JMB Insides

Vol. 32 No. 4 CONTENTS

Evolutionary Developmental Biology, the Human Life Course, and Transpersonal Experience ....................................277 Edward Dale Revision of the DSM and Conceptual Expansion of Mental Illness: An Exploratory Analysis of Diagnostic Criteria........................................................................295 Guy A. Boysen

A Bibliometric Index for Selection Processes ........................................333 Fernando Gordillo, José M. Arana, and Lilia Mestas On the Ontological Status of Some Cosmological and Physical Theories .......................................................................351 Uri Fidelman

Autumn 2011

The Evolution of Language: The Cerebro-Cerebellar Blending of Visual-Spatial Working Memory with Vocalizations .............................................................................317 Larry Vandervert

The Journal of Mind and Behavior

The Journal of Mind and Behavior Autumn 2011

Book Review –Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems by Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary, and Finn Spicer (Editors) Reviewed by Mirko Farina ..................................................................361

Vol. 32 No. 4 Autumn 2011

Books Received for Review .....................................................................367

Volume 32 Number 4

Author Index Volume 32.........................................................................373


ISSN 0271– 0137

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The Journalof MindandBehavior EditorialBoard Editor: Raymond Chester Russ, Ph.D. Department of Psychology University of Maine Associate Editors: Charles I. Abramson, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Oklahoma State University David Cohen, Ph.D., M.S.W. School of Social Work Florida International University Avshalom C. Elitzur, Ph.D. Israel Institute for Advanced Research Rehovot, Israel Robert Haskell, Ph.D. Psychology Department University of New England

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Manfred J. Holler, Ph.D. Sozialökonoisches Seminar Universität Hamburg J. Scott Jordan, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Illinois State University

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Paul Krassner, Editor The Realist Venice, California Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. Saybrook Graduate School San Francisco Gerhard M. Kroiss, Ph.D. International Institute for Critical Thinking Greensboro, North Carolina Rebecca Kukla, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy University of South Florida James T. Lamiell, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Georgetown University Wendy Lee, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy Bloomsburg University Jonathan Leo, Ph.D. Department of Anatomy Lincoln Memorial University Altan Löker Istanbul, Turkey William J. Lyddon, Ph.D. Department of Counseling Psychology University of Southern Mississippi Maria Malikiosi–Loizos, Ed.D. University of Athens Athens, Greece Pete Mandik, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy William Paterson University Frank McAndrew, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Knox College L. Brooks McCutchen, Ph.D. Shelburne Falls Clinical Group Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts Michael Montagne, Ph.D. Massachusetts College of Pharmacy Boston Alain Morin, Ph.D. Department of Behavioral Sciences Mount Royal College, Calgary Paul G. Muscari, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy State University College of New York at Glens Falls Raymond A. Noack CMS Research Seattle, Washington Dr. Christian Onof Department of Philosophy Birkbeck College London

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TheJournalofMindandBehavior Autumn 2011


EvolutionaryDevelopmentalBiology,theHuman LifeCourse,andTranspersonalExperience....................................277 Edward Dale RevisionoftheDSMandConceptualExpansion ofMentalIllness:AnExploratoryAnalysis ofDiagnosticCriteria .......................................................................295 Guy A. Boysen TheEvolutionofLanguage:TheCerebro-Cerebellar BlendingofVisual-SpatialWorkingMemory withVocalizations .............................................................................317 Larry Vandervert ABibliometricIndexforSelectionProcesses........................................333 Fernando Gordillo, José M. Arana, and Lilia Mestas OntheOntologicalStatusofSomeCosmological andPhysicalTheories.......................................................................351 Uri Fidelman BookReview –Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems by Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary, and Finn Spicer (Editors) Reviewed by Mirko Farina..................................................................361 BooksReceivedforReview.....................................................................367 AuthorIndexVolume32.........................................................................373

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©2011 The Institute of Mind and Behavior, Inc. The Journal of Mind and Behavior Autumn 2011, Volume 32, Number 4 Pages 277–294 ISSN 0271– 0137

EvolutionaryDevelopmentalBiology,theHuman LifeCourse,andTranspersonalExperience Edward Dale Stockton Hall Psychiatric Hospital

This paper explicates secular psychodynamic growth through the life time and meditation as routes to the transpersonal from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology, based around a multi-line model of growth. A multi-line model raises many significant points for a transpersonal audience. Such models have been pioneered by Hunt. When set on the footing of evolutionary developmental biology and nonlinear dynamics these kind of models become all the more cogent, penetrating and far reaching, validating plurality and diversity in both the process and final form of transpersonal development. The “anecdotal” accounts which Hunt reports, and which this paper adds to, can thus be amalgamated with an established and sophisticated research program (and these “alternative” evidence sources unified with a comprehensive theoretical and research-based paradigm, around which future hypotheses can be formed and tested). Such developments are symptomatic of a general movement in the sciences towards a non-linear paradigm, to which the transpersonal movement might have been slow to respond.

Keywords: transpersonal development, evolutionary developmental biology, nonlinearity

Conceiving transpersonal development as a parallel line to representational development rather than as a higher stage of a single line that includes both representational and transpersonal development can shed light on a number of issues concerning psychology and spirituality. In exploring this further, use is made of Hunt’s (1995a) model of development. These arguments are augmented from a perspective of evolutionary developmental biology. Firstly, a short discussion of “heterochrony” is presented in relation to transpersonal theory, and then an account is offered of both traditional “mystical” techniques like meditation, and the perhaps more usual Western route of life course development towards a spiritual summit as conceived by Maslow (1971), and to some extent by Erikson (Erikson, Erikson, and Rivnick, 1986). Later in the paper, nonlinearity as a Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Edward Dale, Stockton Hall Psychiatric Hospital, Stockton-on-the-Forest, York, YO32 9UN, England. Email: [email protected]

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paradigm, and issues concerning its integration with transpersonal research, are considered in broader terms.

TranspersonalHeterochronyintheHumanLifeCourse Evolutionary developmental biology is the branch of biology that deals with the variable expression of ancestral traits in present-day phenotypes. The subject derived from an amalgamation of the previously disparate fields of evolutionary and developmental biology, in response to the discovery of the regulatory gene, other gene expression mechanisms, and gene expression regulation networks which readily generate rapid variability in the phenotype. The evolutionary developmental process which is most relevant to this discussion of transpersonal themes, and to Hunt’s (1995a) paper, is that of heterochrony. Heterochrony is the variable timing of onset of developmental characteristics. In biology the development of morphological features and behavioural tendencies often involves different timings of emergence. In many species of finch and manakin for example, a delayed emergence of male plumage patterns will result in reduced attacks by older males on younger males (due to their female appearance) and so serve as an evolutionary advantage (Grant, 1990; McDonald, 1989; see Smith [2003] for a review of the uses of term “heterochrony”). If, as Hunt contends, transpersonal development is best conceived as a line or lines which run in parallel to the line of representational cognition, which can emerge into awareness at any time, then the point at which the transpersonal line does emerge can be considered a heterochrony. Recognising transpersonal development as a parallel line to representational cognition and its emergence as a heterochrony suggests the possibility for a synthesis of many of the dominant transpersonal paradigms. Specifically, Hunt describes a representational line which deals with logical thought and a presentational line which deals with “an expanded, spacious sense of isness and a concomitant sense of personal presence” (1995a, p. 121). Hunt also identifies a line of motor development, and argues that Gardner’s (1993) multiple intelligences can be accounted for by differences in the weighting of contribution of each of the three lines. Spirituality is both a high level of dominance of the presentational over the other two lines, and is also defined as the highest form of Gardner’s intra-personal intelligence. It is instructive to consider some of the implications of this multi-line view, but before doing so it is necessary to briefly run over some definitions. For writers like Alexander et al. (1990) and Wilber (1981, 2000), transpersonal development happens once representational development is complete or largely complete. Such frameworks can be considered anagenetic models, as a largely invariant sequence of stages and a single developmental line is implied. A multi-line model, such as Hunt proposes, can be considered a cladogenetic model, as more than one

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line of development is involved. The terms anagenesis and cladogenesis were coined to refer to types of evolution in biology: anagenesis describes a stage-like transition in which one species “grows into” or completely displaces another so that a single line accounts for the evolution of the genus. Cladogenesis refers to the Darwinian branching of phylogenies in which multiple species (or other taxa) exist in parallel. A much greater and lasting emphasis on cladogenesis over anagenesis was one of the major legacies of Darwin. The evolution of the horse, for example, was once thought to progress in anagenetic fashion in which one species replaced another, but it is now known to involve multiple collateral clades, with up to sixteen species having co-existed at once on a single continent (MacFadden, 1999). My usage of cladogenesis applies this morphological formula to consciousness. A cladogenetic model can accommodate seemingly anagenetic instances of development, and so a cladogenetic model can explain everything that anagenetic or hierarchical models of human development can explain, whilst retaining the flexibility to explain more as well. If the development of representational cognition moves from sensorimotor, to preoperational, to concrete operational, to formal operational levels (and then through as many post-formal stages as one believes exist — see Alexander and Langer [1990] on post-formal stages) and then on to transpersonal stages, then it appears as if a single anagenetic line is unfolding, and transpersonal development appears to be a continuation of the representational line. But that single anagenetic line can just as easily be conceived as two separate lines, with one emerging into awareness after the development of the other is largely complete. It is easy to see why many people think that transpersonal development is anagenetic; but the multi-line or cladogenetic formula allows for the earlier emergence of the transpersonal line as well as the later emergence. I will now begin to describe some of the processes and dynamics which are involved in the emergence of transpersonal potentials. Although I discuss these in detail below, I will introduce them here in order to expand the discussion of heterochrony, before returning to look at the processes I use — meditation and spontaneous transpersonal experience from the perspectives of life course development research — later in the paper. If transpersonal development is triggered by serious engagement with meditation as many have contended — see, for example, Alexander et al. (1990) and Washburn (1995), and also the large amount of anecdotal evidence in the Zen, Vipassana, and other contemplative Buddhist traditions for whom meditative practice is an essential part of monastic life — and if meditation is nearly always engaged with seriously (i.e., as long-term daily practice) from an adult age and not before in Western environments, then it stands to reason that the transpersonal line will emerge only in adulthood (once the line of representation cognition is complete) and so human development will appear to be char-

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acterised by a single invariant anagenetic continuum of stages. On the other hand, in a non-Western environment, say, an Indian Hindu ashram like those mentioned by Paramahansa Yogananda (1996), meditation is encouraged from a much younger age. Yogananda writes that it is not unusual, in these circumstances, to see children as young as ten years entering deep states of meditation for an hour or more. In such children, I suggest, the trigger of transpersonal development — serious regular meditation — is applied earlier and so the transpersonal line emerges whilst the line of cognitive representation is still developing (at a concrete operational age) and represents a parallel or collateral aspect of development to the progression of representational cognition. The timing of development evidences a heterochrony, and the heterochrony is triggered by the developmental environment — i.e., whether or not meditation is engaged — in classic epigenetic manner. Of course, meditation is by no means the only trigger of spiritual development. Some individuals appear to encounter similar phenomena to the meditative adept spontaneously, and their development can be explained without recourse to meditation. The triggers of transpersonal development will become clearer with more research, but I suggest that — whether the trigger is meditative training or some spontaneous psychodynamic process — the age that the trigger occurs determines the emergence into awareness of the spiritual line. I consider the spontaneous psychodynamic cases, which might be the more prevalent, later in the paper. The literature includes many examples of adolescent age individuals attaining permanent spiritual realisations long before the completion of adult representational development, both involving meditation and spontaneous occurrence. Nithyananda (2008) claims to have had powerful spiritual experiences from the age of 12 and experienced full enlightenment from the age of 22, and Master Xuecheng was the youngest ordained Han Roshi at the age of 23 (Ruoqiao, 2011). Ramana Maharshi’s awakening took place at age 16 (Maharshi, 2001), Ram Bahadur Bomjon’s at age 15 (Adhikary and McDermid, 2008), and Krishnamurti’s sagelike qualities at age 14 were noticed by Charles Leadbeater ( Jayakar, 1986). The latest research suggests that the development of representational cognition is not complete until well into the twenties. Post-formal stages like Fischer’s level 9 and level 10 abstractions unfold at 19–21 years and 24–26 years respectively (Fischer, Kenny, and Pipp, 1990; Richards and Commons, 1990). Commons and Richards (2003) identify two higher stages than the highest stages investigated by Fischer et al. — the usual age of emergence of these stages has not yet been determined. Other researchers, like Pascual–Leone (1990), trace developments in the representational line through the entire life course to old age. Clearly the examples cited show evidence of deep and powerful transpersonal development occurring well before representational development is complete. If representational and transpersonal development unfold as invariant anagenetic stages, then


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these powerful permanent experiences at adolescent and young adolescent ages should not be possible; if representational and transpersonal development unfold as collateral lines, then the variable age of transpersonal development is natural. Something similar emerges when considering phylogeny: if Commons and Richards’ further stages did not emerge in the species until recent centuries as they claim, then the adepts of old cannot have been enlightened, as those adepts would not have been able to pass through the requisite representational stages. If representational and transpersonal development are separate lines then a high level in the transpersonal line could have been attained in medieval, axial, Chalcolithic, Neolithic, and Paleolithic ages quite easily, while representational development has not perhaps fully flowered until the modern period. This objection to anagenetic views of stage-like development from phylogeny is not new but has arguably never been satisfactorily answered, and a multi-line cladogenetic model provides a more plausible alternative which avoids these difficulties. Meditation as Cause I have suggested that both meditation and secular psychodynamics can serve as the basis for transpersonal experience and, as I fill out these routes to the transpersonal, a fuller evolutionary developmental perspective can be introduced (although the details of such an approach are not completed until later in the paper). Detailed mechanisms — specifically the variable expression of genes through mRNA translation and post-translational protein modification that influences variability in gene products — exist in the evolutionary developmental literature to explicate what has been said. I suggest that transpersonal development can be considered as an alternative developmental chreod. Chreods represent developmental homologues, or pathways laid down by phylogenetic ancestors. The classic metaphor that Waddington (1959) used to describe chreods was balls rolling down grooves on a table. Most balls will take the broadest and deepest groove, but a minority (due to some difference in the epigenetic environment) experience a “perturbation,” and then a “bifurcation” or split in trajectory, and head off down an alternative groove. I suggest below that meditation, or some other source of stress, causes the perturbation; the age at which development diverges from the normal trajectory is thus determined by epigenetic factors. In the West, this usually happens in adulthood, but if the stimulus is applied earlier the divergence of trajectory or “bifurcation” will happen earlier. Accordingly, transpersonal theory grounded in biology immediately suggests malleable developmental avenues. Evidence suggests that both stress (a great promoter of change in biological systems) and relaxation can provide the impetus to change, whether change is driven by purposeful mastery of meditative practices in an Eastern manner or

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by a more natural psychological development across the life time in a Western manner. Meditation itself might invite transpersonal experience by inducing stress. In terms of complex adaptive systems theory (a core pin in much evolutionary developmental work) it might be said that meditative postures, and a general ascetic code, create perturbations which alter developmental trajectory. Readers might expect meditation to produce relaxation, and indeed it often does, but a prolonged period of motionless meditation eventually produces both emotional and physical stress. This stress perturbs the current level of equilibrium and makes possible a new equilibrium, in which the system might sink into a phase profile which incorporates transpersonal experience. Similarly in therapy, progress often only occurs — and greater peace is found — after a period of distress in which the individual vacates her psychological equilibrium and re-calibrates to an alternative equilibrium (see Palombo, 1999 for more on phase transitions in therapy). Long-term meditation does reduce blood markers of stress (Alexander at al., 1990), perhaps as a result of the increased comfort of transpersonal development, but the early stages of transpersonal development involves negotiating stressful transitions — the “lonely valleys” of Western mysticism. The limitations of the ego become starker when faced with an environment of minimum food and sleep, along with several hours of daily practice in a monastic environment, and numerous prohibitions of the things the ego usually enjoys. These conditions persuade the ego to tire of its present state of equilibrium and to more easily give in to and allow the emergence of transpersonal potentials. Stress is acknowledged as a wide cause of heterochrony in evolutionary developmental biology ( Jablonka and Lamb, 2006), and is often implicated in nonlinear phase transitions within organisms: stressful conditions are held to cause the transition from single cellularity to multicellularity in the slime mould Dictyostelium discoideum, for example (Höfer, Sherratt, and Maini, 1995).1 It is worth adding a cautionary note here. Children who penetrate deep levels of meditative awareness might show an above average aptitude for the rapid development of the presentational line from an early age. It would be unfortunate 1An

alternative is that the average “egoic” level of psychological adjustment, and the general phase profile that supports it, is a suboptimal state in which the organismic system has yet to reach a true equilibrium. By the practice of relaxation techniques, the system can first temporarily and then permanently reach an increasingly stable state of equilibrium, which provides the energic substrate for transpersonal experience. This is a systems view of the arguments of Alexander et al. (1990). [Alexander at al., in fact, present an anagenetic view, but their framing of relaxation as the key operator in the production of transpersonal states can be set on the cladogenetic footing that I am expounding as well.] It might be that both relaxation and stress are necessary mechanisms in transpersonal growth, and hence the ability of meditation to produce both responses in students is significant. But as most of the institutions that have historically taken the production of transpersonal phenomena as a primarily goal — monasteries, ashrams, etc. — have also been interested in discipline and austerity, I have focussed on the induction of stress as the primary key that unlocks transpersonal peace in this paper.


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if children who lacked this aptitude were pushed into daily meditation (especially longer, stress-inducing practice sessions) from which they drew no obvious benefits. Even if early meditation can induce significant spiritual development in all children and not just those with a natural aptitude for the line, the pros and cons of firmly pushing a child into meditation must be considered, much as there are pros and cons in pushing hard the development of any capacity (musical, sporting, etc.) in childhood. It would be particularly unfortunate if one were to pursue this pushing of meditation on children, causing discomfort. While this does not detract from the observation that transpersonal development in children is possible, caution is advisable when considering what the consequences of this should be for children growing up in the modern West. The TM and Vipassana meditation programmes advise meditation sessions of no longer than 20 minutes for children, and for children under ten years old the TM technique is done whilst walking rather than sitting, which is not likely to induce excessive stress, and this approach, in children at least, might be wise. Secular Psychodynamic Processes as Cause Spirituality is both the ground of the adept who purposefully activates it through spiritual practices like meditation, and a possibility for the progression of secular human psychology. Stress or dissatisfaction with the conditions of ordinary ego can occur spontaneously without any purposeful induction through ascetic codes and disciplined postural endurance and hence “spontaneous awakenings” are possible — and meditation and asceticism are not always necessary. Washburn (1995) sets the emergence of the transpersonal in the context of existential conflict as well as meditative practice. I have said it is the experience of stress which drives innovation and novelty, in both evolution and ontogeny, by providing the perturbation necessary to drive the movement to alternative system equilibriums; this stress need not be purposefully induced through meditative practice. The stress of the existential conflict that is often said to be at its strongest at the mid-life period can serve just as well. There are many examples of transpersonal awakenings which are anything but relaxing in their early stages. Hunt (2003) acknowledges Erikson’s life stage transitions as presentational shifts. These existential crises can be solved by either an upward movement into another psychological level (upwards through Erikson’s stages), or by the emergence of a previously hidden collateral aspect of existence (the spiritual). Perhaps the healthiest solution to these life crises would involve both a shift on Erikson’s scale of motivation and outlook, and the emergence of the spiritual line as an accompaniment. Indeed, although many people might not claim to be undergoing spiritual awakenings, the general progression of human maturity might involve more of the spiritual than it is typically credited with: Hunt (1995a) suggests that great achievements are often imbued with spiritual presence,

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and cites Churchill and Mohammed Ali as examples of those who have embodied such a mode of being through their performances. It also follows from this that the more usual achievements of ordinary adults can also be coloured by the emergence of the collateral spiritual component and illumed like archetypes as the self naturally flowers into “self-actualising” modes. On this reading, you can experience the extraordinary in ordinary life by engaging the transition from what Maslow (1971) terms “deficit values” (interpersonal needs and worldly success) to “being values” (refined presentational or spiritual life appreciation), and I find this in line with both the message of the religious sages and with what life course psychology is revealing as a “secular Western mysticism” which can occur later in life (see Hunt, 2003). On this view the individual, rather than withdrawing like the ascetic, finds her daily activity imbued with a sense of unity as her life unfolds simultaneously into further levels of psychological adjustment and further intensities of spiritual groundedness. As Hunt (1995a) suggests, a business person who comes into contact with powerful presentational states might also enjoy a synthesis of a wider range of life’s experiences, and perhaps progress more smoothly through Erikson’s stages of the life cycle. If, as Hunt (2003, p. 3) suggests, there exists “a spontaneous spirituality in mid- and late-life self actualisation,” then one can come to the conclusion that spirituality can be achieved without the need of exotic Eastern practices like meditation, and that to live spiritually is to simply live ordinary life as well as you can. Relatedly, the self contracts and dilates in many daily activities as focus shifts from the representational to the presentational line, though this dilation might be largely unnoticed to those who are not familiar with transpersonal or spiritual frameworks. Hunt (1995a) suggests that the development of the spiritual or presentational line can begin with an appreciation of the arts and the open expansive mode of consciousness that intense appreciation (of music for example) can engender. Presented in this manner, as a part of both natural life span progression and daily routine, transpersonal development issues become as relevant to personality psychology, and therefore to healthcare, education, and even politics, as they are to the concerns of the monk and nun. Hunt, Gervais, Shearing–Johns, and Travis (1992) identify two different continuums which are predictive of transpersonal development, the first characterised by “the relative absence of major indicators of childhood and adult conflict, and the other inseparable from high levels of early and continuing dread and panic states” (Hunt, 1995a, p. 128). It appears that routes exist which lead through both pleasant and dark territories, and this is why both an appreciation of the arts (a pleasant route) and ascetic endurances (a stressful route) can trigger transpersonal experience. I would suggest that the second route might produce more profound transpersonal experience and do so more quickly, which is why roshis advised their monks and nuns to engage discipline rather than artistic


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“indulgence.” That said, the beautiful stained glass windows, mandala compositions (a form of Indo-Tibetan art) and chanting, appear to admit a recognition of the first route among ascetics as well: these reclusive communities do not seem to have formed their local subcultures totally without their own forms of aesthetic expression. It might be, however, that the first route becomes the primary mode of transpersonal development in the modern West, where formal spiritual exercises like meditation are less prevalent, and therefore the more relevant to a majority of Westerners and to the study of transpersonal development in modern settings more generally. This plurality of developmental routes sits quite comfortably with the variable developmental chreods described, and is compatible with the general bridges being built with evolutionary developmental biology.

EvolutionaryDevelopmentalBiology The evolutionary developmental view outlined above needs expansion, which I will do here, by running over some of the relevancies to transpersonal phenomena. Development unfolds down constrained developmental pathways, or chreods. The physical substrate to chreods are gene expression regulation networks; these networks are composed of elements in the internal and external environment which serve to turn genes on or off via a complex network of feedback loops between genes, gene products, and a host of other physiological and psychophysiological factors. They are outstanding examples of the interrelationship between mind, behaviour, and their physical correlates. Gene expression regulation networks are large enough to evidence complexity dynamics and often nonlinearity. Sudden, subtle changes in developmental programmes due to sensitivity to initial conditions fall into stable patterns: this is the essence of contemporary biology which has arisen over recent decades as a result of the nonlinear revolution, and complex systems theory (Gould, 2002). Harold (1990, p. 415) describes the role of sensitivity to initial conditions in the generation of novelty: “small initial differences (sometimes random or nonspecific, environmental cues) are progressively amplified, generating spatial fields of one kind or another; the nature of these fields may vary from one case to the next. These fields direct the localisation of molecules and forces that actually shape the visible structure, and therefore serve as obligatory intermediates in all developmental pathways.” Although Harold is referring to the chreods that govern body plan morphology, the process he describes also applies to brain structure morphology, altering the neuronal density of cortical and sub-cortical regions by small but significant amounts, in order to alter the arising phenomena of human consciousness, in both personal and transpersonal forms. Whether the brain changes that produce mysticism are entirely epigenetic, or whether they trace ancestral chreods and are therefore evolutionary as well as developmental, remains to be seen.

