Beyond the Tower of Babel: A Nomenclature for Suicidology

Suicidology finds itself confused and stagnated for lack of a standard nomenclature. This paper proposes a nomenclature for suicide-related behavior in the hope of improving the clarity and precision of communications, advancing suicidological research and knowledge, and improving the efficacy of clinical interventions.     

Deciphering the Tower of Babel: Examining the Theory Base for Wraparound Fidelity

I present the results of a study that examined a theoretical and paradigmatic basis to better define fidelity in a wraparound approach to service delivery. I first examined the literature to clarify terms and to suggest a paradigmatic and theoretical base for the easily misinterpreted, value-laden philosophy of wraparound. Two deceptively simple constructs were identified and examined through a multi-case, multi-method design. Results suggested that wraparound is an emerging collaborative model based in critical and constructivist thought and in ecological systems theory. My study provides a preliminary but essential step in clarifying the process of implementation and evaluation of the wraparound approach.     

The Tower of Babel: Searching for core clinical,theoretical and ethical issues in psychotherapy

This paper is about how different groups of therapists view the others now that UKSPC has voted to initiate a register and 1992 is here. Therapy has a set of common aims and these link all therapies together. This paper tries to draw fundamental conclusions for practitioners and trainees. It is a first step in the author's investigations of the frame or field of psychotherapy, which holds both clients and psychotherapists. Mental health practitioners are joined together by a common bond of having the same type of vocation: to help those who are in emotional pain. It is posited that what happens in one part of the field of mental health care affects all other parts of the field.     

Debugging the case for creationism

Philosophical Studies - Repeatable artworks like musical works have presented theorists in the ontology of art with a puzzle. They seem in some respects like eternal, immutable objects and in...     

Testing the Adult Development Tower of Babel Hypothesis: Homogeneous by Perry Position Collaborative Learning Groups and Graduate Student Satisfaction

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to investigate what appears to be a grounding assumption in some adult developmental and educational research: persons of differing epistemologies who are grouped together will understand one another less well than persons who are grouped homogeneously. A robust effect is discussed within the context of adult development theory, research on collaborative learning groups, and Bruffee's social constructionist challenge (K. A. Bruffee, 1993) to Perry and to cognitive development theory. Collateral research questions relating to covariates of developmental position (according to the Perry scheme) are entertained; confirmatory qualitative data are presented.     

Tower of Hanoi: evidence for the cost of goal retrieval.

Past research on the Tower of Hanoi problem has provided clear evidence for the importance of goal-subgoal structures in problem solving. However, the nature of the traditional Tower of Hanoi problem makes it impossible to determine whether there is any special cost associated with storing or retrieving goals. A variation of the Tower of Hanoi problem is described that allows one to determine separately if there is an effect of how long a goal has to be retained on storage time or how long ago it was formed on retrieval time. This paradigm provides evidence for an effect of retention interval on retrieval time and not on storage time. An ACT-R (Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational) simulation of these data is described, which treats goal memory as no different from other memories.     

Multidimensional same--different judgments: evidence against independent comparisons of dimensions

Commonly discussed models of performance in the multidimensional same-different task are based on the assumption that independent same-different decisions are reached for each of the stimulus dimensions used in an experiment. In these models, a higher level mechanism examines th outcome of these independent decisions in order to determine whether the stimuli are the same or different overall. Previous evidence indicating that these models are inconsistent with results from same trials is summarized, and a new test of the above assumption using data from different trials is proposed. Detailed analysis of reaction times from different trials is shown, at least for some pairs of dimensions, to be incompatible with the view that separate same-different decisions are reached for each dimension. The major finding is that there are more relatively fast responses in a condition with two dimensions different, compared with the two conditions with only one of the dimensions different, than any processing model treating the dimensions separately could predict. The results suggest that partial information may be combined across dimensions in order to reach a "different" judgment.     

Making use of creationism. A case-study for the philosophy of science classroom

In this paper, I describe an approach to the teaching of philosophy of science that draws normally reluctant students into controversial issues in the philosophy of science. I have found that the topic of creationism is a good vehicle for introducing students to the more difficult issues in philosophy of science. I explore the use of creationism as a case-study in the philosophy of science and detail my own experience in the creationism debate.     

The facilitation of aggression by aggression: evidence against the catharsis hypothesis.

Nnety male subjects were either attacked or treated in a more neutral manner by a male confederate. On a subsequent maze-learning task, one third of the subjects shocked the confederate, one third observed as the experimenter shocked the confederate, and one third waited for a period of time during which the confederate was not shocked. Finally, all subjects shocked the confederate as part of a code-learning task. Subjects who had been attacked and had shocked the confederate during the maze task delivered shocks of greater intensity on the code task did subjects in the other two conditions, and the former subjects also experienced a greater reduction in diastolic blood pressure than did the latter. The results contradict the hypothesis of aggression catharsis and are discussed in terms of feelings of restraint against aggressing that a subject experiences after committing an aggressive act.     

Prejudice against women: A new perspective

Studies 1 and 2 of this paper were designed to reexamine the assumption that women and men are prejudiced against women. Subjects were 50 college women, 40 college men, 40 high-school women and 40 high-school men who were presented with four employment applications for evaluation. The names referring to the gender of the applicants were manipulated so that half of the subjects were shown the two most qualified applicants as female and the two least qualified as male. The other half of the subjects were shown the reverse of this. The results for this factor, with women subjects, revealed that the sex of the applicants did not interfere with or distort the subject's judgments (p>.25). The men subjects did not show a preference for or a prejudice against applicants of either sex (p>.05). The qualifications of the applicants were selected according to each subject's previous ranking of 10 job-related characteristics. The results for this factor, with women subjects, indicated a significant difference between the subjects' ranking of the characteristics and their final selection of the applicants (p<.05). The men subjects showed no significant difference between the subjects' rankings of the job-related characteristics and their rating of the applicants (p>.05). No significant interaction between factors was found for either population of subjects (p>.05). This research reflects changing attitudes of women towards women and provides new insights regarding men's attitudes toward their own sex.The authors of this paper would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Dr. John Schaeuble for his continuous support of this research endeavor.