When to Self-Correct?: A Comparison of Two Procedures on Spelling Performance

We compared the effects of two self-correction procedures on the spelling performance of 5 elementary school students with learning disabilities. Previous studies consistently have demonstrated self-correction to be more effective than traditional approaches to spelling instruction. However, we could find no single-subject design experiments analyzing the procedural details of how or when self-correction should be conducted to be most effective. For 4 days each week students practiced a list of 20 spelling words by listening to an audiotape on which the weekly list was dictated and writing the words. For half of each week's words, students checked and self-corrected after attempting each word; for the other half of the list, the students self-corrected after attempting all 10 words. An alternating treatments design showed self-correction after each word to be more effective for acquisition of new spelling words as measured by end-of-the-week tests for all 5 students, and maintenance of previously studied spelling words as measured by 1-week maintenance tests for 4 of the 5 students.     

“A Place to Enter and in Which to Feel”: Reply to Cath,Levine, and Peltz

In this response, I clarify my argument for the utility of affectively organizing and containing work in the treatment of a traumatized child. I find myself in agreement with many of the comments of Peltz regarding the vitalizing aspects of the work and Levine’s discussion of scaffolding to promote development. I delineate my thinking in response to Cath’s queries about transference, Oedipal themes, and the value of interpretation.     

Response to Abrusán,Shaw, and Elbourne

In my book Category Mistakes (OUP 2013), I discuss a range of potential accounts of category mistakes and defend a pragmatic, presuppositional account of the phenomenon. Three commentators discuss the book: Márta Abrusán focuses on a comparison between my book and Asher’s Lexical Meaning in Context, suggesting that Asher’s theory has the advantage of accounting not only for category mistakes, but also for additional phenomena such as so-called ‘coertion’ and ‘co-predication’. I argue that Asher’s account of all three phenomena is deficient, and, moreover, that it is far from clear that the latter two phenomena are related to that of category mistakes. James Shaw challenges two of my arguments against the MBT view. I respond to these challenges. Paul Elbourne provides a novel argument in support of my account of category mistakes, involving multi-sentence discourses and ERP experiments. I show that it is not entirely straightforward for my account to explain this data, but that his argument does ultimately provide support for my view.     

Schizophrenic speech,slips of the tongue,and jargonaphasia: A reply to Fromkin and to Lecours and Vanier-Clément

Chaika (1974, Brain & Language, 1, 257–276) raised the possibility that speech judged “schizophrenic” by researchers results from an intermittent, cyclical aphasia. Fromkin (1975, Brain and Language, 2, 498–503) judged such speech as no different from normal error and even as proof of intactness of linguistic competence. These claims are examined. Lecours and Vanier-Clément (1976, Brain and Language, 3, 516–565), on the other hand, found it not normal, but different from jargonaphasia, a claim not wholly substantiated. Schizophrenic speech is found to be different from that of normals on both formal and intuitive grounds, contributing to new understanding of the differences between normal, pathological, and artistic language.     

Effects of Fourth and Second Graders’ Cross-Age Tutoring on Students’ Spelling

A quasi-experimental study examined some effects of cross-age tutoring on fourth grade tutors' and second grade tutees' ability to spell accurately and correct errors on their own rough drafts. Half of the participating tutors were trained in tutoring skills; half were not. All participants were given pre- and post-assessments. On dictated writing assessments, second graders improved significantly, although fourth graders did not. On a free writing assessment, both second and fourth graders had significant gain scores. Observations during tutoring sessions showed benefits for both tutors and tutees.     

Reply to Kurth,Crosby, and Basse’s review of Emotions,Values, and Agency

In this reply, I argue that the worries raised by Kurth and this coauthors are not fatal for the perceptual theory of emotions. A first point to keep in mind in discussing the analogy argument in favor of that account is that what counts is the overall balance of similarities and differences, given their respective weight. In any case, I argue that none of the alleged differences between sensory perceptual experiences and emotions are such as to rule out that emotions are a kind of perceptual experience which can confer epistemic justification of our evaluative beliefs. Finally, I suggest that the perceptual theory is in a position to nicely capture what happens when we disagree about evaluative issues.     

The Development of Reading and Spelling in Arabic Orthography: Two Parallel Processes?

The parallels between reading and spelling skills in Arabic were tested. One-hundred forty-three native Arab students, with typical reading development, from second, fourth, and sixth grades were tested with reading, spelling and orthographic decision tasks. The results indicated a full parallel between the reading and spelling performances within the second and fourth graders where the performance in the orthographic decision task was significantly lag behind. For the sixth graders, full parallel was found between the spelling and the orthographic decision performances with significant superiority of both performances on the reading performance. The results were discussed in light of developmental course of the orthographic representations and the impact of the specific orthographic features of the Arabic orthography on reading and spelling.     

