Being realistic about motivation

Philosophical Studies - T.M. Scanlon’s ‘reasons fundamentalism’ is thought to face difficulties answering the normative question—that is, explaining why it’s...     

Cut-free common knowledge

Starting off from the infinitary system for common knowledge over multi-modal epistemic logic presented in [L. Alberucci, G. Jäger, About cut elimination for logics of common knowledge, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 133 (2005) 73–99], we apply the finite model property to “finitize” this deductive system. The result is a cut-free, sound and complete sequent calculus for common knowledge.     

Being perceived as a knowledge sender or knowledge receiver: A multistudy investigation of the effect of age on knowledge transfer

As a result of demographic changes, workforces are becoming older and more age diverse. While interactions between workers from different age groups can provide opportunities for mutual learning through bidirectional knowledge transfer, research has yet to investigate how age influences knowledge transfer between age‐diverse colleagues. Building on the organizational theory of age effects, we conducted two studies to examine how age influenced the roles assigned to individuals in knowledge transfer processes, that is, whether they were perceived as knowledge senders or knowledge recipients. In Study 1, we used an experimental vignette design with 450 employees to assess how age affected perceived ability and motivation to share and receive knowledge. Further, we tested the extent to which trustworthiness moderated these relationships. In Study 2, we extended these findings using a dyadic research design with data from 53 age‐diverse knowledge transfer dyads. We examined through which mechanisms the age of one's colleague affected one's knowledge transfer behaviour. We found that the age of one's colleague had a positive effect on one's knowledge receiving behaviour and a negative effect on one's knowledge sharing behaviour. Further, perceived ability to receive knowledge and perceived motivation to share knowledge mediated these effects.     

Speaker overestimation of communication effectiveness and fear of negative evaluation: Being realistic is unrealistic

Speakers systematically overestimate their communication effectiveness (Keysar & Henly, 2002). We argue that doing so is adaptive, reducing the risk of social anxiety and withdrawal from social situations. This hypothesis was tested by having speakers who scored low and high for fear of negative evaluation (FNE), a hallmark of social phobia, attempt to convey a specific meaning of ambiguous statements to a listener and then estimate their communication effectiveness. Low-FNE speakers consistently overestimated their effectiveness, expecting the listener to understand their intended meaning more often than listeners actually did. In contrast, high-FNE speakers’ estimates of communication effectiveness were consistent with the listener’s actual understanding. Signal detection analysis revealed that low- and high-FNE speakers were equally able to discriminate communication success from failure, but low-FNE speakers exhibited a stronger positive response bias. In conclusion, overestimating one’s communication effectiveness is adaptive, and accurate estimation is associated with dysfunction.     

Deduction chains for common knowledge

Deduction chains represent a syntactic and in a certain sense constructive method for proving completeness of a formal system. Given a formula , the deduction chains of are built up by systematically decomposing into its subformulae. In the case where is a valid formula, the decomposition yields a (usually cut-free) proof of . If is not valid, the decomposition produces a countermodel for . In the current paper, we extend this technique to a semiformal system for the Logic of Common Knowledge. The presence of fixed point constructs in this logic leads to potentially infinite-length deduction chains of a non-valid formula, in which case fairness of decomposition requires special attention. An adequate order of decomposition also plays an important role in the reconstruction of the proof of a valid formula from the set of its deduction chains.     

Organisation and evocation of the semantic knowledge: a non-abstractive approach

The majority of the models which attempt to explain category-specific deficits are based on the assumption that the conceptual knowledge is represented in a permanent way in memory (abstractive view). showed that a non-abstractive view would be more suitable to account for some of these cases. The present study aims to assess the hypotheses on the meaning evocation process as formulated by these authors, using a property verification task conducted on healthy subjects. The data were in agreement with these hypotheses and would be more hardly accounted in the frame of the abstractive view.     

Magnitude knowledge: the common core of numerical development

The integrated theory of numerical development posits that a central theme of numerical development from infancy to adulthood is progressive broadening of the types and ranges of numbers whose magnitudes are accurately represented. The process includes four overlapping trends: (1) representing increasingly precisely the magnitudes of non‐symbolic numbers, (2) connecting small symbolic numbers to their non‐symbolic referents, (3) extending understanding from smaller to larger whole numbers, and (4) accurately representing the magnitudes of rational numbers. The present review identifies substantial commonalities, as well as differences, in these four aspects of numerical development. With both whole and rational numbers, numerical magnitude knowledge is concurrently correlated with, longitudinally predictive of, and causally related to multiple aspects of mathematical understanding, including arithmetic and overall math achievement. Moreover, interventions focused on increasing numerical magnitude knowledge often generalize to other aspects of mathematics. The cognitive processes of association and analogy seem to play especially large roles in this development. Thus, acquisition of numerical magnitude knowledge can be seen as the common core of numerical development.     

Infants' knowledge about occlusion and containment events: a surprising discrepancy

The present research examined whether infants acquire general principles or more specific rules when learning about physical events. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated 4.5-month-old infants' ability to judge how much of a tall object should be hidden when lowered behind an occluder versus inside a container. The results indicated that at this age infants are able to reason about height in occlusion but not containment events. Experiment 3 showed that this latter ability does not emerge until about 7.5 months of age. The marked discrepancy in infants' reasoning about height in occlusion and containment events suggests that infants sort events into distinct categories, and acquire separate rules for each category.     

Being skeptical about the medical humanities

In this paper the author challenges the prevailing view that contemporary writing in the medical humanities is serving the needs of the various health care disciplines. The current medical humanities literature assumes that physicians are the appropriate target group. This is most notably the case within health care ethics literature. There appears to be an unexamined assumption that physician-centric approaches to clinical ethical decision-making are the standard by which appropriate ethical practice is judged. The author challenges this assumption and addresses the problems that this approach engenders. The medical humanities literature appears to reinforce hierarchical, patriarchal arrangements which are themselves not morally neutral.     

Being dishonest about our prejudices: moral dissonance and self-justification

We applied the moral dissonance reduction framework, used to explain the maintenance of a positive self-concept in dishonest behavior, to understand self-justification of prejudice. Participants identified ambiguously negative intergroup behaviors, then evaluated those behaviors when performed by others and themselves. As predicted by moral dissonance reduction, participants were less critical of their own behavior when considering others’ behaviors before their own. In a third study directly comparing prejudiced and dishonest behavior, participants’ responses showed the greatest self-justification in the initial question about their behavior regardless of the content of the question, whereas subsequent questions showed more stability, consistent with the idea that participants adjusted their initial self-reports to avoid damage to their self-concepts.     

Inconceivable: South African Lesbians Talking about Being Voluntary Childfree

Sex Roles - Little is known about lesbian couples who choose to be childfree at a time when motherhood is an increasingly available option, particularly given that they live in societies which...     

Children's knowledge of the earth: a new methodological and statistical approach

In the field of children’s knowledge of the earth, much debate has concerned the question of whether children’s naive knowledge—that is, their knowledge before they acquire the standard scientific theory—is coherent (i.e., theory-like) or fragmented. We conducted two studies with large samples (N = 328 and N = 381) using a new paper-and-pencil test, denoted the EARTH (EArth Representation Test for cHildren), to discriminate between these two alternatives. We performed latent class analyses on the responses to the EARTH to test mental models associated with these alternatives. The naive mental models, as formulated by Vosniadou and Brewer, were not supported by the results. The results indicated that children’s knowledge of the earth becomes more consistent as children grow older. These findings support the view that children’s naive knowledge is fragmented.