What can we learn from Plausible Values?

In this paper, we show that the marginal distribution of plausible values is a consistent estimator of the true latent variable distribution, and, furthermore, that convergence is monotone in an embedding in which the number of items tends to infinity. We use this result to clarify some of the misconceptions that exist about plausible values, and also show how they can be used in the analyses of educational surveys.     

Creativity from Constraints: What can we learn from Motherwell? from Modrian? from Klee?

This article presents a problem‐solving model of variability and creativity built on the classic Reitman and Simon analyses of musical composition and architectural design. The model focuses on paired constraints: one precluding (or limiting search among) reliable, existing solutions, the other promoting (or directing search to) novel, often opposite, ones. The primary constraint pair precludes an existing goal criterion and promotes a novel one. Other constraints — source (elements for recombination), task (how materials are used) and subject (motif, theme) — are then strategically selected to realize the goal. A brief discussion of Abstract Expressionism introduces the model, which is then applied to the painting careers of Piet Modrian and Paul Klee.     

Are the ethnically tolerant free of discrimination,prejudice and political intolerance?

We hypothesized that the ethnically tolerant (i.e., people who are anti‐ethnocentric and score very low on a measure of ethnocentrism) would perceive people with extremely incompatible values and beliefs as out‐groups and would engage in discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance against them. Experiments among Australian citizens in Studies 1 (N = 224) and 2 (N = 283) showed that the ethnically tolerant perceived supporters of a message in favour of mandatory detention of asylum seekers as out‐groups and consequently exhibited discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance against them. Study 3 with 265 U.S. citizens showed that, controlling for liberalism, ethnic tolerance led to prejudice against out‐groups. This was replicated with 522 UK citizens in Study 4, which also showed that social identity, and not moral conviction, mediated the link between ethnic tolerance and prejudice. The findings suggest that the ethnically tolerant can be discriminatory, prejudiced and politically intolerant against fellow humans.     

What can behavior analysis learn from the aversives controversy?

The paper argues that behavior analysis may have contributed to the aversives controversy in a number of ways. The role that the field has played and the lessons that may be learned are discussed in the areas of research, training, and politics.     

Linguistic Privilege and Justice: What Can We Learn from STEM?

Abstract

The linguistic privilege of native speakers in scientific communication, both oral and written, has been widely reported to influence researchers’ publications and careers in and beyond academia. I examine social structure and communication in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields through the example of big science and attempt to answer the question of why language injustice has a less significant effect on non-native scientists and engineers than on philosophy scholars. I do so by scrutinizing the role of signs and nonlinguistic boundary objects in STEM practice and written communication. I also argue that although high-energy physics is relatively linguistically inclusive, it is marked by linguistic privilege of certain groups that bears a structural character which is not common in STEM and is predominant mainly in megascience. I finally suggest that insofar as rhetoric in STEM is generally modest, its practices can serve as an example for analytic philosophy, which also aims at minimizing rhetoric.     

What can we learn from psychoanalysis and prospective studies about chemically dependent patients?

Despite the common occurrence of drug abusers in the psychoanalytic clinic, contemporary literature on the subject, particularly among publications in the IJP, is sparse. This paper aims to review the most important psychoanalytic contributions on drug dependency in the past 100 years, then attempts to compare their postulations to the findings ofpertinent prospective studies. In these patients, a persistent symbiotic object relationship is found, which ties them to narcissistic functioning, where drug use is viewed in the light of both pleasure without object and omnipotently controlled need. The author also discusses the possible contribution of the mother and father in the genesis of this condition, focusing on the compromise of the paternal function as the deciding factor. The theoretical and technical implications of this approach are illustrated by clinical material.     

How virtuous is humor? What we can learn from current instruments

Despite the diverse philosophical accounts of the relation of humor to virtue or vice, this ethical dimension has not been included explicitly in psychological humor instruments. Yet, behavior described in humor questionnaires covering a broad variety of components can be used to study an implicit relation of humor to vices and virtues. The main aim of the present paper was (1) to find humorous behavior and attitudes representing virtues and vices within an item pool of 12 popular humor questionnaires; and (2) to investigate the nature of the virtues represented by their item contents. A comprehensive measure of humor covered the entire range from virtue to vice, with the majority of items evaluated as neutral. Humanity and wisdom were most strongly represented, but the items cover all six core virtues (Dahlsgaard, 2004 Dahlsgaard, K. 2004. “Universal virtues?—Lessons from history”. In Character strengths and virtues, Edited by: Peterson, C and Seligman, MEP. 33–52. New York: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar]) to varying degrees. Further research can now investigate the relationship of humor and individual virtues more closely.     

What did Popper learn from Lakatos?

The canonical version of the history of twentieth century philosophy of science tells us that Lakatos was Popper’s disciple, but it is rarely mentioned that Popper would have learned anything from Lakatos. The aim of this paper is to examine Lakatos’ influence on Popper’s philosophical system and to argue that Lakatos did have an important, yet somewhat unexpected, impact on Popper’s thinking: he influenced Popper’s evolutionary model for ‘progress’ in science. And Lakatos’ influence sheds new light on why and how Popper continually revised one of the central claims of his philosophy of science: the evolutionary account of scientific theory change.     

