Two experiments examining effects of eye movements on episodic memory retrieval are reported. Thirty seconds of horizontal saccadic eye movements (but not smooth pursuit or vertical eye movements) preceding testing resulted in selective enhancement of episodic memory retrieval for laboratory (Experiment 1) and everyday (Experiment 2) events. Eye movements had no effects on implicit memory. Eye movements were also associated with more conservative response biases relative to a no eye movement condition. Episodic memory improvement induced by bilateral eye movements is hypothesized to reflect enhanced interhemispheric interaction, which is associated with superior episodic memory (S. D. Christman & R. E. Propper, 2001). Implications for neuropsychological mechanisms underlying eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (F. Shapiro, 1989, 2001), a therapeutic technique for posttraumatic stress disorder, are discussed.

Is moral cognition rational or intuitive? This paper tests two competing theories of moral cognition: rational (i.e., Piaget and Kohlberg) vs. intuitive (i.e., Shweder and Haidt) through an investigation of the relationships of each to Haidt’s pluralistic moral theory. This theory claims that, in addition to an individualizing foundation (i.e., justice and harm avoidance), morality also includes a binding foundation (i.e., group and authority deference). Three-hundred and seventy-one undergraduates from two colleges in Maine (USA) completed a survey comprised of measures of rational and intuitive cognition, political orientation, disgust sensitivity, and the individualizing and binding moral foundations. The study found that rational thinking was the strongest predictor for both of the individualizing (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity) and two of the three binding moral foundations (ingroup/loyalty and authority/respect). Political orientation and disgust sensitivity, found in past studies to be related to these two moral foundation subscales were related, but more weakly, relative to rationality.  While Haidt claims that moral cognition is intuitive, we found a more complex picture: low rational and high intuitive scores are characteristic of the binding moral foundations but the opposite is true of the individualizing moral foundations.

Ramachandran (1995) theorised that the left hemisphere (LH) is specialised for making a single and consistent interpretation of the self and the world, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) is responsible for monitoring anomalies in reference to these interpretations. If the anomalous information reaches a threshold, it interacts with the LH to update these interpretations or beliefs. Because mixed handers may have greater degrees of interhemispheric interaction compared to strong handers, they may have a lower threshold for updating beliefs. Two previous studies found this to be the case (Niebauer, Aselage, & Schutte, 2002a; Niebauer, Christman, & Reid, 2002b). Because monitoring one's beliefs may involve metacognitive processes, i.e., cognitions about cognitions, this model was extended to help explain individual differences in understanding self-referential concepts. In the first two studies, mixed-handed participants displayed a greater understanding of self-reference using a conceptual description of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. In a third study, mixed-handed participants displayed greater appreciation for self-referential works of M. C. Escher. Implications for a neuropsychological model of metacognition are discussed.

It has been suggested that strongly handed individuals have attenuated systems for updating beliefs compared to mixed handers (Niebauer, Aselage, & Schutte, 2002). The current research extended this theory to individual differences in updating beliefs concerning our origins. Although the theory of evolution has gained overwhelming success in the sciences, a significant percentage of the population believes in biblical creationist accounts of human origins that are inconsistent with accepted, contemporary scientific views. If strongly handed individuals possess attenuated systems for updating beliefs, they might be more likely to believe in creationism. In two studies, strongly handed participants were more likely to believe in creationism while mixed-handed participants were more likely to believe in evolution. A model of how interhemispheric interaction functions in maintaining and updating beliefs is discussed. Specifically, mixed-handedness seems to be associated with a lower threshold for updating beliefs.

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Numerous polls conducted in the United States on the subject of the diversity of life on earth show an approximate 50/50 split between belief in biological evolution and belief in biblical creationism. Hypotheses generated to explain this have focused primarily on cognitive and cultural characteristics of individuals who reject Darwinian evolutionary theory. To date the consideration of affective characteristics has been lacking. In this exploratory study, the cultural measures of church attendance and belief in God, the cognitive measure of Need for Cognitive Closure and the affective measures of fear and disgust all correlate with denial of evolutionary theories. Limits and implications of exploring the affective motivations of cognitions will be discussed.

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