Logistic growth curve analysis in associative learning data

We propose an alternative statistical method, logistic growth curve analysis, for the analysis of associative learning data with two or more comparison groups. Logistic growth curve analysis is more sensitive and easier to interpret than previously published methods such as χ² or ANOVA, which require the data to be collapsed into individual total scores or proportion of responses over time. Additionally, this type of analysis better fits the typical graphical representation of associative learning data. An analysis is presented where associative learning data from honeybees are analyzed using the three techniques, and the accessibility and power of the logistic growth curve analysis is highlighted. Accepted after revision: 14 November 2000 Electronic Publication     

试析当代佛教与科学对话现象

佛教与科学的对话是现代文化领域的一个重要现象。在当代,佛教与科学的对话在内容和方式上出现了新的特点,以科学最新成果诠解佛教和对科学范式的批评是同时并存的两个主要方面。通过对于这一现象的透视,对佛教与科学对话的现状、问题和前景作出了分析和评述。     

Identity,practice and dialogue

Identities are constructed and contested. This means they may be re‐worked to support more inclusive visions of who belongs and on what basis. However, identity construction does not take place in a vacuum, and social psychological analyses of change need to address the contextual dynamics that shape the processes and outcomes of dialogue. This requires attention to processes of power. Furthermore, we need to consider minority group members' understandings of these processes. From the perspective of the disadvantaged, dialogue may be experienced as disempowering because it is viewed as compromising group members' capacities to organize themselves to pursue strategies of social change. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A conversation analysis of therapist repeats in open dialogue network meetings

Writings on Open Dialogue approaches to working with families experiencing mental distress emphasize the importance of the therapist repeating the family's words back to them verbatim. Repeats are theorized to display the therapist's listening and to encourage elaboration without imposing the therapist's own interpretations or conclusions on the family. These recommendations have not been subjected to rigorous interactional investigation. In this study, we used conversation analysis to analyze 160 examples of therapists repeating the prior talk of the family from 14 h of video-recorded Open Dialogue sessions. We found that these repeats had similar functions to those previously described in conversation analysis research such as initiating repair, marking receipt, and requesting elaboration as well as examples of therapist repeats occurring in overlap with the talk of the client. Open Dialogue writings thus present an oversimplified account of how repeats are utilized in clinical Open Dialogue sessions. Consistent with dialogical writings, repeats can elicit elaboration with limited input from the therapist, however repeats reflect selectivity and function to direct and guide the conversation to some extent. So, while therapist authority can be mitigated by repeating clients' words, when a therapist chooses to employ a repeat actively shapes the direction of the interaction.     

Physicians and clergy in dialogue

The goals and ends of contemporary medicine are often unclear. An explicit inquiry into the religious dimensions of healing offers an important perspective from which to evaluate the potential capabilities of the medical profession. This paper describes a course in which medical students joined divinity students to explore areas of mutual intellectual, professional, and personal interest. Students and faculty examined in depth three broad areas in which medicine and religion share common ground: concepts of health and illness from the religious perspective, approaches to the understanding of suffering and meaning, and the shared professional stresses of physician and clergy.This paper comes from the Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Hospital, and the Division on Aging and the Program for the Analysis of Clinical Strategies, Harvard Medical School, and the West Roxbury-Brockton Veterans Administration Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center, Boston.     

Four dialogue systems

The paper describes four dialogue systems, developed in the tradition of Charles Hamblin. The first system provides an answer for Achilles in Lewis Carroll's parable, the second an analysis of the fallacy of begging the question, the third a non-psychologistic account of conversational implicature, and the fourth an analysis of equivocation and of objections to it. Each avoids combinatorial explosions, and is intended for real-time operation.     

A metaphilosophical dialogue

Three philosophical attitudes in dialogue are suggested in answering the question posed by the Journal. An inviting, First Inner Voice undeerstands philosophy as a shareable theoretical task that can be explained and understood even across distant philosophical paradigms. A Second Inner Voice, sometimes termed in the dialogue as sceptic, distrusts any metaphilosophical definition of what philosophy is and what it should do, but would, nevertheless, aspire to retain a certain universalistic understanding of its own work, though it cannot be strongly and conceptualy rendered. A Third Inner Voice, regarded in the text as somewhat Hegelian, insists in the unavoidability of strong philosophical definitions both in historical and in conceptual terms. No proposal or conclusion is forwarded regarding what should be done in contemporary philosophy, though an analysis of harm experiences is taken as an example of philosophical work