Maiocchi on Duhem,howard on Duhem and Einstein: Historiographical comments

These comments center on the methodological stance that Howard and Maiocchi recommend to us when we are doing history of philosophy. If Howard and Maiocchi are right, both Duhem and Einstein developed closely related versions of conventionalism and realism, and in both of their philosophies the conventionalist and realist moments were mutually compatible. Duhem's holism and, arguably, Einstein's as well, denies the need for across-the-board literalism, and both of them had important reasons for denying that convergence was required or even desirable for realism. Thus, for those who are caught up in the current disputes, serious consideration of the discrepancies between the standard current versions of realism and conventionalism and the positions that contextualist analyses reveal to have been advocated by Duhem and Einstein may uncover some of the tacit assumptions that impede the resolution or advancement of our disputes.     

Duhem and cartwright on the truth of laws

Nancy Cartwright has drawn attention to how explanations are actually given in mathematical sciences. She argues that these procedures support an antirealist thesis that fundamental explanatory laws are not true. Moreover, she claims to be be essentially following Duhem's line of thought in developing this thesis. Without wishing to detract from the importance of her observations, it is suggested that they do not necessarily require the antirealist thesis. The antirealist interpretation of Duhem is also disputed. It is argued that Duhemian points, often understood antirealistically, bear a realist construal, and that antirealist interpretations of Duhem typically run into problems of consistency or of reducing his position to absurdity.     

Self-construals and values in different cultural and socioeconomic contexts

In this study the authors investigated (a) how individuational and relational self-orientations, as well as self-directed and other-directed values, are related to one another, and (b) how these self- and value orientations differ across 2 cultural (i.e., 422 Turkish and 441 American university students) and 2 socioeconomic status (SES) groups (i.e., 186 lower SES and 167 upper SES Turkish high school students). Across cross-cultural and SES groups, individuational and relational self-orientations appeared to be not opposite but distinct orientations, as predicted by the Balanced Integration-Differentiation (BID) model (E. O. Imamoglu, 2003). Furthermore, both Turkish and American students with similar self-construal types, as suggested by the BID model, showed similar value orientations, pointing to both cross-cultural similarities and within-cultural diversity. Individuational and relational self-orientations showed weak to moderate associations with the respective value domains of self-directedness and other-directedness, which seemed to represent separate but somewhat positively correlated orientations. In both cross-cultural and SES groups, students tended to be high in both relational and individuational self-orientations; those trends were particularly strong among the Turkish and American women compared with men and among the upper SES Turkish adolescents compared with lower SES adolescents. Results are discussed as contesting the assumptions that regard the individuational and relational orientations as opposites and as supporting the search for invariant aspects of psychological functioning across contexts.     

Bullying in different contexts: Commonalities,differences and the role of theory

Research on bullying has grown very rapidly in the last two decades, initially in schools but also in a variety of other settings and relationships; and there has been relatively little communication between the different groups of researchers. We describe the nature of bullying in schools, between siblings, in children's residential care homes, in prisons, and in the workplace. Commonalities and differences in the phenomenon, and the ways in which it is exhibited and experienced are explored. The role of individual and organizational factors in the development and maintenance of these behaviors across contexts is compared. We then examine a number of theoretical approaches which have been suggested as relevant to our understanding of bullying. Integrative approaches from different research traditions are proposed which view these behaviors as being influenced by a combination of situational and individual factors.     

Sense of community and life satisfaction: investigation in three different territorial contexts

The aim of this study was to investigate relations between sense of community, life satisfaction, self-esteem, perceived social support and satisfaction with community services in three territorial communities of different sizes. Further, the relations between sense of community and socio-demographic variables (gender, age, marital status, education, children, working in one's own community, owning one's home and group participation) were also studied. The Italian version of the Sense of Community Scale, Rosenberg's Self-esteem Scale, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, a scale on Satisfaction with Community Services and a questionnaire were administered to 336 subjects; selection was made in the three communities from 20–60 year-old individuals. Results confirm that sense of community and life satisfaction are higher in the town than in the larger communities; also, sense of community relates to life satisfaction only in the town and the small city. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's face recognition in different contexts: the role of encoding strategies

In this study, the relationship between face recognition and different facial encoding strategies was investigated. Children (6-8 years, N= 134) participated in both a face recognition task and an encoding task. During the recognition task, they saw 7 target faces in an eyewitness context (video) or in a neutral context (static black and white slides) which they later had to recognize from a set of 21 faces. On the encoding task, the same children had to categorize new faces (schematic and photorealistic) into two categories. The construction of the categories allowed participants to encode the faces either analytically (by focusing on a single attribute) or holistically (in terms of overall similarity). The results showed that face recognition was better in the social than in the neutral context. In the neutral context, only holistic encoding was connected to better face recognition. In the social context, children seemed to use not only information about the faces but also information about the persons.     

