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cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021301.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021301"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021301.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3384
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+reciprocal control, characteristic of
+reflex processes, where autonomic
+balance can be biased toward one or the
+other of the autonomic branches. High
+scores indicate sympathetic dominance
+and low scores parasympathetic
+dominance. Independent estimates of
+sympathetic and parasympathetic control
+were obtained using standard
+measurement procedures, and the level
+of parasympathetic control was
+subtracted from sympathetic control to
+derive a measure of Cardiac Autonomic
+Balance. A second metric was designed
+to capture an alternative mode of
+autonomic control (Cardiac Autonomic
+Regulation) that assesses the degree of
+relative coactivation (rather than
+reciprocal activation) of both branches.
+This is a metric that taps into the non-
+reciprocal regulatory influences of
+higher neural structures. Cardiac
+Autonomic Regulation scores were
+derived by essentially summing
+activities of the sympathetic and
+parasympathetic branches to afford a
+measure of total overall autonomic
+cardiac control. High scores indicate
+high activation and low scores indicate
+low activation of both branches of the
+autonomic nervous system.
+In the 50-68-year-old adults in
+our sample, spirituality was found to be
+associated not only with a lower
+incidence of heart attack, but a higher
+level of Cardiac Autonomic Regulation.
+That is, people who felt closer in their
+relationship with God exhibited higher
+overall autonomic regulation-both
+sympathetic and parasympathetic. This
+was associated, in part, with lesser
+diminution of parasympathetic control
+and a greater degree of coactivation.
+Moreover, Cardiac Autonomic
+Regulation (but not Cardiac Autonomic
+Balance) predicted better overall health
+Page | 55
+status and was associated with a lower
+incidence of heart attack. Participants
+who had low Cardiac Autonomic
+Regulation were more likely to have
+suffered from a heart attack.
+Could higher Cardiac Autonomic
+Regulation scores explain why
+spirituality was associated with less risk
+for heart attack? That is, could a pattern
+of autonomic regulation associated with
+spirituality explain the link between
+spirituality and heart attack? In order to
+address this question, we conducted
+statistical tests of these linkages. As we
+already knew, both spirituality and
+Cardiac Autonomic Regulation are
+associated with a lower incidence of
+heart attack. When the predictive effects
+of spirituality were statistically
+extracted, Cardiac Autonomic
+Regulation continued to be a significant
+predictor of a lower incidence of heart
+attack. However, when the linkage test
+was reversed and the effects of Cardiac
+Autonomic Regulation were extracted,
+spirituality was no longer a significant
+predictor. This indicates that Cardiac
+Autonomic Regulation is a plausible
+mediator that may explain the
+relationship between spirituality and
+heart attack.
+By capturing higher levels of
+parasympathetic control and the
+associated autonomic coactivation of the
+sympathetic and parasympathetic
+branches, Cardiac Autonomic
+Regulation provided a critical metric that
+permitted the study of a previously
+"invisible" and mysterious link between
+spirituality and health outcomes. This in
+no way diminishes the relationship
+between spirituality and health, but
+rather offers an important hypothesis as
+to how spirituality may impact
+physiology and health status. Spirituality
+reflects an important aspect of the
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021301
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021302.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021302"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021302.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 2650
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+page_vibes_last_page: 0.5
+---
+
+general domain of sociality and social
+relationships, a domain heavily
+influenced by our genetic constitution as
+a social species. Indeed, the importance
+of sociality may be more related to
+beliefs and attitudes about the
+meaningfulness of relationships than
+their existence or number. And again,
+beliefs about social relationships also
+have real consequences.
+Conclusion
+Beliefs impact thoughts and
+actions. This may be reflected in
+phenomena as diverse as biasing a
+behavioral disposition (such as slapping
+a donkey), coloring our perception of the
+environment, or determining how we
+perceive the quality of our social
+(including spiritual) relations.
+Psychology can also impact physiology,
+and physiology, in turn, can influence
+our thoughts and emotions.
+Psychophysiology is the study of these
+relationships, and promises to illuminate
+the intricacies of psychosomatic
+relations and the heretofore "invisible"
+mechanisms that mediate these links.
+The relations between the mind and the
+body, the so-called mind-body problem,
+are complex and still rather obscure.
+Nevertheless, the mind-body problem is
+yielding to science, and the problem it
+poses is progressively diminishing.
+Among the components of the mind-
+body problem yielding to rigorous
+scientific inquiry are the effects of
+spiritual beliefs including feelings of
+closeness to God.
+References
+1. Cannon, W.B. (1942). "Voodoo"
+death. American Anthropologist, 44
+(new series), 169-181.
+Page 56
+2. Wittstein, I.S. (2007). The broken
+heart syndrome. Cleve Clin J Med, 74,
+Suppl 1, S17-22.
+3. Wittstein, I.S., Thiemann, D.R., Lima,
+J.A., Baughman, K.L., Schulman, S.P.,
+Gerstenblith, G., Wu, K.C., Rade, J.J.,
+Bivalacqua, T.J., & Champion, H.C.
+(2005). Neurohumoral features of
+myocardial stunning due to sudden
+emotional stress. N Engl J Med, 352,
+539-48.
+4. Padgett, D. A., Sheridan, J. F., Dorne,
+J., Berntson, G. G., Candelora, J., &
+Glaser, R. (1998). Social stress and the
+reactivation of latent herpes simplex
+virus-type 1. Proceedings of the
+National Academy of Sciences, 95, 7231-
+7235.
+5. Berntson, G. G., Sarter, M. &
+Cacioppo, J. T. (2003). Ascending
+visceral regulation of cortical affective
+information processing. European
+Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 2103-2109.
+6. James, W. (1884). What is an
+emotion? Mind, 9, 188-205.
+7. Berntson, G. G., Norman, G.,
+Hawkley, L., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008).
+Spirituality and autonomic
+cardiovascular control. Annals of
+Behavioral Medicine, 35, 198-208.
+8. Berntson, G. G., Norman, G. J.,
+Hawkley, L. C. & Cacioppo, J. T.
+(2008). Cardiac Autonomic Balance vs.
+Cardiac Regulatory Capacity.
+Psychophysiology, 45, 643-652.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021302
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021304.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021304"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021304.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3495
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+page_vibes_last_page: 0.5
+---
+
+a group poste sevent othere ene
+raine individuals observed cycles Clapping
+perpetie ONCe, disse
+signifi
+Chapter 6®
+The Suspension of Individual
+Consciousness and
+The Dissolution of Self and Other
+Boundaries
+When we watch a group of
+soldiers marching in formation, we see
+the behavior of the group synchronized.
+Although we can make out the
+" The lead author is Gün R. Semin, Ph.D., an
+Academy Professor, Royal Netherlands
+Academy of Arts and Sciences, at Utrecht
+University, The Netherlands. He is the founding
+Scientific Director of the Kurt Lewin Graduate
+School, a past president of the European
+Association of Experimental Social Psychology,
+and the Chair of the International Committee of
+the Association for Psychological Science.
+Semin's research is primarily driven by an
+interest in communication, social cognition as
+jointly recruited process, and language and the
+diverse uses that language can be put to in social
+interaction (ranging from the regulation of
+prejudice to that of interpersonal relationships)
+as well as the embodied grounding of meaning
+and communication.
+A puzzle that has occupied Semin much
+of his career is how it is possible to understand
+social behavior by explaining individual
+processes. Another puzzle has been why one
+should focus on stills when human behavior is a
+movie: behavior is self evidently dynamic and
+highly responsive to contextual variations.
+Finally, Semin has been puzzled by how it is
+possible to think that all there might be to
+psychological processes is some symbolic
+computation taking place somewhere between
+the ears. As outlined in this essay, he has come
+to conceptualize the social in terms of jointly
+recruited processes rather than individual ones,
+social behavior as situated, and psychological
+processes as embodied.
+Page 58
+individual within the group, the group
+seems to be an entity of its own and the
+individual soldier seems to have become
+a cog in the social machine. Mob
+behavior, crowds at sporting events, and
+soldiers in formation all suggest that
+when we are organized to act together,
+the group becomes an emergent entity
+that can submerge the sense of the
+individual self. This apparent social
+absorption stands in contrast to our
+typical experience of being autonomous,
+self-aware agents in the world. The
+dissolution of the boundary between the
+self and the group is one manifestation
+of the social brain and the mechanisms
+that support our ability to connect with
+others.
+Although not everyone has the
+experience of marching in a band or
+running with a mob, most people have
+been part of an audience at a concert or
+play. At the end of a particularly
+thrilling performance, an audience can
+be moved spontaneously as a group to
+clap wildly. In these situations, we
+know the feeling of surging to our feet as
+a collective, hands clapping and faces
+beaming with approval. As the clapping
+blooms, individual clappers merge into a
+synchronized unit. 1, 2
+Similarly,
+thousands of individual sports fans have
+been observed to stand and raise their
+ands in a synchronized fashion t
+produce a collective wave that travel
+around the stadium. In both cases,
+individual people act as a collective unit,
+a superorganismal structure, with
+capacities and behaviors beyond the
+reach of any single individual in the
+group.
+These examples are instances of
+behavioral uniformity in large groups.
+What is distinctive about these examples
+is that the observed behavioral
+synchrony can be understood in terms of
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021304
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021305.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021305"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021305.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3339
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+a shared social goal. Sometimes the goal
+is spontaneous as in clapping to
+demonstrate appreciation and sometimes
+the goal is imposed by the situation (e.g.,
+musicians following a musical score and
+instructions of a conductor, soldiers
+marching to the call of a drill sergeant).
+However, when we behave in synchrony
+with others, there is a sense of becoming
+part of something larger than ourselves.
+To the people engaged in
+spontaneously synchronized behavior,
+there is a clearly identifiable and
+seemingly individual 'cause' for their
+emergent behavior. But when a group
+shares the same goal-demonstrating
+approval-and engages in the same
+action— clapping— the stage is set for
+such behavior to become coordinated
+and organized even without an external
+agent (conductor or drill sergeant). How
+do those moments of spontaneous social
+aggregation occur? How does the social
+brain work to join with others to form
+the emergent group?
+We have begun to understand the
+underlying dynamics of how and when
+such phenomena are likely to occur and
+even how such phenomena can be
+potentially engineered. New insights
+afforded by developments in social
+psychology, developmental psychology,
+and social neuroscience have suggested
+the way in which our brains respond to
+the invisible force of social connection.
+These scientific developments suggest
+neural mechanisms that may be
+important to the way we interact with
+others. At the same time, the insights
+also reveal the likely conditions under
+which individual self merges into the
+group. Such situations when the sense of
+self is suspended contrast sharply with
+the modern Western notion of the
+individual standing apart from others.
+Indeed, the traditional Western focus on
+Page |59
+individual-centered reasons, motives,
+intentions, and causes may be at odds
+with some forms of spontaneously
+synchronized behaviors and group
+action.
+Towards a Biology of Social
+Interaction
+Consider the perspective of an
+engaged spectator at a singles tennis
+match. Although we may be sitting
+distant from competitors, if we identify
+with one of the players we are not
+merely passive observers. On the
+contrary, our observation of the events in
+the game can serve to activate some of
+the same neural mechanisms that would
+be active if we were playing the game
+rather than just observing it. We can feel
+the moves, feel the impetus to defend an
+attack, and feel the urge to slam the ball
+as if we ourselves are playing, albeit
+without actually flailing our arms
+around. We may even anticipate a move
+by the opponent and imagine ourselves
+making the potential response. Research
+over the last 10 years or so has revealed
+that our brains can map the movements
+of other human beings onto our own
+bodies almost as if we were making
+those movements?
+. This ability to put
+ourselves in another person's shoes
+makes it possible to identify with either
+player.
+By comparison to the audience,
+consider how this ability can serve us as
+one of the players. This capacity
+provides an important facility for
+anticipating our opponent's moves
+allowing us to plan a response even
+before the opponent has completed a
+groundstroke. This kind of anticipation
+does not depend on explicit reasoning or
+conscious reflection-it seems to operate
+as an automatic mechanism 3,4
+. This
+kind of mechanism may facilitate
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021305
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021306.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021306"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021306.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3390
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
+page_vibes_legal: 0.5
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+page_vibes_last_page: 0.5
+---
+
+understanding the behavior of others. If
+your brain mirrors the neural activity in
+the brain of someone you see acting, this
+could provide a basis for understanding
+astand thi
+the motivation for the action. If your
+brain resonates to the observed action as
+if you were acting, this could call to
+mind previous experiences acting that
+way providing a memory for why you
+acted that way. That is, our social brain
+may directly resonate to the actions of
+others without reasoning explicitly about
+those actions. This kind of mechanism,
+through which intentions might be
+inferred, could then prepare responses
+quickly to facilitate the smooth flow of
+social interactions whether in a game or
+a dialogue. Of course, a critical aspect
+of such a mechanism is to differentiate
+our resonance to other people's actions
+and the control of our own. This kind
+of neural system for mapping the actions
+and intentions of others has been
+identified with a network of regions
+called the mirror neuron system
+, and
+this system may help to induce a degree
+of reflexive similarity or identification
+between self and other. The mirror
+neuron system appears to be
+continuously engaged unless it is
+actively suppressed by inhibition, so that
+this system may continuous monitor the
+behavior of 'others' in our social
+environment.
+Of course, mapping the
+movements of the opponent is useful,
+but certainly not sufficient to defend our
+position, score a point, or win a match.
+One needs to execute countermoves.
+This is the domain of the motor system
+in the brain, which includes regions
+involved in the preparation and
+execution of motor action. The motor
+system is responsible for the
+implementation of one's goals and
+intentions to perform an action®.
+. Thus,
+Page | 60
+the social brain includes monitoring and
+motor systems that function in parallel.
+The mirror system puts the player in the
+opponent's shoes and monitors the
+opponent's actions in an anticipatory
+manner. Other parts of the social brain
+maintain the distinction between player
+and opponent by shaping the
+implementation of one's actions, namely
+by engaging a counteraction.
+In sum, a tennis game or any
+social interaction depends on a complex
+network of brain regions that mediate
+perception and action, and the
+relationship between observed action
+and one's own behavior. The overlap in
+brain regions responsible for these two
+important social functions suggests how
+tightly coupled and coordinated social
+interactions can be. However, these two
+systems cannot operate in isolation from
+our knowledge of the context in which
+behavior occurs. We, therefore, turn to
+this topic next.
+The Social Context
+In a tennis game or any social
+interaction (e.g., dancing, conversation),
+the behavior of one individual
+constitutes a stimulus for others. If a
+behavior is meaningful, then neural
+mechanisms responsible for social
+perception and social interaction are
+likely to be activated to engage in
+complementary action. In a competitive
+context, such as the tennis game, the
+motor system is engaged in the
+preparation and execution of
+complementary actions to those
+observed and anticipated based on the
+inferred goals and intentions of the
+competitor. However, if everyone shares
+the same goal, for example, as in an
+audience clapping, the neural systems
+for monitoring the actions of others and
+executing one's own actions can be
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021306
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021307.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021307"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021307.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3415
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
+page_vibes_legal: 0.5
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+page_vibes_last_page: 0.5
+---
+
+mutually reinforcing leading to
+synchrony.
+In any dynamic social situation
+observing one person's action can
+initiate neural activity in another. Parts
+of the observer's motor system become
+activated, making it possible to respond
+in synchrony. In fact, the specific actions
+that are observed are not as important as
+the perceived goals or intentions of the
+observed person. One consequence of
+this is that a person is sensitive to new
+actions in the social environment. A
+second is that significant actions by
+another person can quickly produce
+complementary motor responses. Thus,
+adaptive social behavior is a product of
+perceptual monitoring and motor
+processes. The complexity of the social
+environment necessitates selective
+responding to socially significant
+features of any social interaction. Such
+selective responding depends on the
+observer having particular goals for
+action. The identification of significant
+stimuli (e.g., a threatening backhand
+smash) activates in the competitor's
+brain goal-driven decision processes that
+operate in parallel with continuous social
+monitoring and lead to a counteraction
+(e.g., a defensive lob) produced by the
+motor system. However, a linesman
+collecting a ball during a tennis match
+does not constitute a significant action
+for the competition and, even if
+observed, does not initiate any
+counteraction.
+Let us now return to the
+perspective of a spectator at the tennis
+match. While the specific movements
+driving the tennis match have significant
+implications for the players' actions,
+these movements have a different
+implication for the spectator from whom
+no overt responses are warranted. If an
+observed action produced by someone
+Page 61
+else does not have personal significance
+for an observer, the motor system does
+not respond in the same way at all?
+. The
+goal-dependent aspect of observing the
+actions of others allows us to understand
+and respond quickly and effectively
+without confusing what we do with what
+we see. However, in some special cases,
+when a group of individuals all respond
+together, the same motor system may
+operate differently. It is in these
+situations when we are neither observer
+nor respondent but part of a flock or
+chorus that our sense of individuated self
+may begin to dissolve into the larger
+social group.
+The Social Parameters for Suspended
+Self-Consciousness
+The dissolution of self-other
+boundaries is likely to be manifest under
+a specific set of conditions, which
+includes a strong feeling of identification
+with (i.e., connection between) oneself
+and a group of others, the absence of
+constraints to action by oneself or the
+observed others, a common goal shared
+by the group, and the absence of a
+recognized external synchronizing signal
+to which one can attribute any
+synchronized behavior. Clapping in
+unison following a rousing performance
+is a more common example. This
+remarkable phenomenon is evidenced
+despite considerable individual
+differences in clapping tempos. The
+transition to entrained clapping, whereby
+each clapper affects the surrounding
+other clappers both locally and globally,
+enhances the noise intensity at the
+moment of the clapping even though it
+leads to a decrease in the overall average
+noise intensity in the room.
+Synchronized behavior occurs
+rhythmically and one way of capturing
+its regularities is to model its cycles,
+periods, frequencies, and amplitudes 1,2
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021307
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021308.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021308"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021308.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3261
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
+page_vibes_legal: 0.5
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+---
+
+Depending on the particular behavior
+and interaction in question, behavioral
+cycles of interpersonal entrainment can
+range from milliseconds to hours.
+Indeed, this kind of interpersonal
+entrainment is a pervasive phenomenon
+not specific to human social behavior
+alone®
+When does synchronized
+clapping occur? The distinctive feature
+of such an event is a convergence
+between the neural mechanisms
+underlying the monitoring of the
+movement of others and the execution of
+one's own movements. The specific
+factors responsible for the tipping point
+from asynchronous to synchronous
+clapping are not yet known, but
+descriptively each individual shifts the
+timing of his or her subsequent clap to
+the perceived timing of claps by the
+whole collective. Thus, a continuous
+adjustment process emerges in the form
+of a collective behavior (synchronized
+clapping) to which each individual
+contributes and no single individual
+controls. Such continuous monitoring of
+the collective rather than individuals
+within the collective and the adjustment
+of one's own movements to synchronize
+one's behavior with that of the collective
+result in a continuous loop of performing
+the very same action leading to
+dissolution between self and other and
+the emergence of an entrained unit. The
+resulting effect is the materialization of a
+supra-individual behavioral
+phenomenon, namely extended
+behavioral cycles that are locked
+together in time. Although the
+emergence of clapping in unison can be
+regarded as a phenomenon worthy of
+more detailed understanding, it does not
+induce in its performers the necessity of
+searching for an explanation since the
+readily available account is that the
+Page | 62
+performance somehow produces
+synchronous clapping.
+There is preliminary evidence
+that even with no externally imposed
+demands prolonged synchronization
+emerges within pairs of people
+interacting or dyads. What one finds is
+that despite individual differences in
+movements, participants entrain (tap
+together in time) rapidly when
+participants can perceive the behavior of
+others . Extensive research in
+coordination dynamics has demonstrated
+that such entrainment does not depend
+on the intention to coordinate behavior
+10,11
+• Studies have repeatedly shown that
+there is a spontaneous propensity to
+mimic other people (generally observed
+in dyads). One implication this kind of
+behavioral synchrony is the emergence
+of affective bonding - such as a feeling
+of rapport - both in the case of mimicry'2
+and between the synchronized partners!3
+One might conjecture that positive
+feelings are even stronger when more
+people are synchronized.
+The conditions that lead to
+behavioral synchrony can vary. It is
+interesting that people may be more
+likely to experience the dissolution of
+self-other boundaries when
+synchronization is produced without any
+obvious external director and is
+continuous. Prolonged spontaneous and
+unintended entrainment among three or
+more people may introduce this feeling,
+because the emergence of synchrony
+cannot be attributed to a single external
+cause.
+Conclusions
+Social interaction involving
+extended periods of synchronized
+behavior are not part of our daily
+experience, particularly when they
+involve more than two people. How do
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021308
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021309.md

