Speech identification and “knowing that you know”

Twenty-five Ss heard a random list and a context (food-elated) list of 50 words masked in white noise for a total of three trials each. The Ss were required to write the word and indicate their certainty that it was correct. Confidence rating accuracy (Type 2 d’) was greater for context than for random lists (p < .001). Probability correct also improved with context (p < .001). Unlike the context factor, repetitions led to greater probability correct (p < .001) but did not lead to changes in Type 2 d’. The results were interpreted as support for a feedback model of context and confidence rating accuracy.     

Why you don't have a “perfect right” to anything

This paper demonstrates why the kind of rights usually presumed in assertive training most probably do not exist and why acting as if such rights do exist proves problematic. It contrasts these improbable rights with legal rights which do exist for some people in some societies. It concludes by suggesting an alternative scheme, The Picnic Mentality, for dealing with problems others have attempted to address using the concept of rights.Hank Robb is Executive Director for the Pacific Institute for RET and Training Coordinator for the Counseling Psychology Program, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon.I wish to thank four anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.     

Can “I” prevent you from entering my mind?

Shaun Gallagher has actively looked into the possibility that psychopathologies involving “thought insertion” might supply a counterexample to the Cartesian principle according to which one can always recognize one’s own thoughts as one’s own. Animated by a general distrust of a priori demonstrations, Gallagher is convinced that pitting clinical cases against philosophical arguments is a worthwhile endeavor. There is no doubt that, if true, a falsification of the immunity to error through misidentification would entail drastic revisions in how we conceive the boundary between self and other. However, I argue that (1) the idea of unearthing an exception to the Cartesian thesis is, on further reflection, not a realistic prospect and that (2) this casts doubt on the attempt to conjoin first-person phenomenology and third-person cognitive science in the service of philosophical debates.     

“It can save you if you just forget”: Closeness and Competence as Conditions for Coping among Ugandan Orphans

This article explores the coping strategies of orphaned children and their caregivers supported by a community-based organization in a Ugandan slum area. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with eight orphans (aged 12 to 16 years) and their caregivers selected by the community-based organization. The children had experienced several co-occurring risk factors such as loss and separation, poverty, disease, and an unsafe environment. Most caregivers were extended family members. One caregiver was an unrelated foster carer. Three of the households were child-headed. Data were analysed using an adapted approach of Giorgio's (Hafting, 1995; Malterud, 2001) psychological-phenomenological method. Participating children from child-headed households lacked protective factors associated with closeness (i.e., supportive dyadic relationships). All the children in the study experienced competence in the arenas of school and household chores. Cultural advice on handling adversity, including ‘forgetting’, ‘accepting’ and ‘adjusting’, appears to contradict Western theories of coping. Sommerschild's theoretical model on the conditions for coping was effective in identifying conditions in children's lives that may impair their coping, self-worth, and resilience.     

What do you mean “This isn’t the question”?

This is a contribution to the symposium on Tim Scanlon’s Being Realistic about Reasons (2014). We have two aims here: First, we ask for more details about Scanlon’s meta-metaphysical view (about his notion of a domain, his criterion of existence, his ambition to remain ontologically thin, and on the role of pragmatic considerations in Scanlon’s picture), showing problems with salient clarifications. And second, we raise independent objections to the view – to its explanatory productivity, its distinctness, and the argumentative support it enjoys.     

“After you,sir!”: Substitution in Kant and Levinas

This paper compares the later Levinas’ notion of “substitution” with Kant’s account of substitution in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Kant’s account is modelled on the Christian doctrine of the vicarious substitution of Christ, and some recent commentators on Levinas have argued that Levinas’ account is also similar to this Christian doctrine. By bringing out what I see as major differences between the two accounts, I show that Levinas’ notion of substitution should not be understood in this way.     

Do you understand what you are reading?

This article discusses the concepts of literacy, theological literacy and literacy practices as a resource for understanding how tradition and faith/belief are intertwined. Against the background of recent elaborations of literacy within the field of literature and educational studies, the suggestion is made that “tradition” can be understood as a semiotic domain, i.e. a set of practices that recruits one or more modalities to communicate distinctive types of meanings. Theological literacy is accordingly defined as the ability to interpret, develop and communicate a theological semiotic domain. Literacy helps us to see that Christian faith/belief cannot be taught and acquired once and for all by learning a doctrinal content and a specific religious practice. At the same time, however, literacy nevertheless stresses the importance of knowing doctrinal content and religious practise, seeing that literacy is part of the process of shaping and construing faith and tradition.     

Orientations and motivations: Are you a “people person,” a “thing person,” or both?

Previous theory and research suggests that individuals selectively orient primarily toward the social environment (people) or toward the physical environment (things). These orientations can be conceptualized as motivation-based complexes that influence personal preferences and interests, with consequences for important life choices. This paper examined differential orientation in two studies, one with university students and another with children. Person-thing Orientation showed sex differences and was related to occupational choices in both age groups. For university students person-thing interests were linked to academic majors, and retention within programs focused on things (e.g., science and engineering). Sex differences were greater for TO than PO, but not for students majoring in engineering. Sex differences in selective orientations to the social and physical environments were similar in children (3rd and 6th grade) and university students, suggesting processes may be underway early and may be consequential for sex differences in interests and career trajectories for STEM.     

Tell me who you are,and I will tell you how you feel?