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Nonlinearity produces exponential rates of growth: through sensitivity to initial conditions, small differences in starting trajectories are magnified at an exponential rate over time. In linear dynamics, small differences stay small as time passes. Through cascades of gene/environment interactions evidencing nonlinear behaviour small differences in the transpersonal developmental environment are magnified and result in very large differences in the eventual outcome (see Kauffman, 1993 for a definitive work on nonlinear effects in evolution and development; see Palombo, 1999 for an application of nonlinearity to neural networks and consciousness). To link this to the previous theory: a child who meditates regularly will create the conditions which will cause changes in awareness from an early age; across history most realised adepts have become realised from an adult age; the normal time of activation for the transpersonal developmental chreod might be adulthood, whether it is activated through meditation or through the natural progression of life course psychodynamics — but, I have suggested, large divergences from this norm are possible. The purpose of transpersonal development is to break out of the chreods of ordinary development, and this is done through some kind of stressor or perturbation — whether purposefully cultivated through ascetic practice or naturally occurring at a psychodynamic life course crisis point — that throws individual phase profiles out of their conventional repertoire, and leaves open the possibility of the emergence of a new order that incorporates transpersonal awareness as those phase profiles regain regularity.2 Nonlinearity certainly functions in many of the phase transitions of human physiology and perception, but the overall progression of the major features of typical or normal human ontogeny displays “robustness,” and is therefore insensitive to small changes (see Solé and Goodwin, 2000 for a general overview). Typical developments unfold within frozen, orderly portions of ontogenetic phase space (this is why large-scale developmental heterochronies do not exist in representational cognition, and four-year-old formal operational reasoners are not seen). But when development is atypical, nonlinearity comes into play and so large-scale heterochronies in the chreod or chreods that govern the emergence of the transpersonal line of development are possible. Evolutionary developmental concepts have been slow to influence psychology, although that process is now underway; the evolutionary developmental movement in biology’s closest equivalent in psychology is the emerging field of developmental cognitive neuroscience. (For evolutionary developmental effects in psychology see Balaban, 2006; Geary, 2006; Geary and Bjorklund, 2000; Johnson, 2Those

familiar with the cybernetic models of Langton (1992), Lewin (1992), and particularly Kauffman (1993), will note that transpersonal development appears to arise in the region of change in complex systems which falls between orderly and chaotic components, described as a rugged fitness landscape, as this is the area that often yields atypical patterns, rapid change, and nonlinear effects.


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2005; Pennington, Snyder, and Roberts, 2007; but I stress that it is atypical psychological developments to which the field is most relevant.) Behaviour as opposed to just morphology is also widely acknowledged to evidence large scale heterochronies in animal species (see West–Eberhard, 2003), and a general expansion of evolutionary developmental concepts into the arena of consciousness can be expected in coming decades. After all, gene expression is likely to have produced nearly all of the differences between the chimpanzee and the human, including differences in consciousness and cognition as well as morphology (following from King and Wilson’s 1975 discovery that there is only a 1.5% difference between nucleotide sites in human and chimp DNA). The chreods of transpersonal development appear to have been laid down in the Paleolithic era, in line with the thinking of evolutionary psychologists as to the origins of modern human cognition. Transpersonal experience might have been more common in the Paleolithic period, as it was cultivated as a part of communal religious experience. If this is so, then relatively well engrained chreods already exist as ancestral channels and await triggering — much as the capacity to acquire language is argued to have come pre-wired, and needs only to be triggered through exposure to language (Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch, 2002). But a highly specific epigenetic environment — one which involves exposure to tasks that instill transpersonal growth like meditation — is necessary to trigger transpersonal chreods while nearly all human developmental environments involve exposure to language, and this is why most people can use language but don’t experience significant transpersonal development. Whether or not an alternative chreod is taken, and which alternative chreod is taken, is determined by individual differences in the environment. This switching between ancestral characteristics as a result of environment-triggered differences in gene expression is textbook evolutionary developmental biology (see West–Eberhard, 2003). The cross-modal synaesthesias which Hunt (1995b) described can be thought of as pre-programmed responses which await triggering as alternative chreods, and which are specified on the level of gene regulation networks which partially self-organise in spontaneous manner and are partially shaped by the epigenetic environment. Modern mystical experience relies on adaptive responses which were initially honed around the shamanic rituals of Paleolithic religion. Novelty is initially created in the phenotypes of the first generation whether it is created genetically or epigenetically, and so development always leads evolution when new traits are created. How much current transpersonal realisers reactivate ancestral pathways, and how much they break completely new ground and therefore genuinely represent a “cutting edge” as Wilber (1982) claims, remains to be seen. In my own view, because of the remarkable claims of the mystics — developing within a few years to apparently gain ultimate insight into the deepest existential and metaphysical questions — it seems likely that mystics

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traverse pathways which have been refined for millennia and tens of millennia, and the mystics of today walk in the footsteps of the tradition of shamans, saints, rishis, etc., that have gone before them. If, however, the mystics of today really are breaking new ground and only accessing ancestral traits minimally if at all — that is, they are not merely retracing the footsteps of the ancients but standing on their shoulders and seeing farther — then this does not move the ball back to evolutionary genetics alone. The complexity of gene expression regulation explains variety of all kinds including dramatic first generational variety when it arises. Developmental plasticity need not rely on ancestral switching and ordinary epigenetics might suffice; I just think it is likely that ancestral switching is involved in the transpersonal domain.

ResearchConsiderations The hypotheses set out in this paper are derived from applying to transpersonal psychology a paradigm shift which has already set in, in the wider sciences. This deserves some comment, which I provide here, as well as summarising some of the specific hypotheses that can be identified. The Context of the Theory A large amount of debate in transpersonal psychology has concerned to what degree individual development will depart from normative, structuralist, invariant, developmental maps (see Ferrer, 2002; Wilber, 2000, 2007). There has been an increasing admission of a larger degree of departure. For example, Wilber (2007) writes, “to repeat, because these are state-stages, not structure stages, there can be much fluidity, temporary skipping around, peak experiencing of higher states (not structures), and so on. But the general progression of states as they are mastered (from spontaneous peak to plateau) was indeed gross to subtle to causal” (p. 82, his italics).3 My own view is that any model which attempts to map individual differences around a statistical model will fall short as transpersonal development is governed by nonlinear developmental trajectory changes, and not by statistical linear processes. As well as Hunt, the 3Wilber

might argue that the number of levels and lines in his latest models can cover all forms of spiritual experience and all points of emergence in the life time. If so, then Wilber’s model might benefit from being set on an evolutionary developmental footing; there is no evidence in Wilber (2007) that these mechanisms are given any explicit importance in his thinking. Likewise, the phraseology in Wilber suggests that the primary dynamic is still one of linear statistical averaging rather than nonlinear sensitivity to initial conditions. At the same time, the amount of levels and lines in Wilber’s model might make it very difficult to test in practice, while a model based around two primary lines — representational and presentational — might offer a more parsimonious working hypothesis and despite its grounding in self-organisation and non-linearity might actually be easier to test, and thereby easier to qualify as a “scientific theory.”


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models of Ferrer (2002) and Rawlinson (1997) show potential for integration with a nonlinear paradigm, as they admit to large scale pluralities, though Ferrer and Rawlinson do not speak of their models in nonlinear terms. The same movement from the statistical approach of physics (nineteenth century thermodynamics) and in biology (twentieth century population biology) to views of both subjects based around chaos and complexity has unfolded in the history of science (Hacking, 1990; Popper, 1990). The study of transpersonal phenomena might lag behind this level of explanation, as most of it has focussed on attempts to fashion universal models, to which all subjects who undergo transpersonal development are expected to conform to one degree or another. Nonlinearity presents a puzzle for statisticians and therefore a puzzle for psychology. Due to “sensitivity to initial conditions” predictive ability vanishes at an exponential rate as time passes. Standard psychological statistics remove outliers and compare population means and variances for statistically significant but small differences. Individuals who develop in highly atypical fashion are likely to be excluded from results. Exactly the same problem — the routine eradication of outliers and anomalies from data samples — beset Mandelbrot (1982) as he developed his fractal geometry which became an icon in the study of chaos and complexity; anomaly is the essential artefact of nonlinearity in data and observation. Abnormal phenomena in transpersonal development are likely to slip through the broad net of statistical averaging through which psychology generally operates. It is telling that it is these non-quantitative or anecdotal observances in timing of onset of transpersonal development reported in Hunt that have drawn attention to the faults with the hierarchical, anagenetic transpersonal framework, and to the emerging problems with the statistical view of transpersonal theory that dominated the subject in its outset. (See the work of Alexander [e.g., Alexander et al., 1990; Orme–Johnson, 2000] for examples of the application of standard psychological assessment techniques to transpersonal experience; a nonlinear perspective does not make this work invalid, it remains a valuable contribution, it just does not tell the whole story.) The potential for psychology to predict human behaviour and development is increasingly limited when nonlinear trajectories are involved; predictive power declines at an exponential rate as time increases from the data gathering point. Predictive power also decreases exponentially as precision of initial data decreases, in line with Heisenberg’s (1952) uncertainty principle. In standard psychology this rarely matters much, as sensitivity to initial conditions is not a factor; in atypical psychology it is highly important, and the more atypical the development — the more it pushes the current boundaries of evolution and development in a unique way — the more strongly sensitivity to initial conditions applies. This does not bode well for those who seek a “one size fits all” solution to the question “How does transpersonal development happen?”

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Some Specific Hypotheses It is possible to identify differences in both the timing of onset of transpersonal experience and the character of the experience itself regardless of its point of origin in ontogeny. To begin with, I’ll summarise the differences in timing. The work of Hunt suggests very large differences in transpersonal developmental trajectories. To re-iterate, Hunt speaks of a difference in the emergence point of transpersonal development between individuals, so that in some individuals transpersonal development can begin in childhood while in others it does not occur until adulthood (if at all), depending on the time in ontogeny in which they move into (and thereby become intensely aware of ) presentational (or spiritual) modes of being. This is not a straightforward alternative to hierarchical models in which transpersonal development can only happen in adulthood once representational development is complete, the hierarchical models which posit transpersonal development as a higher stage of development can be accommodated as well. If the transpersonal line emerges in adulthood, once representational development is complete or largely complete it will appear to be a higher stage of the representational line. A two-line view can account for both modular and stage-like views of development, and these are some of the points brought out above. Hunt (1995b) also speaks of more than one line of transpersonal development which can show different degrees of emergence in different individuals, and this accounts for the differences in the character of transpersonal experience itself. There have been many attempts to provide cartographies of religious and mystical experience. In all likelihood the number of lines of transpersonal development is very large. Hunt himself identifies a white light module which accounts for some of the experiences of light reported in the mystical literature. Likewise there are also many reports of experiences of blank or voidic absorption which represent a different phenomenal complex. Presentational (spiritual) experience appears to flow outwards from introverted or absorptive modes experienced in meditation (or the boundary between sleep and waking, or in the intense introspective moods of existential crisis points) to immerse extroverted experience in presentational or spiritual tones (Agrawal, 2001; see Stace, 1961 on the introverted/extroverted distinction). Introverted or inner mystical experience can have an integrative effect on character; the extroverted flavour of transpersonal experience might result in a fairly uniform increase in presentational experience across traditions, but the introverted absorptions that can trigger this presentational experience certainly take more than one form. This adds another significant set of individual differences alongside timing of onset. In summary: both the timing of onset and the character of experience of transpersonal phenomena differ between individuals in the ways I have specified, and such a hypothesis can form a basis for testing the evolutionary developmental ideas discussed.


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It is worth explicating in a little more detail what has been said about introverted lines of transpersonal experience: two common forms of introverted mystical experience are those of “mystical light” and “mystical darkness,” which perhaps represent the two most basic representations of an intuition of “reality” free from cultural and contextual framing. If multiple lines of introverted experience exist and can be accessed through meditation and other forms of inner Yoga, and if meditation progresses through stages in the manner suggested by many Eastern contemplative schools like the framework in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (Agrawal, 2001), then the possibility arises that spiritual development might offer an equivalent structural form to the lines of representational cognition. Specifically, just as lines of representational cognition (numerical, emotional, musical, etc.) progress, in neo-Piagetian theory, through Piaget’s stages of sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational representational logic (or another domain general scale of representational development, like Case’s [1992]) at independent rates; so lines of introverted meditative experience (mystical light, mystical darkness) might progress through Patanjali’s stages of dharana, dhyana, and samadhi levels of unity with an object of contemplation (or another cartography of meditative stages like the Theravada or Vajrayana Buddhist stages) again at independent rates. Similarly, if the physical world, as well as outer experience more generally, drives the development of the Piagetian lines by providing a constant for testing towards which lines can equilibrate, then meditative absorption might provide an equivalent phenomenological “constant” that drives the development of presentational experience, such that presentational experience is drawn forward by the unitive experiences of interior absorption into further levels of psychodynamic integration. Representation equilibrates to the outer or manifest world; presentation equilibrates to the inner or unmanifest world. (Some read the Yoga Sutras as a stage-like progression from mystical light towards mystical darkness, but the interpretation that I have given of mystical light and darkness as lines that progress through stages of dharana, dhyana, and samadhi holds as well — see Hewitt, 1983 on the various interpretations of the Yoga Sutras, and Washburn, 1995 on Patanjali’s stages of meditative development.) These variables in developmental course and outcome do not lend themselves well to statistical averaging approaches, but they follow very naturally from a complexity and nonlinearity based view. The movement to a nonlinear footing is necessary as a reflection of the development of our understanding of change in general. But transpersonalists need to be more aware of nonlinearity than ordinary psychologists, as transpersonalists deal with the rugged fitness landscapes of atypical developments on which new ground is broken. Transpersonalists can expect a move in the future to a nonlinear transpersonal paradigm, and that models like Hunt’s which allow a lot of variability will replace the more rigid hierarchical models that have dominated in recent decades (and previously).

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A future nonlinear paradigm in which variability proliferates in all aspects of transpersonal development is likely. Conclusion Pluralistic and variable accounts of transpersonal development need a powerful basis to account for mechanisms which substantiate higher-level observations, and evolutionary developmental biology can provide that. The best models would accommodate hierarchical models based around linear statistics, but would consider them to be just one example of how transpersonal development can happen. The move to complexity has not been spectacular in psychology, as most of psychology studies normal or typical developments, which unfold in orderly manner, as strongly canalised and stable developmental pathways. As transpersonal developments are atypical developments they unfold on precisely the rugged developmental terrain where nonlinear dynamics are most likely to apply, and which are absent in the domain of typical psychology. Nonlinearity is therefore highly relevant to transpersonal discussion, though less relevant to discussion of typical human psychological ontogeny, and it can be expected that an increase in pluralistic and variable models of transpersonal development will be seen in the future. What has been described in this paper is of course just one form that a nonlinear transpersonal theory might take.

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RevisionoftheDSMandConceptualExpansionofMental Illness:AnExploratoryAnalysisofDiagnosticCriteria Guy A. Boysen SUNY Fredonia

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) contains the official diagnostic criteria for recognized mental illnesses. Some have asserted that DSM revisions have caused the boundaries of specific disorders to expand to include more behaviors, but no previous research has examined if such expansion is isolated or endemic. The current research consisted of an exploration of revisions to diagnostic criteria for 81 disorders. Each change between editions of the DSM was conceptually analyzed as making the disorder more exclusive or more inclusive in terms of the number of people who could theoretically meet the criteria. Results indicated that 63% of disorders moved toward inclusivity, that each edition of the DSM moved toward inclusivity, and that most types of revisions increase inclusivity.

Keywords: DSM disorders, diagnostic bracket creep, mental illness

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a foundational document in the study of psychopathology because it provides definitions for the currently acknowledged examples of mental illness. Defining mental illness is an ongoing process that is reflected in the multiple editions of the DSM. The first and second editions of the DSM had limited importance for clinicians and researchers, but the DSM-III was revolutionary both in terms of its definitional approach and its impact (Mayes and Horwitz, 2005). Central features of the DSMIII, such as multiaxil diagnosis and symptom-based definitions, have remained unrevised across the DSM-III-R (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1987), DSM-IV (APA, 1994), and DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000). However, revisions have included many new diagnostic labels, and the new disorders have caused concern about expansion of the concept of mental illness (Follette and Houts, 1996; Pincus, Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Guy A. Boysen, Department of Psychology, W357 Thompson Hall, SUNY Fredonia, Fredonia, New York, 14063. Email: [email protected]

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Frances, Davis, First, and Widiger, 1992; Wakefield, 1999). A related area of concern centers on what has been called conceptual bracket creep (McNally, 2004). Bracket creep refers to the broadening of definitions of mental disorders to be more inclusive, allowing more people to meet the criteria. Although researchers have discussed bracket creep with regard to specific disorders, there has never been an investigation of expansion of the DSM as a whole. As such, the current exploratory study consists of a conceptual analysis of revisions to diagnostic criteria to determine if mental disorders have become more exclusive or more inclusive overall. Such an analysis is particularly relevant given the current DSM revision process and recent controversy surrounding fears of diagnostic expansion in the forthcoming DSM-5 (Francis, 2009, 2010; “Open Letter to the DSM-5,” 2012).

ExpansionoftheDSM Increasing Diagnostic Categories A traditional method of defining mental illness is to conceptualize it as statistically deviant behavior (Wakefield, 1992), but current prevalence rates indicate that mental illness is no longer statistically aberrant. Epidemiological research indicates that the lifetime prevalence of mental disorders is nearly 50% (Kessler et al., 1994; Kessler, Chiu, Demler, and Walters, 2005). Such results are particularly stunning considering the fact that epidemiological studies only assess for a sample of the total disorders in the DSM. The implication is that most of the population will have a diagnosable mental illness in their lifetime — it is normal to have a mental illness. Such findings have provoked questions about the validity of the concept of mental disorder and assertions that the DSM has expanded into diagnosing normal behaviors. Some criticism has focused on single disorders (e.g., Horwitz and Wakefield, 2007), but others have offered indictments of the entire diagnostic system (Boysen, 2007; Kutchins and Kirk, 1997). The number of diagnoses in the DSM has expanded greatly since the first edition was published in 1952. There was a 300% increase in the number of diagnoses from the first to fourth edition, and the number of diagnoses increased by 100 just between the DSM-III and DSM-IV (Houts, 2002). There are several causes for the expansion. Robert Spitzer (2001), one of the main framers of the modern DSM, stated that the approach taken in DSM revisions is one of splitting disorders apart into new diagnoses as opposed to lumping them together. Indeed, much of the increase in diagnostic labels represents creation of disorder subtypes from parent disorders (Wakefield, 1999). Examples include substance abuse and substance dependence, which are parent categories that have nearly a dozen substance-specific subdisorders (APA, 2000). The argument for splitting stems

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from the broader medical practice of creating new illnesses by dividing up a preexisting illness into subcategories as scientific knowledge increases. Smaller, more coherent subcategories are thought to increase validity by providing greater precision (Spitzer, 2001). Another way that new disorders enter the DSM is as signs of risk for preexisting disorders. Some individuals who do not meet the full criteria for a mental disorder, nonetheless, have clear distress or impairment that predicts later mental health problems. Recognizing the potential benefit of identifying and treating these individuals, the framers of the DSM have created new disorders to reflect risk. One of the more controversial risk-based disorders is Acute Stress Disorder (Harvey and Bryant, 2002). Immediate, strong reactions to trauma are an important predictor of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; thus, Acute Stress Disorder was created as a way to provide early assistance to traumatized individuals (Marshall, Spitzer, and Liebowitz, 1999). Disagreement currently surrounds the potential addition of a schizophrenia risk syndrome into the DSM-5 (David, 2011; Yung, Wood, McGorry, and Pantelis, 2011). Researchers have identified subtle, nonpsychotic cognitive impairments that predict later schizophrenia, and these signs may become the criteria for a mental disorder designed to identify individuals before they have psychotic breaks. The central argument against such a risk syndrome is that it represents expansion into territory outside of mental illness (David, 2011). However, the standard response to such criticism is that diagnosis of risk is an accepted practice for physical disorders. Diagnosis of individuals as pre-diabetic or pre-hypertensive occurs in physical medicine, and analogous psychiatric risk syndromes, valid or not, are part of the DSM expansion. Some have rejected the notion that increases in diagnostic categories represents scientific advancement. Houts (2002) offered several practical and social factors as alternatives. For example, having a label for problematic behavior attenuates distress for people exhibiting the behavior and their care providers. Also, there are experts who specialize in the research or treatment of specific syndromes; as such, these experts base their professional identity on those syndromes and are likely to lobby for their official recognition in the DSM. Finally, adding disorders to the DSM translates into financial gains for the medical industry and the publishers of DSM materials. Although explanations diverge, there is agreement that the number of diagnostic categories has increased. It is important to note, however, that the DSM has expanded in more ways than just the number of disorders. Bracket Creep Expansion of the DSM by the inclusion of new disorders is a frequent topic of debate, but a less-discussed phenomenon is the expansion of the diagnostic

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criteria for already existing disorders. One way to fill in diagnostic gaps is to create new disorders. Alternatively, deletion of criteria, alteration of symptom descriptions, and other changes to the definitions of disorders can allow a broader set of symptoms to be diagnosed; this is the process of conceptual bracket creep (McNally, 2004). The psychopathology literature contains few articles on bracket creep, and those that do exist tend to focus on single disorders. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder stands out as the most discussed case of bracket creep (McNally, 2004; Rosen, 2004; Spitzer, First, and Wakefield, 2007). Central to the discussion is the evolving definition of trauma in the DSM. The DSM-III defined trauma as “a recognizable stressor that would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost everyone” (APA, 1980, p. 238). However, DSM-IV revisions altered the definition of trauma to an event that a person “experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with” that caused “intense fear, hopelessness, or horror” (APA, 1994, pp. 427–428). Critics maintain that being “confronted” with a trauma encompasses such a broad spectrum of events that anything that causes fear, hopelessness, or horror might be included (McNally, 2004). Thus, less extreme traumas can lead to diagnosis, and more individuals can meet the disorder criteria. A more complex example of bracket creep can be seen Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder. Early definitions of the disorder focused on children, but the disorder has gradually expanded to include adults (Conrad and Potter, 2000). For example, DSM-III criteria emphasized childhood settings with symptoms such as “has difficulty concentrating on schoolwork” (APA, 1980, p. 43) and “frequently calls out in class” (APA, 1980, p. 44). Furthermore, the in-text description of the disorder was unambiguous in its specificity to childhood. With subsequent editions of the DSM, however, the symptoms became less specific to childhood settings. Calling out in class became “blurts out answers before the question is completed” (APA, 2000, p. 92). In addition, whereas school and home were the only settings initially included in the criteria, workplace impairment was eventually included as well. Over the span of a decade or so, these subtle types of bracket creep changed what was once considered a childhood disorder to one that is applicable to all ages. Autism is yet another disorder with boundaries that have systematically crept toward inclusiveness (Gernsbacher, Dawson, and Goldsmith, 2005). To begin, the DSM-III required that six specific criteria be met for Autism to be diagnosed, but the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-III-R switched to a list of optional symptoms. Having symptom options rather than specific requirements allowed a broader spectrum of symptom presentations to meet the definition of Autism. Changes also occurred in the severity of the symptoms. For example, the DSM-III required “gross deficits” in language (APA, 1980, p. 89), but revisions allowed a “delay in” language development to be sufficient for diagnosis (APA, 2000, p. 75). Although such revisions may seem trivial, changes in the inclusivity of diagnostic criteria are a likely causal factor in the increased number

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of children being diagnosed with Autism (Gernsbacher et al., 2005). Autism is not unique in this sense because seemingly small changes in the definitions of disorders can have significant effects on the number of people who meet the diagnostic criteria.

DiagnosticCriteriaandDisorderPrevalence Several areas of research illustrate the impact that changes to diagnostic criteria can have on prevalence rates for disorders. Epidemiological research often documents prevalence rates, and it provides the best illustration of the impact of small changes in the definition of disorders. Large-scale epidemiological studies produce significantly different lifetime prevalence rates based on the use of different survey techniques and editions of the DSM (Regier et al., 1998). For example, the Epidemiological Catchment Area Study, using the DSM-III, and the National Comorbidity Survey, using the DSM-IV, produced lifetime prevalence rates for mood disorders that differed by over 10% (Regier et al., 1998). In a particularly illustrative epidemiological study, researchers examined the effect slight wording changes had on the number of individuals who assented to symptoms of social phobia (Pélissolo, André, Moutard–Martin, Wittchen, and Lépine, 2000). Results indicated that the addition of more symptom options consistently increased the number of people who assented to criteria. For example, the symptom “fear or avoidance most or some of the time” had a 10% lower prevalence rate than when it was followed by the additional option of “or lifetime avoidance always or frequently” (p. 27). Changing the number of symptoms needed to meet the minimal diagnostic criteria had an even more pronounced effect: 10% of people meet the requirement of having two somatic symptoms, but 28% meet the requirement when it was reduced to one symptom. Reducing the number of symptoms required or the severity of diagnostic criteria results in what is often referred to as a subthreshold disorder. Subthreshold disorders do not meet the standard diagnostic criteria, but that does not mean that they are subclinical (Pincus et al., 1992). Even people diagnosed with the mildest subthreshold disorders have significantly increased risk for subsequent negative health outcomes such as hospitalization, suicide, or serious mental illness (Kessler et al., 2003). For the purposes of this research, however, the point is not the clinical utility of such definitions of mental illness but the definitions’ effect on the exclusivity of a diagnosis. Unsurprisingly, altering diagnostic criteria to create subthreshold disorders systematically increases the number of people who can be diagnosed. Research indicates that expanding diagnostic criteria to include subthreshold cases increases the prevalence of diagnoses such as Social Anxiety Disorder (Fehm, Beesdo, Jacobi, and Fielder, 2008), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (Carter, Wittchen, Pfister, and Kessler, 2003; Ruscio et al., 2007), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Marshall et al., 2001), Major Depression (Kendler and

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Gardner, 1998; Kessler, Zhao, Blazer, and Swartz, 1997), and Bipolar Disorders (Judd and Akiskal, 2003). It is important to note that there is no inherent reason why diagnostic criteria should increase the number people who can be diagnosed; disorders can also become more exclusive. For example, DSM-IV criteria for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder requires “marked distress” and recognition of symptoms as “excessive and unreasonable” (APA, 1994, p. 423), but these requirements were absent in the DSM-III. Research indicates that these changes are a probable explanation for the higher prevalence rates obtained with DSM-III vs. DSM-IV criteria in epidemiological research (Crino, Slade, and Andrews, 2005). Although disorders can move toward greater exclusivity, the key issue in the current research is if revisions to the DSM are systematically biased toward exclusivity or inclusivity.