Neuromotor profiles: what are they and what can we learn from them?

Eye movements, alternating movements, rapid pointing movements, and various tremors were measured on patients with Parkinson's disease (n = 21), on Cree subjects exposed to methylmercury (n = 36), and on healthy control subjects (n = 30). Neuromotor profiles were created according to thirty characteristics extracted from test results of four subgroups matched for age and composed of six subjects each. Z scores were calculated with respect to the mean and standard deviation of the control group for each of the 30 characteristics. The subgroup with the lower methylmercury blood level had larger z scores than the control subgroup and with a few positive values above one standard deviation. The subgroup with the higher methylmercury blood level had several z scores above two standard deviations. Interestingly, the abnormal values for the subgroup with Parkinson's disease were mostly limited to static tremor recorded with no visual feedback and reached up to 5 standard deviations. These results indicate that neuromotor profiles can be used to summarize information extracted from different neuromotor tests and to differentiate neurological conditions.     

Rethinking primate locomotion: what can we learn from development?

Contemporary understanding about primate locomotion has largely been conditioned by studies of adults. It is as yet uncertain how locomotor behavior emerges during ontogeny or the life history of an individual (Gould, 1977). This article explores the manner in which changes in body size, proportions, and composition that occur during growth can potentially influence motor output, substrate selection, and structural design. A central theme explicit in this article is that growth provides an important source of morphological change, both regulating and generating motor behavior and substrate use. It is emphasized that morphology, behavior, and substrate use are integrated and should be investigated in tandem.     

Baby FaceTime: can toddlers learn from online video chat?

There is abundant evidence for the ‘video deficit’: children under 2 years old learn better in person than from video. We evaluated whether these findings applied to video chat by testing whether children aged 12–25 months could form relationships with and learn from on‐screen partners. We manipulated social contingency: children experienced either real‐time FaceTime conversations or pre‐recorded Videos as the partner taught novel words, actions and patterns. Children were attentive and responsive in both conditions, but only children in the FaceTime group responded to the partner in a temporally synced manner. After one week, children in the FaceTime condition (but not the Video condition) preferred and recognized their Partner, learned more novel patterns, and the oldest children learned more novel words. Results extend previous studies to demonstrate that children under 2 years show social and cognitive learning from video chat because it retains social contingency. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/rTXaAYd5adA     

Exploring the enactment effect from an information processing view: What can we learn from serial position analyses?

The focus of the present article was to analyze processes that determine the enactment and age effect in a multi-trial free recall paradigm by looking at the serial position effects. In an experimental study (see Schatz et al 2010), the performance-enhancing effect of enactive encoding and repeated learning was tested with older and younger participants. As expected, there was a steady improvement of memory performance as a function of repeated learning regardless of age. In addition, enactive encoding led to a better memory performance than verbal encoding in both age groups. Furthermore, younger adults outperformed the elderly regardless of type of encoding. Analyses in the present article show that encoding by enacting seems to profit especially from remembering the last items of a presented list. Regarding age differences, younger outperformed older participants in nearly all item positions. The performance enhancement after task repetition is due to a higher amount of recalled items in the middle positions in a subject performed task (SPT) and a verbal task (VT) as well as the last positions of a learned list in VT.     

The Spiritual,the Cultural and the Religious: What can we learn from a study of boy choristers?

This article reports on a study of the boys in a major city centre church choir. It is treated as a case study of the potential confusion between the spiritual, the cultural and the religious. The study shows that the performance of religious rituals might, for many of the boys, be more accurately described as a cultural phenomenon. A deep appreciation of music, with evidence of 'peak experiences', describes a reality which has been called 'spiritual' in humanistic phenomenological writings. All the boys in the study were found to be 'spiritual' in that they loved and were moved by the music they sang in church, but few perceived their singing as a form of religious ministry. Religious commitment and faith development was found to range from piety to atheism, with an increasing tendency towards Enlightenment scepticism amongst the older boys. The boys could be identified as a social group by their shared love for music, but not by a shared religious faith. Discussion is developed about the reality of the spiritual with and without a religious commitment, in which credal literalism is seen as cultural rather than spiritual. A call for greater recognition of the significance of the cultural and social is made.     

The surface structure and the deep structure of sequential control: What can we learn from task span switch costs?

A large component of response time switch costs in the cued task-switching paradigm is linked to cue changes without task changes, suggesting costs might reflect passive priming rather than endogenous control. In contrast, the task span procedure requires subjects to guide task selection via sequences of memorized task cues and therefore may be better suited to reflect endogenous switch processes (Logan, 2004). The present experiments combined the task span procedure with a 2:1 mapping between cues and tasks, allowing separation of cue-switch costs from true task-switch costs. Replicating findings with the cued task-switching paradigm, results showed both substantial cue-switch costs and actual task-switch costs (Experiments 1 and 2) as well as sensitivity of cue-switch costs, but not of task-switch costs, to opportunity for preparation (Experiment 2). Apparently, simple action plans use “surface level” phonological or articulatory codes that contain no task information. These results suggest that the distinction between cue-related and task-related processes is critical no matter whether tasks are cued exogenously or endogenously.