Comparison of the Trail Making and Color Trails Tests in a Chinese context: a preliminary report

The Color Trails Test developed as a culturally fair analogue of the Trail Making Test, was used to examine the relationship between the two tests with 35 undergraduate Chinese in Hong Kong recruited as the subjects. The scores on these two tests of the 12 men and 23 women were significantly correlated .71. The equivalence of the Trail Making and Color Trails Tests when applied to Chinese in Hong Kong was discussed.     

Tarski's Hidden Assumption

It is clear that Tarski's T‐scheme, ‘T”p” if and only if p’, does not hold universally. It is not expected to hold, for instance, with ambiguous sentences, or with indexical sentences. Making explicit the circumstances where it does hold, however, is not just logical housekeeping: it turns out to have more radical consequences for the whole approach to Semantics associated with Tarski than has previously been envisaged.     

Retraction statement: Making sense of war: Using the interpretation comparison model to understand the Iraq conflict

The following article from the European Journal of Social Psychology, “Making sense of war: Using the interpretation comparison model to understand the Iraq conflict” by Stapel, D. A., and Marx, D. M., published online on 23 August 2006 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the co‐author, the journal Editor in Chief, Tom Postmes, and John Wiley and Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed upon following the results of an investigation into the work of Diederik A. Stapel ( https://www.commissielevelt.nl/ ). The Levelt Committee has determined that this article was likely to have contained data that were fabricated by Diederik A. Stapel. The co‐author was unaware of his actions and not in any way involved. REFERENCE Stapel, D. A., & Marx, D. M. (2007). Making sense of war: Using the interpretation comparison model to understand the Iraq conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology 37(3), 401–420.     

An Early History of Multiple Criteria Decision Making

This historical note is based on a plenary talk ‘A History of Early Developments in Multiple Criteria Decision Making’, presented by Stanley Zionts at the 21st International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making held in Jyväskylä, Finland, June 2011. It draws heavily on our book, Multiple Criteria Decision Making: From Early History to the 21st Century, published by World Scientific, Singapore, 2011. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Group importance as a mediator between personality-environment congruence and satisfaction

According to J. L. Holland (1985, Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environments, Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall), there is a positive relationship between personality-environment congruence and satisfaction. The variable “group importance” was used in the present study as a mediator to explain why in some studies Holland's hypothesis was confirmed while in others no support was found. Group importance was measured by an inventory (reliability: .85) and by raters. Spearman rank order correlations between these measures of importance and congruence-satisfaction correlations were .68 (15 groups, p < .01) and .77 (23 groups, p < .01), respectively. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

"Brain-Specific" Nutrients: A Memory Cure?

Contents:
Nootropics, the Aging Brain, and Neural Bases of Learning and Memory, p.13
Phosphatidylserine, p.16
Choline, p.23
Piracetam, p.24
Vinpocetine, p.26
Acetyl-L-Carnitine, p.28
Antioxidants, p.30
Future Work and More Fine-Grained Analyses of Memory, p.32
Summary and Concluding Remarks, p.34     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
S tephen H olland , Bioethics: A Philosophical Introduction
J ulian B aggini , Making Sense     

Peer Commmentaries on Lakshmi J. Gogate,Arlene S. Wlaker‐Andrews and Lorraine E. Bahrick’s The intersensory origins of word comprehension: an ecological–dynamic systems view

David J. Lewkowicz, Word comprehension and intersensory perception: putting the cart before the horse?, p. 19 Robert Lickliter, The dynamics of language development: from perception to comprehension, p. 21 Graham Schafer, Intersensory origins of word comprehension: but what’s the mechanism?, p. 23 Janet F. Werker and Michelle L. Patterson, Does perceptual learning really contribute to word learning, p. 26 Patricia Zukow‐Goldring and Nancy de Villiers Rader, Perceiving referring actions, p. 28     

Adaptation to an autoimmune disorder: Does mental flexibility impact illness-related self-regulation?

Objective: To examine whether mental flexibility moderates the relationship between illness representations of control and coping behaviour in individuals suffering from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Design: Recently, diagnosed RA (N = 80) and SLE (N = 75) patients completed questionnaires about illness representations of personal and treatment control and four coping behaviours: instrumental coping, adherence to medical advice, palliative coping and wishful thinking. Mental flexibility was assessed with the Trail Making Test Part B (TMT-B), while visuomotor processing speed, as a confounder, was assessed with the Trail Making Test Part A (TMT-A). Moderated mediation models were tested within a bootstrapped multiple regression framework.