@@ -0,0 +1,106 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021309"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021309.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 2889
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+---
+
+we understand this kind of synchrony
+when it occurs? In the Western
+intellectual tradition, we have a strong
+tendency to search and explain events in
+terms of individual agency and
+causation.
+Social events are generally
+understood in terms of contributions of
+the individual and the situation itself.
+The degree to which the person or the
+situational constraints shape the nature
+of the event will vary greatly. However,
+spontaneous and prolonged entrainment
+among three or more people introduces
+an experience that is difficult to explain
+by these more traditional accounts.
+These experiences cannot be easily
+reduced the actions of a single person, so
+an account has to be found in some
+source that goes beyond the individual.
+The powerful sense of unity and
+belonging that emerges from this kind of
+experience almost demands a different
+kind of explanation than we generally
+consider. Indeed, such feelings
+emerging from the synchrony of
+behavior may provide some of the
+foundation for the cultural interpretation
+of a transcendental experience.
+References
+'Ne'da, Z., Ravasz, E., Brechet, Y.,
+Vicsek, T., & Barabasi, A. L. (2000a).
+The sound of many hands
+clapping*Tumultuous applause can
+transform itself into waves of
+synchronized clapping. Nature, 403,
+849_850.
+2 Ne' da, Z., Ravasz, E., Vicsek, T.,
+Brechet, Y., & Barabasi, A. L. (2000b).
+Physics of the rhythmic applause.
+Physical Review E, 61, 6987_6992.
+3 Semin, G. R. & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008).
+Grounding Social Cognition:
+Synchronization, Entrainment, and
+Page 63
+Coordination. In G.R. Semin & E.R.
+Smith (Eds.), Embodied grounding:
+Social, cognitive, affective, and
+neuroscientific approaches (pp. 119-
+148). New York: Cambridge University
+Press
+4 Semin, G. R. & Cacioppo, J. T. (2009).
+From Embodied Representation to Co-
+Regulation. In J. A. Pineda (Ed.).
+"Mirror Neuron Systems: The Role of
+Mirroring Processes in Social
+Cognition." (pp. 107-120). Humana
+Press.
+§ Tacoboni, M., Woods, R. P., Brass, M.,
+Bekkering, H., Mazziotta, J. C., &
+Rizzolatti, G. (1999) Science, 286:2526-
+2528
+6 Elsinger C. L., Harrington D. L.., &
+Rao S. M. (2006). From preparation to
+online control: Reappraisal of neural
+circuitry mediating internally generated
+and externally guided actions.
+Neurolmage 31:1177-1187.
+^ Baldissera, F., Cavallari, P., Craighero,
+L., & Fadiga, L (2001). Modulation of
+spinal excitability during observation of
+hand actions in humans, European
+Journal of Neuroscience, 13, 190 -194.
+& Strogatz, S. (2003). Rhythms of nature,
+rhythms of ourselves. London: Allan
+Lane.
+' Tognoli, E., Lagarde, J., DeGuzman, C.
+D., Kelso, J. A. S. (2007). The phi
+complex as a neuromarker of human
+social coordination. PNAS, 19, 8190-
+8195.
+1 Oullier, O. & Kelso, J. A. S. (2009, in
+press). Coordination from the
+perspective of Social Coordination
+Dynamics. Encyclopedia of Complexity
+and System Science., 1-29.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021309
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021310.md

@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021310"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021310.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 346
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+Page 64
+" Jirsa, V. K., & Kelso, J. A. S. (2004)
+Coordination Dynamics: Issues and
+Trends. Springer, New York.
+12 Dijksterhuis, A, & Bargh J. A. (2001).
+Advances In Experimental Social
+Psychology, 33, 1-40.
+13 Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., &
+Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional
+contagion. New York: Cambridge
+University Press.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021310
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021311.md

@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021311"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021311.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 2246
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+You and I as One
+Any social group can be thought
+of as either a collection of individuals or
+as a single new entity with emergent,
+unified group behavior. When a mob
+forms to surge together down a street
+one way and then another; when a flock
+of birds wheels about together, closely
+clustered as they fly without colliding;
+and when an orchestra performs with
+highly coordinated timing, we
+momentarily forget about the individuals
+and see the collective behavior as a new,
+single social entity. Indeed, as Cacioppo
+discusses, many species seem to gather,
+flock, and coordinate to form such
+collectives. For humans there are many
+situations from flash mobs and sports
+teams to choirs and audiences, when
+people congregate in this way.
+The drive for people to affiliate
+and group is not sufficient on its own to
+produce the coordinated behavior that
+emerges from such a collective.
+Sometimes an organizing signal, like the
+conductor of an orchestra, can
+synchronize the behavior. Other times
+common goals and behavioral
+constraints can synchronize a group, as
+in a flock of birds. In his chapter, Gün
+Semin discusses how such synchrony
+may be self-organizing - that is, it is
+achieved without intention, effort, or
+awareness by our social brains, even
+when there is no clear signal or
+constraint. In cases of such human
+sociality, the group may act as though it
+has a single mind. Indeed, Semin
+approaches this issue to relate the
+collective behavior as an embodied
+consequence of individual social forces
+that jointly operate to satisfy our need to
+affiliate, and to consider how connecting
+behavior through synchrony may create
+a collective mind
+Page 65
+Howard Nusbaum specifically
+discusses a different invisible social
+force that has evolved with the power to
+bind people into a collective language.
+Language is the richest social signal that
+has the power to move people to act and
+to move groups to act together. In order
+for language to act as a force, it must
+somehow affect people with sufficient
+social and emotional impact. As
+Nusbaum discusses the impact of
+language, it operates at a social and
+emotional level similar to that discussed
+by Semin rather than exclusively
+through the inferences drawn from
+meaning.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021311
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021312.md

@@ -0,0 +1,119 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021312"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021312.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3707
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+Page 66
+symbolic
+connection then
+understandingg
+sentences cor
+System behavior
+language social
+-Tomation
+& brain
+listener message f speech
+yond To However
+Chapter 77
+Action at a Distance: The Invisible
+Force of Language
+^ The lead author is Howard Nusbaum, Ph.D.,
+Professor of Psychology and Computational
+Neuroscience, and co-director of the Center for
+Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the
+University of Chicago. He has served as the
+Chair of the Psychology Department since 1997.
+He has served as the editor for the International
+Journal of Speech Technology and is on the
+editorial board of Brain & Language, and has
+edited several books on spoken language
+processing. His research interests include
+spoken language use, mechanisms of learning
+and attention, and the role of sleep in learning.
+His recent research has investigated the social
+use of language and the evolution of language.
+In addition, he has been working on neural
+mechanisms of reward and economic decisions.
+We often think about language in terms
+of the information in newspapers or speeches or
+reports. However, language is basis of all our
+social relationships and institutions. We reward
+and praise with language and we shun and
+punish with language, perhaps more often than
+with any other medium. In the recent election,
+Democratic candidates actually gave speeches
+outlining different views of the importance of
+language in our society. One candidate held that
+words are simply words and only have the force
+that we give to them by reasoning about them.
+The other candidate argued that speech has the
+power to move people to connect and act.
+Nusbaum was struck by this debate because it
+seems to him that the power of language goes
+well beyond what linguists and psychologists
+talk about as "meaning" and that understanding
+the meaning of language may depend on
+understanding the social and emotional impact of
+language. In this chapter, the idea of the impact
+of language at a distance is explored.
+Language is one of the most
+important ways in which the social brain
+makes connections, enhances
+connections, and severs connections
+among people. Language is our primary
+medium of social exchange, grounding
+and elaborating our selves and our
+relationships in every conversation.
+However, language goes well beyond
+personal connections to connect us
+culturally through stories, songs, and
+shared manners of speech. Language
+also provides the formal framework that
+defines many of our social institutions.
+Language gives form and substance to
+the governance and behavior of every
+social institution from education to law
+to religion. Clearly there are many ways
+in which language serves to knit us
+together both formally and informally.
+For a linguist, all of these uses can be
+analyzed in terms of the structure of
+sentences and their content. However,
+structure and content do not, on their
+own merits, provide a complete picture
+of how language can have the impact it
+does on our sense of social connection.
+How does language move us to act,
+change our feelings, and connect us to
+others? It seems unlikely that the impact
+of language is simply the result of
+dispassionate rational inferences and
+conclusions drawn from a logical
+analysis of sentences.
+In 1976, Barbara Jordan, a
+Congresswoman from Texas, gave the
+commencement address at Brandeis
+University. Listening to her speak about
+the importance of public service and the
+importance of using talent and ability in
+service of one's country was an
+impressive experience. Her delivery was
+clear and not particularly dramatic and
+yet the force of her speech was riveting.
+It was sufficient to turn a graduating
+senior's mind from graduate school in
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021312
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021313.md

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021313"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021313.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
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+---
+
+psychology to (at least momentary)
+consideration of a career in government
+service. A student with the long-held
+intent of becoming a researcher and with
+no interest in politics, government, or
+public service might seem to be an
+immovable object. And yet, in that
+moment, Jordan's speech had sufficient
+impact to make government service
+seem like the only path one would want
+to take or should ever consider.
+Although her points were argued
+well, the impact of Jordan's speech was
+not simply rhetorical. John F.
+Kennedy's "Ask not what your country
+can do for you..." and Martin Luther
+King, Jr.'s "I have a dream....
+" affected
+listeners deeply well beyond the
+cognitive strengths of a good argument.
+Moreover, while all these speeches were
+delivered beautifully and from the heart,
+it is not the performance of these
+speeches alone that can move listeners to
+act on behalf of others. The
+performance alone cannot give substance
+to an empty message. While there are
+cases in which a great performance may
+suggest briefly that there was content of
+import even in the absence of a real
+message, it is more likely the
+conjunction of message and delivery that
+moves people. In these speeches is a
+clear demonstration of the power of
+language. Language is more than words
+and more than delivery. Indeed, Cicero,
+in De Oratore, said that rhetoric conveys
+information, persuades listeners, and
+evokes emotion.
+"In the beginning was the word...."
+If "the word made flesh" is taken
+metaphorically, the power of language
+can be made visceral in sermons.
+Consider the power of Jonathan
+Edwards' sermon, which Clark Gilpin's
+chapter discusses, to terrify a
+Page | 67
+congregation, to wrench them from
+complacency with images of torment. A
+sermon delivers a message, but it can do
+so in calm tones of instruction or with
+fire and brimstone. The choice and
+poetry of words and the cadence and
+intonation of speaking can draw the
+listener in slowly or seize the listener
+suddenly, the very sounds of speech
+painting images in the mind while
+igniting new interences with literal and
+metaphoric descriptions.
+In the realm of the spiritual, there
+are few corporeal manifestations that can
+be perceived directly. Neither heaven
+nor hell, neither God nor the Devil can
+be seen or heard or touched. Preaching
+is needed to spell out the work of unseen
+hands and will and illuminate the power
+of the unseen. The force of that which is
+not seen can only be felt when
+transmitted directly through speech.
+In Phaedrus, Plato described
+rhetoric as the art of leading the soul.
+Thus it is not surprising that, while at the
+core of religion is a collection of beliefs
+and concepts and canons, the fabric and
+form of religion is language. Symbols
+and icons are certainly important, but
+language is the medium through which
+the force of theology is actualized in
+prayers, benedictions, sermons, and
+teaching. Language can reach across
+time and space to change minds,
+feelings, and behavior, encoding laws
+and beliefs and presenting them with a
+concrete reality in the here and now.
+This is one kind of impact from author to
+audience in which a kind of connection
+is constructed bridging minds.
+At the same time, in religious
+practices, another kind of connection is
+formed within a congregation. Joint
+recitation, responsive reading, collective
+listening, and understanding may serve
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021313
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021314.md

