What are we doing to the earth's climate and what are we going to do about it?

Climatic considerations are critical if our planet is to survive. The environment, and in particular the atmosphere, is particularly sensitive to man. The time has come to act in favor of that which gives us life. This is why, in a field which knows no boundaries, only an international strategy can be effective.     

What are we doing to waiting list controls?

For ethical reasons waiting list controls have been preferred to no treatment controls, provided the wait is still shorter than that for routine services. However, could significant differences arise from the wait being detrimental rather than the intervention being beneficial? Despite the number of studies employing this design, few have analysed intervention trials from the perspective of the waiting list controls rather than the experimental group. A Full Day Stress Management Workshop programme which had run successfully in Birmingham, was repeated in three areas in the South East of England. The data from the four areas were reanalysed to assess progress within the control group and to compare the final assessment points for the two groups. The control group did not show any significant deterioration during the three month wait for their workshop. Three months after their respective workshops, scores in the control groups did not differ significantly from those of the experimental group.     

Whose voice are we hearing,really?

This article, written from the position of someone who has lived experience of therapy for ‘psychosis’ and an interest in participation, explores the degree to which qualitative research truly conveys the voice and perspective of research participants. By exploring five papers focused on diverse experiences of psychotherapy, from the perspective of clients and therapists, it draws out some of the tensions inherent in making interpretations and connections within research papers and the impact this may have on the quality of any conclusions drawn. Finally, it makes some suggestions for ways of meaningfully involving research participants in the process and argues for an ongoing dialogue to prevent our own assumptions and theoretical frameworks from obscuring the importance of this involvement to improve the quality of future research.     

Pictures, words, and sounds: from which format are we best able to reason?

The effect of presentation format on reasoning was studied with a sentence verification task. Background information was presented in single-format and combined conditions that included pictured, printed, or spoken versions of the stimulus items. In Experiment 1, a test sentence appeared together with the background at varied stimulus onset asynchronies, to study how format influences the acquisition of the stimulus information. In Experiments 2 and 3, however, the test sentence followed the presentation of the background, to test the effect of format on memory. Reaction time responses to the test sentences showed a consistent picture advantage. However, when participants responded to materials stored in memory, both pictured and spoken formats provided quicker responses in comparison to printed words, and the format difference was smaller than when materials were readily available on the screen. Multimedia presentations, when compared with single-format conditions, did not provide additional benefits.     

So, are we the massively lucky species?

We are in vehement agreement with most of Vaesen's key claims. But Vaesen fails to consider or rebut the possibility that there are deep causal dependencies among the various cognitive traits he identifies as uniquely human. We argue that "higher-order relational reasoning" is one such linchpin trait in the evolution of human tool use, social intelligence, language, and culture.     

Why are we good at detecting cheaters? A reply to Fodor

It is argued that the recent criticism by Fodor (Cognition 75 (2000) 29) of "cheater detection" in the Wason selection task is based upon a false presumption about what the task entails. Fodor compares two different ways of presenting the task, rather than two different task domains (social and non-social). Consequently, the conclusion that the selection task can tell us nothing about either the architecture or the history of cognition is invalid. Fodor's explanation of the Wason selection task is examined experimentally and compared to predictions derived from social contract theory (Cognition 31 (1989) 187). It is concluded that, although Fodor's variant of the Wason selection task improves performance, this improvement is independent of the task domain and is insufficient to account for the "cheater detection" effect.     

How do we know that we are unique?

This paper aims to examine the notion of uniqueness as one aspect of the self that is taken for granted in psychotherapy. This paper attempts to address the question 'how do we know that we are unique individuals?' and in so doing, points out some difficulties. One plausible, but not problem-free answer is the notion of privileged access. Some of the problems will be briefly outlined.     

What are we frightened of?

I am concerned to understand that relation to a situation which we call fearing it. Some say this cannot be done: it is a brute fact about us that we fear certain things and we understand another's fear when we see that he confronts a situation of this sort (a basic fear object) or one which he understandably associates with this sort. In Section I, I argue that being associated with a basic fear object will not usefully explain a current fear. In Section II, I argue that the obvious candidates for being basic fears will not do the required work. The notion should be rejected. I then argue that to fear an object is to take it as exhibiting one's lack of control and I proceed to describe the nature and content of this notion.     

