BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT FOR SYSTEMATIC DESENSITIZATION FOR COMMUNICATION APPREHENSION

This study reports two experiments designed to further our understanding of the effects of systematic desensitization (SD) training on college students. Experiment 1 demonstrates that students who participate in SD report significantly higher self-esteem after doing so. Experiment 2 provides behavioral support for SD. Using Mulac and Sherman's BASA scale, it was discovered that students who successfully completed the SD program exhibited more verbal fluency and less rigidity in their speeches than did those students who were originally as anxious but did not join the program. Also included was the measurement of a student's predisposition towards verbal behavior. Mortensen, Arntson, and Lustig's scale was used to measure this predisposition. The results showed, however, that students in SD did not differ significantly from those who chose not to join SD.     

WARRANT FOR NOTHING (AND FOUNDATIONS FOR FREE)?

My life consists in my being content to accept many things
(Wittgenstein On Certainty x344)
Two kinds of epistemological sceptical paradox are reviewed and a shared assumption, that warrant to accept a proposition has to be the same thing as having evidence for its truth, is noted. 'Entitlement', as used here, denotes a kind of rational warrant that counter-exempli.es that identi.cation. The paper pursues the thought that there are various kinds of entitlement and explores the possibility that the sceptical paradoxes might receive a uniform solution if entitlement can be made to reach sufficiently far. Three kinds of entitlement are characterised and given prima facie support, and a fourth is canvassed. Certain foreseeable limitations of the suggested anti-sceptical strategy are noted. The discussion is grounded, overall, in a conception of the sceptical paradoxes not as directly challenging our having any warrant for large classes of our beliefs but as crises of intellectual conscience for one who wants to claim that we do.