@@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021314"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021314.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3271
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+to connect people in a religious service.
+Although joint participation in any event
+(such as sports or theatre) may have
+some of the same effect as discussed by
+Gün Semin, the content of language and
+the intent of the messages in religious
+practice is often focused on developing
+and strengthening social and spiritual
+connections.
+Everyone knows someone who
+moved to another country, or to another
+part of their own country where speech
+patterns differ. After a period of time, in
+the context of novel speech patterns,
+some people adopt the speech patterns
+around them. This kind of linguistic
+convergence is well documented and is
+moderated by social factors such as the
+desire to be accepted or the attempt to be
+persuasive! When people talk together,
+one person's speech can impact the way
+another person talks in order to promote
+social connection. Indeed, the same kind
+of behavioral convergence is found over
+the course of conversations for other
+kinds of non-linguistic actions as well.?
+Information, impact, and
+understanding
+How does language bind us
+together and compel us to action,
+thought, and feeling? When we talk,
+sound vibration is transmitted from
+mouth to ears. Facial expressions and
+manual gestures punctuate, illustrate,
+and illuminate our speech. These
+acoustic and visual signals travel over
+space and time to the eyes and ears of
+the audience. The impact of such
+communication is true action at a
+distance.
+This notion of language as action
+at a distance is relatively well accepted
+in the scientific study of language. But
+in research on language and
+communication by psycholinguists and
+Page 68
+linguists, the emphasis is on the
+information contained within an
+utterance and the structure and form by
+which this information is presented.
+Research questions often focus on the
+variety of ways the same message can be
+framed and how listeners interpret such
+messages. But little of this work
+addresses the impact of the message
+itself.
+The standard view of language
+processing is that we hear the sounds of
+speech (acoustic patterns) that we
+translate mentally into words. The
+meanings of these words are determined
+and then the meanings combined
+(through our knowledge of sentence
+structure) to result in sentence meaning.
+Given that a sentence typically occurs in
+a context of other sentences (e.g., a
+sermon) or in response to other speech
+(e.g., a conversation), this context is then
+used to frame and reinterpret the
+sentence meaning.
+Metaphor, irony, sarcasm, and
+other figures are generally thought of as
+being understood later in this process
+although in Gilpin's chapter the
+immediate power of these to affect us is
+quite clear. Emotion and attitudes are
+thought of as not understood until after
+the linguistic message has been
+determined. The impact of language on
+attitudes through persuasion is viewed
+by cognitive psychology and linguistics
+as occurring after the message has been
+understood. However, this does raise the
+question about whether a "message" (to
+be understood) is simply the linguistic
+properties of a sentence or the impact of
+the linguistic form on an audience.
+A very different view of
+language might come from considering
+vocal communications that often have a
+direct impact on an audience.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021314
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021315.md

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021315"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021315.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3333
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+Sometimes just listening to laughter
+compels listeners to laugh. Sometimes
+hearing a cry of terror directly imputes
+an instantaneous feeling of fear.
+Hearing someone weep can produce a
+feeling of sorrow and perhaps even
+cause one to cry. This suggests that
+some forms of vocal communication can
+elicit direct empathic sharing as Decety
+discusses in his chapter.
+These forms of vocal
+communication can produce direct
+results in listeners without following a
+route of symbolic reference and
+interpretation? Language has typically
+been viewed as operating by the more
+symbolic route because of the linguistic
+claim that symbols are not the things
+they stand for and thus must be
+understood-words and sentences are
+not felt. However, the right insult or
+angry words delivered in the right way
+or the right praise seems to be felt
+directly, perhaps through the same kind
+of mechanisms by which empathic
+sharing occurs.
+But how is this achieved? This
+kind of impact of language is not a result
+of understanding the content of speech.
+It reflects social goals and motives. To
+the extent that this kind of social impact
+may parallel empathic processes, we
+might find that similar mechanisms are
+involved. Some kind of resonance must
+be established between a speaker and
+hearer, and language can serve to
+establish this resonance and lead to
+subsequent action by the hearer. This
+idea of a resonance in an audience does
+seem more compatible with the effects
+of vocal behavior such as laughter or
+crying on a listener than the symbolic
+interpretative view. This notion of
+resonance may also be useful in
+understanding other kinds of language
+impact from the fiery sermon of
+Page 69
+Edwards to the passionate speeches of
+Obama and Kennedy and King.
+In listening to speech that has
+impact, language has created a state in
+the listener that reflects the intention of
+the speaker. Whether it is fear or
+connection, somehow language can
+operate as the medium by which social
+and emotional psychological states get
+transmitted to an audience. But how
+does this impact get created in the social
+brain?
+Language impact in the social brain
+Understanding spoken language
+has typically been viewed as an analytic
+process in which sound patterns are
+translated into linguistic symbols by the
+brain. However, an alternative theory is
+that we understand spoken language by
+using our motor system to simulate what
+might have been said. The idea is that
+trying to mentally produce the speech
+internally (without talking) might help
+us understand what is said, when speech
+is not clear. However, this theory did
+not have much neural plausibility.
+People do not generally move their
+mouths overtly or even covertly while
+listening.
+The discovery of mirror neurons,
+examined at greater length by Steve
+Small in the next chapter, suggested one
+kind of mechanism that might instantiate
+this kind of process. In certain parts of
+the brain, involved in the control of
+action, some neurons that respond when
+making certain actions also respond
+when observing the same actions. This
+led to the inference that these neurons
+are involved in understanding the
+behavior of other people. The reasoning
+is simply that neural activity in the
+observer's motor system that results
+when seeing a behavior essentially
+establishes the brain state that would
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021315
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021316.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021316"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021316.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3357
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+correspond if the observer were doing
+the same thing. Another way to say this
+is that there is a resonant response in an
+observer's motor system to observing a
+behavior and this may potentiate a
+degree of social coordination and
+connection, as discussed in Semin's
+chapter. This kind of neural resonance
+has been shown to play a role in
+understanding speech when seeing a
+talker's mouth move, even if the listener
+does not actually make any mouth
+movements.
+Mirror neurons demonstrate that
+observed action can produce a resonant
+response in an observer's brain. Seeing
+a talker's mouth move creates a motor-
+resonant response that aids in
+understanding speech sounds. However,
+these two observations are very different
+from the idea that the meaning of
+sentences can create a resonant response
+in the listener's brain. In the case of
+speech, mouth movements are the
+actions that create speech. This might
+seem like a very special case. The
+traditional linguistic view of language is
+that words and sentences are symbolic:
+Language describing action is not action
+itself. Language describing emotion is
+not the emotion itself. The entire
+concept of a symbol is that a symbol
+denotes something, stands for
+something, but the symbol is not the
+thing itself. But it now appears that this
+long-held notion may be wrong.
+The idea that seeing an object or
+event gives rise to brain states that
+resonate with previous experiences of
+that thing suggests a mechanism for
+language understanding to go beyond
+symbolic interpretation. Given that there
+is a brain mechanism for re-experiencing
+actions or sensations, this same
+mechanism may operate even when
+there is just a symbolic linguistic
+Page | 70
+description. Understanding language
+may take place by invoking such
+resonant past experiences in the brain.
+For example, when listening to
+sentences about hockey action, hockey
+players show neural activity in their
+motor system which is not seen for
+people who are naive to hockey.*
+Experience playing hockey recruits the
+motor system in service of
+understanding hockey sentences as if
+one were watching or playing hockey
+when only listening to speech. This
+suggests one way in which language can
+have a direct impact on a listener.
+Rather than making inferences about
+actions based on the meanings of
+sentences, understanding a sentence may
+be a resonant motor system response in
+the listener to a description of an action.
+If this idea is extended more broadly,
+language impact may come from such
+resonant responses. Language
+understanding and the impact of
+language may result from processes
+more similar to the effects of hearing
+laughter. Hearing a sentence may create
+in a listener a set of resonant responses
+very similar to the patterns that
+correspond to the actual situations being
+described.
+Such resonant responses need not
+be confined to the motor system and
+actions. Emotions such as fear or joy
+may be empathically evoked in listeners
+by speech just as a scream or laughter
+might. Verbal expression of attitudes
+may produce similar attitudinal
+responses in listeners. Moreover, if a
+listener's resonant response is strong,
+there may be increased empathic overlap
+with the speaker, which may serve to
+increase social connection. To the
+extent that people speak together and
+share feelings, social connection may
+increase as well.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021316
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021317.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021317"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021317.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3266
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+page_vibes_last_page: 0.5
+---
+
+Evolution of social connection by
+communication
+The human social brain
+constructs connection and understanding
+by anthropomorphic projection as
+discussed by Nick Epley in his chapter.
+When we observe the behavior of
+nonhuman entities, anthropomorphic
+projection may form a feeling of social
+connection. Social connection depends
+in part on empathic responses to
+observed action. It has been argued that
+this same foundation is the basis for the
+evolution of language as well--observed
+action may be the foundation for
+language.
+A mirror neuron theory of the
+evolution of language starts with the
+assumption that we understand others by
+observing their actions. Communication
+depends on the regularization of typical
+actions that can be pantomimed. In
+principle this could lead to a kind of
+manual gestural system of
+communication akin to sign language.
+Hand and arm movements can depict a
+wide range of actions both by first-
+person depiction of an action such as
+screwing the top onto a jar and by third-
+person depictions such as using the
+fingers to portray a person walking.
+Hand and arm postures can depict
+objects such as a cupped hand
+representing a bowl. Combining
+sequences of such object and action
+depictions can communicate relatively
+complex messages even without a
+formal language. This is a far cry from
+sign languages in which the mapping
+between hand shapes and movements is
+not visually transparent in this way. But
+as the pressure to communicate a
+broader range of messages increases, a
+manual gestural language would have to
+be modified to reflect more abstract
+Page | 71
+symbols ultimately leading in the
+direction of a sign language.
+However, this kind of manual
+language has one major drawback.
+Communication depends on visual
+contact. In order to understand a
+gestural message it is necessary to see
+the hand movements. This limits the
+distances over which communication can
+take place. Moreover, a communication
+system that is effective for a group
+should not depend on face-to-face
+dyadic interaction, but allow for more
+broadcast communications. There is a
+great survival advantage in being able to
+maintain social connection and convey
+information over distances that go well
+beyond face-to-face communication.
+Many species of fish,
+amphibians, reptiles, birds, and
+mammals commonly exchange
+information at a distance through
+vocalizations. The learned songs (and
+some calls) of songbirds are particularly
+rich sources of information conveying,
+to the receiver, individual identity and a
+host of other characteristics of the
+sender. Some mammals exchange
+information at great distances through
+calling behavior. Humpback whale
+vocalizations are perceived over
+extremely long distances and may be
+used to maintain social groups at
+distances as great as 5 km. African
+i am tien
+elephants can recognize friends and
+relatives from their calls at a distance of
+2.5 km. Human sheepherders keep each
+other company from the top of one
+mountain to another in the Canary
+Islands using a whistled language called
+Silbo Gomero. Whether for purposes of
+mating, threat, warning, or social
+organization, conveying information
+regarding location, identity and
+motivation, and directed at one
+individual or towards far-flung groups,
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021317
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021318.md

@@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021318"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021318.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3354
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+vocal communication plays an important
+role in the social connection and
+behavior of a great number of vertebrate
+species. Thus while human vocal
+communication is enhanced substantially
+in face-to-face interaction, the evolution
+of speech has resulted in a system that
+can function even in the absence of
+direct visual observation. The sound of
+a threat or warning or distress can have
+substantial impact even at a distance
+from the speaker.
+Social impact and embodied language
+Many animals use vocalizations
+to maintain social group structure and to
+provide information relevant to a group.
+Even very young children use the way
+people speak as a marker of their social
+affiliation. Such vocalizations are
+typically not viewed as symbolic forms
+that must be decoded and interpreted.
+Instead these vocalizations are mapped
+onto internal states more directly, much
+as human laughter may be. Although
+linguists and psychologists have often
+tried to differentiate human language
+from these kinds of vocalizations,
+language can impact us in much the
+same way. Perhaps language is less
+symbolic and more direct than scientists
+have thought.
+What does it mean for language
+to have impact? If we take laughter as
+our model, perhaps it means that
+language gives rise to responses that
+have a direct effect on our perceptual
+and motor systems. Sermons may terrify
+because they create worlds inside of the
+listener that seem real. We can see and
+hear torment and imagine the feelings of
+pain and suffering. This is not a
+symbolic interpretation but a real
+experience created from language.
+However, just as we can distinguish the
+pain we feel from the pain of others,
+Page | 72
+even when we have strong empathic
+responses, we can distinguish such
+created experiences from those that
+occur in the real world. The stronger the
+language, the richer the imagery, the
+more intense the delivery, the more
+salient the mentally created experience.
+One impact of language may be to create
+real feelings and sensations, imagined
+movement and behavior.' When
+language hurts us through criticism,
+rejection or insult, it may do so by
+activating our experiences of real pain.
+When we are soothed by language, it
+may produce the same kind of endorphin
+effect that placebo treatments can
+invoke. When language binds us
+together, it may do so by creating the
+kind of shared emotional states that
+characterize empathy.
+In many respects, the linguistic
+view of language use does not engage
+these ways in which language functions.
+Linguistics treats language as consisting
+of patterns of symbols divorced from
+their origins in a human mouth, almost
+like print on a page rather than speech.
+But it is spoken language that the social
+brain evolved to use— print is a very
+modern invention which did not play any
+role in our evolution. In contrast, speech
+is produced from a coordinate action of
+muscles compressing lungs and moving
+tongue and jaw under the control of
+neurophysiology and hormones. Unlike
+the shape of printed letters, the sound of
+speech is shaped by attitude and emotion
+and intent, and its impact may be to
+transfer specific embodied states from
+the speaker to the listener.
+Conclusion
+Although physicists have debated
+the possibility of action at a distance for
+quite some time, the biological form of
+action at a distance is well established,
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021318
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021319.md

@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021319"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021319.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 1873
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+---
+
+achieved through vocal communication
+in an extremely broad range of behaviors
+and settings. The force of language is
+carried by the form, content, and
+delivery of a message. And the impact
+of this force may be created in the minds
+of an audience by the resonant
+invocation of past real experiences. Real
+pain and sorrow, real comfort and joy,
+real love and caring, are all part of our
+shared human experience. The impact
+of language may come by invoking
+resonant past experiences that can create
+a platonic mental moment that flickers
+with the shadows of those experiences.
+In order to understand how this process
+works, we need to study how brain
+mechanisms operate to translate the
+sounds of speech into the impact of
+language.
+References
+1. Giles, H. (1973). Accent
+mobility: A model and some data.
+Anthropological Linguistics, 15, 87-105.
+2. Lakin, J., & Chartrand, T.L.
+(2003). Using nonconscious behavioral
+mimicry to create affiliation and rapport.
+Psychological Science, 14, 334-339.
+3. Foroni, F. & Semin, G. R.
+(2009). Language that puts you in touch
+with your bodily feelings. The
+multimodal responsiveness of affective
+expressions. Psychological Science, 20,
+974-980.
+4. Beilock, S. L., Lyons, I. M.,
+Mattarella-Micke, A., Nusbaum, H. C.,
+& Small, S. L. (2008). Sports experience
+changes the neural processing of action
+language. Proceedings of the National
+Academy of Sciences, 105, 13269-13272.
+5. Rizzolatti, G., & Arbib, M.A.
+(1999). Language within our grasp.
+Trends in Neurosciences, 21, 188-194.
+Page 73
+6. Kinzler, K. D., Shutts, K.,
+Dejesus, J., & Spelke, E. S. (2009).
+Accent trumps race in guiding children's
+social preferences. Social Cognition, 27,
+623-634.
+7. Shintel, H., & Nusbaum, H.
+C. (2007). The sound of motion in
+spoken language: Visual information
+conveyed by acoustic properties of
+speech. Cognition, 105, 681-690.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021319
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021320.md

@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021320"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021320.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 1882
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+---
+
+Page 74
+Systems and Signals for Social
+Coordination
+How do we understand each other
+as people? Do we take people at their
+word, or do actions speak even louder?
+When moved to affiliate and to act in
+concert with other people as a group, we
+need to understand the communications
+and actions of others. Language can
+move us to action even across great
+distances but how does it do so? While
+we can observe the behavior of groups
+of people as coordinated, the mechanism
+of achieving this coordination is unseen.
+We may be driven socially to form
+groups but how does that drive function
+in the individual to cause us to cohere.
+In order to go beyond the observation
+and experiences we have with groups
+and group behavior, we need to
+understand what makes the engine of
+social connection run. At one level, we
+can talk about language as a force itself,
+as Howard Nusbaum does. We can talk
+about the synchronization of individual
+behavior as Gün Semin does. However,
+both of these are observations about the
+way individuals may become part of a
+group. To go beyond this we must look
+to our biology to understand how the
+machinery underneath our sociality leads
+to connected minds.
+Semin suggested one way our
+brains may seek to connect. Some
+neurons in an area of the brain that is
+involved in the control and planning of
+our actions also respond when we
+observe actions we have performed.
+Such neurons might be thought to
+"resonate" when seeing someone act or
+speak with our own experiences.
+Neurons that mirror actions and behavior
+have been thought to play a role in the
+process of understanding that behavior
+and the social connection that may form
+as a result of the resonance. In the next
+essay, Steve Small discusses these neural
+mechanisms and how they may be
+important in helping us understand
+spoken language and possibly in
+understanding social behavior.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021320
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021321.md