How do we know what we are doing? Time, intention and awareness of action

Time is a fundamental dimension of consciousness. Many studies of the "sense of agency" have investigated whether we attribute actions to ourselves based on a conscious experience of intention occurring prior to action, or based on a reconstruction after the action itself has occurred. Here, we ask the same question about a lower level aspect of action experience, namely awareness of the detailed spatial form of a simple movement. Subjects reached for a target, which unpredictably jumped to the side on some trials. Participants (1) expressed their expectancy of a target shift during the upcoming movement, (2) pointed at the target as quickly and accurately as possible before returning to the start posiment to the target shift if required and (3) reproduced the spatial path of the movement they had just made, as accurately as possible, to give an indication of their awareness of the pointing movement. We analysed the spatial disparity between the initial and the reproduced movements on those with a target shift. A negative disparity value, or undershoot, suggests that motor awareness merely reflects a sluggish record of coordinated motor performance, while a positive value, or overshoot, suggests that participants' intention to point to the shifting target contributes more to their awareness of action than their actual pointing movement. Undershoot and overshoot thus measure the reconstructive (motoric) and the preconstuctive (intentional) aspects of action awareness, respectively. We found that trials on which subjects strongly expected a target shift showed greater overshoot and less undershoot than trials with lower expectancy. Conscious expectancy therefore strongly influences the experience of the detailed motor parameters of our actions. Further, a delay inserted either between the expectancy judgement and the pointing movement, or between the pointing movement and the reproduction of the movement, had no effect on visuomotor adjustment but strongly influenced action awareness. Delays during either interval boosted undershoots, suggesting increased reliance on a time-limited sensory memory for action. The experience of action is thus strongly influenced by prior thoughts and expectations, but only over a short time period. Thus, awareness of our actions is a dynamic and relatively flexible mixture of what we intend to do, and what our motor system actually does.     

Consciousness and identity: who do we think we are?

This article proposes that the epistemological concerns raised by the inherent incoherence of thought requires a dialogical approach to understanding consciousness and identity. It is argued that such an approach leads to (a) a fundamentally spiritual view of self, (b) a radical view of consciousness as a non-local field that shapes the limits of our perception, and (c) a determination of the degree of gap between reality and thought's representation of it. A method of measuring this kind of consciousness is examined, and examples of insights gained through this methodology are provided. Implications of this perspective are explored, and conclusions arising from this inquiry are presented.     

Using mismatch negativity to study central auditory processing in developmental language and literacy impairments: where are we, and where should we be going?

A popular theoretical account of developmental language and literacy disorders implicates poor auditory temporal processing in their etiology, but evidence from studies using behavioral measures has yielded inconsistent results. The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the auditory event-related potential has been recommended as an alternative, relatively objective, measure of the brain's ability to discriminate sounds that is suitable for children with limited attention or motivation. A literature search revealed 26 studies of the MMN in individuals with dyslexia or specific language impairment and 4 studies of infants or children at familial risk of these disorders. Findings were highly inconsistent. Overall, attenuation of the MMN and atypical lateralization in the clinical group were most likely to be found in studies using rapidly presented stimuli, including nonverbal sounds. The MMN literature offers tentative support for the hypothesis that auditory temporal processing is impaired in language and literacy disorders, but the field is plagued by methodological inconsistencies, low reliability of measures, and low statistical power. The article concludes with recommendations for improving this state of affairs.     

Responsibility in epistemic collaborations: Is it me,is it the group or are we all to blame?

According to distributed virtue reliabilism (Palermos, 2020b), epistemic collaborations—such as Transactive Memory Systems and Scientific Research Teams—can be held epistemically responsible at the collective level. This raises the question of whether participants of epistemic collaborations are exempt from being held individually responsible. In response, this paper explores two possible ways in which attributions of individual responsibility may still be appropriate within epistemic collaborations: (I) Individuals can be held epistemically responsible for their individual shortcomings, but no amount of individual epistemic responsibility can replace collective epistemic responsibility. (II) Even if it is denied that participants of epistemic collaborations can be held epistemically responsible at the individual level, they may be held structurally, perhaps morally, and even legally responsible at the individual level for breaking joint commitments necessary for the effective coordination of the epistemic collaboration.     

Existential choices: to what degree is who we are a matter of choice?

On the one hand, it is commonly agreed that we make choices in which we are guided by a core of personal commitments, wishes, feelings, etc. that we take to express who we are. On the other, it is commonly agreed that some of these ‘existential’ choices constitute who we are. When confronting these two matters, the question of agency inevitably arises: Whether and in what sense can we choose ourselves? The paper will argue for a new perspective on existential choice.     

‘I am–we are’: personal and social pathways to further study, work and family life

This project explores the apparent layers in motivation for young people’s plans in order to extend Pathways Theory. We bring together personal, relational and group motivation to explain the planned pathways to study, work and family life. Location was an Australian town, close to the national socio-economic average, to control broad social factors. Participants (N = 78) were 12 to 18 year-old girls and boys (mean age 14.5 years). Results provide little support for popular explanations based on demographic factors (age, gender, family background) and broad personal indicators of self esteem and mood. Instead, the results support proposed differential explanations for pathways to study, work and family life. In particular, personal aspects of identity and self concepts, social expectations and group identity influence young people’s pathways to further study. Group uniqueness explains pathways to paid work, yet experience of higher education tends to limit plans for family life. Findings support inclusion of personal, relational and group motivations in developing innovative theories of pathways motivation. Ongoing work considers common and distinct explanations across socio-economic contexts.