Results: TMT-A scores had no statistically significant moderation effects on the relation between representations and coping behaviour. Conversely, in those participants with SLE, TMT-B scores moderated the relation of personal control to wishful thinking and palliative coping, as well as the relation of treatment control to both wishful thinking and palliative coping. All significant effects were restricted to the SLE group.

Conclusion: Interactions between neurocognitive factors and the process of illness adaptation may emerge early during the course of SLE. The present findings highlight the role of cognitive functioning as an integral part of the illness-related self-regulation mechanism.     

Peer Commentaries on Michael Siegal’s Language and thought: the fundamental significance of conversational awareness for cognitive development

Janet Wilde Astingto, What would a theory of conversational awareness look like?, p.15 Michel Deleau, Assessing links between conversational awareness and cognitive development, p.16 Angeline S. Lillard, Siegal on Piaget’s legacy: Gricean child meets blundering experimenter, p.18 Orlando Lourenço and Armando Machado, Rich conversation but vague theory, p.21 Leslie Smith, Necessary knowledge in number conservation, p.23 Kain Lee and Michelle Eskritt, Beyond the Gricean maxims: conversational awareness as a multifaceted domain of knowledge, p.27     

Regional cortical dysfunction in schizophrenic patients studied by computerized neuropsychological methods

18 RDC-diagnosed schizophrenic patients (11 men, 7 women) were compared to 84 normal men with three computerized neuropsychological methods, assumed to reflect lateralized and frontal cortical functions: (1) Bilateral Finger Tapping and Finger Alternation, (2) Bilateral Trail Making, and (3) passively perceived Necker cube reversals. Schizophrenics differed from normals by (1) inferior Tapping/Alternation but only in the right hand, (2) inferior Trail Making, most pronounced for Form B, and (3) lower frequency of Necker cube reversals. Patients with previous neuroleptic medication and prior psychiatric hospitalizations were inferior in Trail Making and had fewer Necker cube reversals. The findings were interpreted in line with recent models of schizophrenia involving a left-hemisphere dysfunction/over-activation and a frontal dysfunction.     

Re:Views

Research Press, Champaign, Illinois, 1976 323 pages, paperback Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice and Commitment     

REVIEWS

Book Reviews in this Article.
The Pfato Cult, David Stove
On Being in the World: Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Seeing Aspects, Stephen Mulhall
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
David McLellan, Simone Well     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Religious Studies: The Making of a Discipline by Walter H. Capps
Intersections: Science, Theology, and Ethics by James M. Gustafson
Rationality in Science, Religion and Everyday Life: A Critical Evaluation of Four Models of Rationality by Mikael Stenmark     

Essay Review

Making human beings human: Bioecological perspectives on human development : Edited by U. Bronfenbrenner Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 2004. Pp. 336. Paperback, $34.95. ISBN 0761927123. Hardback, $74.95. ISBN 0761927115     

When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today

Books reviewed: Cox, Harvey, When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today
Reviewed by Derek R. Nelson
Graduate Theological Union     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Marc Simmons, Donna Pierce and Joan Myers, Santiago: Saint of Two Worlds Effiong Utuk, From New York to Ibadan: The Impact of African Questions on the Making of Ecumenical Mission Mandates, 1900–1958     

A Nietzche Round-up

Nietzche: the Ethics of an Immoralist. By Peter Berkowitz
Infectious Nietzche. By David Krell
Nietzche, Politics and Modernity. By David Owen
The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzche's Zarathustra. By Stanley Rosen
Making Sense of Nietzche. By Richard Schacht
Nietzche's Voice. By Henry Staten
Nietzche:. By Michael Tanner
Nietzche: a Re-examination. By Irving M. Zeitlin     

Andromeda Freed From Her Chains

Minds for the Making: The Role of Science in American Education, 1750–1990, by Scott L. Montgomery, New York: The Guilford Press, 1994, pb, $18.95.     

Organizational change in health care: A strategic perspective please!

Abstract

Commentary on “Making Sense of “Resistance”: Responses to Organizational Change in a Private Nursing Home for the Elderly” by C. Meston and N. King