@@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021321"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021321.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3542
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+---
+
+Page 75
+tare brain being
+Chapter 88
+& The lead author is Steven L. Small, M.D.,
+Ph.D., a Professor of Neurology and Psychology,
+Associate Chair for Research in Neurology,
+Member of the Committees on Neurobiology and
+Computational Neuroscience, and Senior Fellow,
+Computation Institute, at The University of
+Chicago. He is currently Director of the Human
+Neuroscience Laboratory and was founder of the
+Brain Research Imaging Center. He is an elected
+member of the American Neurological
+Association, a fellow of the American Academy
+of Neurology, and Editor-in-Chief of the
+international journal Brain and Language.
+Small's research concerns the neural basis of
+human language and its breakdown after injury.
+He has published more than 120 scientific
+articles, primarily about human language, from
+the perspectives of artificial intelligence,
+cognitive psychology, computational
+neuroscience, human systems neuroscience, and
+clinical neurology.
+Human language represents a unique
+product of our social species and the tremendous
+evolution of the primate cerebral cortex
+simultaneously supported the development of
+both. Language is the defining feature of our
+species: In his 12* century volume, Guide to the
+Perplexed, Maimonides viewed it as tautological
+that man is a speaking animal, i.e.,
+"there is no
+third element besides life and speech in the
+definition of man". But how does the brain
+implement this unique function in the context of
+its common ontogeny with social function? The
+current essay discusses the possibility that the
+recently discovered "mirror neurons" of the
+cerebral cortex of macaque monkeys play a
+special role in the ability of humans to
+understand each other with language by using a
+mechanism of observation and covert emulation.
+If the neurobiology of language were partly
+grounded on such systems of visual observation
+and imitation, this would overlap integrally with
+the biology of the social brain.
+Hidden Forces in Understanding
+Others:
+Mirror Neurons and Neurobiological
+Underpinnings
+It is one thing to perceive objects
+in the environment and another to
+understand what is perceived. A rodent
+that senses an apple definitely has a
+notion that this represents something
+edible. A monkey might realize that the
+apple can be eaten but also can be
+thrown. A human might perceive it as a
+food, an object to be propelled, a
+temptation that should be resisted, or
+something that falls out of a tree at a
+specific acceleration. For each individual
+animal or person, understanding an apple
+means to take the sensory perceptions of
+the apple and to use previous experience
+and knowledge to fit it into an overall
+context. In this way, understanding a
+particular apple depends on our
+previously having seen, touched, and
+smelled apples, eaten them, read about
+them, and perhaps even been hit by a
+falling or thrown apple. All of our
+previous experiences come to bear every
+time we encounter a new perception that
+we must make sense of, and of course,
+this represents virtually every moment of
+our waking lives.
+Our perceptions vary enormously
+from seeing simple objects (e.g., apples),
+taking in more complex entities (e.g.,
+restaurants, neighborhoods), hearing
+noises or speech, and seeing actions
+(e.g., simple manual actions, sporting
+events). A major question for brain
+research is how we can possibly
+understand all these different kinds of
+input, and what brain circuits are used to
+do so. We assume that such an
+understanding means taking these inputs,
+weighing them against our previous
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021321
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021322.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021322"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021322.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3406
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+---
+
+experiences in some way or other, and
+then integrating in some way the new
+and old together. This integration
+requires constant and dynamic changes
+to the brain structures that represent
+what we know and how we use it. ' One
+way this could happen is that when we
+perceive something new, we actually re-
+enact in our mind's eye the previous
+related perceptions. For example, if we
+encounter an apple - having encountered
+many previously -- perhaps we actually
+imagine (seeing) one or more previous
+apples or episodes involving apples, or
+imagine (performing) one or more
+instances of biting an apple or throwing
+one, and/or imagine tasting and smelling
+one. We might also imagine hearing the
+word "apple"
+, producing the sounds of
+the word, seeing the written form of the
+word, or even hearing, seeing, or
+producing synonyms or related words in
+our first (e.g., "Granny Smith") or
+second (e.g., "pomme") languages. We
+propose that understanding an apple is
+tantamount to executing this entire set of
+processes, and thus, that the circuits for
+understanding are very complicated and
+take up a large portion of the brain.
+Of course, not all of what we
+understand is directly available to the
+senses; we can clearly understand beliefs
+and emotions as well as physical objects
+and overt actions. Brain researchers
+generally take the view that previous
+experience guides understanding of
+abstract concepts in much the same way
+that it guides the understanding of the
+more concrete entities. For example, we
+can understand the emotional states of
+other people by imagining being in those
+states ourselves. When I see someone
+feeling happy or sad, I can evoke
+examples from my own previous
+experience of feeling happy or sad
+(perhaps even for the same reasons), and
+Page | 76
+by feeling the emotion, I can understand
+it. The closer my previous experience is
+to the perceived one, the better the
+"understanding". This principle holds
+whether one is trying to understand
+objects or people. An important
+distinction between people and objects
+when trying to understand their actions
+is that people, but not objects, have
+intentions.
+The Social Brain
+The critical question for
+neurobiologists is how does the brain
+understand. In particular, we want to
+know whether the same brain circuits
+that are used when we experience things
+personally are also used when we try to
+understand another person having the
+same experiences, whether these
+experiences are concrete, like grasping a
+cup or hitting a baseball, or more
+abstract like feeling sad or fearful or in
+pain. We also want to know whether
+understanding the simple concrete
+perceptions and these highly complex
+emotional states are mediated similarly
+in the brain. Further, we are interested in
+the overlap between conscious and
+unconscious understanding and shared or
+personal understanding. One way to
+address these questions is to examine the
+brain structures responsible for specific
+types of personal sensations, actions, and
+cognitive processes, and to see if these
+same ones play a role when individuals
+attempt to understand these functions in
+others. Using modern techniques of
+physiology, experiments of this type
+have been conducted in both monkeys
+and humans, with some surprising
+results.
+It is now possible to measure
+brain activity of humans while having a
+wide range of different kinds of
+experiences. Such human neuroimaging
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021322
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021323.md

@@ -0,0 +1,114 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021323"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021323.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3497
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+experiments have suggested that
+understanding actions and objects invoke
+some of the same brain structures used
+to perform the actions and to act on the
+objects. With respect to actions in
+particular, humans sometimes use their
+own motor repertoire in interpreting
+actions, possibly by imagining or
+mentally simulating the perceived
+action. When people are asked to
+observe the actions of others,
+particularly goal-directed actions
+involving the hands or mouth, they seem
+to activate brain regions for moving the
+hands or mouth. Thus, there is a link
+between observing actions and executing
+actions. This has a relevance to
+education as well: "Understanding by
+doing" (i.e., by observing and then
+executing) has a long and valued
+tradition in American education?
+, and
+these recent scientific results might help
+us understand why this is effective.
+When my son was 5 years old, he
+was a member of a kids' soccer team in
+Hyde Park, on the campus of the
+University of Chicago. His coach was a
+professor of history at the university, a
+woman who had never played soccer,
+but was a voracious reader, and in her
+readings on the subject, took careful note
+of all the methods needed to play soccer
+as well as the rules and regulations. She
+methodically took the kids through all
+the (theoretically relevant motor) steps
+needed to dribble the ball, to pass, and to
+shoot - flex your foot this way, bend
+your leg that way, keep your arms this
+way, etc. The kids tried to follow the
+verbal instructions but their motor
+performance was less than stellar — they
+learned a little bit, but they lost all of
+their dozen games, for a depressing 0-12
+record. The next season, the same team
+was coached by another volunteer
+parent, this time an engineer from
+Page | 77
+Trinidad, who had played soccer his
+whole life. The instructions he gave the
+kids were quite different: "Follow me
+and do what I do". There were no
+suggested foot flexions or extensions,
+and no specific leg movements
+proposed. The kids learned the skills,
+and won all their games. Why? The kids
+learned by observing a good model and
+then imitating what they observed the
+person doing, which appears to be a way
+to learn motor skills that is far stronger
+than that of explicit motor instruction.
+When people have strokes, a part
+of their brain dies, and they can lose the
+ability to speak or use a hand properly.
+We are now using this idea of imitation
+in a treatment program to re-educate
+people with strokes to use their hands
+better and to pronounce words better.
+For these imitation-based treatments,
+people first observe a particular hand
+action or speech sample on a video
+monitor, and then they try to produce it.
+In fact, they observe it over and over
+again for a while before they even try to
+do it at all. They are never told how to
+move their hands or mouths; they are
+just told to copy what they see. Over the
+course of six weeks, people with hand
+problems progress from imitating a
+simple grasp of a cup to picking up a
+telephone and dialing a number to
+picking up a toothbrush, brushing their
+teeth, and returning the brush to the sink.
+Those with speech problems progress
+from imitating simple words of a single
+syllable to longer less common words
+and even short phrases. We have already
+shown that these therapies have
+beneficial effects in a number of people
+and are now trying it out more
+extensively.
+There seems to be an important
+link between observing and executing
+actions. Similarly, there is a link
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021323
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021324.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021324"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021324.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3475
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+between observing action and
+understanding emotion. This link has
+been most clearly demonstrated in the
+case of facial expressions - if I observe
+the muscles of the face in a position to
+convey an emotional state, clearly I
+perceive the emotion. What has been
+shown recently is that observing such
+facial expressions leads to two kinds of
+brain activations in the observer: The
+first set of regions activated are those
+that would be used by the observer to
+execute the identical face movements,
+just as with hand or mouth movements.
+However, additional regions are also
+active, and these are precisely the ones
+that would be involved if the observer
+were to feel the observed emotion
+personally. Thus the circuitry for action
+observation in the human brain is
+interdependent with parts of the brain
+critical for understanding more complex
+nuanced aspects of the world.
+Mirror Neurons
+It turns out that there may be
+cellular building blocks in the brain that
+are particularly important for observing
+and executing actions, and may
+ultimately lead to an explanation of
+action understanding and imitation-
+based learning. In fact, such structures
+would contribute to any form of
+understanding that could be partly
+explained by imagined re-enactment of
+perceived actions (e.g., seeing an
+emotional facial expression, hearing a
+cry of pain). The cells under discussion
+are a type of nerve cell, or neuron,
+discovered in the front part of the
+monkey brain by Professor Giacomo
+Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the
+University of Parma. The scientists
+trained monkeys to perform specific
+actions like grasping an object or licking
+their lips, and were performing electrical
+recordings in regions in the front of the
+Page 78
+brain known to coordinate movements.
+These recording machines note brain
+activity both visually, as a graph on a
+screen, and auditorily, by a loud series of
+clicks, indicating the firing of a neuron.
+Rizzolatti and his team were focusing on
+a particular region in the front of the
+brain, and were having the monkey
+perform all sorts of hand, mouth, and
+eye movements to see how the brain
+cells were organized to make these
+movements happen. One day (or so the
+story goes), one of the researchers
+returned from lunch while the electrical
+recordings were being made, and was
+finishing off a cone of superb Italian
+gelato, when all of a sudden the
+recording device starting making a loud
+series of clicks. The returning scientist
+stopped licking his ice cream cone to see
+what was going on, and the noise
+stopped. When he restarted licking his
+gelato, the clicks resumed, and when he
+stopped again, they stopped. The
+investigators had discovered a type of
+neuron that was sensitive to the monkey
+observing a particular human action.
+It was not surprising that
+following training to perform an action,
+some neurons in the motor region of the
+brain responded while performing that
+action, when the same neurons would
+not have responded beforehand.
+However, it was extremely surprising to
+find that some of those neurons also
+responded vigorously when the monkey
+observed the very same learned actions.
+Through a methodical and systematic
+approach, this group was able to make a
+more elaborate and far-reaching set of
+observations. For a small subset of
+neurons, if a monkey had learned to
+reach for a particular object, seeing
+another monkey reach for the same
+object would cause the neuron to fire.
+For a different subset of neurons, if the
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021324
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021325.md

@@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021325"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021325.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3349
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+monkey had learned to pucker up his
+lips, the neuron would fire both when the
+monkey did this or when the monkey
+observed another monkey (or even a
+human) doing this. These motor neurons
+have been dubbed "mirror neurons"
+since they respond during both execution
+of action and during observation of the
+same action in a mirror-like fashion.?
+Mirror neurons are not active during
+observation of an appropriate action if
+there is no goal (i.e., the object is absent)
+or when an appropriate object is
+presented alone. Mirror neurons have
+been discovered both for mouth actions
+and hand actions, and for both visual and
+auditory perception of actions.
+Seeing a previously learned
+action performed by someone else seems
+to resonate in some neurons in the motor
+system almost as if the action were being
+performed by the observer. It is as if the
+observed action stimulates some motor
+neurons to "remember" what it was like
+to perform action. Of course, this is not
+memory in the overt sense of conscious
+recollection, but rather that the
+experience of execution changes the
+response of the neurons to observation.
+Not all the motor neurons respond this
+way but a small number have been
+shown to respond when performing and
+observing an action. Such mirror
+neurons could provide a correspondence
+between the experience one has of
+performing an action and seeing the
+same action performed by others.
+These mirror neurons might
+provide one basis for understanding
+action. Relating actions we observe to
+actions we have carried out seems like
+an important component for
+comprehension. After all, we knew what
+we were doing when we performed an
+action. If that experience is somehow
+reinstated during observation we might
+Page | 79
+attribute our past experience as the
+interpretation of the present observation.
+Imitation when observing an action
+might occur because our motor system is
+stimulated by observing an action.
+Coordination of action could occur
+because in representing others' actions
+as if they were our own, our brains may
+be able to compute the time when we
+can act without disrupting the other
+person. This is just the kind of process
+that is described in Gun Semin's chapter
+when he describes how groups of people
+can synchronize their actions like
+clapping together.
+From monkey brains to human
+intention
+Of course, relating responses in
+monkey brains to human brains is
+neither direct nor simple. Parts of the
+monkey brain and and parts of the
+human brain that putatively correspond,
+while similar, are not identical in
+number or size or location, and probably
+do not do exactly the same things, since
+monkeys and humans have evolved to
+have somewhat different capacities and
+behaviors. Furthermore, the study of
+mirror neurons in monkeys is based on
+recording the responses of individual
+neurons, which is not generally possible
+in humans except in rare cases of
+medical necessity. The measures we can
+make on intact human brains come from
+the responses of many thousands of
+neurons, so it is difficult to make claims
+about neurons that respond in producing
+an action and perceiving the same
+action. This means that any claims about
+human mirror neurons depend on a
+degree of good faith and inference rather
+than specific empirical demonstration
+that individual neurons respond both to
+observing and executing action.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021325
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021326.md

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021326"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021326.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3443
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+Researchers have measured
+human brain responses using a variety of
+methods such as functional magnetic
+resonance imaging (fMRI), which
+demonstrate reliable effects of changes
+in neural activity by changes in blood
+flow. Although slower to respond than
+measures of electrical activity, MRI
+provides evidence about where neural
+activity in the human brain occurs. This
+kind of research does show that
+observing action produces activity in
+areas of the human brain more typically
+associated with executing action. While
+there may be some disagreement about
+which motor areas of the human brain
+are active while observing or imitating
+action and how these would correspond
+to areas in the monkey brain, there is
+good agreement that the human motor
+system responds for observation and
+imitation of action.*
+There is quite a difference
+between recognizing an action and
+understanding that action. We can see a
+hand move through space with an open
+palm oriented with the flat of the palm
+moving toward the surface of an object
+and predict where the hand will strike
+the object and that it will apply force to
+the surface of that object. But
+understanding the same general action as
+pushing a door open with the intent to
+enter and slapping a person in the face is
+quite different. A ball can be thrown in a
+game of catch or as a missile intended to
+do harm. The actions may be similar but
+the intentions are different. Therefore it
+is important that some researchers have
+argued that mirror neurons respond to
+the intention as well as the action.'
+However, to date there has been no clear
+evidence that such neurons respond to
+intention -- just that the sight of the
+action of reaching without an object to
+grasp, the sight of the object alone, and
+Page 80
+the sight of the action with the object
+present show different patterns of brain
+response. The fact that such different
+visual experiences lead to different
+patterns of brain activity does not
+provide clear evidence that intentions or
+goals are somehow part of the mirror
+neuron response to observed action.
+Understanding spoken language as
+action understanding
+The potential ambiguity of action
+is perhaps clearest if we consider
+language. Talking is a form of action and
+understanding speech might be a form of
+action understanding. In talking, mouth
+movements are made in such a way as to
+create sounds that will have some affect
+on the listener, as discussed in Howard
+Nusbaum's chapter. Listeners must
+understand what was meant by making
+those sounds. However, if someone says,
+"It's hot in here," or "You are a great
+friend," there can be ambiguity about the
+meaning. Such sentences could be
+straightforward observations as they
+seem to be or they could be something
+very different. We can ask to have a
+window opened or we can make a
+negative social comment using exactly
+the same sentences.
+Nonetheless, there is good reason
+to believe that the human action system
+is involved in understanding speech as
+well as producing it. While some
+ambiguities in speech or behavior simply
+cannot be resolved without broader
+contextual knowledge, the motor system
+may be important in understanding. If
+you try to have a conversation in a noisy
+bar, looking at your friend talking makes
+it easier to understand what is being said
+We have shown that the motor system
+contributes to this process of recognizing
+speech. When listeners can see
+someone's face while talking, mouth
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021326
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021327.md

