Safety in Sosa

Synthese - What is the relationship between virtue and safety? This paper argues that Sosa’s positions in A Virtue Epistemology and in Judgment and Agency regarding this question are, despite...     

Can performance epistemology explain higher epistemic value?

Synthese - Judgment and Agency contains Sosa’s latest effort to explain how higher epistemic value of the sort missing from an unwitting clairvoyant’s beliefs might be a special case of...     

Aggregating with reason(s)

Judgment aggregation is naturally applied to the modeling of collective attitudes. In the individual case, we represent agents as having not just beliefs, but also as supporting them with reasons. Can the Judgment Aggregation help model a concept of collective reason? I argue that the resources of the standard judgment aggregation framework are insufficiently general. I develop a generalization of the framework that improves along this dimension. In the new framework, new aggregation rules become available, as well as a natural account of collective reasons.     

Validity study of the Moral Judgment Test in Physical Education: development and preliminary validation

Teaching ethical behavior is an aspect of physical education. The purpose of the study was to present the construction and to estimate validity of a test which assesses physical education students' moral judgment, the Moral Judgment Test in Physical Education. The sample comprised 281 male and female participants (95 in Grades 7 to 9, 92 in Grades 10 to 12, and 94 university students), who completed Lind's Moral Judgment Test and the Moral Judgment Test-PE version. The validity of the latter was assessed using four criteria of Lind's moral theory. Analysis indicated that the Moral Judgment Test-PE had adequate construct validity and correlated positively, although relatively weakly, with the original test, so the new version has sufficient construct validity to be used in physical education.     

Critical thinking skills and reflective judgment development: Redefining the aims of higher education

Educators who agree that critical thinking and intellectual development are appropriate aims of higher education do not always agree on what constitutes good thinking. This study examined the relationship between two constructs that attempt to describe that aim: critical thinking as defined by the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and a stage model of adolescent and adult intellectual development described as reflective judgment. In a 2 × 4 design, 119 women students at four educational levels were matched on high and low extremes of critical thinking scores and were compared on the basis of their scores on the Reflective Judgment Interview.The results indicate: (a) a significant main effect for educational level: students at higher educational levels achieved higher scores on the reflective judgment measure; (b) a main effect for critical thinking: high critical thinking subjects out-performed low critical thinking subjects on the Reflective Judgment Interview; and (c) while low critical thinking subjects were homogeneously low in reflective judgment levels, high critical thinking subjects had significantly greater variability of Reflective Judgment Interview scores.     

The Relationship Between Personality Traits and Reflective Judgment Among Female Students

Forty-three female undergraduate and graduate students preparing for careers as educators provided Omnibus Personality Inventory and Reflective Judgment Interview data. The sample included 14 seniors, 15 master's candidates, and 14 doctoral candidates. Each educational level group included participants with a range of intellectual disposition scores as measured by the Omnibus Personality Inventory. Scores on six scales of the Omnibus Personality Inventory correlated significantly with Reflective Judgment Interview scores (p < .05): thinking introversion, response bias, altruism, autonomy, complexity, and theoretical orientation. These findings support the conclusion that postformal reasoning, as described in P. M. King and K. S. Kitchener's (1994) reflective judgment model of cognitive development, is related to measurable personality traits.     

Structure and Content: The Relationship Between Reflective Judgment and Laypeople's Viewpoints

A neglected research area involving the relationship between structure and content in thinking is explored in this study. Fifty-nine adults participated in initial (1986–88) and follow-up (1993–94) interviews on Reflective Judgment (RJ) dilemmas devised by Kitchener and King. An earlier study by A.-M. Pirttilä-Backman and A. Kajanne (2001) showed that Reflective Judgment mean scores were higher in the second interview round than those in the first. One of the Kitchener and King dilemmas on food additives was investigated further. In another study using the same data, A. Kajanne and A.-M. Pirttilä-Backman (1996) presented 4 categories of standpoints (Harmful, Safe, Both, and Neither) on food additives that were apparent in both interviews. A shift from the more clear-cut (Harmful and Safe) to the more moderate (Both and Neither) standpoints was detected between the 2 studies. The results of these two studies are utilized here in investigating the connection between form and content in thinking. In both interviews the mean stage scores on Reflective Judgment differed according to the standpoint taken. Stages 4 and 5 formed a dividing line: those under this line chose one of the clear-cut standpoints more often than those above it. Some contents were independent of the stage scores, but others were closely linked to them.     

The law of categorical judgment (corrected) extended: a note on Rosner and Kochanski (2009)

Rosner and Kochanski (2009) noticed an inconsistency in the mathematical statement of the Law of Categorical Judgment and derived "the valid equation, the Law of Categorical Judgment (Corrected)" (p. 125). The purpose of this comment is to point out that the law can be corrected in many different ways, leading to substantially different equations. The different versions have different consequences for the predicted distributions of the responses and, hence, for fitting real data. Some of these consequences are unexpected and sometimes undesirable. Researchers should be aware of the different possibilities as they may lead to pronouncedly different accounts of given data.     

The moral judgment test: comments on Villegas de Posada's critique

The Moral Judgment Test is an operationalization of Kohlberg's notion of moral judgment competence and Piaget's two-aspect model of behavior and thus differs from tests of preferred moral orientations and Kohlberg's own Stage measurement. As this best presents counter-arguments to be rated in regard to their moral quality, it is a difficult task for many, and the C score reflects the respondents' competence to cope with the task. Validation studies of 27 language versions and thirty years of use in research and evaluation studies have indicated the Moral Judgment Test is valid and useful for assessing affective and cognitive aspects of moral behavior for research and evaluation.     