TypesofRevisionsAffectingExclusivity Before examining actual changes made to the DSM it is important to consider the numerous ways in which diagnostic criteria for mental disorders can be revised and if the revisions decrease the number of people who can be diagnosed (i.e., greater exclusivity) or increase the number of people who can be diagnosed (i.e., greater inclusivity). Revisions include changes in (a) the number of required symptoms, (b) the number of symptom options available, (c) the number of criteria, (d) the duration of symptoms, (e) the frequency of symptoms, (f ) age requirements, (g) the use of criteria vs. symptoms lists, (h) the requirement of mental acts vs. behavioral acts, (i) the requirement of self-reported vs. observed symptoms, and (j) the severity of wording. As outlined below, each of these changes can theoretically lead to increased exclusivity or inclusivity of diagnostic criteria. Some of the most common revisions in the DSM affect the number of symptoms or criteria. Criteria in the DSM are labeled with sequential letters. Each criterion can require a subset of symptoms. Thus, symptoms and criteria can change independently. One of the most obvious changes is the number of symptoms required, which can increase or decrease. For example, Oppositional Defiant Disorder’s required symptoms increased from two to five between the DSM-III and DSM-III-R but then decreased to four in the DSM-IV. All things being equal, adding required symptoms increases exclusivity because there are more conditions to be meet, and removing required symptoms increases inclusivity because there are fewer conditions to be met. Frequently, a change in the number of available symptoms occurs simultaneously with a change to the number of required symptoms. Considering Oppositional Defiant Disorder once again, the number of symptom options increased from five to nine between the DSMIII and DSM-III-R and decreased to eight in the DSM-IV. Individual symptoms can be changed to add more options as well. To illustrate, DSM-IV revisions changed the definitions of paraphilias so that fantasies or urges qualified a per-

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son for the disorder whereas the previous definition required both fantasies and urges; this functionally splits a single symptom option into two symptom options. As opposed to the number of symptoms required, having fewer available symptoms increases exclusivity because the behavior in question must be more specific, and having more available symptoms increases inclusivity because more behaviors can meet the definition. The number of criteria required follows the same pattern as the number of symptoms required. To illustrate, revisions to the DSM-III-R added a criterion to Specific Phobia requiring that the phobic object cause an immediate anxiety response; added criteria such as this increases exclusivity because there are more specific requirements. In contrast, revisions of Pain Disorder in DSM-III-R deleted the requirement that the pain symptoms be inconsistent with the actual functioning of the nervous system. Deleting criteria increases inclusivity because fewer specific characteristics are required. DSM revisions also sometimes lead to changes in the required frequency and duration of symptoms. Frequency of symptoms can increase as illustrated by Enurisis in which the number of required incidents increased from two per month to two per week between the DSM-III and DSM-III-R. In contrast, the definition of Panic Disorder functionally reduced the frequency requirement to one panic attack per month in the DSM-III-R by altering the wording to reflect a requirement of “one or more attacks” followed by a month of worry (APA, 1987, p. 239). In addition to changes in established frequency requirements, revised criteria can include new frequency requirements such as the DSM-III-R stipulation that tics in Transient Tic Disorder must occur every day. Such additions are the same as adding a criterion to the definition of a disorder and, thus, increase exclusivity. The duration of disorders functions analogously to frequency. For example, the previously mentioned revision of Transient Tic Disorder also included a reduction in the required duration of the disorder from one month to two weeks. In contrast, the DSM-III requirement that Substance Abuse last one month was changed in the DSM-III-R to symptoms occurring recurrently any time in a year, and this meant that the duration was reduced because symptoms could be recurrent over the span of less than one month. In general, stipulating that symptoms be more frequent or of greater duration increases exclusivity because fewer people will exhibit symptoms to that extreme. Also, adding or deleting a frequency or duration requirement functions analogously to adding or deleting a criterion. Age requirements for disorders also may increase or decrease exclusivity. Adding or deleting an age requirement functions like adding or deleting a required diagnostic criterion and increases or decreases exclusivity, respectively. To illustrate, DSM-III-R revisions stipulated that Generalized Anxiety Disorder be diagnosed only in adults, but revisions also deleted the age requirement for Oppositional Defiant Disorder; thus, fewer people could meet the criteria for

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Generalized Anxiety Disorder and more could meet the criteria for Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Existing age requirements can also be constricted, such as with Tourette’s Disorder for which the age of onset decreased from 21 to 18 in the DSM-III-R, or expanded, such as with Reactive Attachment Disorder, which originally only applied to infants but was expanded to all of childhood in the DSM-III-R. Restricting the possible ages of people with a disorder makes the disorder more exclusive because fewer people can meet the criteria, and expanding the possible ages makes the disorder more inclusive for the opposite reason. Another way that definitions of disorders can be altered is in the use of required criteria vs. symptom lists. Some disorders have a set list of criteria that must all be met for diagnosis to occur (i.e., a monothetic classification), and other disorders have a list of symptoms from which a certain number must be present for a diagnosis to occur (i.e., a polythetic classification). For example, current DSM definitions of personality disorders use lists of five to nine symptoms, of which three to five must be present for diagnosis. However, the DSMIII did not consistently use the symptom list approach, and disorders such as Schizoid Personality were defined by set criteria that all had to be met. Having set criteria is the more exclusive of the definitional approaches because the characteristics of the disorder must occur in one way. Symptom lists are more inclusive because there are more ways symptoms can manifest and still meet the disorder’s definition. The best illustration of the flexibility of symptom lists is Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, which requires four symptoms be present out of a list of eight; thus, two people diagnosed with the disorder may not share a single symptom. Acceptable types of symptoms also change in revisions of the DSM. For some disorders symptoms must be observable behaviors, but mental behaviors are acceptable for other disorders. Allowing only observable behaviors is more exclusive because it reduces subjectivity and ambiguity in diagnosis. Also, engaging in an abnormal behavior is more extreme than having an abnormal thought. Furthermore, allowing thoughts and behaviors increases the number of potential symptoms in relation to allowing only behaviors. The best example of this type of change occurred with Paraphilias in the DSM-III-R. Many of the Paraphilias switched from requiring a person to act on fantasies and urges to allowing fantasies and urges to be sufficient for diagnosis. In contrast, the option that subjective evaluations of low excitement be sufficient for diagnosis was deleted for both Female Sexual Arousal Disorder and Male Erectile Disorder in the DSM-IV, and this made the disorders more exclusive because arousal actually had to be low rather than just subjectively low. The type of behavior required for diagnosis can also be restricted to self-report, or observations by others can be allowed. Dysthymic Disorder has always required low mood, but revisions to the DSM-III-R allowed for the low mood to be documented by “subjective account” or by “observations by others” (APA, 1987, p. 232). Allowing

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both self-report and observation of the symptoms increased the ways in which they can be identified and, thus, increases inclusivity. The final type of change includes revisions in the severity of disorders. As disorders become more severe they also become more exclusive because the behaviors in question are less common. Some of the previous changes overlap with severity; for example, longer durations and increased frequencies would be more severe than shorter durations and reduced frequencies. The type of severity in question here, however, focuses on the wording of symptoms and criteria. To illustrate, Pathological Gambling was originally defined as “chronic” and “progressive” in DSM-III and then simply “maladaptive” in DSM-III-R, which represented a decrease in severity. Another example is the subtle word changes in the definition of Vaginismus. The disorder was defined as “recurrent and persistent” in the DSM-III (APA, 1980, p. 280) and “recurrent or persistent” in the DSM-III-R (APA, 1987, p. 295), which decreased its severity because both negative descriptions did not need to be met. Individual symptoms can also change in their severity. An example is an Autism symptom that required “no mode of communication” in the DSM-III-R (APA, 1987, p. 38) but only required a “delay in” language development in the DSM-IV (APA, 1994, p. 70). In contrast, an increase in severity occurred between the DSM-III and DSMIII-R for the symptoms of Conduct Disorder required as part of the diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder. The DSM-III listed symptoms such as fighting and casual sex, but the DSM-III-R symptoms increased the severity by including symptoms such as using weapons in fights and forcing sex.

PotentialBiasinDSMRevisions Clearly, there are many types of changes that can occur during DSM revisions, and each of them can theoretically lead to an increase or decrease in disorders’ exclusivity. Logically then, there are only three possible outcomes of the DSM revision process. One, revision might be a completely neutral process with no net effect on exclusivity. Revisions have the potential to make disorders more or less exclusive. If the end goal is a valid diagnosis, neither exclusivity nor inclusivity should be favored in the revision process because there is no reason to assume a set level of exclusivity or inclusivity for disorders. Two, revision may be biased toward exclusivity. Scientific progress should allow for increased diagnostic precision. Advances in knowledge about disorders should produce greater differentiation; after all, this is the explanation offered for the splitting of large categories of disorder into smaller subcategories (Spitzer, 2001). Making finer distinctions between disorders would shrink rather than expand the disorders’ respective areas of explanation. Three, revision may be biased toward inclusiveness. Social, professional, and personal influences could bias decision makers toward accommodating a wider spectrum of symptom presentations with

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each subsequent edition of the DSM. Overall, the DSM revision process may be biased or unbiased, and only an examination of diagnostic criteria across disorders and editions of the manual will determine the effect revision has had on exclusivity and inclusivity. Although expansion of the total number of disorders in the DSM has been a topic of previous research (Houts, 2002), no study has explored the expansion of the individual diagnostic criteria across a broad spectrum of disorders. In order to fill this gap in the literature, I coded revisions to diagnostic criteria in the DSM as conceptually increasing disorders’ exclusivity or inclusivity. Coding occurred for 81 disorders that remained in the manual from the DSM-III to the DSM-IV-TR. As such, conceptual changes in exclusivity could be examined for individual disorders, editions of the DSM, types of revisions, and revisions overall. The results of the coding will help to determine if the DSM revision process is biased toward exclusivity, biased toward inclusivity, or unbiased.

Method The review focused on revisions of diagnostic criteria for mental disorders from the DSM-III through the DSM-IV-TR. As such, an inclusion criterion was that disorders be present across all four editions of the DSM. In addition, the review focused on mental disorders, and this led to the exclusion of conditions primarily caused by substances or medical illnesses. Finally, disorders that are identically defined subcategories of a larger category received only one code. Specifically, Substance Abuse and Substance Dependence received only one code, and the male/female sexual dysfunctions with analogous criteria received only one code. These methods led to the inclusion of 81 disorders (see Table 1). It is important to note that the purpose of the DSM-IV-TR revision was only to update the text descriptions of the disorders with new research; thus, only four disorder criteria received revisions that could be coded. Coding occurred for changes made to each edition of the DSM starting with the DSM-III. Each edition was only compared to the immediately succeeding edition (e.g., DSM-III and DSM-III-R). Coding included ten types of revisions: (a) the number of required symptoms, (b) the number of symptom options available, (c) the number of criteria, (d) the duration of symptoms, (e) the frequency of symptoms, (f ) age requirements, (g) the use of criteria vs. symptoms lists, (h) required mental acts vs. behavioral acts, (i) the requirement of symptoms self-report vs. observation, and (j) the severity of wording. Disorders received a score for each change corresponding to one of the ten revision types; negative scores reflected revisions that led to increased exclusivity, and positive scores reflected increased inclusivity. Specific changes received only one code and could not count toward multiple categories. For example, the addition of an age requirement as a separate

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criterion counted as an age requirement but did not also count as a change to the number of criteria. Changes that affected both exclusivity and inclusivity for the same type of revision canceled each other out. For example, if an extra symptom option was added to one criterion and one symptom was subtracted from another criterion, the net score for number of symptoms available would be zero. Disorders sometimes include the diagnostic criteria for other disorders as part their own criteria, and coding included both sets of criteria in these situations. For example, coding for Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSMIV also reflected changes in the diagnostic criteria for Conduct Disorder, which is required as part of the former’s definition. The focus of this research was on the symptoms that uniquely define disorders in the DSM, and for that reason two types of diagnostic criteria did not receive codes: standardized clinical significance criteria and exclusion criteria. Many disorders in the DSM have a separate clinical significance criterion stating that “The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning.” The addition or deletion of this specific stock criterion did not receive a code. These identical statements were added en masse to disorders as part of the DSM-IV revisions. Thus, the main reason for their exclusion from the coding system is that they do not actually contribute to the unique definitions of disorders. In fact, the clinical significance criteria are often redundant with the specific symptoms of disorders, which already define the associated distress or dysfunction (Spitzer and Wakefield, 1999). In general, the clinical significance criterion is not definitional itself, it is merely a tautological reminder to clinicians “that only disorders should be diagnosed as disorders” (Spitzer and Wakefield, 1999, p. 1859). Exclusion criteria were left out of the coding scheme for similar reasons as clinical significance criteria. The DSM’s exclusion criteria state that the disorder being defined is not caused by substances, medical illness, or other mental disorders. Thus, rather than defining the disorder, exclusion criteria make explicit the assumption that the disorder does not have a better explanation. Furthermore, the main function of exclusion criteria is to prevent comorbidity. Overall, these two criteria did not receive codes because they do not add or remove precision to the actual symptom-based definitions of disorders; in fact, their inclusion in the DSM is simply an indication of the current inability to accurately define the disorders using their specific symptoms. Coding of the revisions resulted in assignment of scores of –1 to changes that increased exclusivity and assignment of scores of +1 to changes that increased inclusivity. Analysis of the results included simple addition of assigned scores across relevant domains to yield a net score. For example, addition of scores for a single disorder across editions of the DSM yielded a net score for that disorder (e.g., the net change score for Schizophrenia from DSM-III through DSM-IV-

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TR). Or, the sum of codes for one revision type across disorders and editions of the DSM would indicate if changes of that type moved disorders toward exclusivity or inclusivity overall.

Results The first analysis examined net changes in exclusivity for the diagnostic criteria of individual disorders across editions of the DSM (see Table 1; a more detailed table outlining specific ratings for each disorder is available from the author). For example, the analysis examined if changes in the criteria for Adjustment Disorder resulted in a net move toward exclusivity across the DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-IV-TR. Of the 81 disorders, 51 had net changes toward inclusivity, 13 had net changes toward exclusivity, and 17 showed no net change. Thus, disorders showed a majority trend toward inclusivity across editions of the DSM. Next, the analyses examined net changes in exclusivity for the revisions made to each edition of the DSM. Revisions in the DSM-III-R moved 43 diagnostic criteria toward inclusivity and 10 toward exclusivity. DSM-IV revisions moved 26 diagnostic criteria toward inclusivity and 15 toward exclusivity. All four diagnostic criteria changes in the DSM-IV-TR moved toward inclusivity. Thus, the total number of revised criteria that moved toward inclusivity (73) was nearly triple the number of revised criteria that moved toward exclusivity (25). The next analysis examined how different types of revisions affected exclusivity. Net changes can be seen in Table 2. Several important trends are worth noting. First, seven out of ten types of revisions had a positive net score indicating that most types of revisions move the DSM toward greater inclusivity. Second, revisions to the number of symptoms and severity resulted in the most net change, and both revisions moved the DSM toward increased inclusivity. In fact, the net change toward inclusivity of either one of those types of revisions was larger than the total net change toward exclusivity. Third, the only prominent negative net change was in duration, which illustrated a definitive trend toward exclusivity in stipulating the lengths of disorders. Fourth, looking at net changes for each edition of the DSM it becomes clear that the revisions associated with the DSM-III-R led to the largest shift toward inclusiveness. A potential criticism of these results is that they do not take into account exclusion or clinical significance criteria. Although this research is primarily about symptoms that specifically define disorders in the DSM, the addition of exclusion and clinical significance criteria are extremely common DSM revisions that are technically part of definitions. As such, I coded the addition and subtraction of those criteria as a supplementary analysis. The only type of revision affected by this coding was number of criteria. To begin, changes to the number of criteria resulted in a positive net score of 4 across all disorders during the initial coding

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(see Table 2), but the net score was –28 after the recoding, which means that revisions to the number of criteria moved disorders toward exclusivity. When considering net changes to the 81 disorders across the DSM editions, 35 became more inclusive, 21 became more exclusive, and 25 showed no change. Revisions in the DSM-III-R moved 42 diagnostic criteria toward inclusivity and 11 toward exclusivity, DSM-IV revisions moved 18 diagnostic criteria toward inclusivity and 28 toward exclusivity, and the DSM-IV-TR results remained the same. Clearly, results for the DSM-IV changed the most with recoding, and the major cause was the addition of a generic clinical significance criterion to many disorders in the DSM-IV. Nonetheless, the total number of criteria that moved toward inclusivity (64) remained higher than the total number of criteria that moved toward exclusivity (39). Overall, consideration of exclusion and clinical significance criteria makes the DSM movement toward inclusiveness less dramatic, but the effect remains even with this more stringent standard.

Discussion The results of this exploratory review clearly support the notion that the DSM has been conceptually expanding over time. Inclusivity increased across every metric considered. At the level of individual disorders, 63% of disorders had a net move toward inclusivity between the DSM-III and DSM-IV-TR. The trend toward expansion was also consistent across editions of the manual. Although the largest move toward inclusivity occurred in the DSM-III-R, each revision of the DSM yielded more changes toward inclusivity than exclusivity. Finally, seven out of ten types of revisions resulted in net moves toward inclusivity. Results indicative of increased conceptual inclusivity of diagnostic criteria are consistent with several other areas of research. Critics have pointed out that the number of disorders in the DSM has grown well beyond the scientific knowledge supporting the validity of such disorders (Houts, 2002). Apparently, filling in diagnostic gaps with new disorders occurs simultaneously with expansion of existing disorders’ boundaries. The current research is also consistent with existing concerns about diagnostic bracket creep. Analysis of individual disorders such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (McNally, 2004) and Autism (Gernsbacher et al., 2005) have suggested that DSM criteria sometimes change to become more inclusive. With this review, however, there is now evidence that most disorders show evidence of similar diagnostic bracket creep. Reductions in severity were the second most common revision leading to increased inclusivity. Such a finding fits perfectly with the inclusion of risk syndromes such as Acute Stress Disorder (Harvey and Bryant, 2002) in the DSM and ongoing interest in mild and subclinical disorders (e.g., Kessler et al., 2003). Overall, all evidence points to expansion of the DSM, the concept of mental disorder, and the types of behaviors that qualify as symptoms of mental disorder.

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Table1 Net Changes in Mental Disorders Inclusivity and Exclusivity Across Editions of the DSM Disorder Adjustment Disorder Agoraphobia Anorexia Nervosa Antisocial Personality Disorder Attention–Deficit/Hyperactivity Autism Avoidant Personality Disorder Borderline Personality Disorder Brief Psychotic Disorder Bulimia Nervosa Chronic Motor or Vocal Tic Disorder Conduct Disorder Conversion Disorder Cyclothymia Delusional Disorder Dependent Personality Disorder Depersonalization Depression Dissociative Amnesia Dissociative Fugue Dissociative Identity Disorder Dyspareunia Dysthymic Disorder Encopresis Enuresis Exhibitionism Expressive Language Disorder Factitious Disorder Fetishism Gender Identity Disorder Generalized Anxiety Disorder Histrionic Personality Disorder Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder Hypochondriasis Intermittent Explosive Disorder Kleptomania Male/Female Orgasmic Disorder Male/Female Sexual Arousal/ Erectile Disorder Mania Mathematics Disorder Mental Retardation Narcissistic Personality Disorder

DSM-III-R

DSM-IV

DSM-IV-TR

1 2 1 1 –1 2 1 1 1 –4 1 2

1 2 1 –2 2 –1 1 1

1 1

2 2 –2

1 1 –1 –1 1 –1

1 1 1 1 1 1 –1

2

2 –1 1 1 1

1 4 1 1 1

–2 –1 1 2

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Table1—Continued Net Changes in Mental Disorders Inclusivity and Exclusivity Across Editions of the DSM Disorder Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder Oppositional Defiant Disorder Pain Disorder Panic Disorder Paranoid Personality Disorder Pathological Gambling Pedophilia Phonological Disorder Pica Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Premature Ejaculation Pyromania Reactive Attachment Disorder Reading Disorder Rumination Disorder Schizoid Personality Disorder Schizoaffective Disorder Schizophrenia Schizophreniform Disorder Schizotypal Personality Disorder Selective Mutism Separation Anxiety Disorder Sexual Masochism Sexual Sadism Shared Psychotic Disorder Sleep Terror Disorder Sleepwalking Social Phobia Somatoform Disorder Specific Phobia Stuttering Substance Abuse Substance Dependence Tourette's Disorder Transient Tic Disorder Transvestic Fetishism Vaginismuss Voyeurism

DSM-III-R

DSM-IV

DSM-IV-TR

1

1 1 1 2 2

–1 1 –1 2

1 –1 2 1 3 1

1 –2 1

1 1 –1

1

–1 –2 2

2 –2

2

–1 1 –1 –2 2 1 3 3 1 1 2

2 1 –1 –2

2

Note. Positive scores indicate net change in criteria toward inclusivity and negative scores indicate net change toward exclusivity. Although mania is not a diagnosable disorder, it is included here for simplicity because it functions as the minimal requirements for Bipolar I.

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The most common types of changes to diagnostic criteria provide some insight into the DSM revision process. Increased symptom options and reduced severity were by far the two most prevalent revisions resulting in greater inclusiveness. Both of these revisions are fairly subtle; they typically represent alterations in already existing criteria or wording. Thus, expansion of diagnostic criteria occurs incrementally. DSM task force members appear to change criteria just enough to allow for broader symptoms presentations or borderline cases. Several examples are worth considering. The DSM-III-R Social Phobia criteria required fear of social situations that result in scrutiny from others, but the DSM-IV added alternative options so that the fear could also center on performance situations and unfamiliar people. Such a change seems to indicate a desire to accommodate diagnosis of people who have social anxiety that manifests in situations just outside of the disorder’s original boundary. In terms of changes to severity, all of the Paraphilias had their severity reduced in the DSM-III-R by the deletion of the requirement that the abnormal sexual behavior be the “preferred or exclusive” source of sexual excitement. The change allowed the basic behavior in question to remain the same, but it also broadened the disorder to include people who are simply disturbed by their sexual behavior or whose sexual behavior causes them problems. Overall, the most common changes causing increased inclusivity tend to broaden the scope of diagnoses without significantly altering the underlying concept. In contrast to the subtle changes toward inclusivity, revisions that cause an increase in exclusivity are more straightforward. Changes to symptom duration,

Table2 Net Changes in DSM Revisions by Revision Type and DSM Edition Revision Type Symptoms available Severity Behavior type Set criteria vs. options Symptoms required Number of criteria Report type Duration Frequency Age

DSM-III-R

DSM-IV

DSM-IV-TR

Total

17 21 7 8 0 4 2 –14 –1 3

18 8 0 –2 0 0 1 –6 –3 –4

0 4 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0

35 33 7 6 4 4 3 –20 –4 –1

Note. Positive scores indicate net change in criteria toward inclusivity and negative scores indicate net change toward exclusivity.