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021327"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021327.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3387
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+movements increase activity within the
+motor system measured using MRI.
+Furthermore, it is possible to show that
+the same parts of the motor system can
+be active in talking and in understanding
+speech. By analyzing which parts of the
+brain are active and when they become
+active, it is possible to show that when
+motor system activity in the frontal lobe
+of the brain precedes activity in other
+regions (e.g., the temporal lobe),
+listeners have a better understanding." It
+is as if the motor system "recognizes"
+the speech before other parts of the brain
+when the talking mouth is visible to the
+listener.
+This study shows that more
+information about the action of
+producing speech (visible mouth
+movements) can activate the motor areas
+of the brain during understanding of
+speech. But it is also the case that
+understanding speech without seeing the
+speaker depends on the motor system.
+Hockey players are experts at hitting
+slap shots, blocking passes, and
+whacking each other in the head with
+hockey sticks. They have done these
+things in the real world just as monkeys
+in Parma have learned to reach for
+certain objects. When hockey players
+to teach fronkeys
+listen to sentences describing hockey
+action, even without seeing the speaker
+or the action, motor areas are active
+during sentence understanding and these
+same motor areas are not active in
+people without hockey experience?
+Understanding described actions appears
+to be influenced by the motor systems of
+people who have experience with those
+actions. Understanding action may be
+influenced by the experiences of our
+motor systems.
+Reading minds through action
+Page 81
+In understanding other people,
+we start with what we understand about
+ourselves. As Nick Epley describes in
+his chapter, we take this kind of
+egocentric perspective in understanding
+other people or pets or God or the
+behavior of inanimate objects. We know
+what we meant when we say something
+or do something and we make the same
+attribution to others, even nonhuman
+others. While this may be a good starting
+point for religions to help people feel
+connected to God, as discussed by Clark
+Gilpin, it may not be uniformly
+informative about human behavior.
+Behavior is not transparent for the
+intention of that behavior. The fact that
+any particular action is not necessarily
+unique to the intent behind it is the basis
+of a great deal of misunderstanding in
+daily interactions. As a result, even if
+mirror neurons help our brains recognize
+actions and sometimes interpret them,
+there are real limits to how experience-
+producing actions can correctly inform
+social understanding.
+In spite of this limitation, we
+may often do just this-assume we
+understand another's actions because of
+what we would intend were we to do the
+same thing in the same circumstance.
+Human social understanding does suffer
+egocentric limitations often and to the
+extent that it does, something like a
+mirror neuron system may play a role.
+For example, as discussed by Jean
+Decety in his chapter, our ability to
+understand the pain of others may derive
+in part from the neural systems involved
+in our experience of pain, but goes
+beyond this starting point. The social
+brain is on one level perhaps a very
+egocentric brain. But the fundamental
+motivation to connect with others has
+resulted in systems built on top of these
+egocentric foundations. If social
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021327
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021328.md

@@ -0,0 +1,110 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021328"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021328.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3229
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+understanding depended entirely on past
+experiences of our own intentions and
+actions, there might be much more
+misunderstanding and cynicism in the
+world. However, the capacity to reason,
+hypothesize, and model possible futures
+may increase social understanding
+beyond the anchor of purely egocentric
+perspective. We can conceive of
+alternatives to our own goals and
+motives and relate those alternatives to
+the actions we observe. To some extent,
+this process might also involve the motor
+system by mentally simulating actions
+and anticipated responses. By imagining
+how we might act in some situation to
+achieve a goal or the alternative ways we
+may act given some intention, it may be
+possible to go beyond the limits of our
+own experience. Such constructive
+imagery may well depend on the motor
+system, along with other neural systems,
+but currently there is no scientific
+evidence that such a system might be
+linked with the operation of mirror
+neurons.
+Conclusion
+We are equipped to understand
+the world around us by relating what we
+perceive to our own experiences. With
+respect to actions in particular, our
+brains have specialized circuitry to relate
+previously executed actions to newly
+perceived ones, possibly by performing
+an internal (imagined) simulation of
+them. There is evidence too that we
+might understand the emotional states of
+others by a similar kind of process,
+whereby our brains activate circuits for
+experiencing the emotion as a way to
+understand that emotion in others. These
+brain mechanisms might also apply (to a
+greater or lesser degree when we try to
+understand actions or feelings by non-
+human animals or even inanimate
+entities. This could be a partial
+Page | 82
+biological explanation of
+anthropomorphism, as discussed by
+Epley and Gilpin. Of course as humans
+we have the ability to go beyond these
+strict egocentric limitations and
+recognize and respond to our social
+connections more explicitly. This ability
+to go beyond the more basic grounding
+of the way we understand others may
+subserve part of the goal of some
+religions, discussed by Kathryn Tanner,
+in fostering a more abstract view of our
+connection to others. While a mirror
+neuron system might help form the basis
+for some aspects of social understanding,
+there may well be other invisible forces
+at work supported by these and other
+neural systems in our social brain.
+References
+1. Hasson, U., Nusbaum, H. C., & Small, S. L.
+(2009). Task-dependent organization of
+brain regions active during rest. Proceedings
+of the National Academy of Sciences of the
+United States of America, 106(26), 10841-
+10846.
+2. Dewey, J. (1903). Democracy in Education.
+The Elementary School Teacher, 4(4), 193-
+204.
+3. Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L.,
+& Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action
+recognition in the premotor cortex.
+Brain, 119 (Pt 2), 593-609.
+lacoboni, M., Woods, R. P., Brass,
+M., Bekkering, H., Mazziotta, J. C.,
+& Rizzolatti, G. (1999). Cortical
+mechanisms of human imitation.
+Science, 286(5449), 2526-2528.
+5. lacoboni, M., Molnar-Szakacs, I.,
+Gallese, V., Buccino, G., Mazziotta,
+J. C., & Rizzolatti, G. (2005).
+Grasping the intentions of others
+with one's own mirror neuron
+system. PLoS Biology, 3, 529-535.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021328
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021329.md

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021329"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021329.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 489
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
+page_vibes_legal: 0.5
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+---
+
+Page 83
+6. Skipper, J. I., van Wassenhove, V.,
+Nusbaum, H. C., & Small, S. L.
+(2007). Hearing lips and seeing
+voices: how cortical areas supporting
+speech production mediate
+audiovisual speech perception.
+Cerebral Cortex, 17, 2387-2399.
+7. Beilock, S. L., Lyons, I. M.,
+Mattarella-Micke, A., Nusbaum, H.
+C., & Small, S. L. (2008). Sports
+experience changes the neural
+processing of action language.
+Proceedings of the National
+Academy of Sciences, 105, 13269-
+13272.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021329
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021330.md

@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021330"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021330.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 1942
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+Connecting and Binding Social Brains
+and Minds
+We evolved as social organisms
+in the context of face-to-face interaction.
+Much of our human biology was
+established before the technology of
+email and cell phones. As a result, our
+biological nature is tuned primarily to
+social signals and interaction that occurs
+in the presence of another. It takes just
+a moment of observation for us to know
+a lot about another person as a social
+being. We can understand other
+speakers easily within tens of
+milliseconds of experience. Our brains
+have developed to make this kind of
+social connection quickly and easily,
+whether through language or action. In
+order to understand someone else, we
+need to be able to understand their goals
+and intentions. Moreover we need to
+relate their behavior to our own
+individual and personal experience.
+Steve Small discusses some of the brain
+machinery that may allow us to translate
+our perception of language and
+observation of behavior into a form that
+can be related to our own use of
+language and action. This kind of
+resonance with experience, rather than
+elaborate inferences, may allow us to
+connect quickly with others, satisfying
+our drive for sociality.
+But understanding behavior and
+communication is not all there is to
+forming social connections. It is one
+thing to read intentions and another to
+feel someone's pain. If we only could
+understand action and communication,
+an important element of human
+connection would be missing. In
+forming a collective mind, as Gün Semin
+discusses it, we need to have collective
+emotional responses. Jean Decety
+discusses the foundations of empathy
+Page 84
+and the brain machinery that supports
+this important capacity by providing a
+resonant response to the observation of
+another person's distress. Although
+sympathy may motivate helping others,
+empathy may be one of the social glues
+that binds us together as a collective
+social organism.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021330
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021331.md

@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021331"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021331.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3564
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+page_vibes_last_page: 0.5
+---
+
+social.
+affective cognitive,
+empathy.
+ban empathic others avior
+people
+sepations -
+neural self
+actions 2a understanc
+circuits &
+pain
+component
+1l5l concern response &
+individuals
+demotions.
+Chapter 9'
+Empathy and Interpersonal
+Sensitivity
+A young girl, after watching a
+televised documentary account of child
+hunger and suffering in Bangladesh,
+pleads with her parents to "do
+something" to help them. A new child in
+9 The lead author is Jean Decety, Ph.D., the
+Irving B. Harris Professor in the Departments of
+Psychology and Psychiatry, and co-director of
+the Brain Research Imaging Center at the
+University of Chicago Medical Center. He is the
+editor of the journal Social Neuroscience. His
+interests include the investigation of the
+neurobiological mechanisms underpinning
+interpersonal sensitivity, particularly empathy
+and sympathy. His recent work focuses on
+developmental neuroscience with both typically
+developing children and adolescents as well as in
+children with deficits in empathic responding
+such as antisocial behavior problems. Decety has
+published more than 115 scientific papers, and
+recently edited the Social Neuroscience of
+Empathy (2009, MIT press), and Interpersonal
+Sensitivity: Entering Others' World (2007,
+Psychology Press).
+naly day con and are
+necessary components for healthy co-existence.
+Sympathy is thought to have a key role in
+motivating prosocial behavior, guides our
+preferences and behavioral responses, and
+provides the affective and motivational base for
+moral development. Although the study of these
+abilities has traditionally been examined using
+behavioral and clinical methods, recent work in
+social neuroscience has begun to provide
+compelling and novel insights on the neural
+mechanisms involved in interpersonal
+sensitivity. These developments are explored in
+this essay.
+Page 85
+daycare is being ignored by the other
+children with the exception of one little
+boy who takes her hand and includes her
+in all his activities. These modest
+beginnings signal the important and
+ongoing role of empathy for surviving
+and flourishing in our social world.
+Empathy has been suggested to be
+essential to navigating the social world;
+it enhances our understanding of others,
+improves the effectiveness of our social
+communication, and fosters mutually
+satisfying social relationships.
+Conversely, lack of empathy or its
+maladaptive use causes social
+relationships to falter and fail.
+Empathy refers to our natural
+capacity to quickly and automatically
+relate to the emotional states of another
+person. Rudimentary forms of empathy
+appear early in the life course, and with
+maturation, empathy can be experienced
+by simply reading about or imagining
+someone else's emotion. Empathy
+comes so naturally that physicians must
+learn to dampen their empathic pain
+responses when inserting a needle into a
+patient (1). Just because empathy comes
+naturally does not mean, however, that it
+is instantiated in a discrete brain module
+that is automatically activated when one
+witnesses another's distress or suffering.
+Rather, the experience of empathy is
+underpinned by the combined activity of
+several dissociable psychobiological
+systems. Further, empathy can be
+modulated by various contextual,
+dispositional, and interpersonal factors.
+The study of empathy, using
+sophisticated methods from psychology,
+neurology, neuroimaging, and
+neuropsychology, provide a unique
+opportunity to understand the invisible
+power of empathy in shaping our
+obligatorily gregarious social nature.
+Defining empathy and its functions
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021331
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021332.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021332"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021332.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3507
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+Empathy can be defined as our
+natural capacity to share, appreciate, and
+respond to the affective states of others.
+This capacity is essential for the
+regulation of social interactions. For
+instance, empathy is believed to
+motivate prosocial behavior and inhibit
+aggressive behavior (2). In addition, our
+ability to share the emotions of those we
+observe binds us to each other and
+fosters a collective social identity.
+Empathy's invisible power is that it
+moves us to cooperate, coordinate our
+behaviors, and provide the needed care
+for one another. Notably, however,
+empathic concern does not necessarily
+lead to empathic behavior. First,
+empathy poses a paradox, as sharing of
+feelings does not necessarily imply that
+one will act or even feel impelled to act
+in a supportive or sympathetic way.
+Second, the complexity of the social and
+emotional situations eliciting empathic
+concern influences the probability and
+nature of the help provided. Whether and
+how empathic actions are expressed
+depends on the feelings we perceive in
+the other, our relationship with that
+individual, and the context in which we
+share an emotional state.
+Empathy is critical for complex
+human interactions, but this does not
+mean that empathy and prosocial
+behavior have suddenly appeared with
+Homo sapiens. If empathy is a potent
+invisible force generated by the social
+brain, some form of emotion-sharing
+should also be evident in other social
+species such as non-human primates.
+Indeed, field observations conducted by
+comparative psychologists and
+ethologists suggest that behaviors
+homologous to empathy can be found in
+non-human primates (2). Some have
+argued that empathy is not an all-or-
+nothing phenomenon, and that many
+Page 86
+intermediate forms of empathy exist
+between the extremes of mere agitation
+at the distress of another and full
+understanding of their predicaments (3).
+Many comparative psychologists view
+empathy as a kind of induction process
+by which emotions, both positive and
+negative, are shared, and which increase
+the probability that the protagonists will
+subsequently engage in similar behavior.
+Though certain non-human
+primates may share feelings between
+individuals, humans seem to have the
+unique ability to intentionally "feel for"
+and act on behalf of other individuals
+whose experiences may differ greatly
+from their own. Such a capacity may
+help explain why empathic concern is
+often associated with prosocial behaviors
+such as helping kin, and why it has been
+considered the foundation for altruism,
+the expression of empathy and caring for
+those who are not kin. Evolutionary
+biologists have suggested that empathic
+helping behavior evolved because of its
+contribution to genetic fitness (kin
+selection). In humans and other
+mammals, an impulse to care for
+offspring is almost certainly genetically
+hard-wired. Less clear, however, is
+whether an impulse to care for siblings,
+more remote kin, and similar non-kin is
+genetically hard-wired. The emergence
+of altruism is not easily explained within
+the framework of neo-Darwinian
+theories of natural selection (but see
+Cacioppo's chapter on this point). Social
+learning explanations of kinship patterns
+in human helping behavior are thus
+highly plausible. Indeed, one of the most
+striking aspects of human empathy is
+that it can be felt for virtually any
+"target," even targets of a different
+species (animals included). We can see
+a deer hurt by a passing car or the dogs
+locked in crates at a shelter and feel
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021332
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021333.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021333"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021333.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3446
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+---
+
+strongly for their pain or confinement
+and future. In part, this kind of empathic
+extension may be motivated by the kind
+of anthropomorphic attitudes we have
+about non-human entities as discussed
+by Nick Epley in his chapter. The fact
+that we are adept at "feeling for" very
+different others whom we can observe
+but not truly understand suggests that we
+possess a capacity to cognitively re-
+represent others in our mind in a way we
+can understand. Indeed, second-order
+representation is a key component of
+empathy in humans, and may be a useful
+adaptation for human survival because it
+maximizes the range of individuals with
+whom we can form a social bond
+The Components of Empathy
+The psychological components
+that make up full-blown empathy are
+supported by distinct and separable
+psychobiological systems. Empathy can
+be decomposed into an affective
+component that includes the perception
+and sharing of an emotional state
+observed in another individual, and a
+cognitive component that includes the
+motivation and intention to respond.
+Closely related is a regulatory
+component that involves adjustment of
+one's emotional and behavioral
+response. The affective, cognitive, and
+regulatory aspects of empathy involve
+interacting, yet partially non-overlapping
+neural circuits. The initial component in
+the overall process leading to empathy
+draws on somatic mimicry, also known
+as "emotion contagion." This affective
+component of empathy develops earlier
+than the cognitive component. Affective
+responsiveness is present at an early age,
+is involuntary, and relies on mimicry and
+linking of actions perceived in others
+with actions in oneself (i.e., perception-
+action coupling). For instance,
+newborns and infants become vigorously
+Page 87
+distressed shortly after another infant
+begins to cry. Facial mimicry of basic
+emotional expressions also contributes to
+affective sharing, and this phenomenon
+starts very early in life, by
+approximately 10 weeks of age. This
+primitive mimicry mechanism, which
+may be based on mirror neurons, which
+are sensorimotor neurons found in the
+premotor, motor, and posterior parietal
+cortex of the brain that become active
+when observing as well as when
+enacting a behavior as discussed in
+Steven Small's chapter. This kind of
+mechanism may contribute to the
+development of empathy in the early
+preverbal period, and continues to
+operate past childhood. There is
+evidence that when we perceive
+emotions and actions of others, we use
+the same neural circuits as when we
+produce the same emotions and actions
+ourselves (e.g., watching another
+individual being disgusted and
+experiencing disgust in oneself activate
+similar neural circuits). For instance,
+viewing facial expressions triggers
+expressions on one's own face, even
+without explicit identification of what
+we're seeing (4).
+The cognitive component of
+empathy is closely related to processes
+involved in "theory of mind" (i.e., the
+ability to attribute mental states to others
+and to understand that others' mental
+states can differ from one's own) and
+self-regulation. The capacity for two
+people to resonate with each other
+emotionally, prior to any cognitive
+understanding, is the basis for
+developing shared emotional meanings,
+but it is not enough for mature empathic
+understanding and concern. Such an
+understanding requires the observer to
+form an explicit representation of the
+feelings of another person, a process that
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021333
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021334.md