Surprisingly little is known about the suggested mediator role of emotional intelligence and mood‐regulation regarding the relationship between personality and subjective well‐being. Three independent samples were administered to investigate whether EI and mood‐regulation served as mediators for subjective well‐being beyond personality. Using structural equation modelling, the authors demonstrated the superior role of extraversion and neuroticism in explaining satisfaction with life, happiness, positive and negative affect. Consistent mediation effects were found for the trait meta‐mood of repair. Contrary to expectations, the remaining variables (attention, clarity, self‐efficacy of affect regulation) did not mediate the relationship between personality and well‐being; neither did they show substantial incremental validity in explaining variance in SWB. Results are discussed with regard to methodological issues and practical implications. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“If you’d wiggled A,then B would’ve changed”

This paper deals with the truth conditions of conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular class of problematic examples for semantic theories for these sentences. I will argue that the examples show the need to refer to dynamic, in particular causal laws in an approach to their truth conditions. More particularly, I will claim that we need a causal notion of consequence. The proposal subsequently made uses a representation of causal dependencies as proposed in Pearl (2000) to formalize a causal notion of consequence. This notion inserted in premise semantics for counterfactuals in the style of Veltman (1976) and Kratzer (1979) will provide a new interpretation rule for conditionals. I will illustrate how this approach overcomes problems of previous proposals and end with some remarks on remaining questions.     

When “I like you” indicates disagreement an experimental differentiation of information and affect

It was hypothesized that the independent manipulation of the informational content and the affective meaning of personal evaluations would indicate that both informational judgments and attraction responses are a joint function of the two stimulus components. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, each of 80 subjects was exposed to a videotape message from a stranger which was either affectively positive or negative and informationally positive or negative. Analysis of variance indicated that perceived similarity was influenced only by the informational variable (p < .0001) while attraction was influenced by both information (p < .0001) and affect (p < .002). It was suggested that the most inclusive theories of person perception and attraction will necessarily encompass elements of both cognitive and reinforcement formulations.     

Indiscriminate mothering as a contextual factor in aggressive-oppositional child behavior: “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t”

Fifty-two mother-child dyads took part in a parent training program to modify coercive, antisocial child behavior. Prior to intervention, scores on 14 measures of mother-child interaction and on an index of maternal community contacts (known as insularity) were obtained for each dyad. This index was used to divide the sample into two groups (noninsular) n=21; insular n=31). The interactional measures were then compared between the groups. Insular mothers were more aversive and indiscriminate than noninsular mothers in their use of aversive behavior toward their children, while their children were more aversive than noninsular children, especially in response to aversive maternal behavior. It was concluded that research and therapeutic work with deviant families should focus not only on immediate family interactions but also on the extrafamily environment in which these interactions take place.The research data reported in this paper were generated with support of Grant No. R01-1068-58 from the National Institute of Mental Health, Crime and Delinquency Section. The first author conducted the research while supported by a grant from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research.     

“I see what you mean”: Oral deaf individuals benefit from speaker's gesturing

Recent studies in the psychological literature reveal that cospeech gestures facilitate the construction of an articulated mental model of an oral discourse by hearing individuals. In particular, they facilitate correct recollections and discourse-based inferences at the expense of memory for discourse verbatim. Do gestures accompanying an oral discourse facilitate the construction of a discourse model also by oral deaf individuals trained to lip-read? The atypical cognitive functioning of oral deaf individuals leads to this prediction. Experiments 1 and 2, each conducted on 16 oral deaf individuals, used a recollection task and confirmed the prediction. Experiment 3, conducted on 36 oral deaf individuals, confirmed the prediction using a recognition task.     

“Knows what is good and bad”, “Can teach you things”, “Does lots of crosswords”: Children's knowledge about wisdom

Whereas a number of studies have investigated adult laypersons' understanding of the concept of wisdom, children's knowledge about wisdom has not yet been studied. A total of 461 Austrian elementary-school children filled out a questionnaire about wisdom. Results showed an increase in self-reported familiarity with the term “wisdom” from 43.0% in grade 1 to 92.1% in grade 4. Children's open definitions of wisdom as well as their wisdom-typicality judgements of a list of adjectives focused on cognitive aspects, especially fluid intelligence, and social aspects of wisdom, especially friendliness. Aspects involving reflection, such as learning from experience or perspective taking, were seldom mentioned. The frequency with which old age was judged as typical for wisdom increased across grades 1 to 4. Gender differences were mostly found in nominations of wise figures, where boys nominated male figures more often than girls.     

“Not with me you don't”: A story of narrative practice and dissociative disorder

This paper discusses issues relating to therapeutic practice based upon the narrative metaphor. A case of someone suffering the effects of Dissociative Identity disorder is used to illustrate the difficulties that clients can experience with the “expert” knowledge conception of therapy. The value of the “respectful” and “non-expert” emphasis of Narrative Practice emerges even when the therapist believes that he or she lacks expertise in the client's apparent “condition.” Three themes emanating from the case form the basis for the discussion: the client's experience of being recruited into accepting the diagnostic label of Dissociative Identity Disorder; the effects of being forced to accept a contract to eliminate self-abusive behaviour; and the therapist's dealing with a gun in the therapy room.     

Can you forgive? It depends on how happy you are

This paper examined how individual group status and happiness influence forgiveness. In Study 1, happiness was treated as a trait difference: highly happy people, compared with very unhappy people, were found to be more willing to forgive murderers. More important, an interaction effect between happiness and group status on forgiveness was found, that is, highly happy people tended to be more forgiving when either ingroup or outgroup members were killed; unhappy people, however, tended to be less forgiving about murder when ingroup rather than outgroup members were killed. In Study 2, happiness was treated as an emotional state difference: happiness, rather than sadness, was found to bring greater forgiveness. Moreover, consistent with the interaction effect displayed in Study 1, happy participants tended to forgive more when ingroup or outgroup members were hurt; sad participants tended to forgive less when ingroup members rather than outgroup members were hurt. Implications for connections between happiness, group membership, and forgiveness are discussed.