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symptom frequency, and age were the only revisions that had a net move toward exclusivity, but duration changes were by far the most prevalent. The most common way in which these revisions occurred was through the simple addition of a new requirement. For example, six month duration became part of the Paraphilias’ criteria in the DSM-III-R. Addition of duration requirements seems to be the only example in which DSM revisions show a clear impetus toward increasing exclusivity. A duration requirement does not change the symptomology of the disorder, but it does reduce the likelihood that people exhibiting those symptoms can be diagnosed with a disorder. It is interesting to consider that the net change toward exclusivity for age requirements seems to be an artifact. Revisions to the minimum onset age for Tourette’s Disorder, Chronic Tic Disorder, and Transient Tic Disorder dropped from 21 to 18 in the DSM-IV in order to align them with the International Classification of Diseases (APA, 1994). Such a change seems to reflect arbitrary shifts in the definition of childhood rather than scientific advancement or a desire to allow fewer people to meet the disorders’ criteria, and without those changes the age revisions would have moved toward inclusivity rather than exclusivity. Conceptual expansion of mental disorders is problematic for the validity of the DSM and for the validity of research based on the DSM. In terms of the validity of the manual itself, the DSM includes so many varied behaviors that one concept of mental illness cannot possibly encompass them all in a meaningful way; this is especially true considering the fact that the manual undoubtedly includes some normal behaviors that have been misclassified as abnormal (Boysen, 2007). In addition to its role as a tool for clinical classification, the DSM also functions as a source of research stimulation, and these roles conflict in a way that is problematic for research validity. As an instrument of clinical diagnosis, the DSM is quite tentative; the Introduction of the DSM explicitly states that the manual does not assume that disorders are categorical entities with discrete boundaries, nor does it assume that disorders represent a clear concept of mental illness that is precisely separated from normality. These cautious statements are difficult to recognize in the work of researchers who, with good reason, use DSM diagnostic criteria as operational definitions. Researchers often use the diagnostic criteria as the foundation of research programs focused on finding the biological underpinnings of disorders. Such efforts are unlikely to be fruitful if the DSM criteria change unscientifically according to social pressures and if the criteria are inherently designed to account for heterogeneous behaviors not reflective of any underlying essential concept. Anecdotal evidence suggests that members of DSM task forces are well aware of the power of small changes and consider the exclusiveness or inclusiveness of diagnostic criteria when making revisions. For example, the committee considering revision of the trauma requirement for the DSM-IV definition of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder disagreed over the criteria’s stringency. Some felt

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that it should be expanded so that people in need could receive treatment, and others felt it should be restricted so as to avoid over-diagnosis (McNally, 2004). Another example concerns the definition of Pedophilia. The task force in charge of revising this disorder, worried that Pedophilia was too exclusive and could not be diagnosed if a person was not distressed by the behavior, added the option to diagnose the Pedophilia if the Paraphilic desires were acted upon with a nonconsenting person (First and Frances, 2008). Considering DSM task force members’ apparent awareness of the impact of small changes, what is to be made of the overwhelming trend toward making diagnostic criteria more inclusive? It seems unlikely that there is a general, purposeful effort to expand definitions of disorders in the DSM. The explicit reason for changes is often pragmatic. For example, increasing clinical utility is often cited as a justification for DSM revisions (First et al., 2004). In contrast, Houts (2002) maintains that implicit social and practical factors are the largest reason for expansion. In addition to serving as a clinical diagnostic manual, the DSM facilitates insurance reimbursements for treatment. Clinicians find it easier to receive payment for services if those services are for diagnosable mental illnesses and expanding disorder criteria eases this process. Similarly, pharmaceutical companies create and promote drugs for specific diagnoses; more diagnoses and expanded criteria translate into a larger market. Researchers face expansion pressures as well. Having an official diagnostic label for the phenomena being studied increases the legitimacy of a research program and makes it more attractive to funding agencies and publication outlets. Overall, the forces pushing the DSM toward expansion are numerous, and aside from the occasional published criticism (e.g., David, 2011; Pincus et al., 1992), there has not been strong social or practical forces opposing diagnostic expansion. Thus, the accumulation of many individual efforts to increase the utility and legitimacy of specific diagnoses leads to expansion across the entire manual. However, the existence of strong public criticism of proposed revisions to the DSM-5 could theoretically shift the balance of forces pushing toward expansion. Although the revised manual is far from finalized, DSM-5 task force members have shared drafts of new criteria on the website dsm5.org; this has led to unprecedented scrutiny and controversy surrounding diagnostic expansion. The most prominent critic of the DSM-5 revision process has been Allen Francis (2009, 2010), and he has special insight and clout in the debate due to his former position as the Chair of the DSM-IV Taskforce. Although Francis’s (2010) concerns are numerous, chief among them are the inclusion of new diagnoses that are likely to have high incidence in the general population and alterations to disorder criteria that will move the diagnostic threshold closer to normality. The Society for Humanistic Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association, has published a petition outlining problems with proposed revisions (“Open Letter to the DSM-5,” 2012). First among their

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concerns is the “lowering of diagnostic thresholds.” Currently, several dozen international organizations of psychologists have endorsed the petition, and over 10,000 people have added their signatures online. Nothing in the DSM5 is finalized. As such, it is impossible to tell what effect the public backlash will have on the DSM, but public criticism appears to be an increasing force opposing expansion. The major limitation of the current research is that it cannot actually demonstrate how many people may be diagnosed using any given diagnostic criteria. Analysis of the diagnostic criteria occurred only at the conceptual level, and that makes the results of this study purely exploratory and theoretical. Only epidemiological research can demonstrate changes in the prevalence of disorders. Unfortunately, it is difficult to say exactly what overall result the revisions of the DSM have had on actual prevalence rates. Researchers seem to reify diagnostic criteria and behave as if there is an actual mental disorder entity in nature that can be accurately measured. As such, variations in prevalence rates are treated as a nuisance variable to be controlled in epidemiological research rather than a topic of legitimate concern (e.g., Regier et al., 1998). A more accurate analysis is that mental disorder criteria are social constructs and that prevalence rates will always be affected by their evolving definitions. DSM revisions are purportedly based on scientific advances in the study of psychopathology; however, the current research illustrates a flaw in this presumption. If there are indeed underlying essential concepts to be measured as forms of mental illness, increased knowledge should lead to increased diagnostic precision, and this should be independent from the number of people who fit a diagnosis. In contrast, the DSM revision process appears to be systematically biased toward allowing more people to fit diagnostic criteria. Furthermore, ostensive movements toward precision, such as stipulations of symptom duration, are arbitrary, and the dramatic increase in exclusionary and clinical significance criteria is simply a sign that the definitions of disorders are inadequate. Overall, the DSM is indeed informed by science, but the current research suggests that use of that science seems to be biased toward a creating an expanded concept of mental illness.

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Carter, R.M., Wittchen, H., Pfister, H., and Kessler, R.C. (2003). One-year prevalence of subthreshold and threshold DSM-IV Generalized Anxiety Disorder in a nationally representative sample. Depression and Anxiety, 13, 78–88. Conrad, P., and Potter, D. (2000). From hyperactive children to ADHD adults: Observations on the expansion of medical categories. Social Problems, 47, 559–582. Crino, R., Slade, T., and Andrews, G. (2005). The changing prevalence and severity of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder criteria from DSM-III to DSM-IV. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162, 876–882. David, A.S. (2011). Should the diagnostic boundaries of schizophrenia be expanded? Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 16, 97–100. Fehm, L., Beesdo, K., Jacobi, F., and Fiedler, A. (2008). Social anxiety disorder above and below the diagnostic threshold: Prevalence, comorbidity and impairment in the general population. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 43, 258–265. First, M.B., and Frances, A. (2008). Issues for DSM-V. Unintended consequences of small changes: The case of paraphilias. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 1240–1241. First, M.B., Pincus, H.A., Levine, J.B., Williams, J.B.W., Ustun, B., and Peele, R. (2004). Clinical utility as a criterion for revising psychiatric diagnoses. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 946–954. Follette, W.C., and Houts, A.C. (1996). Models of scientific progress and the role of theory in taxonomy development: A case study of the DSM. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 1120–1132. Francis, A. (2009). Whither DSM-V? The British Journal of Psychiatry, 195, 391–392. Francis, A. (2010). Opening Pandora’s box: The 19 worst suggestions for DSM5. Retrieved from psychiatrictimes.com Gernsbacher, M.A., Dawson, M., and Goldsmith, H.H. (2005). Three reasons not to believe in the autism epidemic. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 55–58. Harvey, A.G., and Bryant, R.A. (2002). Acute stress disorder: A synthesis and critique. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 886–902. Horwitz, A.V., and Wakefield, J.C. (2007). The loss of sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder. New York: Oxford. Houts, A.C. (2002). Discovery, invention, and the expansion of the modern Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In L.E. Beutler and M.L. Malik (Eds.), Rethinking the DSM: A psychological perspective (pp. 17–65). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Judd, L.L., and Akiskal, H.S. (2003). The prevalence and disability of bipolar spectrum disorders in the US population: Re-analysis of the ECA database taking into account subthreshold cases. Journal of Affective Disorders, 73, 123–131. Kendler, J.S., and Gardner, C.O. (1998). Boundaries of Major Depression: An evaluation of DSMIV criteria. American Journal of Psychiatry, 155, 172–177. Kessler, R.C., Chiu, W.T., Demler, O., and Walters, E.E. (2005). Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12–month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey replication. Archive of General Psychiatry, 62, 617–627. Kessler, R.C., McGonagle, K.A., Zhao, S., Nelson, C.B., Hughes, M., Eshleman, S., Wittchen, H.-U., and Kendler, K.S. (1994). Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey. Archives of General Psychiatry, 51, 8–19. Kessler, R.C., Merikangas, K.R., Berglund, P., Eaton, W.W., Koretz, D.S., and Walters, E.E. (2003). Mild disorders should not be eliminated from the DSM-V. Archives of General Psychiatry, 60, 1117–1122. Kessler, R.C., Zhao, S., Blazer, D.G., and Swartz, M. (1997). Prevalence, correlates, and course of minor depression and major depression in the national comorbidity survey. Journal of Affective Disorders, 45, 19–30. Kutchins, H., and Kirk, S. (1997). Making us crazy: DSM: The psychiatric bible and the creation of medical disorders. New York: Free Press. Marshall, R.D., Olfson, M., Hellman, F., Blanco, C., Guardino, M., and Struening, E.L. (2001). Comorbidity, impairment, and suicidality in subthreshold PTSD. American Journal of Psychiatry, 158, 1467–1473.

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Marshall, R.D., Spitzer, R., and Liebowitz, M.R. (1999). Review and critique of the new DSM-IV diagnosis of acute stress disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 156, 1677–1685. Mayes, R., and Horwitz, A.V. (2005). DSM-III and the revolution in the classification of mental illness. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 41, 249–267. McNally, R.J. (2004). Conceptual problems with the DSM-IV criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. In G.M. Rosen (Ed.), Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Issues and controversies (pp. 1–14). New York: Wiley. Open letter to the DSM-5. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dsm5/ Pélissolo, A., André, C., Moutard–Martin, F., Wittchen, H.U., and Lépine, J.P. (2000). Social phobia in the community: Relationship between diagnostic threshold and prevalence. European Psychiatry, 15, 25–28. Pincus, H.A., Frances, A., Davis, W.W., First, M.B., and Widiger, T.A. (1992). DSM-IV and new diagnostic categories: Holding the line of proliferation. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 112–117. Regier, D.A., Kaelber, C.T., Rae, D.S., Farmer, M.E., Knauper, B., Kessler, R.C., and Nordquist, G.S. (1998). Limitations of diagnostic criteria and assessment instrument for mental disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 55, 109–115. Rosen, G.M. (2004). Traumatic events, criterion creep, and the creation of pretraumatic stress disorder. The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 3, 39–42. Ruscio, A.M., Chiu ,W.T., Roy–Byrne, P., Stang, P.E., Stein, D.J., Wittchen, H., and Kessler, R.C. (2007). Broadening the definition of generalized anxiety disorder: Effects on prevalence and associations with other disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey replication. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21, 662–676. Spitzer, R.L. (2001). Values and assumptions in the development of the DSM-III and DSM-III-R: An insider’s perspective and a belated response to Sadler, Hulgus, and Agich’s “On Values in Recent American Psychiatric Classification.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 189, 351–359. Spitzer, R.L., First, M.B., and Wakefield, J.C. (2007). Saving PTST from itself in DSM-V. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21, 233–241. Spitzer, R.L., and Wakefield, J.C. (1999). DSM-IV diagnostic criterion for clinical significance: Does it help solve the false positive problem? American Journal of Psychiatry, 156, 1856–1864. Wakefield, J.C. (1992). The concept of mental disorder: On the boundary between biological facts and social values. American Psychologist, 47, 373–388. Wakefield, J.C. (1999). Philosophy of science and the progressiveness of the DSM’s theory-neutral nosology: Reponses to Follette and Houts, part 1. Behavior Research and Therapy, 37, 963–999. Yung, A.R., Wood, S.J., McGorry, P.D., and Pantelis, C. (2011). Commentary on “Should the Diagnostic Boundaries of Schizophrenia be Expanded?” Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 16, 107–112.

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TheEvolutionofLanguage:TheCerebro-Cerebellar BlendingofVisual-SpatialWorkingMemory withVocalizations Larry Vandervert American Nonlinear Systems

Leiner, Leiner, and Dow proposed that the co-evolution of cerebral cortex and the cerebellum over the last million years gave rise to the unique cognitive capacities and language of humans. Following the findings of recent imaging studies by Imamizu and his colleagues, it is proposed that over the last million or so years language evolved from the blending of (1) decomposed/re-composed contexts or “moments” of visual-spatial experience with (2) those of sound patterns decomposed/re-composed from parallel context-appropriate vocalizations (calls or previously acquired “words”). It is further proposed that the adaptive value of this blending was the progressively rapid access to the control of detailed causeand-effect relationships in working memory as it entered new and challenging environments. Employing the complex syntactical sequence of nut-cracking among capuchin monkeys it is proposed how cerebro-cerebellar blending of low-volume vocalization and visual-spatial working memory could have produced the beginnings of the phonological loop as proposed by Baddeley, Gathercole, and Papagno. It is concluded that the blending of cerebellar internal models in the cerebral cortex can explain the evolution of human advancements in the manipulation of cause-and-effect ideas in working memory, and, therefore, the emergence of the distinctive “cognitive niche” of humans proposed by Tooby and DeVore and supportively elaborated by Pinker.

Keywords: cerebellum, language evolution, visual-spatial working memory Before humans evolved, the rate of enlargement of the basal ganglia exceeded that of the cerebellum, but when humans evolved, a change occurred: The basal ganglia enlarged at a particularly slow rate, while the cerebellum outstripped it, enlarging dramatically (Passingham, 1975; Stephan and Andy, 1969). It has often been remarked that an explanation is required for the threefold to fourfold increase in size of the cerebellum that occurred in the last million years of evolution (Washburn and Harding, 1970). [Leiner, Leiner, and Dow, 1986, pp. 443–444] I thank Raymond Russ and an anonymous reviewer for comments on an earlier version of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Larry R. Vandervert, Ph.D., American Nonlinear Systems, 1529 W. Courtland Avenue, Spokane, Washington 99205. Email: [email protected]

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In their watershed article cited above, Leiner, Leiner, and Dow went on to propose that the greatly enlarged, phylogenetically newest parts of the human cerebellum (especially the ventrolateral portion of the dentate nucleus) might do for the rapid manipulation of ideas what the older parts had done for motor skills — namely, “serve as a fast information-processing adjunct of the association cortex” (1986, p. 444). In a follow-up article, Leiner, Leiner, and Dow (1989) extended their proposal to the combined mental and motor features of language: “two-way connections linking the cerebellum to Broca’s area (areas 44 and 45) in the inferior frontal convolution make it possible for the cerebellum to improve language dexterity, which combines motor and mental skills” (p. 1006). Thus, according to Leiner, Leiner, and Dow, the adaptive advantage of cerebrocerebellar evolution in humans was the rapid and increased skill in the manipulation of ideas and progressive increases in language dexterity. The Evolution of Language as an Adaptive Extension of Working Memory If existing non-human primates are any indication, all early hominins (notably Homo habilis a million and half years ago) had well-developed visual-spatial working memories. The visual-spatial working memories of monkeys have been found to be well-structured in spatial reasoning (Fragaszy and Cummins– Sebree, 2005) and in sequences of abstract reasoning (Obayashi et al., 2007). Therefore, as Aboitiz, Garcia, Bosman, and Brunetti (2006) and Vandervert (1997, 2003, 2009, in press) have suggested, the evolution of language would be most profitably studied as a direct adaptive extension of brain mechanisms which sub-serve visual-spatial working memory. Purpose The purpose of this article is to describe the evolution of specific cerebrocerebellar mechanisms which, it is hypothesized, resulted in the blending of visual-spatial working memory with vocalizations of early hominins to produce human language. Specifically, it is hypothesized that during approximately the last million years of cerebro-cerebellar co-evolution, language evolved from the cerebral blending of multiple cerebellar internal models of (1) decomposed/re-composed contexts or “moments” of visual-spatial experience with (2) those of sound patterns decomposed/re-composed from parallel context-appropriate vocalizations (calls or previously acquired “words”). It is proposed that the adaptive value of this blending was the progressively rapid access in working memory to the control of detailed cause-and-effect relationships in new and challenging environments. Before presenting further details of these mechanisms, it is necessary to describe relevant theoretical and empirical aspects of visual-spatial and speech-related working memory, the latter of which, according to Baddeley, Gathercole, and

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Papagno (1998), evolved primarily to mediate the acquisition of new sound forms. Working Memory Working memory has been described by Baddeley (1992) as a multi-component “brain system that provides temporary storage and manipulation for complex cognitive tasks such as language comprehension, learning, and reasoning” [abstract]. Baddeley divided working memory into the following three subcomponents: (1) an attention-controlling system which serves as a “central executive,” (2) a visual-spatial sketchpad which manipulates visual images within an ongoing flow of visual-spatial experience, and (3) a phonological loop which both stores and rehearses speech-based information. Baddeley, Gathercole, and Papagno (1998, p. 159) argued that the primary function of the phonological loop (both in silent and overt speech) is to learn the sound patterns of new words and new syntactical sequences and thereby to mediate language learning. In their conclusion, Baddeley et al. extended the phonological loop’s function of learning new sounds to the evolution of language: “the primary purpose for which the phonological loop evolved is to store unfamiliar sound patterns while more permanent memory records are being constructed [in long-term memory]” (1998, abstract). The storage and rehearsal process of the phonological loop involve the lateral cerebellum and speech-related areas of the cerebral cortex in both overt and silent speech used in solving problems (Marvel and Desmond, 2010, in press) Details of the Cerebro-Cerebellar Blending Mechanism Imamizu, Kuroda, Miyauchi, Yoshioka, and Kawato (2003) and Imamizu et al. (2000) demonstrated the learning of multiple cognitive internal models in the lateral cerebellum (see Figure 1). Through the decomposition and re-combination of existing mental models, cerebellar internal models contribute to motor, sensory, and higher cognitive functions of the cerebral cortex in the optimization of goal-directed behavior (Imamizu and Kawato, 2009, in press). Imamizu, Higuchi, Toda, and Kawato (2007) found that when confronting new situations, these cognitive internal models were blended in the cerebral cortex to negotiate the new challenges. Based upon these findings they argued that cerebral blending of multiple cerebellar internal models bestowed several tightly interrelated advantages: (1) interference between different learning epochs [or “moments”] is reduced thereby enabling the rapid switching of skilled behaviors, (2) entirely new environments can be coped with by adaptively blending pre-existing motor and cognitive primitives as multiple internal models, (3) multiple internal models are blended in proportion to the requirements of the current new

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Figure 1: Flattened view of cerebellar surface illustrating that the anterior lobe and intermediate parts of the posterior lobe are related to “motor and somatosensory functions,” whereas the lateral posterior cerebellum is related to “cognitive functions.” To orient properly to the anterior/posterior axis of the flattened view, the viewer should keep in mind that anterior/posterior refer to what is actually a substantially convex cerebellar surface (see smaller drawing to left). Arrows at (a) indicate difference between “motor” (note modularity of somatotopic maps at top and bottom) and “cognition” found in previous neuroimaging studies. Arrows at (b) indicate modularity within the lateral posterior cerebellum for two different cognitive functions. From “Modular Organization of Internal Models of Tools in the Human Cerebellum,” by H. Imamizu, T. Kuroda, S. Miyauchi, T. Yoshioka, and M. Kawato, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, pp. 5461–5466. Copyright 2003 National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. Reprinted with permission.

context, and (4) because blending is proportionate to the specific requirements of changing contexts, an enormous, perhaps limitless, repertoire of behavior can be generated even when the number of internal models might be limited. When applied to Baddeley, Gathercole, and Papagno ’s (1998) conclusions on the evolutionary function of the phonological loop, this means that an enormous number of novel sound forms of new words could be mixed or blended with an equally enormous number of new visual-spatial contexts or moments.1 It is proposed that the blending of multiple cerebellar internal models via the mechanisms found by Imamizu et al. (2007) can account for the evolution of working memory’s phonological loop and therefore the evolution of language.2 1Since, like words, particular sound patterns fractioned from vocalizations have no inherent meanings (no inherent, pre-determined connections with particular moments of visual-spatial experience) each group of early humans would have developed a slightly different “language” depending on the specific environmental circumstances and individuals involved. 2It

is proposed that this feature of the nearly limitless blending of internal models of sound patterns and visual-spatial imagery explains the origin of what Hockett (1960) referred to as the “duality of patterning” feature of language (meaningless sounds or symbols can be rearranged to produce an unlimited number of messages, e.g., Hockett described how Morse Code exemplifies this feature). Hockett argued that duality of patterning is unique to human language. However, since monkeys have shown fronto-cerebellar action in switching tools (Obayashi et al., 2002)


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Cerebro-Cerebellar Decomposition/Re-Composition and Blending Within Working Memory Combining Baddeley, Gathercole, and Papagno (1998), Imamizu, Higuchi, Toda, and Kawato (2007), and Mandler (2004, in press) the following scenario for both the evolution of language in phylogeny and the development of language in ontogeny is proposed. In phylogeny, new environmental challenges set in motion the decomposition and re-composition of cerebellar internal models (Flanagan et al., 1999; Nakano et al., 2002) related to situation-specific visualspatial moments and of likewise decomposed/re-composed vocalization patterns linked to those situation-specific moments. These new situation-specific visualspatial moments and their linked situation-specific sound patterns were blended proportionately to meet the requirements of the new, challenging situation (Imamizu et al., 2007). It is proposed that these composites of blended cerebellar internal models were adaptive only because they represented cause-and-effect meanings in the new environmental situation.3 It is further proposed that the adaptive value of this blending across generations of early humans was the progressively more rapid access in working memory to the control of progressively more detailed cause-and-effect relationships in the new, challenging environments. The blending process would have resulted in the gradual emergence of a working memory where moments representing cause-and-effect relationships could be quickly tagged into long-term memory using sub-vocal or vocal tags and which, subsequently, could be rapidly accessed from long-term memory using, again, sub-vocal or vocal tags to meet a variety of fast-moving environmental situations. The foregoing scenario provides an explanation for Baddeley et al.’s conclusion that the phonological loop selectively evolved due to its adaptive advantage of temporarily storing unfamiliar sound patterns while more permanent pathways were being constructed in long-term memory. The evolution of the phonological loop within the pre-existing visual-spatial working memory (and long-term memory) enabled the social sharing of detailed cause-andeffect relationships as well as the silent manipulation of ideas in planning, including the envisioning and manufacture of progressively advanced stonetool technology. indicating an open-ended synthesis of multiple visual-spatial internal models, duality of patterning appears to be shared, at least in nascent form, with other primate species, and, therefore, that duality patterning originates not in the tags that place moments of visual-spatial working memory in long-term memory, but in the limitless potential of internal models of those visual spatial moments themselves. 3Blended

internal models are cause-and-effect models simply because in Imamizu et al.’s (2000, 2003, 2007) imaging studies their acquisition leads subjects to skillful cognitive and motor manipulation of new tools. In evolution, then, the blending of internal models was adaptive, because it bestowed the advantage of the skillful manipulation of cause-and-effect relationships (threatening or opportunistic) in the environment.