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+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021334"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021334.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3453
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+involves additional mechanisms beyond
+the sharing of emotion and includes self-
+regulatory mechanisms to modulate the
+observer's experience of negative
+arousal. Specifically, in order to
+understand the emotions and feelings of
+others in relation to oneself, second-
+order representations of the other must
+be consciously available and must not
+confuse the other with the self. The
+medial and ventromedial prefrontal
+cortices are known to play crucial roles
+in decoupling first-person and third-
+person information and maintaining
+representations of the other as distinct
+from the self (5).
+The regulatory component of
+empathy, especially regulation of
+internal emotional states and processes,
+is particularly relevant to the modulation
+of vicarious emotion and the experience
+of empathy as well as sympathy.
+Empathy is unlikely to lead to helping
+behavior if the observer is incapacitated
+by strong empathically evoked emotions,
+which is why emotional regulation is an
+important component in empathy.
+Indeed, children high in effortful control
+show greater empathic concern, and the
+tendency to experience empathy and
+sympathy versus personal distress varies
+as a function of their ability to regulate
+their emotions more generally.
+How We Perceive Other People in
+Pain
+When witnessing another person
+experiencing pain, the scope of an
+observer's reaction can range from
+concern for personal safety, including
+feelings of alarm, fear, and avoidance, to
+concern for the other person, including
+compassion, sympathy, and care-giving.
+The existence of the perception-action
+coupling mechanism apparent in
+emotional contagion also seems to
+Page 88
+account for our ability to perceive and
+understand the pain of others. In the case
+of pain, individuals are predisposed to
+find distress of others aversive and learn
+to avoid actions associated with this
+distress. This is even the case in many
+mammalian species, including rodents.
+For instance, rats that had learned to
+press a lever to obtain food would stop
+doing so if their response was paired
+with the delivery of an electric shock to
+a visible neighboring rat (6).
+Recently, a handful of functional
+neuroimaging studies performed with
+healthy human volunteers revealed that
+the same neural circuits implicated in
+processing the affective and motivational
+aspects of pain in oneself account for the
+perception of pain in others (7). In one
+study, participants in a magnetic
+resonance imaging (MRI) scanner either
+received a painful stimulus or, in other
+trials, observed a signal that their
+partner, who was present in the same
+room, would receive the same stimulus.
+First-hand experience of pain resulted in
+activation of the somatosensory cortex,
+which encodes the way we feel aspects
+of a noxious stimulus such as its bodily
+location and intensity. Furthermore, the
+anterior medial cingulate cortex (ACC),
+and the anterior insula were activated
+during both first-hand pain and the
+anticipated experience of pain in
+someone else. These regions are
+responsible for the affective and
+motivational processing of noxious
+stimuli such as those aspects of pain that
+pertain to desires, urges, or impulses to
+avoid or terminate a painful experience.
+A number of other neuroimaging studies
+of empathy for pain in adults as well as
+in children have demonstrated that the
+somatosensory cortex is not activated
+only during first-hand pain but is also
+activated with the perception of other
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021334
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021335.md

@@ -0,0 +1,114 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021335"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021335.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3516
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+people in pain. Altogether, there is
+strong evidence to suggest that
+perceiving the pain of others triggers an
+automatic somatic sensory-motor
+mirroring mechanism between other and
+self, which activates almost the entire
+neural pain matrix including the
+periaqueductal gray, a major site in pain
+transmission and for processing of fear
+and anxiety, and the supplementary
+motor area that programs defensive
+movements in response to anticipated
+pain. Such a neural resonance
+mechanism provides a functional bridge
+between first-person and third-person
+information. It is grounded in the
+equivalence of self and other, which
+allows for analogical reasoning, and
+offers a possible, yet partial, route to
+understanding others.
+Of course, human empathic
+abilities are more sophisticated than
+simply yoking perceptions of the self
+and other. In the eighteenth century,
+Scottish philosopher and economist
+Adam Smith proposed that through
+imagination,
+"we place ourselves in his
+situation... enter as it were into his body,
+and become in some measure the same
+person with" (8). By means of
+imagination we come to experience
+sensations which are generally similar
+to, although typically weaker than, those
+of the other person. This capacity to
+engage in role-taking has been
+theoretically linked to the development
+of empathy, moral reasoning, and more
+generally, prosocial behavior. Unlike the
+motor mimicry and emotional contagion
+aspect of empathy, perspective-taking
+develops later, possibly because it draws
+heavily on the maturation of executive
+functions (i.e., processes that serve to
+monitor and control thought and actions,
+including self-regulation, planning,
+cognitive flexibility, response inhibition,
+Page 89
+and resistance to interference), functions
+that are predominantly centered in the
+prefrontal cortex which continues to
+mature from birth to adolescence.
+Theoretically, imagining the other is
+distinct from imagining the self: the
+former may evoke empathic concern
+(defined as an other-oriented response
+congruent with the perceived distress of
+the person in need) while the latter
+induces both empathic concern and
+personal distress (i.e., a self-oriented
+aversive emotional response such as
+anxiety or discomfort). This distinction
+has been supported empirically. When
+individuals are asked to imagine how
+they would feel in reaction to emotion-
+laden familiar situations and to imagine
+how a known person would feel if she
+was experiencing the same situations,
+common neural circuits are activated
+both for the self and the other. However,
+relative to imagining the self, imagining
+the other results in specific activation of
+parts of the frontal cortex that are
+implicated in executive control-the use
+of attention and working memory and
+decisions and an area of the brain at
+the interface of the temporal and parietal
+lobes of the brain that is a key
+component of a larger network of neural
+circuits involved in attention (sometimes
+called the temporoparietal junction).
+Some researchers have
+hypothesized that the role of the frontal
+lobes and the temporoparietal junction is
+to hold separate perspectives or to resist
+interference against attention to one's
+own perspective. In a recent functional
+brain imaging study (9), participants
+were shown pictures of people with their
+hands or feet in painful or non-painful
+situations with the instruction to imagine
+themselves or to imagine another
+individual experiencing these situations.
+During perception of painful situations,
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021335
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021336.md

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021336"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021336.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3352
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+both the self-perspective and the other-
+perspective were associated with
+activation in the neural network involved
+in pain processing. These results reveal
+the similarities in neural networks
+representing first- and third-person
+information. In addition, however, the
+self-perspective yielded higher pain
+ratings and involved more extensive
+activation of some circuits in the pain
+matrix than did the other-perspective,
+thus highlighting important differences
+between self- and other-perspectives.
+Neuroanatomical regions and
+circuits form the foundation for the
+experience of pain in others, but they are
+not sufficient to explain variability in
+interpersonal sensitivity. Although
+empathetic brain circuits are activated by
+the mere perception of pain in others,
+activity in these circuits can be
+modulated by social, motivational, and
+cognitive factors. For example,
+observing pain in likable others (1.e.,
+those who played a game fairly) resulted
+in an enhancement of empathic brain
+responses, whereas pain in dislikable
+others who played unfairly did not.
+Another functional MRI study (10)
+found that participants showed
+significantly greater responses in neural
+regions that are involved in pain
+perception when observing the pain of
+people who were not responsible for
+their stigmatized condition (i.e.,
+individuals who contracted AIDS as the
+result of a blood transfusion) than either
+controls (healthy individuals) or people
+who were held responsible for their
+condition (i.e., those who contracted
+AIDS through illegal drug use). In
+addition, participants expressed more
+empathy and personal distress in
+response to the pain of people who were
+not responsible for their stigmatized
+condition as compared to controls. The
+Page | 90
+level of empathic response, therefore,
+seems to be influenced by motivational
+factors as well as the interpersonal
+relationship between the target and the
+observer.
+Altogether, these findings
+demonstrate that the similarities between
+affective representations of the self and
+the other stem from shared neural
+circuits that can be emulated either
+automatically or intentionally by the act
+of perspective-taking. Importantly, these
+findings also point to some distinctions
+between these two representations,
+distinctions that contribute to our
+capacity to detach ourselves from others
+sufficiently to make considered
+responses to their pain.
+Conclusion
+Empathy, the natural capacity to
+share, appreciate, and respond to the
+affective states of others, plays a crucial
+role in much of human social interaction
+from birth to the end of life. As would be
+expected if empathy functions to
+enhance social cohesion, social non-
+human primate species also exhibit
+rudimentary versions of empathy. What
+humans have in abundance are higher-
+level cognitive and social abilities
+(language, theory of mind, executive
+functions) that can be deployed to
+modulate empathic responses, and that
+are amenable to modulation by lower-
+level processes such as emotional
+contagion and mimicry. These levels of
+processing enable empathy to have an
+impact on a wide variety of human
+behaviors. From motivating prosocial
+behavior to providing the affective and
+motivational bases for moral
+development, empathy is an invisible
+force to reckon with when considering
+how humans behave toward each other.
+References
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021336
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021337.md

@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021337"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021337.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 1649
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+1.
+Cheng, Y., Lin, C., Liu, H.L.,
+Hsu, Y., Lim, K., Hung, D., &
+Decety, J. (2007). Expertise
+modulates the perception of pain
+in others. Current Biology, 17,
+1708-1713.
+2.
+De Waal, F. (2009). The Age of
+Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a
+Kinder Society. New York:
+Harmony Books.
+3.
+De Waal, F. B. M. (2009).
+Darwin's last laugh. Nature, 460,
+175.
+4.
+Meltzoff, A.N., & Decety, J.
+(2003). What imitation tells us
+about social cognition: A
+rapprochement between
+developmental psychology and
+cognitive neuroscience. The
+Philosophical Transactions of the
+Royal Society, London, 358,
+491-500.
+5.
+Decety, J., & Sommerville, J.A.
+(2003). Shared representations
+between self and others: A social
+cognitive neuroscience view.
+Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7,
+527-533.
+6.
+Church, R. M. (1959). Emotional
+reactions of rats to the pain of
+others. Journal of Comparative
+and Physiological Psychology,
+52, 132-134.
+Decety, J., & Lamm, C. (2009).
+Empathy and intersubjectivity.
+In G. G. Berntson & J. T.
+Cacioppo (Eds.), Handbook of
+neuroscience for the behavioral
+sciences (Vol. 2, pp. 940-957).
+Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
+Smith, Adam. The Theory of
+Moral Semtiments. Edited by
+9.
+10.
+Page |91
+Sálvio M. Soares. MetaLibri,
+2005, v1.0p.
+Jackson, P.L., Brunet, E.,
+Meltzoff, A.N., & Decety, J.
+(2006). Empathy examined
+through the neural mechanisms
+involved in imagining how I feel
+versus how you feel pain: An
+event-related MRI study.
+Neuropsychologia, 44, 752-61.
+Decety, J., Echols, S.C., &
+Correll, J. (2009). The blame
+game: the effect of responsibility
+and social stigma on empathy for
+pain. Journal of Cognitive
+Neuroscience, Epub ahead of
+print.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021337
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021338.md

@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+---
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+---
+
+Page | 92
+consequences for the way we feel and
+think about and behave toward others.
+Seeing into My Mind and Other
+Minds
+Empathy is defined by Jean
+Decety as "the natural capacity to share,
+appreciate, and respond to the affective
+states of others." Empathy rests on our
+ability to see into the mind of another
+while distinguishing it from one's own
+to be in a position to cooperate,
+coordinate, and provide the needed care
+for others. The possession of empathic
+capacity is not sufficient to determine
+the precise nature of the response toward
+others, however. As Decety points out,
+whether an individual attends to and
+responds empathically upon observing
+emotion in another individual depends
+on, among other things, dispositional
+tendencies, the relationship between the
+individuals, and contextual constraints.
+Motivation to help another is also
+influenced by the amount of cognitive
+effort we are willing and able to exert to
+take the perspective of the other.
+Perspective-taking is essentially
+an attempt to see into the invisible mind
+of another. What we can't see, we model
+based on our own mind and like-minded
+individuals. Nick Epley shows that
+seeing into and connecting with other
+minds is such a frequent operation of the
+social brain that the absence of others
+inclines people to see human minds in
+nonhuman entities. Whether it's a tree, a
+pet, or God, ascribing mind to others
+endows them with the capacity to
+experience the same affective states we
+experience. This shared capacity evokes
+in us a tendency to feel and express
+empathic concern for their well-being.
+Unfortunately, humans do not grant all
+individuals, much less non-human
+entities, an equivalent degree of mind.
+Epley articulates how differences in the
+capacity to see mind in others have
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021338
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021339.md

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021339"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021339.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3368
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+minds may
+experience one's
+this think no seem
+agent.
+Emndmindful
+people
+ate able player
+Chapter 1010
+Seeing Invisible Minds
+Shortly after taking off from
+LaGuardia airport in the dead of winter,
+the engines of US Airways flight 1549
+failed after inhaling several large geese.
+The pilots glided their plane onto the
+Hudson River, where all of the
+10 The lead author is Nicholas Epley, Ph.D., a
+Professor of Behavioral Science at the University
+of Chicago Booth School of Business. His
+research investigates people's ability to reason
+about others' minds, from knowing how one is
+being judged by others to predicting others'
+attitudes, beliefs, and underlying motivations,
+and the implications of systematic mistakes in
+mind reading for everyday social interactions.
+His research has appeared in more than two
+dozen journals, has been featured by the Wall
+Street Journal, CNN, Wired, and National Public
+Radio, among many others, and has been funded
+by the National Science Foundation and the
+Association for Psychological Science, and is the
+winner of the 2008 Theoretical Innovation Prize
+from the Society for Personality and Social
+Psychology.
+Other minds are inherently invisible.
+You cannot see an attitude, smell a belief, or
+touch an intention, and yet you can nevertheless
+"see" these mental states in other people with
+great ease. You can even see them in agents
+ranging from pets to gadgets to gods. How you
+are able to see other minds, and how they
+become visible, matters because it marks the
+difference between treating others as human
+beings worthy of moral care and concern versus
+treating others as objects or animals.
+Page | 93
+passengers were rescued, cold, wet, and
+almost completely unharmed. Explained
+one passenger, "God was certainly
+looking out for us." New Orleans Mayor
+Ray Nagin offered a very different
+assessment of God's mind following the
+devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina
+when he explained that, "Surely God is
+mad at America. Surely he's not
+approving of us being in Iraq under false
+pretense. But surely he's upset at Black
+America, too."
+Depending on your own beliefs,
+such statements will seem somewhere
+between insane and insightful. To
+psychologists, they seem impressive.
+They seem impressive not because they
+reveal a keen sense of causal inference,
+but rather because they reveal what may
+be the most impressive capacities of the
+social brain—the ability to reason about,
+or "to see," what other minds see.
+Introspection enables you to know your
+own intentions, report on your own
+thoughts, feel your own pain, and
+recognize when you are feeling shame
+rather than guilt. Other minds, however,
+are inherently invisible. You cannot
+know what it is like to be another person
+on the inside because your skull gets in
+the way.
+The inherent invisibility of other
+minds poses a major problem for hard-
+nosed philosophers, who skeptically note
+that people cannot infer that other minds
+exist at all. Although it is surprisingly
+difficult for philosophers to reject the
+skeptical conclusion from the "other
+minds problem," almost everyone else
+casts it aside altogether some time
+around the age of five. At this point
+people have developed such a strong
+capacity to think about other minds that
+they not only see minds in other people,
+but they seem to see other minds almost
+everywhere'
+Gods can be caring or
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021339
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021340.md