Indian college students' attitudes toward abortion in different contexts

Two experimental studies used the hypothetical situation of a pregnant woman (the stimulus person) considering the possibility of an abortion and obtained from Bombay college students estimates of the likelihood of an abortion and their own recommendations in favor of abortion. The first study had a 2 (subject's sex) × 2 (reason for abortion: unplanned child vs. female child) × 2 (person more in favor of abortion: stimulus person vs. her husband) × 3 (stimulus person's socioeconomic status: upper, middle, or lower class) factorial design with 15 subjects per cell. Male subjects indicated greater likelihood of abortion than female subjects. Recommendations were stronger for the unplanned rather than female child and for the lower class rather than upper and middle class stimulus persons. The second study had a 2 (subject's sex) × 3 (reason for abortion: unplanned marital pregnancy, premarital pregnancy, or rape pregnancy) × 3 (stimulus person's socioeconomic status: upper, middle, or lower class) factorial design with 15 subjects per cell. Perceived likelihood and strength of recommendation were highest for rape pregnancy followed by premarital pregnancy and marital pregnancy in that order. The interactions in this study suggested a greater vulnerability of the middle class as compared to the other two classes with respect to sexual morality.     

Levels of processing of normal and ambiguous sentences in different contexts

Summary An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of depth of semantic analysis on the recall of sentences presented for comprehension. The depth of semantic analysis was varied by presenting 48 subjects with 24 unambiguous or lexically ambiguous sentences that were either preceded by a picture or not. Each picture showed either one or both interpretations of the respective ambiguous sentence. The sentence remained on display until the subject had pressed a key to indicate that he had understood its meaning. After the presentation of all the sentences the subjects were tested for recall. Ambiguous sentences were equally well understood as unambiguous sentences, but were better recalled when their ambiguity had been noticed. The subject's awareness of sentence ambiguity, and hence the depth of semantic analysis, was found to depend on the pictorial context in which the sentences were presentend. The pictorial context was also found to affect the depth of processing of unambiguous sentences, which, when presented without a picture, were more time-consuming in comprehension and less well recalled than when preceded by a picture. These findings provide the background for a discussion of the interrelations between the comprehension of sentences, the depth of their semantic processing, and the recall of these sentences.The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Lorenz Sichelschmidt in collecting and analyzing data and B. Jankowski in the translation of this paper from an original German version     

Identity processing style and cognitive attributional strategies: similarities and difference across different contexts

Identity processing style refers to the manner in which individuals approach or manage to avoid identity relevant problems and decisions. Two studies were designed to investigate the relationship between identity style and the specific cognitive and attributional strategies youth deploy in achievement and affiliative contexts. In Study 1, 198 American late adolescents filled in the revised Identity Style Inventory and a Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire. In Study 2, 109 Finnish late adolescents filled in the same measures. Study 1 revealed that diffuse/avoidant‐oriented American youth relied on maladaptive strategies in both contexts. Information‐oriented youth engaged in more strategic planning than did their normative and diffuse/avoidant counterparts. Study 2 indicated an identical pattern of associations among the identity processing styles and cognitive and attributional strategies for Finnish youth in achievement but not in interpersonal settings. The results are discussed in the context of a social–cognitive theory of identity development. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Detection and criterion change associated with different test contexts in recognition memory

Three groups of physics Ss and three groups of arts Ss viewed 20 physics words (PWs) and 20 common words (CWs) in a randomly ordered inspection sequence. Ss were then assigned to one of three recognition test conditions where the inspection items were embedded in different sequences of 120 additional words (60 PWs + 60 CWs; 100 PWs + 20 CWs, 20 pWs + 100 CWs). Signal-detection and Luce analyses examined the effects of the different test contexts on Ss′ true sensitivity and response bias. While all Ss found detection of PWs easier than CWs, these judgments varied according to the properties of the recognition sequences. This latter finding was interpreted as indicating that Ss adopted a conservative and probabilistic strategy for the recognition task as a whole rather than utilizing different strategies for PWs and the CWs where these would result in superior overall performance.     