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In ontogeny, it is proposed that the foregoing blending of visual-spatial “moments” and linked sound patterns account for the formation of conceptual primitives and subsequent language acquisition (including the emergence of the phonological loop) in infants. The above account of the decomposition/re-composition of visual-spatial experience and its blending with situation-specific sound patterns provides a supportive neurological basis for Mandler’s (1992a, 1992b, 2004, in press) theory of early conceptual and language development involving how perceptual meaning analysis leads to visual-spatial image-schemas and these, in turn, provide the basis for language acquisition. Mandler proposed that perceptual analytic processes occurring during infancy (as early as three months) “redescribe” perceptual information into conceptual primitives, which in turn underlie the later acquisition of the relational aspects of language. The following abstract from Mandler (1992b) provides a synopsis of the tenets of her position: The theory proposes that perceptual analysis redescribes perceptual information into meanings [italics added] that form the basis of an accessible conceptual system. These early meanings are represented in the form of image-schemas that abstract certain aspects of the spatial structure of objects and their movements in space. Image-schemas allow infants to form concepts such as animate and inanimate objects, agents, and containers. It is proposed that this form of representation serves a number of functions, including providing a vehicle for simple inferential and analogical thought, enabling the imitation of actions of others, and providing a conceptual basis for the acquisition of the relational aspects of language. (p. 273)

The critical feature of Mandler’s theory is perceptual analysis, which more recently (Mandler, 2004) she calls perceptual meaning analysis to emphasize that it is a framework of meanings that is extracted by the process. Within the theory, perceptual meaning analysis “redescribes” (recodes) perceptual information (both visual and kinesthetic) into spatial meanings, and thus initiates the beginnings of concept formation. Mandler (1992b) further proposed that the “redescription” process begins whenever the infant attentively “notices” (not merely looks at) some aspect of the environmental/bodily stimulus array. She indicates that the redescription of perceptual information results in a simplified form of information that is of less detail, but of “distilled meaning” (Mandler, 1992b, p. 277). Mandler did not propose brain mechanisms which might account for the redescription process, or how the distilled meanings come about. It is suggested that both the redescription and distillation of perceptual meaning analysis is precisely what the cerebro-cerebellar decomposition/re-composition of visual-spatial experience and its blending with situation-specific sound patterns accomplish. That is, in agreement with Baddeley, Gathercole, and Papagno (1998), not only did the phonological loop emerge out of this cerebro-cerebellar process in phylogeny, but as Baddeley et al. also concluded, the cerebro-cerebellar process guides the emergence of the phonological loop in ontogeny: “the phonological


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loop component of working memory has evolved as a system for supporting language learning” (p. 170). A Non-Human Primate Model for the Cerebro-Cerebellar Origins of the Phonological Loop The foregoing developmental and evolutionary scenario will now be used to describe a detailed non-human primate model of visual-spatial working memory and vocalization as it may have occurred in Homo habilis approximately one and half million years ago. While the capuchin monkey is not in direct line with Homo habilis, several who have extensively studied the capuchin’s spontaneous tool selection, bipedal transport, and highly refined manipulation of stone tools in nut-cracking have argued that the capuchin is an ideal model for early human evolution (Fragaszy and Cummins–Sebree, 2005; Fragaszy, Visalberghi, and Fedigan, 2004; Visalberghi, Addessi et al. 2009; Visalberghi, Spagnoletti et al. 2009; Westergaard, 1995). Within the overall framework of these arguments Fragaszy and Cummins–Sebree (2005) supplied abundant research evidence that the capuchin provides a good model for the study of the spatial reasoning across eras of human prehistory. This places the visual-spatial working memory capacities of the capuchin monkey somewhere near the very beginnings of human language evolution. Moreover, Obayashi et al. (2007), in studying whether monkeys can master remote visual-spatial operations under different sets of rules, found that monkeys are able to learn to organize abstract sequential operations under context-related rules and be able to understand causal relationships, thus implying the use of abstract cognitive representations (mental models). And, since Obayashi et al. found that cerebro-cerebellar loops mediate the learning of these abstract sequential operations in monkeys, their visual-spatial processes appear to employ cerebellar internal model blending to accomplish new and challenging tasks as found by Imamizu, Higuchi, Toda, and Kawato (2007). Therefore Obayashi et al’s findings, along with the several above findings of lab and field studies of capuchins, are particularly pertinent to the use of monkeys as a rough model of Homo habilis, a model that sheds direct light, perhaps, on the earliest beginnings of the recent three- to four-fold evolutionary expansion of the cerebellum toward human language proposed by Leiner, Leiner, and Dow (1986). The Adaptive Rise to the Phonological Loop Figure 2 is a generalized representation of the capuchin nut-cracking sequence observed in wide variety of analytic field studies (Fragaszy, Greenberg et al. 2010; Fragaszy, Izar, Visalberghi, Ottoni, and Gomes De Oliveira, 2004; Fragaszy, Pickering

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et al. 2010). The sequence in Figure 2 begins the nut-cracking sequence after the capuchin has already (1) searched for and (2) carefully selected appropriate stone “hammers” which will crack the nuts, and (3) bipedally transported the hammer(s) to a (4) selected “anvil” area where the nuts will be cradled during cracking efforts. Since the capuchin is serving as a theoretical model for Homo habilis, the sequence will hereafter be referred to as that of capuchin–Homo habilis to metaphorically emphasize the suggested parallels between their two evolutionary sequences. The actual nut-cracking sequence begins at the left in Figure 2 with an internal representation (I) of the prospective goal (obtaining kernels from a palm nut) in the capuchin’s visual-spatial working memory. The precise nature of this internal representation is an important issue. Here, the notion of the internal representation as the starting point in the sequence is based upon Baddeley and Andrade’s (2000) proposal that the mental modeling imagery of goals in the visual-spatial working memory of early humans was selectively adaptive because it helped in the prediction of future events and therefore in the planning of action. This idea is in complete agreement with Fuster’s (2008) definition of working memory as, “the temporary retention of information — sensory or other — for the performance of a prospective act to solve a problem or to attain a goal” (p. 138). Once learned through the repetitive experience of meeting the novel challenge of cracking each new nut, the internal representation contains the entire sequence of associations necessary to initiate the working memory imagery and actions

Figure 2: Generalized sequence of actions driven by visual-spatial working memory during nutcracking in capuchins. Following the internal representation (I) of a prospective, mentally modeled goal in visual-spatial working memory, the orderly series of actions (A) is mediated by cerebrocerebellar loops. Across the top is low-volume vocalization which is hypothesized to be associated with capuchin sub-vocalization while visual-spatial working memory and manipulation is working through the ever-new challenges of the “If no — repeat” sub-routines of nut-cracking (see footnote 3).


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necessary to achieving the prospective goal (see Fuster, 2008, p. 364, Figure 8.5 for a detailed discussion of the organization of such a sequence). The learning of the entire internal representation takes about two years in capuchins and is mediated by changes in cerebro-cerebellar re-organization or blending occurring over thousands of learning attempts (repetitions). Why is cerebro-cerebellar re-organization or blending involved in the establishment of the internal representation? Fuster (2008) emphasized the role of novelty or the confronting of new, challenging circumstances (as did Imamizu, Higuchi, Toda, and Kawato, 2007) in the adaptive evolution of working memory in the prefrontal cortex. Fuster pointed out that in working memory delay tasks using monkeys “each trial must be treated by the animal as unique and independent from previous trials. The game is old, but each play is new” (2008, p. 366). Likewise, as the capuchin goes through each “trial” in the sequence in Figure 2, the nut, its position on the anvil, and the required aim and force of the stone hammer throw, constitute a randomly new event (Liu et al., 2011). Proceeding on from the internal representation in Figure 2, the typical capuchin sequence of nut-cracking actions (A) unfolds to the right. Learned imagery sequences in working memory guide both the linear series of actions and those of the four sub-routines, the latter each indicated by a question and an “If no — repeat” internally mediated instruction. Thus, each time a palm nut is satisfactorily cracked, reaching the goal requires the repetition of an orderly sequence of visual-spatial imagery involving orderly steps of decision-making. This orderly sequence constitutes a syntax of actions (Fuster, 2008; Lashley, 1951), but, since the path of the sequence of actions is guided by a sequence of imagery in working memory, it is more importantly an ordering or syntax in cognitive decision-making. The cerebro-cerebellar formation of this syntax requires thousands of repetitions through the entire sequence of actions and thus comes to constitute the internal representation (I) of the sequence. This syntax of cognitive/visual-spatial decision making in capuchins involves precisely the same process as the “abstract sequential operations” that Obayashi et al. (2007) found in monkeys and which they referred to as “a relatively sophisticated system of internal representation [mental models] in the absence of language” (abstract, p. 389). Vocalizations Paralleling the Nut-Cracking Sequence: The Earliest Sub-Vocal Moments of the Phonological Loop Dorothy Fragaszy, whose extensive research on capuchins is cited above, has indicated that capuchins in general “comment” on their manipulative activities with low-volume vocalizations (personal communication, 2011). Running across the top of the action sequence in Figure 2 is a line representing those ongoing low-volume vocalizations.

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Why would capuchins pair low-volume vocalizations with tool manipulation? A definitive answer to this question is not yet known. However, in the meantime, the following hypothesis is proposed. Desmond, Gabrieli, Wagner, Ginier, and Glover (1997) and Marvel and Desmond (2010) concluded that sub-vocal speech enhances the effectiveness of working memory in complex tasks, and that sub-vocal speech accomplishes this by operating through cerebro-cerebellar loops which correct errors in vocalization and tool-use computations emanating from Broca’s area. It is proposed that the low-volume vocalizations heard in capuchins during manipulative activities are an indication of the presence of ongoing subvocalizations which, as Desmond et al. and Marvel and Desmond found in humans, served that same purpose in capuchins, namely, enhanced effectiveness of working memory in complex tasks. Thus, in capuchins, the low-volume vocalizations accompanying tool manipulation may aid in negotiating the long delays and sub-routines (especially during early learning) in the nut-cracking sequence depicted in Figure 2 and thereby provide a significant adaptive advantage. It is further hypothesized, therefore, that in capuchin–Homo habilis, cerebellar internal models of orderly sequences of visual-spatial working memory and actions associated with sequences of tool use depicted in Figure 2 were blended with cerebellar internal models of sub-vocalizations via the same processes proposed by Imamizu, Higuchi, Toda, and Kawato (2007) and described above. It is proposed that this blending resulted in adaptive vocal coding (vocal tagging and filing) of socially common actions and cognitive syntaxes in the long-term memory of capuchin–Homo habilis and thus began the gradual emergence of the phonological staging and manipulation of imagery sequences in active (working) memory as suggested above by Baddeley, Gathercole, and Papagno (1998). Baddeley (1992) suggested a similar evolutionary scenario for working memory: Working memory stands at the crossroads between memory, attention, and perception. In the case of the slave systems, the phonological loop, for example, probably represents an evolution of the basic speech perception and production systems to the point at which they can be used for active memory. (p. 559)

Directly supporting Baddeley’s scenario, it is argued that the vocal tagging and filing in long-term memory during the evolutionary emergence of the phonological loop was the result of the following two interrelated contributions of cerebro-cerebellar collaboration. First, upon encountering new, challenging environmental demands which pressed the limits of then-existing stone tool technology, cerebellar internal models gradually decomposed/re-composed visualspatial experience associated with situation-specific actions ([A] in Figure 2), and parallel situation-specific vocalizations into further decompositions/re-organizations of cerebellar internal models (Flanagan et al. 1999; Haruno, Wolpert, and Kawato, 2003; Nakano et al. 2002) which, when blended, selected toward


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new, uniquely human syntactic orders of language features. Second, these new vocal differentiations in evolving visual-spatial working memory served as an increasingly larger system of associative internal and social vocal tags (Fuster, 2008, pp. 249–251). Cerebellar internal models associated with this proliferation of vocal tags gradually selected toward a rehearsal loop in working memory (phonological loop) enabling capuchin–Homo habilis to negotiate longer and longer delays in task sequences represented in working memory (Fuster, 2008, p. 185). It is suggested that the cerebellar internal models representing these new differentiations in vocal tagging may have first appeared as “silent” vocalizations (sub-vocalizations) which allowed capuchin–Homo habilis, as Marvel and Desmond (2010) suggested in their research on humans, “to represent, maintain, and organize task-relevant information and conscious thoughts whenever talking through a solution to a problem or complex sequence of tool construction or use is beneficial” (p. 273). The ability to negotiate longer task delays in this manner appears to have been the driving force that eventually led Homo habilis to develop more articulated multiple-component types of tools (Ambrose, 2001), which, by expanding the sequence and sub-routines of the type in Figure 2, then in turn further articulated vocal tagging through the blending process described by Imamizu et al. (2007). According to this view, new stone-tool technology was first imagined in visual-spatial imagery within longer task delays and with the aid of sub-vocalization. Since, as stated above, the cerebro-cerebellar formation of longer task delays (and therefore the capacity to imagine new stone-tool technology as an internal representation, [I] in Figure 2) required long periods of repetitions through the sequence of actions [A], it is argued that emerging internal representations acquired through repetitions in working memory led advances in stone-tool technology; stone-tool technology per se did not lead advances in working memory. It is suggested that the gradual, generation-by-generation cerebro-cerebellar blending of visual-spatial behavioral sequences paired with the personal/social access system of parallel vocalization sequences (the phonological loop) would have provided not only a way of allowing Homo habilis to manipulate detailed cause-and-effect relationships in personal visual-spatial experience but also a way of communicating that visual-spatial cause-and-effect imagery to others in some detail (see footnote 3). The gradual emergence of an infinitely partitionable working memory and, at the same time, a socially sharable working memory about detailed cause-and-effect relationships would have been of enormous selective advantage. This would have been the working memory first envisioned by Tooby and DeVore (1987) in their concept of the uniquely human advantage, the “cognitive niche,” wherein early humans became cognitively superior to all prey and predator species: “We accomplish[ed] this by conceptually abstracting from a situation a model of what manipulations are necessary to achieve proximate goals that correlate with fitness. These highly orchestrated

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and intricate situation-specific sequences of behavior are cognitively organized” (p. 209). Pinker (2010) supportively elaborated on Tooby and DeVore’s notion of the evolution of the cognitive niche of early humans in some detail. It now appears that the evolutionary expansion of cerebro-cerebellar blending of visualspatial working memory with vocalization was the driving mechanism behind the emergence of the cognitive niche in early humans. Conclusion Imamizu et al’s (2000, 2003, 2007; Imamizu and Kawato, 2009) imaging studies on the cerebro-cerebellar blending of internal models can serve as a model for the mechanisms behind the last million or so years of the evolution of language and other abstract reasoning processes. These cerebro-cerebellar mechanisms, when combined with the work of Baddeley and his colleagues, move the study of language away from a strictly internal analysis of the structure and meaning of language to one that places language evolution within the larger intertwined evolution of the components of working memory. It is argued that the last million years of the evolution of cerebro-cerebellar blending of visualspatial working memory with vocalization in Homo habilis (or perhaps even earlier) was the driving mechanism behind the evolution of the human “cognitive niche” first proposed by Tooby and DeVore (1987). Since the brain mechanisms underlying the proposals in this article are based upon Imamizu, Higuchi, Toda, and Kawato’s (2007) experimental imaging procedures, it is suggested that these procedures be adapted to imaging studies of cerebro-cerebellar involvement in acquisition of new vocabulary as studied by Baddeley, Gathercole, and Papagno (1998). Marvel and Desmond (2010, in press) have performed imaging studies that are closely related to this suggestion, and which could be adapted directly to Baddeley et al.-type studies within the framework of Imamizu et al.’s procedures. Further adaptations of Marvel and Desmond’s (2010, in press) imaging studies would be to apply them to the study of the low-volume vocalizations of capuchins during nut-cracking. It is hypothesized that capuchin vocalizations during tool manipulation are indications of sub-vocalization, and that sub-vocalization activity would be most intense and most varied during the four “If no — repeat” sub-routines illustrated in Figure 2. A strong illustration of a gateway for the working memory-based study of language evolution was the work of the late Charles Hockett. Just over 50 years ago in his now classic article that appeared in Scientific American, Hockett (1960) proposed that language evolved from the blending of fractionated call systems of pre-humans. He was convinced that the selective blending of combinations of different calls in the pressure of new, challenging environmental circumstances led to language evolution. In Hockett’s time, he was unable to point to


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brain systems or brain mechanisms to support his contentions about some sort of brain-based process of blending that would have bestowed advantage. Detailed theoretical models and laboratory studies of working memory and of the cognitive and language functions of cerebro-cerebellar collaboration were off in the future. But the theories and findings of these new sciences have indicated that Hockett was not far off the mark in his conjectures (see footnote 2).

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ABibliometricIndexforSelectionProcesses Fernando Gordillo Camilo José Cela University José M. Arana University of Salamanca Lilia Mestas National Autonomous University of Mexico

A bibliometric index is proposed that accounts for the differential contribution authors make to a joint paper published, the valuation of the number of publications, the quality of the journals in which the authors are published and which cite them, as well as the timeliness of the paper. This approach means the index can be used in selection processes for positions of employment or the award of research projects, as it abides by the premise of considering scientific merit based on the quality and quantity of publications. The term weighted citability index (WCIQT ) is used to refer to a mathematical process that uses filters proportionally both to the degree of involvement in the joint research and to the values of number, quality, and timeliness of the research papers.

Keywords: analysis of citations, research impact, h-index.

The valuation of research allows the accumulation of scholarly output with the corresponding increase in salary and the possibility of promotion within a researcher’s academic career, as well as access to research projects, subsidies, and grants. This valuation is commonly effected using different metrics, such as the journal impact index, the number of citations, the total number of papers published, etc. The difficulties are apparent when establishing an objective yardstick for each scholar’s merits, as the preference of certain metrics over others has so far not been clearly established. With a view to resolving this lack Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Fernando Gordillo, Ph.D., Camilo José Cela University, Castillo de Alarcón 49, 28692 Madrid, Spain. Email: [email protected]

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of consensus, the h-index was proposed by Hirsch (2005), who considered the possibility of using a simple method to evaluate research according to metrics for the quantity and impact of scholarly output. Subsequent studies have indicated that the index is better than others for predicting scientific achievements (Hirsch, 2007). The h-index combines the quantity and impact of the publications in order to determine the outcome of each individual’s research. Researchers have an h-index when h of their publications have received at least h citations each, and the rest of their publications have no more than h citations per document. Its calculation involves compiling two lists, one in ascending order (ranking), with the position the paper occupies according to the number of citations, and the other in descending order, with each paper’s number of citations. When the two values coincide, this gives the h-index. Table1 Example of an author with seven papers and an h-index of six. Ranking

Citations

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

20 12 8 7 6 6 5

One of the more salient characteristics of this index is that increasing the value of h requires an increasingly greater effort, as for each computable paper there is an increase of one in the number of citations required to increase it the next time. In the example presented here (see Table 1), the author will need to publish a paper that will generate at least seven citations in order to raise the index by one point. This aspect rewards the dedication and effort of researchers, at the same time as it stops isolated publications with a high citation rate inflating the index artificially. Certain studies have considered the possibility of using the index both to compare different research areas or groups (Batista, Campiteli, Kinouchi, and Martinez, 2006; Kinney, 2007) and to act as a yardstick in selection processes (Bornmann and Daniel, 2005). Nevertheless, the index has a number of possible drawbacks, such as its high positive correlation with the total number of citations, whereby the information given on the research capacity seems to be rendered redundant when giving the number of

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citations (Aznar and Guerrero, 2011; Van Raan, 2006), or that it favours researchers with more protracted careers that accumulate a large number of citations compared to fledgling researchers (Kelly and Jennions, 2006). On the other hand, although the index takes into account both the quantity and the “quality” (or impact) of the publications (Meho and Rogers, 2008, p. 7), it is more focused on quantity; and there is still some controversy over the convenience or otherwise of including self-citations in the calculation of the index (Aksnes, 2006; Glänzel, Debackere, Thijs, and Schubert, 2006; Purvis, 2006; Van Raan, 2006). Nevertheless, given that research is an accumulative process, it is normal to expect a certain degree of self-citation (Aznar and Guerrero, 2011), which means that the exclusion of self-citations would not always be justified (Glänzel et al., 2006). It should be taken into account that an individual h-index can never exceed the number of each corresponding author’s publications, penalising those authors with selective publication strategies; in other words, those that give quality precedence over quantity. A further problem is that no account is taken of the number of times an article is cited, whereby publications with a very different number of citations may be making the same contribution to the index’s value (Lehmann, Jackson, and Lautrup, 2008). This means that, as reported by Bornmann and Daniel (2009), authors with very different citation rates may have the same h-index, as suitable consideration is not given to either the number of publications or to the amount of citations in each one. In short, the possible limitations of the Hirsch h-index, according to Aznar and Guerrero (2011), are as follows: (1) difficulties of assessing a scholar by means of a single digit; (2) it does not provide information that is any better than that provided by the number of citations; (3) it uses only publications included in the Journal Citation Reports; (4) it does not compare researchers from different fields; (5) it takes no account of the quality of the journals in which the papers are published; (6) it may be limited by the number of papers; (7) it does not distinguish between active and inactive researchers; (8) it does not value the context of the citations; (9) it may be influenced by the citations; (10) it includes citations corresponding to negative, fraudulent, or withdrawn papers; and (11) it does not take into account a paper’s order of authorship. In order to compare an author’s number of citations with someone else’s, a series of filters needs to be applied to determine the true value of those citations and allow an objective comparison to be made between authors. These filters need to be included in an index that specifies the number of true citations according to their proportionality regarding the quality, quantity, and authorship of the publications; that is, the citations made of a paper are to be attributed to the authors according to their contribution to research, the quality of the journal in which they have been published, and the quality of the journals in which they are cited. On the other hand, the inclusion of a temporal

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variable in the index (n year) would allow account to be taken solely of those articles published n years before the index was calculated, with the outcome being that the value of the index obtained by an author at any given moment would be reduced over the following years until it disappeared if during that time the scholar did not publish any further papers (BiHui, LiMing, Rousseau, and Egghe, 2007). In this sense, and according to these premises, the index proposed will provide objective values, as well as permit an updated measurement of the research impact, thereby distancing itself from the outdated concept that gives the highest values to renowned scientists on the basis of their past trajectory. Through the timeliness of n years, the competition for research resources will involve those scholars who at that stage of their careers have the best research ability, whereby they will be the ones best placed at a given moment to compete for those resources, with this undoubtedly having an impact on research outcomes. This does not mean devaluing someone’s research trajectory, but instead the values that gave rise to that prestige should be contextualised within a timeframe that provides a developmental perspective of science. The updating of a person’s research capacities is consistent with the law on the ageing of scientific literature (Price, 1976). The assessment of research capacity should take into account that the half-life of citations depends on the knowledge areas analysed, and so wider citation windows should be assumed for areas of slow ageing (Bordons, Fernández, and Gómez, 2002). The method proposed here does not confine access to resources to a reduced group of researchers, because it will not be sufficient to access these resources, nor will it suffice to publish in top-tier journals, as we shall see in due course, as the values for the index presented here depend on peer citations of the work. This means, for example, that an author who has received a large grant and who manages to publish in a prestigious journal has many possibilities of being cited; however, if this does not occur, not only will the value of the index not increase, but it will also be penalised. The penalisation of research with no scientific impact will be a controversial step, but given that all publications will have positive or negative repercussions on the value of the index, a more balanced judgement will be forthcoming on the quality of the work, thereby requiring a conservative approach in response to the research requirements of both journals and authors, with the tendency being to accept and produce, respectively, a fewer number of papers but of greater quality. In short, an index that seeks to provide an objective valuation of research ability should be based on the number of citations generated by a researcher’s publications. These citations should pass through a series of filters that determine their true value. These filters could be integrated through an index that provides a weighted average of each author’s citations. By seeking to use mathematical values to evaluate a scientist’s research performance, there is a risk of


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becoming lost in the details of formalism (de Bellis, 2009), assuming realities in the values obtained that are not always consistent with the purpose of the evaluation context. Especially regarding the field of bibliometrics, formulae are expected to evolve, adapt, and become fine-tuned over time. This paper deals with the beginning of this evolutionary process, adopting a more theoretical than applied approach that seeks to address the issue of evaluating research performance, integrating the most significant parameters into a single formula. Consistent with this approach, a weighted citability index (WCIQT ) has been proposed, which is described in the following sections. The WCIQT is based on the hypothesis that there are several key elements when establishing an author’s research merits, and which should be used as filters to determine the true value of citations: (1) authors’ contribution (Ac ); (2) valuation of the number of publications (Vnp ); (3) impact of the citing journals (Icj ); (4) impact of the publishing journals (Ipj ); and (5) timeliness (T), defined as the time span that will determine the papers to be considered for calculating the index. Below is a step-bystep explanation of the mathematical process for calculating these items, which will enable us to understand their inclusion in the index. Finally, the index’s theoretical and practical implications will be analysed.