@@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021340"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021340.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3264
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+callous. Pets can be thoughtful or
+devious. And every now and then,
+computers can have a mind of their own.
+Having the capacity to reason
+about other minds enables people to
+form deep social connections with
+others, to empathize with others' pain
+and share in their joy, and to anticipate
+others' actions. But having a capacity
+and actually using it are two different
+things. People are not naturally inclined
+to see invisible things in the
+environment. People do not
+automatically see into other minds,
+either, but instead do so only under
+certain circumstances and with some
+psychological effort. This chapter will
+describe how people come to see other
+minds, how other minds can become
+more or less visible, and why the
+visibility of other minds matters for
+everyday life.
+Kinds of Minds
+Studying how people understand
+other minds first requires understanding
+how people intuitively define another
+mind. Research suggests that people
+think of minds as having two distinct
+dimensions, the ability to act (agency)
+and the ability to feel (experience)
+Mindful agency involves the cognitive
+activities that enable action, such as the
+capacity to plan, to have intentions, to
+engage in deliberate self-control, and to
+pursue one's own goals. Conscious
+preferences, attitudes, and beliefs follow
+from these capacities. Mindful
+experience, in contrast, involves the
+cognitive activities involved in reacting
+to the external world, such as the
+capacity for self-awareness, and the
+experience of basic psychological states
+(like hunger, thirst, or pain), and other-
+oriented emotions (such as empathy or
+sympathy). Mindful experience also
+Page 94
+involves the capacity for
+metacognition— the capacity to think
+about one's own thoughts or emotions-
+exemplified in experiences such as
+confidence and doubt, or in secondary
+emotions such as shame, guilt, joy, or
+hope. People seem to represent these
+two capacities in others quite
+independently. A sociopath, for
+instance, can appear to act with a high
+degree of mindful agency but no mindful
+experience, whereas a baby might appear
+full of mindful experience with
+relatively little mindful agency. Seeing
+other agents as mindful essentially
+means seeing them as able to
+consciously think and/or to feel.
+Because you are aware of both your own
+thoughts and feelings, you likely
+consider yourself-like most people
+do to be very mindful.
+Making Other Minds Visible
+Introspection provides a kind of
+flashlight that seems to provide direct
+access to one's own agency as well as
+experience. Although research
+demonstrates that introspection is
+actually a process of indirect inference,
+it appears to us that introspection
+provides direct access to the workings of
+our own brain. It seems that we can look
+on the inside and feel when we are
+suffering, know when we are
+experiencing regret, or be aware of our
+intentions to lose weight. We can use
+our introspective abilities to make
+inferences about what others are likely
+thinking or feeling (and we very often
+do), but such inferences are likely to
+seem inherently less direct, less
+immediate, and less illuminating. We
+cannot see into other minds as clearly as
+we seem able to see our own.
+When something is difficult to
+see, people may doubt whether it
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021340
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021341.md

@@ -0,0 +1,115 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021341"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021341.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3490
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+actually exists, or may not see it at all.
+This is true of the relative difficulty that
+people have seeing other minds
+compared to one's own, in ways that are
+sometimes very subtle and surprising.
+For instance, we tend to evaluate
+ourselves by consulting our mindful
+intentions, but we evaluate others (and
+their intentions) by observing their
+actions. We may consider ourselves to
+be conscientious if we planned to buy
+our spouse a birthday gift, but need to
+see an actual gift to infer that our spouse
+is equally conscientious.? We tend to
+believe that we are more likely to
+experience complicated mental emotions
+like shame, guilt, or embarrassment than
+are others.
+We tend to believe that our
+own behavior will therefore be guided
+by moral sentiments like empathy, guilt,
+or compassion whereas others' behavior
+is more likely driven by the relatively
+mindless motives of self-interest. Other
+minds are more opaque than our own,
+and some learning, attending, seeking,
+and projecting is required for our brains
+to become fully social and see into them.
+Here's how?
+Learning. Children do not enter
+the world able to think about other
+minds, but they learn to do so fairly
+quickly. At around three months of age,
+children start preferentially attending to
+animate objects compared to inanimate
+objects, and at around six months of age
+start to distinguish between intentional
+(goal-directed) and unintentional
+(accidental) action. At this age, for
+instance, children will look reliably
+longer at a person who is reaching for a
+cup than to a person who is making the
+same reaching motion in the absence of
+a cup. Over the next 18 months,
+children become more likely to mimic
+intentional than unintentional actions®.
+, to
+follow the gaze of another person and
+Page 95
+therefore share his or her attentional
+focus, and recognize that other people
+may have preferences that differ from
+one's own. By age two, children's
+social ability to read other minds seems
+to have already surpassed that of our
+nearest primate relatives, and over the
+next two years they pick up what appear
+to be uniquely human mind-reading
+capacities. By age five, children
+demonstrate the most sophisticated of
+mind-reading abilities-the capacity to
+recognize that others' beliefs may differ
+from one's own and to use those
+differing (sometimes mistaken) beliefs to
+predict the other agent's behavior.
+Variability from age five onward comes
+from learning more specific details about
+how other minds actually work, largely
+gathered from personal experience,
+religious practice, or broader cultural
+norms.
+Many psychologists and
+neuroscientists speculate that learning to
+read other minds comes from the deeply
+social tendency, present at birth, to
+mimic others' actions. For example,
+Steve Small examines a neurological
+underpinning for mimicry, and Jean
+Decety argues in his essay that an inborn
+capacity for mimicry underlies the
+human capacity for empathy. Looking
+where others look and copying their
+actions is a reasonable way to copy their
+likely mental states as well. This
+egocentric method of using one's own
+mental experience as a guide to other
+minds continues to be employed
+throughout adulthood, and can give
+insight into others' mental states but can
+also lead people to overestimate the
+extent to which others' minds are similar
+to one's own. These biases tend to be
+called egocentric when reasoning about
+other people, and they tend to be called
+anthropomorphic when reasoning about
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021341
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021342.md

@@ -0,0 +1,114 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021342"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021342.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3469
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+nonpeople such as a god or a gadget or a
+pet.
+Attending. People rarely notice
+things in their environment unless they
+are specifically attending to them. Other
+minds likewise tend to be relatively
+invisible unless attention is specifically
+drawn to them. For instance, take a
+moment to think about how happy you
+are compared to the average American...
+No really, please take a moment... If you
+just spent some time thinking about how
+happy you are and no time thinking
+about how happy the average American
+is, then you are no different from the
+majority of people in psychology
+experiments who do likewise®
+. People
+can consider others' thoughts, feelings,
+beliefs, or emotions, but doing so
+requires mental effort that is in short and
+limited supply. Consider, for instance, a
+simple experiment in which you are
+playing a game with another person?
+Both you and the other player in this
+game must first choose privately to
+cooperate or compete with each other. If
+you both choose to cooperate, you both
+earn $5. But if the other player chooses
+to cooperate and you choose to compete,
+then you win $10 and your partner gets
+nothing. If you, however, choose to
+cooperate and the other player chooses
+to compete, you win nothing and your
+partner wins $10. If you both choose to
+compete, you both win a measly $2. It
+seems obvious in this situation that you
+should consider both what you would
+like to do, but also consider what the
+other player is likely to be thinking.
+Experimental evidence suggests that
+people do indeed think about the former
+but spend little time thinking of the
+latter. In a basic version of this
+experiment, 60% of people chose to
+cooperate. However, when people were
+simply asked to think about their
+Page 96
+partner's thoughts before making their
+choice, only 27% chose to cooperate. If
+people had already been thinking about
+others' thoughts, as it seems like they
+would naturally be doing in this
+situation, then a simple instruction to
+consider others' thoughts would have no
+effect on people's own behavior. That is
+not the case. This simple experiment
+shows that people may not naturally
+consider other minds even when it
+appears that they should. Thinking
+about other minds requires attentional
+effort. It does not necessarily come
+automatically. Indeed, as Tanya
+Luhrmann describes in her chapter,
+people may have to work very hard to
+discern other minds, such as the mind of
+God, even when they are actively
+looking for them.
+Seeking. If seeing other minds
+requires attention, then other minds are
+especially likely to become visible when
+people are motivated to think about
+them. There are many reasons why
+people might try to get into the mind of
+another agent, from a spouse to a pet to a
+god, but two are reasonably well-
+supported by existing research. First,
+people tend to think about other minds
+when they are trying to form a social
+connection with others. 1º Making
+people feel lonely or isolated, for
+instance, increases the tendency to
+describe one's pet as thoughtful,
+considerate, or sympathetic (all mindful
+traits). And those who are made to feel
+lonely are also likely to report believing
+in mindful supernatural agents, such as
+God. Second, people tend to think about
+other minds when they are trying to
+achieve some understanding and control
+over their environment or over another
+agent's behavior.' Concepts of mind,
+including attitudes, beliefs, goals, or
+desires, can provide compelling cause-
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021342
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021343.md

@@ -0,0 +1,114 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021343"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021343.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3473
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+and-effect explanations of behavior that
+give a sense of predictability and
+control. A meteorologist may know that
+a hurricane may strike here or there
+depending on environmental conditions.
+Lacking such knowledge, a hurricane
+that strikes here rather than there may
+lead people to invoke a mindful agent-
+such as a God-to explain that action.
+Projecting. If introspection
+makes your own mind visible, then you
+might assume that those who look
+similar to you on the outside might look
+similar to you on the inside as well.
+Indeed, animals that move at a
+humanlike speed (such as a horse) seem
+more mindful to people than do animals
+that move either much slower (such as a
+sloth) or much faster (such as a
+hummingbird)." And an agent that look
+humanlike, such as a computerized
+avatar with human face, seems more
+mindful than avatars that do not look
+humanlike. Any parent knows how well
+toy makers love to capitalize on this
+tendency. But it is the converse of this
+effect that is even more interesting
+other minds become less visible as the
+agent becomes less similar to the self.
+она по иной в ше.
+Others that differ from you in their
+interests, nationality, or social status are
+likely to be seen as less mindful-less
+thoughtful, less likely to experience
+complicated emotions, less able to
+experience pain or suffering-than those
+that are similar to you. It is little
+wonder, then, that the history of human
+conflict is filled with instances of people
+dehumanizing radically different others,
+treating them like mindless animals or
+objects.
+Why Minds Matter
+It may not be obvious to you why
+it matters that your neighbor, every now
+and then, thinks that her computer has a
+Page 97
+mind of it's own, that a mayor believes
+that God punished his city by sending a
+hurricane, or that you truly believe that
+your pet poodle is thoughtful and
+considerate. Some of these attributions
+of mind seem purely metaphorical and
+therefore unimportant, as ways of
+speaking rather than ways of believing,
+whereas others seem to represent
+genuine beliefs about the real presence
+or absence of another social mind. But
+metaphors have a way of influencing
+behavior in ways that are consistent with
+believing the metaphor to be literally
+true. People metaphorically refer to
+feeling dirty after behaving unethically,
+and yet washing one's hands actually
+reduces the guilt that people report
+feeling from engaging in unethical
+actions.!3 People are surely just
+speaking metaphorically when they refer
+to rejection as being given the cold
+shoulder, and yet research demonstrates
+that people do indeed report feeling that
+a room is colder after someone has just
+rejected them than after someone has
+just accepted them.
+14 And surely people
+are only speaking metaphorically when
+they refer to the stock market as anxious
+or jittery, and yet describing the market
+as mindful leads stock traders to believe
+that trends are likely to continue whereas
+describing the market as mindless leads
+traders to predict more random
+variability.'5 Whether metaphorical or
+literal, seeing other agents as mindful
+matters because people tend to treat the
+agent as if it has a mind. That matters
+for at least three major reasons.
+First, mindful agents have both
+intentions and the capacity for self-
+control. Mindful agents can therefore be
+held responsible for their actions.
+Possessing a guilty mind (mens rea) is
+necessary for being held criminally
+responsible for a crime in the US, a
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021343
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021344.md

@@ -0,0 +1,114 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021344"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021344.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3408
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+---
+
+precedent found in courts around the
+world dating back to the Middle Ages.
+In times past and cultures in which
+people did not so naturally restrict
+intentional capacities to other humans,
+animals (such as rats) and objects (such
+as "possessed" statues) were common
+targets of criminal prosecution 16,17
+Increasing the extent to which other
+agents seem mindful also increases the
+praise or blame that they receive for
+their actions. And even diminishing the
+extent to which people feel in mindful
+control of their own behavior (e.g., by
+undermining people's belief in free will),
+leads people to behave in ways that are
+consistent with diminished self-control
+(such as by cheating on an exam when
+tempted to do so). 18
+Second, other minds are capable
+of thinking, and may therefore be
+thinking about you. Being under
+scrutiny by mindful agents has two basic
+effects on human behavior. One is that
+mindful agents become sources of social
+influence, increasing the extent to which
+people behave in socially desirable
+ways?°
+Imagine, for instance, how you
+might behave if you found a magic ring
+that made you invisible.. and you'll get
+the point. This ability for mindful
+surveillance to control behavior has been
+proposed as one of the reasons, if not the
+primary reason, why religious systems
+that posit an omnipresent deity are able
+to maintain such large-scale cooperative
+societies. The other effect of mindful
+surveillance is that it is mentally taxing
+to monitor others' thoughts. This
+effortful monitoring can diminish a
+person's performance on other
+cognitively demanding tasks?
+. And
+while waiting for a stressful event, such
+as giving a speech, people show less
+stress-related responses when in the
+presence of their relatively mindless pet
+Page 98
+than when in the presence of their
+relatively more mindful spouse?
+Finally, other minds matter
+because mindful agents become moral
+agents worthy of care and compassion?
+The principle of autonomy captures this
+most basic of human rights—that
+because all people have the same
+minimal capacity to suffer, deliberate,
+and choose, no person can compromise
+the body, life, or freedom of another
+person. Agents with mindful
+experience, the capacity to suffer,
+deliberate, and choose, become those
+that evoke empathy and concern for well
+being, whereas agents without mindful
+experience can be treated simply as
+mindless objects. From debates about
+abortion to animal rights to euthanasia,
+the mindful experience of the agents in
+question is often either the explicit or
+implicit focus of debate. Making
+invisible minds visible, and hence more
+like one's own, enables people to more
+readily follow the most famous of all
+ethical dictates— to treat others as you
+would have others treat you.
+Conclusion
+It is impossible for scientists to
+examine whether God was looking out
+for the passengers of flight 1549 or
+punishing the residents of New Orleans
+with Hurricane Katrina, but it is very
+possible to examine why people might
+make such inferences. These
+examinations have revealed a
+remarkable capacity to look beyond the
+visible behavior that the environment
+provides to reason about a completely
+invisible world of intentions and goals,
+of motives and beliefs, of attitudes and
+preferences— an invisible world of other
+minds. Understanding when people are
+likely to recognize other minds (and see
+into them) and when they are not is the
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021344
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021345.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021345"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021345.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
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+---
+
+key to understanding when people may
+be likely to invoke natural versus
+supernatural explanations, when gadgets
+can seem to have minds of their own,
+and when people are likely to treat their
+pets as people and their enemies as
+animals. A mind like our own, with the
+capacity to see into other minds, is
+essential for an agent to be, as we are,
+fundamentally social.
+References
+1. Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J.T. (2007).
+On seeing human: A three-factor theory of
+anthropomorphism. Psychological Review,
+114, 864-886.
+2. Gray, H.M., Gray, K., & Wegner,
+D.M. (2007). Dimensions of mind
+perception. Science, 315, 619.
+3. Kruger, J., & Gilovich, T. (2004).
+intentions,
+assessment:
+enhancement is paved with good
+intentions. Personality and Social
+Psychology Bulletin, 30, 328-339.
+4. Leyens, J.P., Paladino, P.M.,
+Rodriguez, R.T., Vaes, J., Demoulin,
+S., Rodriguez, A.P., & Gaunt, R.
+(2000).
+The emotional side of
+prejudice: The role of secondary
+emotions. Personality and Social
+Psychology Review, 4, 186-197.
+5. Van Boven, L., Lowenstein, G., &
+Dunning, D. (2005). The illusion of
+courage in social predictions:
+Underestimating the impact of fear
+of embarrassment on other people.
+Organizational Behavior and Human
+Decision Processes, 96, 130-141.
+6. Epley, N., & Dunning, D. (2000).
+Feeling "holier than thou": Are self-
+serving assessments produced by
+errors in self or social prediction?
+Journal of Personality and Social
+Psychology, 79, 861-875.
+Page | 99
+7. Epley, N., & Waytz, A. (in press).
+Mind Perception. In S.T. Fiske, D.T.
+Gilbert, & G. Lindsay, (Eds.), The
+Handbook of Social Psychology (5th
+ed.). New York: Wiley.
+8. Kruger, J. (1999). Lake Wobegon be
+gone! The "below-average effect"
+and the egocentric nature of
+comparative ability judgments.
+Journal of Personality and Social
+Psychology, 77, 221-232.
+9. Epley, N., Caruso, E.M., & Bazerman,
+M.H. (2006). When perspective
+taking increases taking: Reactive
+Egoism in social interaction. Journal
+of
+Personality
+and
+Social
+Psychology, 91, 872-889.
+10. Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., &
+Cacioppo, J.T. (2008). Creating
+social connection through inferential
+reproduction: Loneliness and
+perceived agency in gadgets, gods,
+and greyhounds. Psychological
+Science, 19, 114-120.
+11. Morewedge, C.K., Preston, J., & Wegner,
+D.M. (2007). Timescale bias in the
+attribution of mind. Journal of Personality
+and Social Psychology, 93, 1-11.
+12. Haslam, N., & Bain, P. (2007)
+Humanizing the self: Moderators of
+the attribution of lesser humanness to
+others. Personality and Social
+Psychology Bulletin, 33, 57-68.
+13. Zhong, C.B., & Liljenquist, K
+(2006). Washing away your sins:
+Threatened morality and physical
+clensing. Science, 313, 1451-1452.
+14. Zhong, C.B., & Leonardelli, G.J.
+(2008). Cold and lonely: Does
+social exclusion literally feel cold?
+Psychological Science, 19, 838-842.
+15. Morris, M.W., Sheldon, O.J., Ames,
+D.R., & Young, M.J.
+(2007).
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021345
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021346.md