Family, School, and Community Factors and Relationships to Racial–Ethnic Attitudes and Academic Achievement

This study examined family, school, and community factors and the relationships to racial–ethnic attitudes and academic achievement among 98 African American fourth-grade children. It has been posited that young people who feel better about their racial–ethnic background have better behavioral and academic outcomes, yet there is a need for more empirical tests of this premise. Psychometric information is reported on measures of parent, teacher, and child racial–ethnic attitudes. Path analysis was used to investigate ecological variables potentially related to children's racial–ethnic attitudes and achievement. Parental education and level of racial–ethnic pride were correlated and both were related to children's achievement though in the final path model, only the path from parental education level was statistically significant. Children whose teachers exhibited higher levels of racial–ethnic trust and perceived fewer barriers due to race and ethnicity evidenced more trust and optimism as well. Children living in communities with higher proportions of college-educated residents also exhibited more positive racial–ethnic attitudes. For children, higher racial–ethnic pride was related to higher achievement measured by grades and standardized test scores, while racial distrust and perception of barriers due to race were related to reduced performance. This study suggests that family, school, and community are all important factors related to children's racial–ethnic attitudes and also to their academic achievement.     

Threat to Whom? Conflict,Consensus, and Social Control

A number of observers have questioned the efficacy of model specifications designed to falsify the conflict perspective of crime control. Exploiting the quasi-experimental qualities of Cincinnati's recent race-related riot, this study employs interrupted time series techniques to evaluate a component of conflict theory, the racial threat hypothesis. In brief, the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) transfer function models indicate that, upon controlling for the potentially confounding effects of robbery offenses, the April 2001 riot led to a lasting increase in the level of robbery arrests. The implications of this investigation for distinguishing between the predictions of conflict and consensus theories of crime control are discussed.     

Love, Suspense, Sex, and Violence: Men’s and Women’s Film Predilections, Exposure to Sexually Violent Media, and their Relationship to Rape Myth Acceptance

This investigation addressed the relationship between men’s and women’s predilections for film with a love story, suspense, or sex and violence theme and how that predilection related to rape myth acceptance (RMA). Also examined was how men’s and women’s predilections, as they related to RMA, were moderated by exposure to different levels of sexually violent media based on a true story. Finally, the relationship between traditional attitudes and film predilection, as well as the relationship between film predilection and attitudes toward film editing, were investigated. Results indicate that men prefer film with sex and violence significantly more than women do, whereas women prefer love stories significantly more than men do. Those with sex and violence film predilections are more accepting of RMA than those with love story or suspense predilections. Women’s film predilections and their relationship to RMA attitudes are moderated to an extent by exposure to sexually violent media based on a true story, whereas men’s attitudes remain unaffected. Finally, those with sex and violence film predilections are less in favor of film editing than are those with suspense or love story predilections. Theoretical explanations for the findings are discussed and their implications.     

Integrating Job, Jesus’ Passion, and Buddhist Metta to Bring Meaning to the Suffering and Recovery from Breast Cancer

Coming face-to-face with death was a spiritual crisis. My family and I suffered individually and collectively during my treatment and recovery for locally advanced breast cancer. Like Job, I learned that it takes tremendous energy to ruminate about the causes of suffering and to protest innocence with little gains in wisdom. Wisdom came as I deeply experienced a passion narrative based on the life of Jesus with reference to the psychological benefits as extolled by Wilkes. The grueling experience of treatment for locally advanced breast cancer broke my body and forced me to experience Easter Saturday as I retreated to heal in the tomb. My physical and emotional healing of Easter Saturday included the Buddhist meditation of Metta and guided imagery that involved spiritual healing focussed on God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. My reflection on the story of Job, passion journaling and Buddhist meditation enabled me to physically, emotionally, and spiritually heal, even in the midst of chaos.     

Diminishing Returns to Income, Companionship – and Happiness

From philosophical and intuitive sources, I find three goods that should serve as ultimate ends in assessing a high quality of life: subjective well-being, human development, and justice. With acknowledged plural ends (we use them whether we acknowledge them or not), each takes its value from its scarcity relative to the other two – a version of diminishing marginal utility. Contrary to economists' belief that income (together with leisure) is the source of all utility, evidence shows that companionship, which does not pass through the market, has higher utility and contributes more to well-being than does income. But if money income has diminishing marginal utility, so does this competing good, companionship. With arguments drawn from the meaning of happiness, I show that happiness, too, may have diminishing marginal utility and that often it must rely for its hedonic and social value on such other goods as human development and justice.     