Social experiences and daily routines of African American infants in different socioeconomic contexts

Sixty-two 3- to 4-month-old African American infants from lower, middle, and upper socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds were each observed in naturalistic contexts for 12 hr. The social experiences of infants in the 3 groups were similar in many ways: Infants from all backgrounds slept and were vocalized to for similar amounts of time. However, infants in the upper SES families engaged in more self-play, vocalized less, fussed less, had fewer but longer naps, and fewer but longer bouts of social interaction than did infants in the middle- and lower SES families. Infants in the upper SES families also received more verbal affection and soothing responses to their fussing and crying than did the other infants, whereas infants in the lower SES families interacted more with extended kin than did infants in the upper SES families. These results underscore the need to study African American families in a variety of socioeconomic contexts because families in more advantaged circumstances may greatly differ from those who are more disadvantaged, especially in terms of reliance on extended kin as caregivers.     

Youth civic development: theorizing a domain with evidence from different cultural contexts

The authors use examples of youth civic engagement from Chile, South Africa, Central/Eastern Europe, and the United States--and also emphasize diversities among youth from different subgroups within countries--to illustrate common elements of the civic domain of youth development. These include the primacy of collective activity for forming political identities and ideas and the greater heterogeneity of civic compared to other discretionary activities, the groupways or accumulated opportunities for acting due to the groups (social class, gender, ethnic, caste, etc.) to which a young person belongs, and the role of mediating institutions (schools, community-based organizations, etc.) as spaces where youths' actions contribute to political stability and change.     

Behavioral assessment of psychiatric inpatients and normal controls across different environmental contexts

Objectively defined, publicly observable behaviors were time sampled for hospitalized psychiatric patients and normal controls in three distinct environmental contexts: lunch time, free time, and gym time. The behaviors sampled included body activity, extremity activity, proximity, social interactions, participation, visual scanning, laughing/smiling, and idiosyncratic behavior. Patient behaviors were recorded during both a drug-free baseline period and a subsequent medication period. The data suggest that consistent and reliable differences between patients and normals in most behaviors can be observed and that environmental context is an important determinant of these differences. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for assessment procedures and treatment decisions.These investigations were supported in part by State of Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Grants RD836-13 and RD622-02 to the first author. The cooperation of the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute staff is gratefully acknowledged.     

Cultural attitudes: in contexts of argumentation and explanation

Traditionally, attitudes are supposed to predict behavior. However, due to their poor performance, we are sometimes advised to abandon the notion. The present study attempts to preserve the concept but takes attitudes to be evaluative goals accomplished through interactional, especially argumentative and explanatory activities. The paper uses reasoned-discourse analysis and demonstrates the attainment of positive attitudes towards the Dutch by expatriate Chinese intellectuals in the Netherlands by attending to a variety of argumentative and explanatory strategies in their interview talk. Results suggest that there is good empirical reason to believe that attitudes are accomplishments of communicating actors' rhetorical contextualizations.     

Theory of mind, inhibitory control, and preschool-age children's suggestibility in different interviewing contexts

The current study examined the relations among 3- to 5-year-olds' theory of mind, inhibitory control, and three measures of suggestibility: yielding to suggestive questions (yield), shifting answers in response to negative feedback (shift), and accuracy in response to misleading questions during a pressured interview about a live event. Theory of mind aided in the prediction of suggestibility about the live event, and inhibitory control was a moderator variable affecting the consistency of children's sensitivity to social pressure across situations. The findings indicate that theory of mind and inhibitory control predict children's suggestibility about a live event above and beyond yield, shift, and age and that the construct validity of shift may improve as children's inhibitory control develops.     

Superlatent inhibition and spontaneous recovery: differential effects of pre- and postconditioning CS-alone presentations after long delays in different contexts

In two pairs of three-stage conditioned taste aversion experiments, we examined the effects of delay interval (1 or 21 days) between the second and third stages, and of context in which the animals spent the delay (same as or different from the context of the other stages) on latent inhibition (LI) and spontaneous recovery following extinction. In the LI experiments (Experiments 1A and 1B), the first stage comprised nonreinforced presentations to saccharin or to water. In the second stage, rats were conditioned by saccharin paired with LiCl. In the extinction experiments (Experiments 2A and 2B), the order of the stages was reversed. For all experiments, Stage 3, the test stage, consisted of three presentations of saccharin alone. There was a super-LI effect in the saccharin-preexposed group that spent the 21-day delay in the different context (Experiment 1A). When the delay was spent in the same context, there was no difference in the amount of LI between the short- and long-delay groups (Experiment 1B). Conversely, there was a spontaneous recovery effect in the long-delay/same-context group (Experiment 2B), but not in the long-delay/different-context group (Experiment 2A). The pattern of results, incompatible with current explanations of delay-induced changes in memory performance, was interpreted in terms of an interaction between the delay conditions (same or different delay context), which modulate the extinction of previously acquired context-CS-nothing associations (during CS-alone presentations), and primacy effects.