@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021346"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021346.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 1182
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+Page | 100
+Metaphors
+market:
+Consequences and preconditions of
+agent and object metaphors in stock
+market commentary. Organizational
+Behavior and Human
+Decision
+Processes, 102, 174-192.
+16. Berman, P. S. (1994). Rats, pigs, and
+on trial: The creation of
+cultural narratives in the prosecution
+of animals and inanimate objects.
+NYU Law Review, 69, 288-326.
+17. Sunstein, C.R., & Nussbaum, M.C.
+(2004). Animal rights: Current
+debates and new directions. New
+York: Oxford University Press.
+18. Vohs, K.D., & Schooler, J.W.
+(2008). The value of believing in
+free will: Encouraging a belief in
+determinism
+increases
+cheating.
+Psychological Science, 19, 49-54.
+19. Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A.F.
+(2008). The origin and evolution of
+religious prosociality. Science, 322,
+58-62.
+20. Buss,
+A. H. (1980). Self-
+Consciousness and social anxiety.
+San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman.
+21. Beilock, S. L. & Carr, T. H. (2005).
+When high-powered
+people fail:
+Working memory and
+"choking
+under
+pressure"
+in math.
+Psychological Science, 16, 101-105.
+22. Allen, K. M., Blascovich, J., &
+Mendes,
+W.B
+(2002).
+Cardiovascular reactivity and the
+presence of pets, friends, and
+727-739.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021346
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021347.md

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021347"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021347.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 2082
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+Inferring Minds Where None
+Can Be Seen
+The social brain seeks
+connections with others. But what is the
+foundation that we use to build such
+connections? We experience empathy as
+a form of emotional resonance and
+understanding of other people. This
+connection allows us to comfort and
+support and celebrate with others. Being
+in tune with emotional states of others
+allows us to respond in ways that
+strengthen a group. But how do we
+understand the thoughts and goals of
+others? How do we predict choices and
+decisions to facilitate cooperation in
+groups? Anthropomorphism is the basis
+for predicting behavior and thoughts and
+goals. Nick Epley discusses how
+anthropomorphism is rooted in an
+egocentric view of others. Moreover our
+view of others is not confined to the
+others that are people. It is perhaps
+reflective of the deep and fundamental
+nature of anthropomorphism in the
+social brain that its anthropomorphic
+inferences about agents can be derived
+from observed behavior, allowing us to
+understand "minds" where none may
+exist, as in mechanical toys or alarm
+clocks. Of course we tend to understand
+those minds by thinking they are just
+like us.
+Even when there is no agent to
+be seen, events in the world may be
+understood by attributing them to unseen
+agents. During World War II, the
+bombing of London was demonstrably
+random, but citizens of London could
+not help but discern intentional patterns
+in the attacks. As Epley points out,
+hurricanes and floods are even today
+attributed to the hand of God, perhaps an
+angry God. Clark Gilpin discusses how
+religions may use this aspect of the
+Page | 101
+social brain to achieve an understanding
+of God and what God wants. This kind
+of anthropomorphism can be taken to
+different metaphoric extremes in
+personifying God as father or friend.
+But an overly concrete personification
+may have costs perhaps diminishing the
+universality and pervasiveness of God in
+other religions. Thus religions may
+differ in theological perspective on the
+value of the anthropomorphic impulse
+inherent in the social brain.
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021347
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021348.md

@@ -0,0 +1,114 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021348"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021348.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
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+---
+
+# house-oversight-021348
+
+- God relight a
+anthropomorphisme peremon
+faithfune Edwards nonhumanmodern
+È psychological fire
+Chapter 11™
+Anthropomorphism: Human
+Connection to a Universal Society
+When Jonathan Edwards, an
+angular New England minister in his late
+11 The lead author, Clark Gilpin, Ph.D., is the
+Margaret E. Burton Professor of the History of
+Christianity at the University of Chicago
+Divinity School. Clark studies the cultural
+history of theology in England and America
+from the seventeenth century to the present.
+From 1990 to 2000, he served as dean of the
+Divinity School, and from 2000 to 2004 he
+directed the Martin Marty Center, the Divinity
+School's institute for advanced research in all
+fields of the academic study of religion. His
+current research projects include a book with the
+working title Alone with the Alone: Solitude in
+American Religious and Literary History, which
+explores ways in which the spiritual discipline of
+solitary writing-autobiographic narratives,
+journals, and letters-shaped the careers of
+major New England intellectuals of the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
+Anthropomorphic representations of
+God make many modern people very nervous,
+including many religious people. Attributing
+human-like ideas and emotions to the
+comprehending powers of the universe not only
+seems out of step with modern science but also a
+presumptuous confinement of the world within
+merely human needs and capacities. Yet, the
+impulse to speak anthropomorphically about our
+"ultimate environment" has vigorously persisted
+into the modern age. Rather than dismissing
+anthropomorphism as an outmoded way of
+thinking, this essay adopts a historical approach
+to rethink why anthropomorphism exhibits this
+perennial capacity to focus the human ethical
+imagination on our relations with and obligations
+to the universe within which we live.
+Page | 102
+thirties, mounted the narrow steps into
+the pulpit on July 8, 1741, the sermon he
+was about to preach would become one
+of the most famously electrifying
+orations in American history, "Sinners in
+the Hands of an Angry God." Edwards
+preached this sermon during the massive
+transatlantic religious revival that gave
+rise to Methodism in England and came
+to be known in the American colonies as
+"the Great Awakening." This was not
+the familiar pulpit of his congregation in
+Northampton, Massachusetts, but rather
+the church at Enfield, a town that had
+gained notoriety for stubbornly resisting
+the exhortations of previous preachers of
+spiritual awakening. From his scriptural
+text— "their foot shall slide in due time"
+(Deut. 32: 35)—Edwards drew the
+doctrine that "there is nothing that keeps
+wicked men, at any one moment, out of
+hell, but the mere pleasure of God."
+Sinners living here and now, Edwards
+declared, were "the objects of that very
+same anger and wrath of God, that is
+expressed in the torments of hell," and
+that wrath was an annihilating fire that
+already "burns against them; their
+damnation does not slumber; the pit is
+prepared; the fire is made ready...to
+receive them." In a notorious image,
+Edwards portrayed God dangling the
+sinner's soul over the fires of hell like a
+spider on a single, slender filament of its
+web. The sermon achieved stunning
+results, as recorded in the diary of one of
+those present, Stephen Williams:
+"before the sermon was done, there was
+a great moaning and crying out
+throughout the whole house what shall
+I do to be saved; oh, I am going to hell;
+oh, what shall I do for a Christ." The
+"shrieks and cries were piercing and
+amazing," Williams reported, and the
+scene was so tumultuous that Edwards
+had to stop before finishing his sermon.'
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021348
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021349.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021349"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021349.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
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+---
+
+As the classic American example
+of fire-and-brimstone Protestant
+preaching, "Sinners in the Hands of an
+Angry God" depends, for its effect, on
+anthropomorphism: ascribing human
+form and attributes-hands, emotions,
+and purposive agency-to nonhuman
+phenomena. Anthropomorphism has
+been a hotly debated feature of religion
+since classical antiquity. But, in the
+modern world, religious
+anthropomorphism has become
+especially controversial, while, at the
+same time, also becoming a crucial
+concept in modern theories about the
+very nature of religion." Modern
+objections to anthropomorphism have
+taken two major forms. First, traditions
+within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
+have long opposed the worship of
+"idols," and regarded anthropomorphism
+as a dangerous assault against genuine
+piety and properly theological
+understanding of existence. In the
+modern period these religious objections
+against anthropomorphism have
+eventuated not only in sophisticated
+intellectual polemics against
+anthropomorphic concepts of God but
+also in popular movements of
+iconoclasm, which protested against
+anthropomorphic representations of the
+divine and sometimes physically
+destroyed anthropomorphic images.
+Second, the rise and development of
+modern science has emphasized the
+regularity of the processes that structure
+the natural world. And even when these
+orderly processes were described as
+natural "laws" — a term with obvious
+anthropomorphic connotations-they
+have generally been understood in ways
+that are thoroughly impersonal and
+lacking any intrinsic purpose or design.
+Hence, modern science has generated
+numerous questions about religious
+Page | 103
+interpretations of influence on the course
+of nature by divine ideas and purposes.
+Since the late nineteenth century, many
+instances of the so-called "warfare"
+between science and theology have
+turned on the issue of whether any
+scientific plausibility could be attached
+to concepts of a divine mind, purpose, or
+intention that guided or ordered the
+structure of the universe."* According to
+the philosopher Charles Taylor, the
+transition from perceptions of a divinely
+ordered, purposive universe to an
+"impersonal order" of nature marked a
+pivotal change that, especially since the
+eighteenth century, has shaped "a secular
+age" among the societies of the modern
+West. In short, anthropomorphism has
+not only become a source of tension
+within religions but also something of an
+impasse between religious and scientific
+interpretations of the universe.
+Nonetheless, anthropomorphic
+assumptions remain vigorously present
+in many of the modern forms of
+theology, spiritual practice, and religious
+art, a persistence that suggests the
+strength of the psychological and social
+functions performed by
+anthropomorphic representation.
+In light of these longstanding
+controversies about religious
+anthropomorphism, the graphically
+anthropomorphic, spider-dangling deity
+of Edwards's sermon would seem to
+offer a good test case for understanding
+how anthropomorphic religious language
+works in the modern era. Such an
+understanding begins with one of the
+central themes of this book, namely, the
+powerful human motivation to establish
+and maintain social connections.
+Anthropomorphism extends this drive
+for social connection beyond the
+boundaries of human societies by
+attributing human characteristics to
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021349
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021350.md

@@ -0,0 +1,114 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021350"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021350.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3405
+ocr_status: "ok"
+document_type: "other"
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+---
+
+nonhuman phenomena. In this way,
+anthropomorphic language incorporates
+human society in a web of ethical
+obligations that connect to the natural
+environment and, by imaginative
+extension, to the universe as a whole.
+Although the drive toward social
+connection is a general human trait,
+however, persons neither seek nor find
+satisfaction in a generalized sense of
+connection. Instead, satisfying social
+connections are sought and experienced
+in terms of the social norms and values
+of particular historical and cultural
+settings. Likewise, anthropomorphism,
+as an inferred social connection to the
+nonhuman, takes shape and becomes
+persuasive in terms of historically and
+culturally specific assumptions about
+society and social relations. This
+chapter will, therefore, step back from
+"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,"
+in order to describe how contemporary
+scholarship in social neuroscience and in
+ce and in
+the history of religions provides a fresh
+point of view on the workings of
+anthropomorphic perception and then
+test that interpretive model by
+reappraising Edwards's famous sermon
+in its historical context.
+The Boundary of the Human
+The line between the human and
+the nonhuman is, perhaps, the most
+consequential presupposition that any
+society, group, or individual adopts
+about life in the world. The way various
+cultures draw this line, between "us" and
+"the other," has shaped civilizations and
+their goals as well as the norms of
+personal conduct and identity. Although
+concepts of the human have a long and
+contentious philosophical history, people
+in their everyday lives show remarkable
+consensus in the features they use to
+define "human." Central to this process
+of perceiving the human is a perception
+Page | 104
+of mind in other agents, including the
+presence of goal-directed agency,
+emotions such as anger, guilt, or pride, a
+capacity for self-awareness, and free
+will. As Nick Epley demonstrated in the
+preceding chapter, the perception of
+these distinctively human traits-"seeing
+invisible minds" —is a psychological
+mechanism with tremendous influence
+on the way humans order and understand
+their social environment.
+Mind perception is such a
+powerful tool of inductive inference,
+however, that it regularly crosses the line
+it has itself drawn between the human
+and the nonhuman. Scholars from a
+wide array of disciplines have long
+observed humans' anthropomorphic
+tendency to see nonhuman things or
+events as humanlike, imbuing the real or
+imagined behavior of nonhuman
+phenomena with human motivations,
+agency, and emotions. By perceiving
+the world in terms of human capacities
+and social relationships,
+anthropomorphism builds a complex
+system of analogies that uses knowledge
+of what it is like to be a person, in order
+to interpret the behavior of animals, the
+function of technological devices, the
+operation of complex social systems
+such as "the market," or natural
+occurrences such as violent weather
+patterns or catastrophic events." Hence,
+anthropomorphism, as a process of
+inference that not only draws but also
+crosses the line between the human and
+the nonhuman, has very substantial
+consequences for the human sense of
+connection to nonhuman animals, to
+larger ecological systems, and to the
+structure of the universe taken as a
+whole.
+Contemporary psychological
+research has created an intellectual space
+that opens the phenomenon of
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021350
+

cleaned/house-oversight-nov/21/house-oversight-021351.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+document_id: "house-oversight-021351"
+source_file: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021351.md"
+dataset: "house-oversight-nov"
+pages: 1
+chars: 3420
+ocr_status: "ok"
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+---
+
+anthropomorphism to fresh possibilities
+for interpretation that are especially
+important for understanding its role in
+the human spiritual traditions in
+modernity, as well as the controversies
+surrounding that role. This research
+proposes that a single set of
+psychological mechanisms is likely to
+explain when people perceive a mind at
+work in an encountered phenomenon,
+regardless of whether the thing in
+question is a god, a machine, an animal,
+another person, or an uncanny sequence
+of events. From this perspective, the
+psychological process of
+anthropomorphic inference works in
+concert with two other motivational
+mechanisms: the need to interact
+effectively with nonhuman phenomena
+in our environment and the desire to
+establish social connections with other
+humans."' The phrase anthropomorphic
+inference fails to capture, however, the
+interactive dynamism that infuses a
+person's perception that a mind is at
+work in another agent. Put more
+strongly, our sense that mind is present
+in the other is, in no small measure, the
+sense that we are communicating. The
+absence of this communicative
+dimension of mind perception is
+precisely the tragedy in the family of an
+Alzheimer's patient-the loss of
+reciprocal recognition. As Tanya
+Luhrmann vividly illustrates in the next
+chapter, religious anthropomorphism
+builds on the notion that this
+communicative reciprocity extends
+beyond the boundary of human society
+into the wider environment and includes
+social connection and communication
+with the divine.
+Anthropomorphism adds an
+obvious but important twist to these
+psychological mechanisms: whenever a
+person ascribes human attributes to a
+Page | 105
+nonhuman phenomenon, the person
+nonetheless continues to perceive it as
+nonhuman. When, for instance, a pet
+owner observes a dog's reliability and
+infers that this behavior arises from the
+dog's faithfulness, the owner does not go
+on to say that the dog is human. Indeed,
+an indispensable aspect of an
+anthropomorphic way of seeing Fido's
+faithfulness is that the person also
+continues to see Fido as a dog. This dual
+perception is even more pronounced in a
+parallel illustration: a person observes
+the everyday reliability of gravity and
+infers that this arises from faithfulness at
+the heart of the natural order. Both
+illustrations indicate a close connection
+of anthropomorphism to metaphor, in
+which persons understand one kind of
+thing in terms of another by identifying a
+feature that bridges their difference
+without eliminating it. The specific
+feature, in this case faithfulness, posits a
+point of comparison that enables a
+familiar human capacity for loyalty to
+enable interpretation of another,
+unfamiliar or alien phenomenon. The
+illustrations further suggest that Fido's
+faithfulness is what could be called weak
+anthropomorphism, because one could
+plausibly argue that dogs and humans
+actually do share a capacity for
+faithfulness. We perceive that, as
+mammals, they exhibit many behavioral
+similarities. By contrast, the perception
+of faithfulness as an attribute of the
+natural order is strong
+anthropomorphism, because it makes a
+far more daring inference in its effort to
+draw an analogy that produces insight or
+knowledge about the communicative
+reciprocity of the human and the
+nonhuman. Religions, as Edwards's
+sermon illustrates, build primarily on
+strong anthropomorphism in order to
+propound communicative social
+HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021351
+