Why,and to What Extent,Is Sexual Infidelity Wrong?

Sexual infidelity is widespread, but it is also widely condemned, yet relatively little philosophical work has been done on what makes it wrong and how wrong it is. In this paper, I argue that sexual infidelity is wrong if it involves breaking a commitment to be sexually exclusive, which has special significance in the relationship. However, it is not necessarily worse than other kinds of infidelity, and the context in which it takes place ought to be considered. I finish the paper by looking at how the hegemonic norm of monogamy makes infidelity both more likely and more difficult to deal with.     

Dynamic doxastic logic: why,how, and where to?

We investigate the research programme of dynamic doxastic logic (DDL) and analyze its underlying methodology. The Ramsey test for conditionals is used to characterize the logical and philosophical differences between two paradigmatic systems, AGM and KGM, which we develop and compare axiomatically and semantically. The importance of Gärdenfors’s impossibility result on the Ramsey test is highlighted by a comparison with Arrow’s impossibility result on social choice. We end with an outlook on the prospects and the future of DDL.     

Information and Communication Technologies,Genes, and Peer-Production of Knowledge to Empower Citizens’ Health

The different and seemingly unrelated practices of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) used to collect and share personal and scientific data within networked communities, and the organized storage of human genetic samples and information—namely biobanking—have merged with another recent epistemic and social phenomenon, namely scientists and citizens collaborating as “peers” in creating knowledge (or peer-production of knowledge). These different dimensions can be found in joint initiatives where scientists-and-citizens use genetic information and ICT as powerful ways to gain more control over their health and the environment. While this kind of initiative usually takes place only after rights have been infringed (or are put at risk)—as the two cases presented in the paper show—collaborative scientists-and-citizens’ knowledge should be institutionally allowed to complement and corroborate official knowledge-supporting policies.     

Are Newsjunkies More Likely to Vote? Intrinsic Need for Orientation and Voter Registration,Intention to Vote,and Voter Conscientiousness

This study examined the newsjunkie characteristic—intrinsic need for orientation (INFO)—as a predictor of being registered to vote, intention to vote, and voter conscientiousness among a large sample of U.S. adults (N = 2,059), while controlling for media use, news consumption, political partisanship, and demographics. INFO assesses the extent to which people access news in their downtime, feel discomfort when they cannot get news, check news among the first things they do daily, and believe that following news connects them with others. The current study is the first to examine relationships between the sustained, psychological INFO trait and political participation. INFO rests upon theoretical frameworks of uses and gratifications and self-determination theory, both of which are employed in this study. INFO was positively correlated with being registered to vote, with intending to vote in the 2020 U.S. election, and with voter conscientiousness, even after controlling for numerous other variables. Additionally, INFO was still positively associated with the political participation variables after political news consumption was included as a mediator in three mediation analyses.     

Kierkegaard,MacIntyre and Narrative Unity—Reply to Lippitt

In a recent article in this journal, John Lippitt mounts a forceful argument against narrativist approaches to issues in personal identity and practical deliberation, with specific reference to the application of such approaches in the interpretation of Kierkegaard's writings. The present critical discussion piece addresses two points in Lippitt's argument. First, it seeks to meet Lippitt's challenge to clarify the notion of “a whole life” as this figures in narrativist positions. Second, it clarifies the sense in which narrative unity, and even selfhood, may be a matter of degree. It then uses this latter insight to sketch a defense of the claim that narrativity may indeed play a crucial role in Kierkegaard's distinction between ethical and aesthetic ways of life.     

The Relation of Exposure to Parental Criminal Activity,Arrest, and Sentencing to Children’s Maladjustment

We examined the psychosocial maladjustment of 32 children with an incarcerated parent from the child’s perspective as well as from the perspective of their caregiver. We focused on the relation between the incarcerated parent’s report of children’s exposure to parental criminal activity, arrest, and sentencing and caregivers’ and children’s self-reports of maladjustment. Results indicate that witnessing these events is associated with more behavior problems according to caregivers’ and children’s self-reports. Moreover, incarcerated parents’ reports of children’s exposure to these events predicted caregivers’ and children’s reports of maladjustment over a 6 month period. Our results also suggest that children with incarcerated mothers, in comparison to children with incarcerated fathers, are exposed to more of these events and may be experiencing greater maladjustment. Implications of these findings are discussed within a proactive context and the use of procedures that take children’s reactions to witnessing parental arrest and sentencing into consideration.