Model Author’s Contribution (Ac ) The value Ac establishes the number of citations stemming from each author’s contribution to the research. Accordingly, albeit not explicitly, the authors’ order of appearance in the heading reflects the extent of their contribution to the research. It determines that, as deduced from the survey conducted by Wren et al. (2007), the author making the largest contribution is the one appearing in first place, although there are cases of journals in which the prevailing criterion is that the author who has made the largest contribution appears in last place. The point of departure is a hypothetical paper that receives 20 citations, in which the authors are distributed according to the following authorship positions (Apos ): A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6. It is assumed that the closer an author is to the front of the list the greater that person’s research contribution will have been and, therefore, the greater the acknowledgement that person should receive for the citations the paper generates. The order of authors prior to the calculation of Ac is to take account of the degree of participation of the last of the authors, which will depend on the journal in which the article was published. In the case of those journals that apply the criterion of placing the author who has contributed the most to the paper in last position, the process is to be reversed. In order to provide an objective reflection of each author’s contribution to the work, the following points are to be awarded, which will depend on the number

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of authors and to each one’s position in the heading. In this example, as there are six authors, the first author is assigned the same number of points as the number of authors, and each author receives the preceding one’s points minus one. The percentage of points over the total is therefore as seen in Table 2. The number of citations that can be “attributed” to each author is obtained according to the resulting percentage, being calculated by dividing the percentage by 100 and then multiplying it by the number of citations, which in this case is 20. Table2 Example of the calculation of Ac for a paper with six authors. Apos 1 2 3 4 5 6

Points

Percentage

Ac

6 5 4 3 2 1

[6/(6+5+4+3+2+1)] * 100 = 28.6 [5/(6+5+4+3+2+1)] * 100 = 23.8 [4/(6+5+4+3+2+1)] * 100 = 19.0 [3/(6+5+4+3+2+1)] * 100 = 14.3 [2/(6+5+4+3+2+1)] * 100 = 9.50 [1/(6+5+4+3+2+1)] * 100 = 4.80

0.286 * 20 = 5.72 0.238 * 20 = 4.76 0.190 * 20 = 3.80 0.143 * 20 = 2.86 0.095 * 20 = 1.90 0.048 * 20 = 0.96

Apos = author’s position in the heading Ac = author’s contribution

As can be seen, the first author would be assigned 5.72 of the 20 citations, the second 4.76, and so on. Therefore, the formula for finding the number of citations per paper “attributable” to each author depending on the number of authors and the author’s position in the heading, in other words, each author’s contribution to the research (Ac ), is as follows: Naut

Ac = [(Naut + 1 – Apos ) /

Σ Xi ] * Nc i=1

Ac = author’s contribution Nc = number of citations Naut = number of authors Apos = author’s position in the heading Naut

Σ Xi = aggregate over i from 1, up to the number of authors i=1

The formula would be applied to each and every one of the papers to be counted for each author, giving the average for all the papers (AVERAGE_Ac). The result would provide the average number of citations attributable to each author


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depending on that person’s contribution to the research and the number of authors per paper. Nevertheless, the average value does not suitably consider the number of papers published by each author. In order to include this variable in the index, use has been made of what has been referred to as the valuation of the number of publications (Vnp ). Valuation of the Number of Publications (Vnp ) As the number of publications increases, the index’s final score is expected to rise. Yet provision should be made for a small number of publications to have a greater influence on the index, with this influence steadily falling as the number of publications increases. Why should this be the case? It stands to reason that a certain amount of research experience is required to be able to compare authors, and this experience should be valued in an objective manner. Accordingly, as the number of publications increases, the impact on the index steadily decreases, being much more acute when an author has few published papers. For example, between an author with 100 papers and another with 150, the number of publications will not make any major difference to the value of the index, giving greater importance to the quality of the publications rather than to their quantity. This means a decelerating curve needs to be generated, in which the effect on the value of the index is higher when an author has fewer published papers, but as that number increases, whilst still making a greater and progressive contribution to the value of the index, this contribution will be increasingly smaller. Accordingly, the following treatment for the number of papers should be: Np

Vnp = 1 – [(100 /

Σ Xi ) * Np] / 100 i=1

Vnp = value of the number of publications Np = number of papers Np

Σ Xi = aggregate over i from 1, up to the number of authors i=1

Therefore, the value for an author with 20 papers will be Vnp = 0.91. The deceleration in the contribution the number of papers makes to the values of Vnp can be seen in Figure 1. The difference between having one paper and having ten is 0.818; between ten and 20 it is 0.071; between 20 and 30 it is 0.026; between 30 and 40 it is 0.014, and so on. Thus, an asymptotic progression is

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obtained in which the greater the number of papers, the closer the value of Vnp is to 1.00 although this progression slows as the number of papers increases. Example of the calculation of Vnp for an author with 20 papers: Vnp = 1 – [100 / (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18+19+20) * 20] / 100 = 0.91

Vnp values

1

0 1

10

19

28

37

46

55

64

73

82

91

100

Numberofpapers Figure 1: Relationship between the number of papers and Vnp.

Once the factors Ac and Vnp have been defined, the next step involves a practical application for the calculation of the WCI index (see Table 3), using the following formula: WCI= Vnp * AVERAGE_Ac WCI = weighted citability index Vnp = valuation of the number of publications AVERAGE_Ac= average number of citations The average number of citations (AVERAGE_Ac ) is obtained by calculating Ac for each paper and obtaining the average, which is then multiplied by the valuation of the number of publications (Vnp ), which in this case is 0.91. This provides an index with a value of 5.88.


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Table3 Example of the calculation of the WCI for an author with 20 papers Naut

Paper

Nc

Naut

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

20 12 15 35 42 35 60 55 12 0 2 34 23 45 0 0 12 11 4 1 Np = 20 Vnp = 0.91

6 4 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 2 2 3 4 6 2 1 3 4 3 2

Apos

2 0.238 3 0.200 1 0.500 2 0.300 1 0.667 2 0.333 3 0.200 2 0.333 2 0.333 1 0.667 1 0.667 2 0.333 4 0.100 3 0.190 1 0.667 1 1.000 3 0.167 2 0.300 2 0.333 1 0.667 AVERAGE_Ac = 6.50

Naut

Ac = [(Naut + 1 – Apos) /

ΣX]*N

i=1

i

c

Np

Vnp = 1 – [(100 /

Σ X * N ] / 100

i=1

i

p

Naut

Σ X = aggregate over i from 1 up to the number of authors i

(Naut+1–Apos) /

Paper = numbered list of the author’s papers Nc = number of citations Naut = number of authors Apos = author’s position in the heading Ac = author’s contribution Np = number of publications Vnp = valuation of the number of publications AVERAGE_Ac = average number of citations WCI (weighted citability index) = Vnp * AVERAGE_Ac

Σ X i=1

i

Ac

4.8 2.4 7.5 10.5 28.0 11.7 12.0 18.3 4.0 0.0 1.3 11.3 2.3 8.6 0.0 0.0 2.0 3.3 1.3 0.7 WCI = 5.88

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The WCI reflects the average citations recorded for the author’s 20 papers, after the papers have been rated according to the author’s position in the heading (degree of involvement in the research) and to the number of published papers. Therefore, once the terms of the formula have been established regarding the number of publications (Vnp ) and the author’s position in the heading (Ac ), the next stage involves explaining the integration of the quality of the publishing and citing journals within the index’s final composition. The data for our hypothetical author shall now be used again. Impact Index of Citing Journals (Icj ) and Publishing Journals (Ipj ). Index Levels: WCI1, WCI2, WCI3, WCI4 Classifying journals in terms of quality involves using a quartile for rating a journal’s position with regards to other journals. The process consists of separating the journals from a specific field and ordering them from greater to lesser visibility (impact factor). When a list of journals arranged in order from a greater to a lesser impact factor is divided into four equal groups, each one of these groups forms a quartile. Those journals with a greater impact factor are in the first quartile, and those with the least impact are in the fourth quartile. This unit of classification will enable levels to be established for the index depending on the quartile containing the journal publishing the paper and the journals citing it. In another example, the number of citations will be distributed depending on the quartile containing the citing journal. For calculating the levels of the WCIQ index, where Q may have values of 1 to 4, the number of citations (Nc ) will be established by adding up those from journals of the same or higher standing than the publishing journal. This ensures that a level of quality is upheld for the citing author that objectively corresponds to the level of quality of the cited author. The data in Table 4 provide four WCI indices, to be calculated using the mathematical procedure applied in the preceding sections, but taking into account for level 1 (WCI1 ) only those papers published in journals with an impact index in the first quartile and, likewise, account will be taken solely of the citations from journals in this quartile. This would be the most exclusive level. For level 2 (WCI2 ), account is to be taken of papers published in journals in quartile 2, and consideration will be given solely to citations from journals in levels 1 and 2. For level 3 (WCI3 ), only publications in quartile 3 are taken into account, with citations from journals in quartiles 1, 2, and 3. Finally, for level 4 (WCI4 ), account will be taken solely of publications in journals in quartile 4 and the citations from journals in quartiles 1, 2, 3, and 4. This approach means that the higher the level, the more exclusive the requirements are. This levelbased format for the index also means it can be adapted to selection processes, where depending on the vacancy to be filled, a pre-requisite for applicants may


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be a minimum index level, with the most exclusive level being 1 (WCI1 ), which involves not only having publications in high-impact journals, but also that the citations of that paper come from journals of this kind. It therefore introduces a twin measure of quality, namely, the journals and peers of the same standing who cite the paper. What about those journals that move into a different quartile after the author’s article is published? Some stability is assumed in the position a journal maintains within the context of publications in its field, but account should be taken nonetheless of the value of the quartile the journal belongs to when the value is calculated. This makes it a value that is susceptible to change. The next step involves calculating the index levels for Table4 Example of the calculation of the WCI for an author with 20 papers, taking into account the level of the journals publishing and citing the papers. Paper

Nc

Ac

Q.Pub

Q1.Cit

Q2.Cit

Q3.Cit

Q4.Cit

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

15 6 10 25 42 12 40 35 5 0 2 30 22 45 0 0 12 4 4 1

3.57 1.20 5.00 7.50 28.00 4.00 8.00 11.67 1.67 0.00 1.33 10.00 2.20 8.57 0.00 0.00 2.00 1.20 1.33 0.67

3 2 3 2 4 1 1 1 1 3 3 2 2 4 3 2 3 2 4 3

10 3 5 15 25 12 40 35 5 0 2 15 12 30 0 0 6 2 1 1

4 3 4 10 10 11 15 12 5 0 0 15 10 10 0 0 3 2 1 0

1 3 1 5 5 2 5 3 2 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 3 4 1 0

5 3 5 5 2 10 0 5 0 0 0 0 1 5 0 0 0 3 1 0

Paper = numbered list of the author’s papers Nc = number of citations Ac = author’s contribution Q.Pub = quartile containing the journal publishing the paper Qn.Cit = number of citations in journals in quartile n

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our example, using the data presented in Table 4, and which will be defined within the index’s initialism with the letter Q to give WCIQ. The number of citations of each paper is distributed according to the quartile containing the citing journal (Q1.Cit, Q2.Cit, Q3.Cit, Q4.Cit). Therefore, the calculation of the different levels of the index will take into account only those citations from a journal of equal or higher standing to the journal publishing the paper. For example, regarding the first paper in the table, as it was published in a journal in quartile 3 (Q3), consideration will be given to the citations from quartiles 3, 2, and 1. This premise will be understood if a comparison is drawn with the peer-review process. No researcher would agree to have his or her research assessed by an undergraduate. In terms of citability, and allowing for obvious differences, account should be taken solely of those citations involving journals of an equal or higher level, as this will guarantee the quality of the work and of the citation itself. The number of papers used to calculate Vnp will depend on the target level to be calculated, for WCI1, account will be taken solely of those papers published in journals in quartile 1, in this case (see Table 5) there would be four (i.e., papers 6, 7, 8, and 9). On the basis of these premises, the next step is to calculate the four levels of the WCI index for our example. Table5 Example of the calculation of the four levels of the WCI. WCI1 = Vnp * AVERAGE_Ac = 3.80 Number of papers published in journals in quartile 1 (Q1) = 4 Vnp = 0.60 AVERAGE_Ac = (4+8+11.67+1.67)/4 WCI2 = Vnp * AVERAGE_Ac = 2.62 Number of papers published in journals in quartile 2 (Q2) = 6 Vnp = 0.71 AVERAGE_Ac = (1.2+7.5+10+2.20+0+1.20)/6 WCI3 = Vnp * AVERAGE_Ac = 1.35 Number of papers published in journals in quartile 3 (Q3) = 7 Vnp = 0.75 AVERAGE_Ac = (3.57+5+0+1.33+0+2+0.67)/7 WCI4 = Vnp * AVERAGE_Ac = 6.32 Number of papers published in journals in quartile 4 (Q4) = 3 Vnp = 0.50 AVERAGE_Ac = (28+8.57+1.33)/3


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Any value in one level is higher than the values in the preceding levels, whereby presentation will be made in selection processes of the value for the highest level, which in this case is level 1 (WCI1 = 3.80). Timeliness (T) Finally, a period of timeliness (T) will be specified in years, which will be defined in the index initialism by the letter T (WCIQ,T ), and will be determined according to the demand criteria, whereby the shorter the established period, the greater the requirement in terms of each author’s output and quality. In order to calculate the index taking this filter into account, computation is to be made solely of those citations made of papers published within the accepted timeframe. This undoubtedly penalises those classical articles that continue to receive citations, yet it should be considered that this index is of use in selection processes that prioritise the publications’ topicality, whereby classical articles are not contemplated within a selection process that values a scholar’s research potential at a given moment and not that person’s trajectory. The index is therefore constituted according to different levels and requirements. This means that in a possible tender for research projects or in a call for filling teaching vacancies, the index could be used for establishing the priority of the applicants. The grading of the levels of the index — from the most demanding to the least demanding one — could be used alongside the appraisal of other merits to score the personal summaries of the applicants and arrange them in order.

Results Valuation of the Number of Publications (Papers Published) The valuation of Vnp, as expressed in the formula, allows comparing scholars with different research trajectories (fledgling, senior), whereby the number of publications does not increase the values of the index in an untenable manner. Vnp fluctuates between 0.00 and 1.00 (the greater the number of articles, the closer the value is to 1.00). Given that in the final formula the value of Vnp is multiplied by the average of the values obtained in Ac (WCI = Vnp * AVERAGE_Ac ), the closer Vnp is to 1.00, the less it will reduce the score recorded in AVERAGE_Ac , and the greater the increase in the values of the index, although as noted, this increase will decelerate. This means that the effect of the number of papers on the index will decrease in importance as more papers are published. This is a fair procedure because once the continued ability to publish in a specific group of journals has been proven, the values of the index should consider quality over quantity. The difference between having ten or twenty papers published

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is 0.071, so from ten onwards the number of publications hardly makes any difference to the values of the index between authors. Therefore, once they have published ten papers in which they have proven their ability to express their ideas in journals of a certain standing, scholars with shorter careers can compete on equal terms with their more seasoned peers. Under these conditions of equality, quality might have better chance of prevailing. Accuracy in the Attribution of Results Not all authors are involved to the same degree in research, and the attribution of merits (citations) should therefore be proportional to this involvement. The method proposed for defining this proportionality favours papers with fewer authors and those featuring in the first or last positions in the heading. In other words, the fewer the number of authors and the closer to the front the author’s position, the greater the increase in the index, in the event the paper is indeed cited. No Penalisation of the Number of Citations per Paper In the h-index, the number of citations per paper is not properly valued, as a high number of citations could increase the value of the index by only 1.00, regardless of the number of the same, as it would be enough for the number of citations to be equal to or exceed the number of the paper’s ranking. This is an advantage as it avoids the disproportionate effect a single paper of great repercussion would have on a researcher’s career. However, a rule on this has been introduced, whereby no computation is made of values when the author has only one paper. At least two papers are required for this to happen. Furthermore, with fewer than ten papers there is a significant penalisation of the value obtained in the index, with subtraction from it of a percentage that is proportional to the number of papers. This means that a scholar who has only one paper in a journal contained within quartile 1, however high the number of citations it has received, cannot obtain an WCI1,V until that same scholar publishes again in journals of that same standing, and in the event another paper is published, if it is not cited it will be computed as “0” for calculating the average. It would therefore reduce the value of the citations of the first paper. Penalisation of Papers not Cited As noted briefly in the preceding section, if a paper is not cited, it will likewise be given the value “0” when calculating the average (AVERAGE_Ac ), so it will of course lower the average. This is a controversial point, but it should be


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remembered that the index is measuring the ability to contribute data to the wealth of scientific knowledge that will help to advance a specific field. The citations of a paper reflect the impact the information has had on the scientific community, just as the ripples caused by a pebble falling into a pond indicate that the pebble has sunk to the bed. A publication might not be cited and may gain in importance over the years, and this would not be the first time this has happened, but if this criterion is not applied, the possibilities that many publications of scant significance would raise the value of the index would be greater than the chances that a publication of considerable importance would not do so. If all the possibilities cannot be considered, the highest possible levels of equity should at least be ensured. Penalising the Lack of Output The timeliness filter applied to this index means that the quality of an author’s citations can be measured within a range of years prior to its calculation. For example, if a timeliness is established of 3 (WCIQ,3), an author who does not publish in three years or whose papers are not cited may see the value of the index reduced until it disappears at the end of the three years. This means that researchers’ abilities are constantly being reviewed. Double Quality Filter One of the main features of WCIQ,V is that increasing its value in one of the levels requires more than just conducting a great deal of research and publishing in journals in that level. This increase also requires the paper to be cited by journals of the same or higher standing than the one in which it was published. This provides a double quality filter, on the one hand regarding the publishing journals, and on the other peer citations. Adjustment to Selection Processes The use of four levels in the index facilitates the requirements for access to scholarly resources according to the candidates’ recent merits. In this way, the minimum required for opting to an academic category or for opting to a subsidised project may be objectively approached by asking for a minimum in the levels of the index (WCI1,T , WCI2,T , WCI3,T , WCI4,T ) and a specific timeliness (WCIQ,1 , WCIQ,2 , WCIQ,3 , WCIQ,4 , WCIQ,5 , WCIQ,6 , etc.), with the criteria being more demanding the lower the number is, as a value of 1.00 in both would require, on the one hand, publishing and having citations in journals in quartile 1, and on the other, that this level has been attained in the year preceding the index’s calculation.

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Discussion The valuation of the merits of an individual, in this case a researcher, should be as objective as possible, although nothing within the human or social field is free of subjective assessment, so it would be very bold to attempt to be wholly objective. This end is justified according to the work by Martin (1996) in which it is established that the valuation of research activity requires a combination of different parameters, with some of the more important ones being as follows: the number of articles, the citations generated, and the quality of the journals. The index presented here should be adjusted through comparative analyses with other quality indices in order to understand how their values correlate and ensure their application to different fields is as effective as possible. To conclude, we understand that research, as an environment in which researchers adapt and survive, should adopt a developmental stance that is consistent with their cognitive and motivational characteristics. The index proposed seeks to integrate factors that have been dispersed and which lacked a valued focus on research activities. In this sense, an index of scientific output should give rise to the need to increase it on an individual basis, and this motivation should be taken into account and harmonised with an understanding of the merits fairly required for comparing those individuals who compete to increase the values of this index. Accordingly, efforts should be made not only to avoid unduly increasing the number of superfluous publications, but also to marshal the implicit consent of the scientific community, whereby the need to increase the index signals the pathways (reduce the number of authors, and not publish without quality, as this may be penalised if there are no citations, etc.) that suit such purposes and avoid alternative practices that are damaging because they are unnecessary and pointless.

References Aznar, J., and Guerrero, E. (2011). Análisis del índice-h y propuesta de un nuevo índice bibliométrico global: el índice global [Analysis of the h-index and proposal of a new bibliometric index: The global index]. Revista Clínica Española, 211, 251–256. Aksnes, D.W. (2006). A micro-study of self-citations. Scientometrics, 56, 235–246. Batista, P.D., Campiteli, M.G., Kinouchi, O., and Martinez, A.S. (2006). Is it possible to compare researchers with different scientific interests? Scientometrics, 68, 179–189. BiHui, J., LiMing, L., Rousseau, R., and Egghe, L. (2007). The R- and AR-indices: Complementing the h-index. Chinese Science Bulletin, 52, 855–863. Bordons, M., Fernández, M.T., and Gómez, I. (2002). Advantages and limitations in the use of impact factor measures for the assessment of research performance in a peripheral country. Scientometrics, 53, 195–206. Bornmann, L., and Daniel, H.-D. (2005). Does the h-index for ranking of scientists really work? Scientometrics, 65, 391–392. Bornmann, L., and Daniel, H.-D. (2009). The state of h index research. Is the h index the ideal way to measure research performance? EMBO Reports, 10, 2–6.


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de Bellis, N. (2009). Bibliometrics and citation analysis: From the science citation index to cybermetrics. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. Glänzel, W., Debackere, K., Thijs, B., and Schubert, A. (2006). A concise review on the role of author self-citations in information science, bibliometrics and science policy. Scientometrics, 67, 263–277. Hirsch, J.E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 16569–16572. Hirsch, J.E. (2007). Does the h-index have predictive power? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 19193–19198. Kelly, C.D., and Jennions, M.D. (2006). The h-index and career assessment by numbers. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 21, 167–170. Kinney, A.L. (2007). National scientific facilities and their science impact on nonbiomedical research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 17943–17947. Lehmann, S., Jackson, A., and Lautrup, B. (2008). A quantitative analysis of indicators of scientific performance. Scientometrics, 76, 369–390. Martin, B.R. (1996). The use of multiple indicators in the assessment of basic research. Scientometrics, 36, 343–362. Meho, L.I., and Rogers, Y. (2008). Citation counting, citation ranking and h-index of human computer interaction researchers: A comparison between Scopus and Web of Science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(11), 1711–1726. Price, D.J. (1976). A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative disadvantage processes. Journal of American Society of Information Sciences, 27, 292–306. Purvis, A. (2006). The h-index: Playing the numbers game. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 21, 422. Van Raan, A.F.J. (2006). Comparisons of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups. Scientometrics, 67, 491–502. Wren, J.D., Kozak, K.Z., Johnson, K.R., Deakyne, S.J., Schillig, L.M., and Dellavalle, R.P. (2007). The write position. A survey of perceived contributions to papers based on byline position and number of authors. EMBO Reports, 8, 988–991.

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OntheOntologicalStatusofSomeCosmological andPhysicalTheories Uri Fidelman Technion, Israel Institute of Technology

This study investigates the ontological status of some physical and cosmological theories that are not based on empirical observation and probably cannot be tested empirically. It is suggested that these theories exist only in our consciousness and are no more than Kantian ideas. Indeed, these theories imply paradoxes as was predicted by Kant regarding ideas of pure reason.

Keywords: Kantian ideas, bubble theory, many worlds theory, string theory

Our knowledge about physical phenomena is based primarily on input that we obtain through our senses. However, raw sensory input does not arrive directly to our consciousness. There are several stages of neural processing and censorship (Treisman and Schmidt, 1982) leading to the creation of an image of the world and of the phenomena pertaining to it in our consciousness. Therefore, these images are not necessarily what Kant called “the things as they are in themselves” that emit the raw sensory input, which is processed to become the images. Another source of these images of the world is the mathematical model created by physicists. The existence of a consistent mathematical model of the world does not necessarily mean that the entity described by the model exists in some external real world (Fidelman, 2009). Moreover, physical phenomena may be described by more than one possible model. Some criteria have been developed for choosing the best model. One is “Occam’s razor,” according to which we choose the simplest of all the possible explanations. Another criterion was suggested by Popper (1934), according to which a scientific theory cannot be proved empirically. It can only be falsified Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Uri Fidelman, Dr. Sc., Department of Humanities and Arts, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel. Email: [email protected]

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by empirical methods. Each scientific theory is merely a candidate for falsification. A theory for which there is no possibility for an empirical falsification is not defined as scientific. Nevertheless, cosmological and physical literature is infested with theories that are neither simple nor falsifiable empirically. The only justification for these theories is that they have beautiful and very complicated mathematical models. It seems that some theoretical physicists have forgotten that their discipline is based on empirical facts and have turned physics into a branch of pure mathematics. Here, I will investigate the ontological status of some of these cosmological and physical theories. The Hemispheric Model of the Brain’s Functioning There is a functional difference between the two cerebral hemispheres. According to Ben-Dov and Carmon (1976), the left hemisphere is more specialized than the right one in the analysis of individual items. After the analysis these individual items are transferred to the right hemisphere, which is specialized to some degree in the integration of several individual items into a comprehensive new whole. This new whole is transferred back to the left hemisphere where it is treated as a new individual item and it is processed analytically by the left hemisphere, and so on. Thus, more and more complex cognitive structures are constructed. However, the two hemispheric mechanisms don’t always operate in harmony. Below we will see that sometimes the two mechanisms oppose and inhibit each other. When this happens the outcome is cognitive conflict. The first example for such a conflict is the antinomies related to Kant’s ideas of pure reason. Kant’s Ideas of Pure Reason According to Kant there are three levels of consciousness. The first level is perception, that is, the awareness of the sensory input. Perception produces images, or, rather, phenomena. These phenomena must be perceived within a framework of the spatial and temporal modes of perception. The second level of consciousness is understanding, that applies Kant’s transcendental logic to classify the phenomena into two sorts. The first sort is of phenomena that comply with logic, which are accepted as “experience” or, rather, physical experience. The second sort is of phenomena that do not comply with Kant’s transcendental logic and are rejected as illusions. The individual is aware of both kinds of phenomena, but understanding causes the person to feel that the illogical phenomena should be regarded as illusions and be ignored. The third level of consciousness is pure reason. Pure reason produces Kantian ideas (that are different from Platonic ideas), which are not part of