The Development of Implicit Epistemologies During Early and Middle Adulthood

This study examined the development of implicit epistemologies of Finnish adults during the last ten years. It was hypothesized that specific adult experiences are stimulating for development. Moreover, a person's exploratory orientation was hypothesized to be related to development. Kitchener and King's model and method of Reflective Judgment provided tools to study adolescents' and adults' epistemologies and their possible development. Participants (N = 59) were given initial (1986–1988) and follow-up (1993–1994) Reflective Judgment interviews. The age range was from 24–50 years in the follow-up groups. The Reflective Judgment mean stage scores clearly increased during the two study periods (M₁ = 4.64,M₂ = 5.10; F(1, 58) = 32.82, p = .000). Education, in particular education beyond a person's primary profession/occupation, was a strong predictor of development. Also, encountering diversity and exploratory orientation were related to development, but their connections were more complicated. No gender differences were found. The results support the idea that positive changes in thinking and reasoning take place during adulthood.     

小学生预见性偏差及其削弱

采用三种不同去偏差方法,对不同年龄儿童的预见性偏差及削弱进行探讨。实验结果发现,二年级和三年级出现了预见性偏差,五年级没有出现预见性偏差;对于二年级儿童,只有基于理论的去偏差方法才能削弱预见性偏差。而三年级儿童,三种方法都能削弱预见性偏差。结果说明帮助他们建立正确的元认知理论可以有效提高他们元认知监测水平。     

小学生预见性偏差及其削弱

采用三种不同去偏差方法,对不同年龄儿童的预见性偏差及削弱进行探讨。实验结果发现,二年级和三年级出现了预见性偏差,五年级没有出现预见性偏差;对于二年级儿童,只有基于理论的去偏差方法才能削弱预见性偏差。而三年级儿童,三种方法都能削弱预见性偏差。结果说明帮助他们建立正确的元认知理论可以有效提高他们元认知监测水平。     

A revised law of comparative judgment

In contrast to Thurstone's Law of Comparative Judgment, a model in which a comparison pair and its complement are assumed to give rise to two different distributions of differences is considered. The consequences of this revised model on scaling problems is developed.The research in this article was supported jointly by the Army, Navy, and Air Force under contract with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.     

学会感判断相对精确性的研究范式与指标

学会感削断是个体对正在学或刚学过的材料的学习程度的判断,它是元认知监控的重要形式.本文介绍了学会感判断研究的LJR范式与PRAM范式,分析了学会感判断相对精确性指标Gamma系数及其变式的应用与优缺点,最后针对指标的使用和发展提出了建议.     

A solution for case iii of the law of comparative judgment

A solution for Case III of the Law of Comparative Judgment, modeled after Thurstone's solution for Case IV but eliminating the restrictive assumption of relatively equal discriminal dispersions, is developed.     

学习次数和材料难度对学习判断绝对准确性的影响

本研究采用5（学习次数）×2（材料难度）被试内设计,考察材料难度和学习次数对即刻和延迟学习判断绝对准确性的影响。45名大学生被试参加实验,共收集有效数据37个。结果表明：（1） 即刻条件下,高、低难度词对都出现了练习伴随低估效应;（2） 延迟条件下,高、低难度词对均未出现练习伴随低估效应。对低难度词对的学习判断准确预测了回忆成绩,高难度词对则出现了练习伴随高估效应;（3） 随着学习次数的增加,不同难度词对在即刻条件下的练习伴随低估效应趋于消失,延迟条件下高难度词对的练习伴随高估效应趋于消失。     

Representational gravity: Empirical findings and theoretical implications

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Judgment of the location of a previously viewed moving or stationary target is often displaced in the direction of implied gravitational attraction, and this has...     

Lack of degradation in visuospatial perception of line orientation after one night of sleep loss

Sleep deprivation impairs a variety of cognitive abilities including vigilance, attention, and executive function. Although sleep loss has been shown to impair tasks requiring visual attention and spatial perception, it is not clear whether these deficits are exclusively a function of reduced attention and vigilance or if there are also alterations in visuospatial perception. Visuospatial perception and sustained vigilance performance were therefore examined in 54 healthy volunteers at rested baseline and again after one night of sleep deprivation using the Judgment of Line Orientation Test and a computerized test of psychomotor vigilance. Whereas psychomotor vigilance declined significantly from baseline to sleep-deprived testing, scores on the Judgment of Line Orientation did not change significantly. Results suggest that documented performance deficits associated with sleep loss are unlikely to be the result of dysfunction within systems of the brain responsible for simple visuospatial perception and processing of line angles.     

The Ways of Judgment: The Bampton Lectures, 2003 – Oliver O'Donovan

Book reviewed:
The Ways of Judgment: The Bampton Lectures, 2003 , Oliver O'Donovan, Eerdmans 2005 (0-8028-2920-1), xv + 330 pp., hb $35.00/£19.95     

Let me take the wheel: Illusory control and sense of agency

Illusory control refers to an effect in games of chance where features associated with skilful situations increase expectancies of success. Past work has operationalized illusory control in terms of subjective ratings or behaviour, with limited consideration of the relationship between these definitions, or the broader construct of agency. This study used a novel card-guessing task in 78 participants to investigate the relationship between subjective and behavioural illusory control. We compared trials in which participants (a) had no opportunity to exercise illusory control, (b) could exercise illusory control for free, or (c) could pay to exercise illusory control. Contingency Judgment and Intentional Binding tasks assessed explicit and implicit sense of agency, respectively. On the card-guessing task, confidence was higher when participants exerted control than in the baseline condition. In a complementary model, participants were more likely to exercise control when their confidence was high, and this effect was accentuated in the pay condition relative to the free condition. Decisions to pay were positively correlated with control ratings on the Contingency Judgment task, but were not significantly related to Intentional Binding. These results establish an association between subjective and behavioural illusory control and locate the construct within the cognitive literature on agency.