can have both good and bad aspects). Core affect is described by a bipolar valence dimension in which feeling good precludes simultaneously feeling bad and vice versa…Read more
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