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experience, but are related to experience. These ideas of pure reason include the entirety of all phenomena of experience (which is not part of experience). This kind of idea is called “a cosmological idea.” Another kind of Kantian idea of pure reason is an explanation for the existence of experience. An idea of this kind is called “a theological idea.” For example, there is empirical evidence for the “Big Bang” and it may be thus considered to be “Kantian experience.” However, at our present state of knowledge a reason for the “Big Bang” is a “Kantian theological idea” and there is no empirical evidence for the existence of any of the reasons suggested for it. Since Kantian ideas are not part of experience they may not comply with logic, and may involve paradoxes (or antinomies), and vice versa: if a theory implies a paradox it cannot be experience, since it is rejected by understanding. If this theory is not based on empirical observations it cannot be defined as illusion, and the only remaining possibility is that it is a Kantian idea of pure reason. Cosmological and Physical Structures as Kantian Ideas According to Kant, the entire cosmos is an idea. This follows Kant’s argument that the cosmos is neither finite nor infinite, therefore it can be only a subjective idea. Thus Kant’s argument applies also to Einstein’s closed and finite cosmos, which is integrated by the right hemisphere from all the individual phenomena which have been analyzed by the left hemisphere. If the cosmos is finite we cannot avoid the question “What is beyond the end of the cosmos?” Linde (1983a, 1983b) suggested an answer to this question. He introduced to cosmology the many “bubbles concept,” each bubble of which is an entire “Einsteinian cosmos,” similar to our cosmos and external to it. However, according to Einstein, the cosmos is closed. This means that no information from outside the cosmos can penetrate it, and the existence of these external cosmoses has not been proved empirically without alternative explanations to the relevant phenomena. Thus the entirety of phenomena is a Kantian idea, and it is created by the right hemisphere. If all these supposed bubbles are limited in a finite space then this finite space becomes a cluster of bubbles, or a super bubble. Then we must continue to ask: “What exists outside this finite space?” And so on. We obtain a potentially infinite series of larger and larger clusters of super bubbles. This series cannot be limited by some finite border, because the space limited by this border becomes itself a new super cluster of bubbles, and the process is not terminated by this limiting. The assumption that the cosmos is finite leads to a paradox. Suppose that this potentially infinite series of clusters of bubbles is integrated by the right hemispheric mechanism of our consciousness into a new comprehensive whole, thus integrating an actually infinite cosmos. Kant negated the infinite cosmos by an argument similar to Zeno’s paradoxes of the runner and Achilles and the tortoise: the potentially infinite process of obtaining horizon beyond

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horizon without a last stage never ends and therefore it cannot be terminated by the integration of a comprehensive entity. The assumption of the existence of an actually infinite cosmos again implies a paradox. This paradox is caused by the objection of the left cerebral mechanism that creates the potentially infinite process to the attempts of the right cerebral mechanism to terminate this process by integration. Thus neurological and cognitive conflict is created. This issue is discussed by Fidelman (1988, 2004). Another approach that introduced “Kantian ideas” into cosmology is the parallel worlds theory of Everett (1957). According to Everett, when an event concerning a microscopic particle has two options of unfolding (for example, when a single particle has a certain probability to be an electron and another probability of being a positron and its wave function collapses) then the world splits into two parallel worlds, in each of which one of these two options is realized. This effect is repeated and many parallel worlds emerge and exist simultaneously. However, no information can be transferred between these worlds and we cannot obtain any empirical evidence that worlds parallel to our world do exist. Since these additional cosmoses are not part of experience they can be only ideas of pure reason. Thus we extend the term Kantian idea to include widening of the empirical world (or experience) into larger domains. Since additional worlds are no more than Kantian ideas, the same is true regarding “worm holes,” passages between our world and these additional worlds, that exist according to some cosmological theories: if the worlds parallel to our own world have no real existence, the same must be true regarding passages to these worlds. Indeed, Everett’s theory involves paradoxes, as may be expected from Kantian ideas. This theory is implied by the collapse of the wave function that is a Kantian antinomy, as well as the existence of additional worlds that is inferred from it. According to Fidelman (2002, 2004, 2005), this confusing antinomy and the collapse of the wave function is related to the transfer of our cognizing of the physical phenomenon from the right hemispheric mechanism (that cognizes the wave function) to the left hemispheric mechanism (that cognizes the appearing of the concrete object or particle). This means that the Kantians ideas and the paradoxes (or antinomies) related to them exist in our consciousness (i.e., they are subjective) and are related to a conflict between the two hemispheric mechanisms that produce two alternative presentations of the raw sensory input: a wave and a particle, rather than to the real physical world. This conflict explains the paradox of the duality in physics: the particles and waves are two different interpretations of the same raw sensory input. In addition to cosmologists, theoretical physicists sometimes introduce into physics beautiful mathematical structures that have no relation to empirical facts. For example, string theory introduced into physics, in addition to the known three spatial axes, more spatial axes that cannot be seen (thus widening


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the experiential world into a larger domain). Therefore, physicists assume that these axes are folded into curled loops that are so small that they cannot be detected empirically. Instead of empirical proof for this theory, string theorists provide conjecture that in the future, technology will be more advanced and the problem of obtaining empirical proof to the existence of these folded spatial axes will be solved. Let us examine this possibility. One purpose of string theory is to unify electromagnetic and gravitational forces. Popper’s (1934) demand that a scientific theory should be subjected to empirical falsification is not fulfilled by string theory. The success of this theory to construct a beautiful mathematical structure that seems to solve the important problem of unifying the two forces cannot turn this theory into a scientific one. Meanwhile, we may suspect that string theory, as well as the previously discussed cosmological theories, may be no more than Kantian ideas. If string theory is an idea of pure reason then it is liable to imply paradoxes. If we can discover such a paradox this will be in line with our suspicion that it is a Kantian idea. The Direction of Particles in Time According to Feynman (1985), a positron is an electron that moves backwards in time. Assume that this is correct. The inversion of the direction of time inverts also the order of the events occurring during time. Therefore, if an electron inverts its temporal direction and travels towards the past, the electrostatic force of repulsion that operates between it and an ordinary electron is inverted and becomes a force of attraction. That is, the inversion of the direction of time of an electron is equivalent to the inversion of the sign of its electrostatic charge from negative to positive. Indeed, the electrostatic force between a positron and an electron is attraction. This means that the empirical observations are as expected by Feynman’s suggestion, and we may call it a theory rather than a suggestion or a hypothesis. In addition to the electrostatic force there is also a weak gravitational force that operates between these two particles. The gravitational force depends only on the mass of the two particles (and the distance between them). Suppose that the direction of the gravitational force too is inverted in an electron that moves backwards in time. Since this force is determined only by the mass of the particle, its inversion means the sign of the mass of the electron that moves backwards in time is inverted and the mass should be negative. However, negative mass has not been detected empirically and may, in fact, not exist. In order to save Feynman’s theory, Fidelman (2002, 2006, 2009) proposed that this apparent contradiction may be resolved by the suggestion that there are at least two independent temporal axes. The electrostatic force operates along one of them while the gravitational force operates along the second. Usually such independent axes are represented graphically by two perpendicular lines

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in space. The projection of each force on the temporal direction of the other force is zero. Unified Field Theories In order to unify two force fields into one field, a physicist has to describe, using mathematical equations, the mutual influences of the two fields on each other while time changes. This is how Maxwell unified the electric and magnetic force fields into one field: the electromagnetic force field. Einstein believed that such unification can be achieved also for electromagnetic and gravitational forces. However, neither Einstein, nor others, succeeded in this endeavor. The above suggestion — that time comprises at least two independent axes along one of which operates Maxwell’s electromagnetic force (that, according to Maxwell, includes electrostatic force) and along the other one of which operates the gravitational force — implies that changes in the force operating along one of these temporal axes does not influence the force operating along the second temporal axis. This means that no unification of the gravitational and the electromagnetic forces is possible. This observation may explain the failure of Einstein and others to achieve this unification. More recently, string theorists achieved a unification of these two force fields. This was done by adding several spatial dimensions to the three existing spatial dimensions. This observation apparently contradicts the outcome of the previous discussion according to which no unification of the electromagnetic and gravitational force is possible and seems to contradict string theory. In order to remove this contradiction one must determine whether there is a difference between spatial and temporal dimensions. Since Descartes, time is considered to be a spatial axis, additional to the three ordinary axes. It is well known to physicists that inverting the direction of time, the sign of the electrical charge, and the direction of the spatial axes do not change Maxwell’s equations that describe the electromagnetic force. Such transformations are known as “CTP [Charge, Time, Parity] transformations,” and they can interchange spatial and temporal axes. Thus, temporal axes may be transformed into — or be disguised as — spatial axes. That is, temporal axes disguised as spatial axes have been introduced into physics by string theorists — obtaining a unified field theory. In order to decide between the theory of multidimensional time and string theory, Occam’s razor may be helpful. Accepting temporal axes is simpler than accepting the bizarre folded spatial axes that string theory has introduced to physics in order to explain why the additional spatial axes are not observable. Thus, the theory of multidimensional time is preferred over string theory in its original form of adding spatial axes, but not temporal axes, to physics, according to the principle of Occam’s razor.


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Contradiction between String Theory and Feynman’s Theory It is observed that cosmology and physics include several theories that have no relation to empirical facts. It has been shown that the additional cosmological structures, both Linde’s (1983a, 1983b) “bubbles” and Everett’s (1957) “many worlds,” are Kantian ideas and not physical experience. Indeed, these “cosmoses” involve paradoxes — the first of the kind that is implied by the Kantian idea of the cosmos and the second of the kind that is related to the collapse of the wave function. String theory, too, is of the same nature. Indeed, there is no empirical evidence for the existence of additional spatial dimensions, in particular of folded dimensions, and at no foreseeable future can any attempt to test their existence possibly be imagined. Therefore, string theory is immune to any attempt at falsification, and according to Popper, it cannot be considered to be a scientific theory related to Kantian experience. Moreover, string theory involves antimony, thus the structure created by it is, apparently, a Kantian idea rather than a physical reality. This means that all the efforts to test this theory experimentally cannot lead to any result. It follows that this theory in its original form (with the addition of spatial dimensions but not temporal dimensions), as well as the above-mentioned cosmological theories, do not help us to understand the experiential world. Alternatively, it may be that string theory is valid and then Feynman’s positron theory is not valid. These theories are mutually exclusive. Reconciliation of String Theory with Feynman’s Theory In order to prevent contradictions in theoretical physics, one has to choose between the two theories: string theory and Feynman’s theory of positrons. Feynman’s theory is in line with an empirical observation: the direction of the electrostatic force between an electron and a positron is the opposite of that of the force between this electron and another electron, and this is the only difference between an electron and a positron. This observation may be explained by Feynman’s theory. On the other hand, there is no justification for the introduction of additional folded spatial dimensions. The fact that this introduction enables string theory physicists to obtain unification of the electromagnetic and the gravitational fields does not mean that the mathematical structures created by string theory, that are not supported by empirical evidence, have any real physical meaning. Certainly their existence in not subject to empirical falsification. Therefore, according to Popper’s principle we should prefer Feynman’s theory. Feynman’s theory also causes us to introduce mutually independent temporal axes to the spatial-temporal frame of the world. Since a temporal dimension cannot be observed, there is no need to fold these temporal dimensions in order

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to explain their being undetectable empirically. Thus, replacing some spatial axes by temporal axes camouflaged as spatial axes (the existence of which is derived from Feynman’s theory) simplifies the original string theory considerably. Also, the unification of gravitational and electromagnetic forces may become possible by describing the changing of each of them along one of the two independent temporal axes. Thus, after updating string theory, a reconciliation of these two theories occurs. Identifying Physical Structures as Ideas of Pure Reason Previously it was suggested that contradictory empirical findings in physics, like the duality of light, may be explained by the existence of two different hemispheric neural mechanisms that present to our consciousness two different interpretations of the raw sensory data and there is neural and cognitive conflict between these two interpretations. The antinomies related to Kantian ideas are also related to similar inter-hemispheric conflicts. In this article a method is suggested by which we may determine whether a non-usual theoretical physical structure, which is an extension of our daily experience, should be defined as Kantian experience or as a Kantian idea of pure reason. This method comprises attempting to find paradoxes related to this structure. We have found a paradox related to the existence of the spatial multi-dimensional structure of string theory. This means that the rules of logic do not apply to the structure of additional spatial dimensions and this structure cannot be defined as a Kantian experience but rather as a Kantian idea or as an illusion. Since the existence of these dimensions cannot be tested empirically, they are not phenomena and they cannot be defined as illusions. Thus, we obtain that the additional spatial dimensions that are constructed by string theory can be only the new kind of Kantian ideas of pure reason suggested above: the widening of the experiential world into a larger domain. The difference between the paradoxical duality between waves and particles in physics and string theory is that the duality follows from empirical phenomena. The paradoxes that follow from this duality were imposed on physics but were not really understood logically by the physicists who were compelled by the empirical evidence to live with them. There is no logical explanation within physics for these paradoxes. These paradoxes can be understood only within a higher level of science, neuropsychology, which is the meta-language of physics (Fidelman, 2009). The hemispheric theory, which is part of neuropsychology, can give a logical explanation to this duality in physics. On the other hand, string theory is not based on any findings and the paradoxes related to it may imply that such empirical findings will not be found.


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References Ben-Dov, G., and Carmon, A. (1976). On time, space, and the cerebral hemispheres: A theoretical note. International Journal of Neuroscience, 7, 29–33. Everett, H. (1957). “Relative state” formulation of quantum mechanics. Reviews of Modern Physics, 29(3), 454–462. Feynman, R. (1985). QED: The strange theory of light and matter. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Fidelman, U. (1988). Cerebral basis to transfinite structures and cosmological theories. Methodology and Science, 21, 29–46. Fidelman, U. (2002). Kant, the two stages of visual search, quantum mechanics and antimatter. International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems, 13, 274–289. Fidelman, U. (2004). Cognitive and neuropsychological basis of quantum mechanics: Part I. Quantum particles as Kantian ideas. Kybernetes, 33(8), 1247–1257. Fidelman, U. (2005). Visual search and quantum mechanics: A neuropsychological basis of Kant’s creative imagination. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 26, 23–34. Fidelman, U. (2006). Analysis of Feynman’s temporal directions and the emission of light by gases: Reconsideration of the problem of non-locality. Physics Essays, 19, 517–533. Fidelman, U. (2009). On the methodology of physics: Cognizing physical phenomena and the genesis and termination of time. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 30, 229–248. Linde, A.D. (1983a). Chaotic inflation. Physics Letters, B129, 177–181. Linde, A.D. (1983b). Chaotic inflating universe. JETP Letters, 38, 176–179. Popper, K.R. (1934). The logic of scientific discovery. London: Routledge. Treisman, A., and Schmidt, H. (1982). Illusory conjunction in the perception of objects. Cognitive Psychology, 14, 107–141.

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Perception,Action,andConsciousness:SensorimotorDynamicsandTwoVisual Systems. Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary, and Finn Spicer (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 372 pages, £49.99 hard. Reviewed by Mirko Farina, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University

Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems is a state-of-the-art collection whose main goal is to explore, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the relationship between action and perception. A second goal of the volume is to investigate how perception and action interact specifically in the production of phenomenal awareness. In presenting and contrasting the major perspectives on the field, this volume marks a good sign of the progress being made on the nature of phenomenally conscious visual experience. By combining theoretical and empirical approaches it also contributes to the debate in key domains of the cognitive sciences (such as perceptual psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy of mind). The book contains a useful editorial introduction written by the Editors (Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary, and Finn Spicer) and six sections further divided into fifteen chapters. In the first part of this review I briefly summarize the content of each section. Having offered an outline of the volume, I then turn my attention to the main theme of the collection, which is the dichotomy between action-oriented theories of perception and the two visual systems hypothesis and look at the dialectic underlying this debate. Book Summary Part one of the book is constituted by a series of three essays written by J. Kevin O’Regan, Andy Clark, and Dana H. Ballard. It addresses methodological issues in the scientific study of phenomenal awareness and focuses on the sensorimotor theory of I would like to express my appreciation to the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD) and to Macquarie University for generously financing my research. Thanks also to John Sutton, Richard Menary, Julian Kiverstein, Leslie Marsh and Raymond Russ for useful comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this review. Needless to say, any remaining errors are mine and mine alone. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mirko Farina, Institute of Human Cognition and Brain Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Building C5C, Level 4, Office 492, Macquarie University, Balaclava Road, North Ryde, Sydney (NSW), Australia. Email: [email protected]

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perception. The sensorimotor theory of perception is a theory that explains perception as an achievement of an agent acting in a complex environment.1 Advocates of this theory affirm that sensorimotor contingencies (specific patterns of dependencies that hold between the movements the perceivers make and what they are able to perceive) are necessary ingredients for phenomenal awareness, and maintain that the perceptual content of one’s conscious experience is always a function of the implicit sensorimotor knowledge acquired by the perceiver through her active engagement with the world. In his contribution, O’Regan mounts a defense of this idea on the grounds of empirical evidence derived from studies on sensory substitution (p. 42), colour perception (p. 43), and change blindness (p. 45). He then claims that analogous sensorimotor considerations can be drawn for consciousness, which rather than being understood as driven exclusively by sub-personal neural mechanisms should instead be described as arising from the individual’s direct and unmediated engagement with her own environment (p. 47). Clark disagrees with this take and denies that action can enter the content of phenomenal experience in a direct and unmediated way. Contra the understanding that describes consciousness as a unitary entity in which perception, action, and experience twines all together to form a “golden braid” (p. 51), he proposes to explore the validity of the two visual systems hypothesis (on which more below) but concludes his essay by arguing that a decisive solution to the elusive questions concerning the nature and the neural underpinnings of conscious visual experience hasn’t yet been formulated. Ballard, rather than focusing on the elusive question of where to locate consciousness (either internally or externally), prefers to address the problem of what components are necessary for it. He concentrates on finding a mechanistic and purely computational explanation of what it feels like to be conscious and argues that this feeling “must be handled at a high level of abstraction, a level that incorporates a bookkeeping strategy of tagging” (p. 30). Part two of the book is devoted to the analysis of the two visual systems hypothesis, with contributions from A. David Milner and Melvyn A. Goodale, and from Dean R. Melmoth, Marc S. Tibber, and Michael J. Morgan. In a series of pioneering studies conducted in the early 1990s, Milner and Goodale (1995) suggested that humans possess two functionally distinct cortically-based visual systems, which they labeled as the ventral and the dorsal pathways. The former (also known as the “what pathway”) is a potentially conscious vision-for-perception system situated in the ventral stream, which protrudes from the primary visual cortex to the inferior temporal cortex and is generally associated with experiential awareness and with a kind of indirect control of action. It is also reported to be responsible for object and color recognition. The latter (also known as the “where pathway”) is instead an unconscious vision-for-action system that is located in the dorsal stream. It projects from the primary visual cortex to the posterior parietal cortex and it is fundamentally devoted to governing body movements by exercising direct control of visually informed action. In their contribution to this volume, Milner and Goodale survey the evidence that has accumulated to support their hypothesis and use it to sharpen their distinction and further refine their model. Milner and Goodale reckon that the available data on double dissociations are partly contradictory and somehow incomplete. They nevertheless defend their dichotomous account of perception and action against critics and argue that even if results across patients suffering from visual agnosia and optic ataxia do not decisively indicate the emergence of double dissociations, this does not necessarily entail that the function of 1See Hurley (1998) and O’Regan and Noë (2001); for antecedents in psychology see Gibson (1979); for precursors in developmental psychology see Piaget (1972).

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the ventral and the dorsal streams cannot be strongly dissociated (p. 89). Substantial disagreement with this claim is expressed by Melmoth, Tibber, and Morgan, who in analyzing the role that illusory stimuli (such as the Poggendorff illusion) come to play for visuo-motor actions, defend the conjecture that a single unified representation of spatial position is used for both perceptual and motor tasks and therefore attack the idea that action and perception are functionally distinct (p. 95).2 Part three investigates agency and the problem of perceptual experience in relation to the nature of visuo-motor actions with a triptych of ground-breaking essays. Mohan Matthen focuses on the notion of “feeling of presence” distinguishing between “motion-guiding vision” and “descriptive vision” (p. 107). The former, he argues, is used in the control of motor movements and is a key element for the cognitive feeling of presence that accompanies our perception of real objects. The latter instead has to do with the capacity of the perceiver to store and recall information and is essentially (though not entirely) responsible for visual consciousness. Matthen uses this distinction to give an explanation of the problem of perceptual experience that isn’t merely based on the role of the perceiver’s actions (as in sensorimotor theories of perception) but more profoundly depends on the nature of the perceptual object and on the possibilities of interactions it offers. Pierre Jacob and Frédérique de Vignemont offer a solution to the problem of how we perceive that is fully consistent with the two visual systems hypothesis, and attribute the contents of conscious experience to the processing in the ventral stream. On the grounds of some experimental evidence they then defend a version of the two visual systems hypothesis and claim that it is unlikely that information at the service of action can participate in and constitute perceptual experiences. Susanna Schellenberg develops her account of perceptual experience by disentangling the perceptual content of one’s experience into what she calls “situation-dependent properties” and “intrinsic properties” (p. 145). In her view, the perceptual content of one’s experience is determined by both the perceiver’s capacity of self-location and the knowledge, gained through action, of how objects will look from different perspectives. So, Schellenberg argues that perception depends on the capacity to know what it would be to act in relation to given objects. Part four further explores the relationship between action and perception and focuses on empirical evidence drawn from cognitive neuroscience (in particular from cases of optic ataxia and neglect syndrome) to substantiate and develop an experimentally driven defense of action-oriented theories of perception [see chapters by Yves Rossetti, Hisaaki Ota, Annabelle Blangero, Alain Vighetto, and Laure Pisella, and by Giuseppe Vallar and Flavia Mancini]. This fourth section also includes an essay from Yvonne Delevoye–Turrell, Angela Bartolo, and Yonn Coello, in which the authors use transcranial magnetic stimulation to motor areas of the brain to show the importance of action-oriented processing in triggering spatial visual experiences. This work is important because it contributes to undermine the rigid and sharp distinction between the “what” and the “where” pathways that lies at the core of the two streams models. Part five centers on the role of action and sensorimotor knowledge in sensorimotor theories of perception. Alva Noë offers a taxonomy of four distinct ways of relating action and perception and tries to accommodate and reconcile his actionism with the two visual systems hypothesis by showing the extent to which conscious perception can 2The Poggendorff

illusion is a geometrical-optical illusion that was first discovered by physicist J.C. Poggendorff in 1860. It is characterized by a misjudgment of the position of the two ends of a straight line segment passing behind an obscuring rectangle. The illusion consists in seeing the lines as distorted by their background when they are instead aligned.

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impact upon visuo-motor behavior and perceptual experience. Julian Kiverstein defends Noë’s understanding of perceptual experience but argues for the constitutive role of sub-personal sensorimotor expectations in perceptual content. In particular, he proposes to conceive the content of phenomenal awareness as egocentrically encoded and substantially determined by skillful practice. Finally, in part six of the book a self-standing contribution from Robert A. Wilson explores the boundaries of the agent: the author defends an externalist position about visual experience and offers a positive argument for the idea of extended vision which relies (quite heavily) on enactivist assumptions. The Main Theme of the Book Having summarized the contents of this volume, I now briefly want to focus on what I believe is the major theme that characterizes this collection: namely the tension between action-oriented theories of perception and versions of the two visual systems hypothesis. Action-oriented theories typically emphasize the role of action in structuring (in non-trivial ways) perception. Versions of two visual systems hypothesis instead postulate the existence of a profound functional distinction between vision-for-perception and vision-for-action. Now, if the understanding endorsed by versions of the two streams model is right, then it seems we have to say that perception and action are independent, functionally distinct, and completely separated. If, on the contrary, action-oriented theories stand correct, then it seems we should describe perception and action as reciprocally coupled, deeply interwoven, and mutually interconnected. At this point a question naturally arises: are action-oriented theories of perception and versions of the two visual systems hypothesis necessarily opposed and inevitably in conflict (as it would appear at a superficial glance) or is there a way to reconcile them? Noë intriguingly argues that action-oriented theories are not in opposition with empirical evidence supporting the dual streams model. He actually claims that the former are necessary for making sense of the latter. Action-oriented theories on his view offer a plausible and credible explanation of how ventral and dorsal streams can communicate, despite using alternative encodings of visual information. Milner and Goodale, and Jacob and de Vignemont suggest a close correspondence too, but of course, do not go all the way with Noë in asserting the instrumental dependence of perception on action. Jacob and Jeannerod (2003) have proposed an interesting way of thinking about the anatomical distinction between the ventral and the dorsal pathways. In particular, they have rejected “a simple dichotomy between vision-for-action and vision-for-perception in favor of a more nuanced model that takes into account, for example, the complexities of human pragmatic processing of objects — in particular the contribution of the parietal lobes (part of the dorsal pathway) to high-level pragmatic processing, including complex tool use and the perception of other people’s actions” (Bermudez, 2007, pp. 1–2). Other authors (such as Norman, 2002) have claimed that in order to explain and fully understand the relation between action-oriented theories and dual stream models we ought to embrace an integrative dual process approach aimed at revealing their synergistic interactions. Several PET studies have revealed that during motor imagery of grasping actions the posterior parietal cortex and premotor inferior parietal areas of our brain are vigorously activated (Decety et al., 1994; Grafton, Arbib, Fadiga, and Rizzolatti, 1996; Parsons et al., 1995). Another study conducted by Sirigu, Duhamel, Cohen, Pillon, Dubois, and Agid (1996) has further highlighted the involvement of the dorsal stream in cognitive tasks (Gallese, Craighero, Fadiga, and Fogassi, 1999). Van der Kamp, Rivas, van Doorn, and Savelsbergh (2008) have more recently demonstrated the crucial con-

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tributions (in fast ball sports) of the ventral system in perceiving what action the situation affords and of the dorsal system in the visual guidance of that action (p. 101). Indeed, the idea of a major role played by action in building our perception has become increasingly popular (Gallese, 2007) and all these findings taken together seem to explicitly contradict the sharp distinction between an “acting brain” and a “knowing brain,” suggesting that perception can be properly accounted for only by considering the bidirectional relationship between the agent and her environment. This volume doesn’t (probably) resolve the tension between action-oriented theories and versions of the two visual systems hypothesis; but this wasn’t its main goal. Nor does it unravel the mystery surrounding the concept of visual conscious experience, as an ambitious reader could have hoped. The book nevertheless succeeds in providing an up-to-date and coherent state-of-the-art treatment that is capable of both advancing the research and satisfying the curiosity of the most inquisitive reader. Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems is, from an academic perspective at least, an intriguing book. Quite densely written and difficult to understand in places, it might not be suitable for lay people. Impressive both in scope and depth, the volume is vital reading for those (especially philosophers and cognitive scientists) who want to know more about the interdisciplinary study of perception and action. Philosophical rigor and scrupulous attention to empirical details make this collection of essays a complete, erudite, and authoritative contribution that will surely have a very long life as a definitive account of the subject. References Bermudez, L. (2007). From two visual systems to two forms of content? Psyche, 13, 1–7. Decety, J., Perani, D., Jeannerod, M., Bettinardi, V., Tadary, B., Woods, B., and Mazziotta, J.C. (1994). Mapping motor representations with PET. Nature, 371, 600–602. Gallese, V. (2007). The conscious dorsal stream: Embodied simulations and its role in space and action conscious awareness. Psyche, 13, 1–20. Gallese, V., Craighero, L, Fadiga, L., and Fogassi, L. (1999). Perception through action. Psyche, 5, 1–8. Gibson, J.J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Grafton, S.T., Arbib, M. A., Fadiga, L., and Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Localization of grasp representations in humans by PET: 2. Observation compared with imagination. Experimental Brain Research, 112, 103–111. Hurley, S.L. (1998). Consciousness in action. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Jacob, P., and Jeannerod, M. (2003). Ways of seeing: The scope and limits of visual cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Milner, D., and Goodale, M.A. (1995). The visual brain in action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norman, J. (2002). Two visual systems and two theories of perception: An attempt to reconcile the constructivist and ecological approaches. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 73–96 . O’Regan, J.K., and Noë, A. (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 883–975. Parsons, L.M., Fox, P.T., Downs, J.H., Glass, T., Hirsch, T.B., Martin, C.C., Jerabek, P.A., and Lancaster, J.L. (1995). Use of implicit motor imagery for visual shape discrimination as revealed by PET. Nature, 375, 54–58. Piaget, J. (1972). Psychology and epistemology: Towards a theory of knowledge. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sirigu, A., Duhamel, J.R., Cohen, L., Pillon, B., Dubois, B., and Agid, Y. (1996). The mental representation of hand movements after parietal cortex damage. Science, 273, 1564–1568. van der Kamp, J., Rivas, F., van Doorn, H., and Savelsbergh, G. (2008). Ventral and dorsal contributions in visual anticipation in fast ball sports. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 39, 100–130.

