Ruben Diaz

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect (delayed response due to interference) elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods.

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods

The distinctive security features of the Spanish electronic national identity card, known as Documento Nacional de Identidad electrónico, allow us to propose the usage of this cryptographic smart card in an authentication framework that can be used during the registration and login phases of internet services where the validation of the user’s age and real identity are key elements, as it is the case for example of the so-called social networks. Using this mechanism with NFC-capable devices, the identity and age of the potential user can be determined, allowing or denying the access to the service based on that information.

El presente artículo da cuenta de las actitudes hacia los inmigrantes entre los estudiantes de educación secundaria de edades comprendidas entre 12 y 13 años en Extremadura, España. Los datos proceden de una investigación financiada por el Gobierno Regional de Extremadura y en ellos se muestran ¿mediante análisis de contenido y utilización de citas textuales¿ los componentes estructurales que alimentan las actitudes positivas y/o negativas hacia la inmigración y los inmigrantes por parte de los adolescentes extremeños, en la medida en que son plenamente representativos en cuanto a actitudes y valores del conjunto nacional. El análisis nos permite establecer un modelo actitudinal frente a la inmigración que deberá ser probado en futuras investigaciones