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BOOkSRECEIVEDFORREVIEW 8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder: Effective Strategies from Therapeutic Practice and Personal Experience. Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb. W.W. Norton, New York, 2011. $19.95 paper, 224 pages. The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques Workbook. Margaret Wehrenberg. W. W. Norton, New York, 2012. $19.95 paper, 240 pages. Addiction and Responsibility. Jeffrey Poland and George Graham (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $40.00 hard, 328 pages, 9 illustrations. The Aging Intellect. Douglas H. Powell. Routledge, New York, 2011. $34.95 hard, 319 pages. Animal Thinking: Contemporary Issues in Comparative Cognition. Randolf Menzel and Julia Fischer (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $40.00 hard, 354 pages. Animals and World Religions. Lisa Kemmerer. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $99.00 hard, $35.00 paper, 346 pages. Art in Three Dimensions. Noel Carroll. Oxford University Press, New York, 2010. $74.00 hard, 539 pages. The Art of Cosmic Vision: Practices for Improving Your Eyesight. Mantak Chia and Robert T. Lewanski. Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 2010. $16.95 paper, 196 pages. Art, Self and Knowledge. Keith Lehrer. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $24.95 paper, 224 pages. Attachment Focused Family Therapy Workbook. Daniel A. Hughes. W.W. Norton, New York, 2011. $29.95 paper, 272 pages. Beyond Reduction: Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science. Steven Horst. Oxford University Press, New York, 2012. $29.95 paper, 242 pages. Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do About It. Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2011. $24.95 hard, 191 pages. Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media. Davi Johnson Thornton. Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, New Jersey, 2011. $24.94 paper, $72.00 hard, 208 pages. Causing Human Actions: New Perspectives on the Causal Theory of Action. Jesús H. Aguilar and Andrei A. Buckareff (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2010. $35.00 paper, 336 pages, 2 illustrations. Cerebral Plasticity: New Perspectives. Leo M. Chalupa, Nicoletta Berardi, Matteo Caleo, Lucia Galli–Resta, and Tommaso Pizzorusso (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $60.00 hard, 425 pages. The Cognitive Neuropsychiatry of Parkinson’s Disease. Patrick McNamara. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $45.00 hard, 232 pages, 8 b&w illlustrations, 16 tables. A Collaborative Approach to Eating Disorders. June Alexander and Janet Treasure (Editors). Routledge, New York, 2011. $39.95 paper, 322 pages. Collective Papers, Volume 1: Mind and Language, 1972–2010. Stephen Stich. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $65.00 hard, 384 pages. Concepts and Fuzzy Logic. Radim Belohlavek and George J. Klir (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachuestts, 2011. $35.00 hard, 286 pages. The Consciousness Paradox: Consciousness, Concepts, and Higher-Order Thoughts. Rocco J. Gennaro. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $40.00 hard, 388 pages. Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and the Humanities. Edward Slingerland and Mark Collard (Eds.). Oxford University Press, New York, 2012. $35.00 paper, 472 pages.

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Decision Making: Towards an Evolutionary Psychology of Rationality. Mauro Maldonato. Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, United Kingdom, 2010. $32.50 paper, 121 pages. Dialogues with Davidson: Acting, Interpreting, Understanding. Jeff Malpas (Editor). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $50.00 hard, 507 pages. Doing without Concepts. Edouard Machery. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $24.95 paper, 296 pages. Educating Intuition. Robin M. Hogarth. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010. $20.00 paper, 360 pages. Emotional Truth. Ronald de Sousa. Oxford University Press, New York, 2010. $65.00 hard, 344 pages. Empathy: From Bench to Bedside. Jean Decety (Editor). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $40.00 hard, 336 pages, 12 illustrations. Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie (Editors). Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $150.00 hard, 736 pages. Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $40.00 hard, 481 pages. The Ethical Treatment of Depression: Autonomy through Psychotherapy. Paul Biegler. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $35.00 hard, 214 pages, 1 illustration. Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice. Kristen Renwick Monroe. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2011. $35.00 paper, $75.00 hard, 488 pages. Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport (third edition). Robert L. Simon. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2010. $33.00 paper, 256 pages. Fate, Fortune & Mysticism in the Peruvian Amazon: The Septrionic Order and the Naipes Cards. Marlene Dobkin de Rios. Park Street Press, Rochester, Vermont, 2011. $14.94 paper, 144 pages, two 8-page color inserts and 15 b&w photographs. Feeling Pain and Being in Pain (second edition). Nikola Grahek. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $16.00 paper, 208 pages. Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will. Gregg D. Caruso. Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland, 2012. $80.00 hard, 209 pages. Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem. Mark Balaguer. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $18.00 paper, 216 pages. Game Theory and the Humanities: Bridging Two Worlds. Steven J. Brams. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $35.00 hard, 352 pages, 35 figures. Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story. Paul Shaw. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $39.95 hard, 144 pages, 273 color illustrations. How We Remember: Brain Mechanisms of Episodic Memory. Michael E. Hasselmo. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $40.00 hard, 366 pages, 111 illustrations. In Defense of Shame: The Faces of an Emotion. Julien A. Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, and Fabrice Teroni. Oxford University Press, New York, 2012. $55.00 hard, 288 pages. Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, and Reginald B. Adams, Jr. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $29.95 hard, 344 pages. Internal Reasons: Contemporary Readings. Kieran Setiya and Hille Paakkunainen (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $35.00 paper, 386 pages. Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology. Tamar Szabó Gendler. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $65.00 hard, 320 pages. Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. George Saliba. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $22.00 paper, 327 pages.


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Joint Attention: New Developments in Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, and Social Neuroscience. Axel Seemann (Editor). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $45.00 hard, 501 pages. Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema. David A. Kirby. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $27.95 hard, 280 pages. Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought. John F. Hoffecker. Columbia University Press: New York, New York, 2011. $50.00 hard, 288 pages. The Language of Thought: A New Philosophical Direction. Susan Schneider. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $36.00 hard, 259 pages, 2 figures. Like-Minded: Externalism and Moral Psychology. Andrew Sneddon. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $40.00 hard, 294 pages. Living Beyond the One and the Many: Silent-Mind Transcendence of All Traditional and Contemporary Monism and Dualism. J. Richard Wingerter. Hamilton Books, Lanham, Maryland, 2011. $39.95 hard, 345 pages. Making Sense of Freedom & Responsibility. Dana Kay Nelkin. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $55.00 hard, 200 pages. Manic Minds: Mania’s Mad History and Its Neuro-Future. Lisa M. Hermsen. Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, New Jersey, 2011. $23.95 paper, 172 pages. Manual of Panic Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy — eXtended Range. Fredric N. Busch, Barbara L. Milrod, Meriamne B. Singer, and Andrew C. Aronson. Routledge, New York, 2011. $34.95 soft, 230 pages. Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen. James H. Austin. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $24.95 hard, 275 pages. Mind and Brain: A Critical Reappraisal of Cognitive Neuroscience. William R. Uttal. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $55.00 hard, 488 pages, 24 illustrations. Mindfulness and Hypnosis: The Power of Suggestion to Transform Experience. Michael D. Yapko. W.W. Norton, New York, 2011. $29.95 hard, 256 pages. The Mind of the Chimpanzee. Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf, Stephen R. Ross, and Tetsuro Matsuzawa (Editors). Foreword by Jane Goodall. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010. $49.00 paper, 464 pages. Mindreading Animals: The Debate over What Animals Know about Other Minds. Robert W. Lurz. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $35.00 hard, 245 pages. Models and Cognition. Jonathan A. Waskan. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $19.00 paper, 344 pages, 20 illustrations. Modes of Creativity: Philosophical Perspectives. Irving Singer. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $36.00 hard, 320 pages. Neural Basis of Motivational and Cognitive Control. Rogier B. Mars, Jérôme Sallet, Matthew F.S. Rushworth, and Nick Yeung (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $50.00 hard, 448 pages. Nietzsche and the Drama of Historiobiography. Roberto Alejandro. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2011. $40.00 paper, 392 pages. Nurturing the Older Brain and Mind. Pamela M. Greenwood and Raja Parasuraman. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $40.00 hard, 341 pages. Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will. John Martin Fischer. Oxford University Press, New York, 2010. $24.95 paper, 192 pages. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind. Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann and Sven Walter (Editors). Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $55.00 paper, 832 pages. The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism. Cedric Boeckx (Editor). Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $150.00 hard, 640 pages.

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BOOKS RECEIVED

Perception and Basic Beliefs: Zombies, Modules, and the Problem of the External World. Jack C. Lyons. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $24.95 paper, 216 pages. Perplexities of Consciousness. Eric Schwitzgebel. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $27.95 hard, 237 pages. Persons in Context: The Challenge of Individuality in Theory and Practice. Roger Frie and William J. Coburn (Editors). Routledge (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series, Volume 32), New York, 2010. $80.00 hard, $29.95 paper, 152 pages. Phenomenal Consciousness: Understanding the Relation Between Experience and Neural Processes in the Brain. Dimitris Platchias. Acumen, Durham, United Kingdom, 2011. £55.00 hard, £18.99 paper, 223 pages. The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe. Roger Teichmann. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $35.00 paper, 254 pages. The Philosophy of Information. Luciano Floridi. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $55.00 hard, 360 pages. Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up. Irving Singer. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $8.95 hard, 144 pages. Philosophy of Mind (third edition). Jaegwon Kim. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2011. $38.00 paper, 384 pages. Philosophy, Neuroscience and Consciousness. Rex Welshon. Acumen, Durham, United Kingdon, 2011. £55.00 hard, £19.99 paper, 397 pages. Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind. Daniel J. Siegel. W.W. Norton, New York, 2012. $29.95 paper, 560 pages. Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Human Strengths (second edition). Alan Carr. Routledge, London, 2011. $37.50 paper, 408 pages. Practical Social Skills for Autism Spectrum Disorders: Designing Child-Specific Interventions. Kathleen Koenig. W.W. Norton, New York, 2012. $32.95 hard, 256 pages. Psychiatry in the Scientific Image. Dominic Murphy. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $20.00 paper, 424 pages, 3 illustrations. Psychosocial Assessment and Treatment of Bariatric Surgery Patients. James E. Mitchell and Martina de Zwaan (Editors). Routledge, New York, 2012. $34.95 hard, 285 pages. Regimens of the Mind: Boyle, Locke, and the Early Modern Cultura Animi Tradition. Sora Corneanu. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2011. $50.00 hard, 308 pages. Reliable Reasoning: Introduction and Statistical Learning Theory. Gilbert Harman and Sanjeev Kulkarni. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $16.00 paper, 120 pages, 19 illustrations. Retraumatization: Assessment, Treatment and Prevention. Melanie P. Duckworth and Victoria M. Follette (Editors). Routledge, New York, 2011. $49.95 paper, 476 pages. Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics. Patrick Lin, Keith Abney, and George A. Bekey (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $45.00 hard, 398 pages. Robotics: Science and Systems VI. Yoky Matsuoka, Hugh Durrant–Whyte, and José Neira (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $80.00 paper, 340 pages. Schizophrenia: The Final Frontier – A Festschrift for Robin M. Murray. Anthony S. David, Shitij Kapur, and Peter McGuffin (Editors). Psychology Press, Hove, East Sussex, United Kingdom, 2011. The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy. Allan N. Schore. W.W. Norton, New York, 2012. $45.00 hard, 480 pages. The Sciences of the Soul: The Early Modern Origins of Psychology. Fernando Vidal [translated by Sandra Brown]. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2011. $55.00 hard, 413 pages.


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Seeing Fictions in Film: The Epistemology of Movies. George M. Wilson. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $45.00 hard, 240 pages. Self-Knowledge. Anthony Hatzimoysis (Editor). Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $85.00 hard, 320 pages. The Senses: Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives. Fiona Macpherson (Editor). Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $29.95 paper, 432 pages. Sleep Paralysis: Night-Mares, Nocebos, and the Mind–Body Connection. Shelley R. Adler. Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, New Jersey, 2011. $27.95 paper, 192 pages, 7 photos, 1 table. Social Epistemology: Essential Readings. Alvin I. Goldman and Dennis Whitcomb (Editors). Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $29.95 paper, 368 pages. Social Neuroscience: People Thinking about Thinking People. John T. Cacioppo, Penny S. Visser, and Cynthia L. Pickett (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $24.00 paper, 320 pages, 6 color and 19 b&w illustrations. Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. Nicholas Humphrey. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2011. $24.95 hard, 256 pages. Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies. Susan Landau. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $29.95 hard, 399 pages. Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth. Robert Costanza, Lisa J. Graumlich, and Will Steffen (Editors). MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $22.00 paper, 517 pages, 47 illustrations. Things: Papers on Objects, Events, and Properties. Stephen Yablo. Oxford University Press, New York, 2010. $35.00 paper, 323 pages. Thinking as Computation: A First Course. Hector J. Levesque. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012. $45.00 hard, 328 pages, 139 illustrations. Trauma Essentials: The Go-To Guide. Babette Rothschild. W.W. Norton, New York, 2011. $19.95 paper, 160 pages. The Tyranny of Utility: Behavioral Social Science and the Rise of Paternalism. Gilles Saint–Paul. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2011. $39.50 hard, 163 pages. Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignties. Warwick Anderson, Deborah Jenson, and Richard C. Keller (Editors). Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2011. $24.95 paper, $89.95 hard, 314 pages. Understanding and Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Relational Approach. Elizabeth F. Howell. Routledge, New York, 2011. $35.95 paper, 330 pages. Understanding Research in Clinical and Counseling Psychology (second edition). Jay C. Thomas and Michel Hersen (Editors). Routledge, New York, 2011. $69.95 paper, 514 pages. The Unity of Consciousness. Tim Bayne. Oxford University Press, New York, 2010. $55.00 hard, 256 pages. When the Past is Always Present: Emotional Traumatization, Causes, and Cures (Psychological Stress Series). Ronald A. Ruden. Routledge, New York, 2010. $34.95 hard, 210 pages. Where Does Mind End? A Radical History of Consciousness and the Awakened Self. Marc J. Seifer. Park Street Press, Rochester, Vermont, 2011. $18.95 paper, 374 pages. Why Think? Evolution and the Rational Mind. Ronald de Sousa. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. $19.95 paper, 200 pages. Wittgenstein in Exile. James C. Klagge. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $35.00 hard, 249 pages, 1 figure. The Wonder of Consciousness: Understanding the Mind through Philosophical Reflection. Harold Langsam. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011. $35.00 hard, 234 pages.


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AUTHORINDExVOLUME32 Arana, J.M. See Gordillo, F., Arana, J.M., and Mestas, L. Berta, L. Qualia from the Point of View of Language, pp. 181–208. Boysen, G.A. Revision of the DSM and Conceptual Expansion of Mental Illness: An Exploratory Analysis of Diagnostic Criteria, pp. 295–316. Buttle, H. Attention and Working Memory in Mindfulness–Meditation Practices, pp. 123–134. Connelly, S.E. Book Review: The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood by Jane Leavy, pp. 159–164. Courtial, J.-P. Scientific Knowledge-Building and Healing Processes, pp. 113–122. Crooks, M. Consciousness: Sentient and Rational, pp. 251–276. Crooks, M. Semantikos: Understanding and Cognitive Meaning. Part 1: Two Epistemologies, pp. 91–112. Cunningham, P. F. Are Religious Experiences Really Localized Within the Brain? The Promise, Challenges, and Prospects of Neurotheology, pp. 223–250. Dale, E. Evolutionary Developmental Biology, the Human Life Course, and Transpersonal Experience, pp. 277–294. Doomen, J. Cornering “Free Will,” pp. 165–180. Farina, M. Book Review: Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems by Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary, and Finn Spicer (Editors), pp. 361–366. Fidelman, U. On the Ontological Status of Some Cosmological and Physical Theories, pp. 351–360. Glicksohn, J. Book Review: The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion by Michael A. Jawar with Marc S. Micozzi, pp. 151–154. Glicksohn, J. and Ohana, A.B. From Trance to Transcendence: A Neurocognitive Approach, pp. 49–62. Gordillo, F., Arana, J.M., and Mestas, L. A Bibliometric Index for Selection Processes, pp. 333–350. Jacobs, D.H. Is the DSM’s Formulation of Mental Disorder a Technical–Scientific Term?, pp. 63–80. Joseph, J. A Human Genetics Parable, pp. 209–222. Kiritani, O. Function and Modality, pp. 1–4. Kiritani, O. Modality and Function: Reply to Nanay, pp. 89–90. Madary, M. Book Review: The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology by Mark Rowlands, pp. 81–84. McClelland, R.T. A Naturalistic View of Human Dignity, pp. 5–48. McClenon, J. Evolutionary Theories of Schizophrenia: An Experience-Centered Review, pp. 135–150. Mestas, L. See Gordillo, F., Arana, J.M., and Mestas, L.

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Nanay, B. Function, Modality, Mental Content: A Response to Kiritani, pp. 85–88. Ohana, A.B. See Glicksohn, J. and Ohana, A.B. Schmerker, J. Book Review: Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema by David A. Kirby, pp. 155–158. Vandervert, L. The Evolution of Language: The Cerebro-Cerebellar Blending of Visual-Spatial Working Memory with Vocalizations, pp. 317–332.

The Journal of Mind and Behavior (JMB) is dedicated to the interdisciplinary approach within psychology and related fields. Mind and behavior position, interact, and causally relate to each other in multidirectional ways; JMB urges the exploration of these interrelationships. The editors are particularly interested in scholarly work in the following areas: the psychology, philosophy, and sociology of experimentation and the scientific method the relationships among methodology, operationism, and theory construction the mind/body problem in the social sciences, psychiatry and the medical sciences, and the physical sciences philosophical impact of a mind/body epistemology upon psychology and its theories of consciousness critical examinations of the DSM–biopsychiatry–somatotherapy framework of thought and practice issues pertaining to the ethical study of cognition, self-awareness, and higher functions of consciousness in nonhuman animals phenomenological, teleological, existential, and introspective reports relevant to psychology, psychosocial methodology, and social philosophy historical perspectives on the course and nature of psychological science. The Journal also recognizes the work of both established and non-established independent scholars. JMB is based upon the premise that all meaningful statements about human behavior rest ultimately upon observation — with no one scientific method possessing, a priori, greater credence than another. Emphasis upon experimental control should not preclude the experiment as a measure of behavior outside the scientific laboratory. The editors recognize the need to propagate ideas and speculations as well as the need to form empirical situations for testing them. However, we believe in a working reciprocity between theory and method (not a confounding), and in a unity among the sciences. Manuscripts should accentuate this interdisciplinary approach — either explicitly in their content, or implicitly within their point of view.

A NOTE ON OUR BOOK REVIEW POLICY ________________________________ We will accept book reviews for publication each issue. Authors wishing to submit book reviews are urged to write with the above interdisciplinary framework firmly in mind. All books solicited from publishers will be sent to selected individuals for review. JMB also accepts unsolicited reviews. Reviews should be absent of all titles except the name of the work reviewed, author of work reviewed, place of publication, publisher, date of latest publication, number of pages, and cost. Any individual wishing to submit a review should contact our Book Review Editor for further information: Steven E. Connelly, Ph.D., Department of English, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809. Email: [email protected] JMB is abstracted or indexed in: Cultures, Langues, Textes: La Revue de Sommaires; Current Contents (Social and Behavioral Sciences); EMBASE/Excerpta Medica; International Bibliography of Book Reviews; International Bibliography of Periodical Literature; Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts; Physics Abstracts; Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal; PsychINFO/Psychological Abstracts; Research Alert; Social Science Citation Index; Social Work Abstracts; Sociological Abstracts; The Philosopher’s Index. The Journal of Mind and Behavior website is located at www.umaine.edu/jmb/.

JMB offers an immediate publication outlet on a quarterly basis. The Journal publishes one volume per year in the following sequence of issues: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. There are no page costs for accepted manuscripts. JMB is a refereed journal, and all decisions will be made by the assessing editors, associate editors and chief editors. Commentaries and responses to individual articles and reviews are welcome. Authors subscribing at the time of manuscript submission are eligible for reduced subscription rates (see below). All manuscripts should follow the style and preparation presented in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (sixth edition, 2010). Particular attention should be paid to the citing of references, both in the text and on the reference page. [Note exceptions to APA style: JMB uses no ampersands or city/state abbreviations in referencing; the Journal uses three levels of headings: level 1, level 3, and level 4, see pp. 113, 114, 115 from the fifth (2001) edition APA Manual.] Authors requesting blind review must specify and prepare their manuscripts accordingly. Manuscripts may be sent to the Editor either by e-mail to [email protected] or by post (one copy) to: Raymond Chester Russ, Ph.D., Editor The Journal of Mind and Behavior Department of Psychology The University of Maine 5742 Little Hall Orono, Maine 04469–5742 Tel. (207) 581-2057 Yearly subscription rates are $32.00 for students or hardship; $35.00 for past/present JMB authors or for those submitting manuscripts; $46.00 for individuals; $176.00 for institutions. Air mail rates upon request. All back issues are available and abstracts are located at www.umaine.edu/jmb. For detailed information contact our Circulation Department at The Institute of Mind and Behavior, P.O. Box 522, Village Station, New York City, New York 10014; Tel: (212) 595-4853.

Printed by The University of Maine Printing Services

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v.32 n.4


Evolutionary Developmental Biology, the Human Life Course, and Transpersonal Experience ....................................277 Edward Dale Revision of the DSM and Conceptual Expansion of Mental Illness: An Exploratory Analysis of Diagnostic Criteria........................................................................295 Guy A. Boysen

A Bibliometric Index for Selection Processes ........................................333 Fernando Gordillo, José M. Arana, and Lilia Mestas On the Ontological Status of Some Cosmological and Physical Theories .......................................................................351 Uri Fidelman

Autumn 2011

The Evolution of Language: The Cerebro-Cerebellar Blending of Visual-Spatial Working Memory with Vocalizations .............................................................................317 Larry Vandervert


The Journal of Mind and Behavior Autumn 2011

Book Review –Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems by Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary, and Finn Spicer (Editors) Reviewed by Mirko Farina ..................................................................361

Vol. 32 No. 4 Autumn 2011

Books Received for Review .....................................................................367

Volume 32 Number 4

Author Index Volume 32.........................................................................373


ISSN 0271– 0137