Are visual-perceptual and visual-motor skills separate abilities?

This study explored the independence of visual-perceptual and visual-motor abilities. Scores on the Motor-free Visual Perception Test were correlated by Pearson's method with scores on tests that weight the visual-perceptual, motor, and visual-motor components differently. Small but significant correlations were found between the Motor-free Visual Perception Test and tests of visual-motor integration, but there was no relationship between the motor-free test and tests of motor ability. These findings support the premise that tests of visual perception, visual-motor integration, and motor ability measure different skills.     

Flat intentions – crazy dispositions?

Future-directed intentions, it is widely held, involve behavioral dispositions. But of what kind? Suppose you now intend to Φ at future time t. Are you thereby now disposed to Φ at t no matter what? If so, your intention disposes you to Φ even if around t you will come to believe that Φ-ing would be crazy. And would not that be a crazy intention to have? – Like considerations have led Luca Ferrero and others to believe that only intentions with strong internal conditions are capable of rationality. This paper explores in how far a broadly dispositional view of intention supports their claims. Its first point will come as a surprise: Intentions indeed involve dispositions toward follies in plenty. Natural objections against this bizarre-sounding claim are shown to fail, and standard counterfactual analyses of disposition locutions are shown to underpin it further. However, since the dispositions at issue are pro tanto dispositions, the consequences are not as odd as might be expected: When hedged by reasonable habits to reconsider one’s intentions, dispositions toward follies do not entail any actual crazy behavior. On balance, unconditional intention is therefore found rational after all. Dispositions toward crazy actions need not be crazy dispositions.     

Can bare dispositions explain categorical regularities?

One of the traditional desiderata for a metaphysical theory of laws of nature is that it be able to explain natural regularities. Some philosophers have postulated governing laws to fill this explanatory role. Recently, however, many have attempted to explain natural regularities without appealing to governing laws. Suppose that some fundamental properties are bare dispositions. In virtue of their dispositional nature, these properties must be (or are likely to be) distributed in regular patterns. Thus it would appear that an ontology including bare dispositions can dispense with governing laws of nature. I believe that there is a problem with this line of reasoning. In this essay, I’ll argue that governing laws are indispensable for the explanation of a special sort of natural regularity: those holding among categorical properties (or, as I’ll call them, categorical regularities). This has the potential to be a serious objection to the denial of governing laws, since there may be good reasons to believe that observed regularities are categorical regularities.     

Decision-making competence and cognitive abilities: Which abilities matter?

Decision-making competence is a skill that is associated with numerous positive life outcomes. Even though multiple cognitive abilities have been shown to predict decision-making competence, few studies have incorporated a large test battery tapping into several cognitive abilities concurrently in the same models. The current paper presents a study that sought to investigate which cognitive abilities predicted overall decision-making competence in adults using hierarchical regression analysis. A cognitive test battery, comprising abilities such as general intelligence, executive functions, numeracy, visuospatial ability, and time perception, was administered to 182 participants. Results indicate that both general intelligence, which was consistently the strongest predictor, and numeracy contributed independently to overall decision-making competence. Executive functions did predict overall decision-making competence, while all predictors were included in the models. A novel finding concerns the relationship between time perception and decision-making competence. The complementary roles of these cognitive abilities are discussed.     

Are criminals better lie detectors? Investigating offenders' abilities in the context of deception detection

The present research examined lie detection abilities of a rarely investigated group, namely offenders. Results of the studies conducted thus far indicated a better performance of offenders compared to non‐offenders when discriminating between true and false messages. With two new studies, we aimed at replicating offenders' superior abilities in the context of deception detection. Results of Study 1 (N = 76 males), in contrast, revealed that offenders were significantly worse at accurately classifying true and false messages compared to non‐offenders (students). Results of Study 2 (N = 175 males) revealed that offenders' discrimination performance was not significantly different compared to non‐offenders (clinic staff). An internal meta‐analysis yielded no significant difference between offenders and non‐offenders, questioning the generalizability of previous findings.     

Does power magnify the expression of dispositions?

Conventional wisdom holds that power holders act more in line with their dispositions than do people who lack power. Drawing on principles of construct accessibility, we propose that this is the case only when no alternative constructs are activated. In three experiments, we assessed participants' chronic dispositions and subsequently manipulated participants' degree of power. Participants then either were or were not primed with alternative (i.e., inaccessible or counterdispositional) constructs. When no alternatives were activated, the responses of power holders--perceptions of other people (Experiment 1), preferences for charitable donations (Experiment 2), and strategies in an economic game (Experiment 3)--were more in line with their chronically accessible constructs than were the responses of low-power participants. However, when alternatives had been activated, power holders' responses were no longer more congruent with their dispositions than were the responses of low-power participants. We propose a single mechanism according to which power increases reliance on accessible constructs--that is, constructs that easily come to mind-regardless of whether these constructs are chronically or temporarily accessible.     

Are people with high and low mental rotation abilities differently susceptible to the alignment effect?

We investigated whether the alignment effect (Levine et al, 1982 Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 111 157-175) is influenced by mental rotation abilities. In two experiments, groups of undergraduate students with high and low performance in mental rotation tasks were required to study either schematic (experiment 1) or more complex (experiment 2) maps, and to perform a number of pointing tasks adopting a perspective which could be aligned, misaligned (45 degrees, 135 degrees), or counteraligned (180 degrees) with the perspective assumed during learning. Cognitive styles in spatial representation have also been considered. Results of experiment 1 show that people with low performance in mental rotation tasks prefer to adopt a representation of space focused more on landmarks. Their performance in the pointing tasks depends on the alignment conditions, with more errors in the counteraligned condition followed by the two misaligned and aligned ones. In contrast to this, high-ability mental rotators prefer survey and route spatial representations and are affected only by the aligned and non-aligned conditions. In the second experiment, practice was studied as a function of mental rotation and alignment. The group high in mental rotation ability was found to be free from the alignment effect in the pointing tasks performed after the final of four learning phases.     

What cognitive abilities are involved in trail-making performance?

The cognitive abilities involved in the Connections (Salthouse, et al., 2000) version of the trail making test were investigated by administering the test, along with a battery of cognitive tests and tests of complex span and updating conceptualizations of working memory, to a sample of over 3600 adults. The results indicate that this variant of the trail making test largely reflects individual differences in speed and fluid cognitive abilities, with the relative contributions of the two abilities varying according to particular measure of performance considered (e.g., difference, ratio, or residual). Relations of age on trail making performance were also examined. Although strong age differences were evident in the Connections and working memory measures, with both sets of variables there was nearly complete overlap of the age differences with individual differences in speed and fluid cognitive abilities.     

Are models necessary?

Modelling is currently one of the most successful and popular ways of dealing with some neurotic problems. It is based on a social learning theory that amongst other virtues takes into account cognitive variables. helps shed light on the aetiology of some neurotic disorders (Rachman. 1972). and seems particularly relevant to the understanding of much child behaviour.The technique of the modelling treatment has been refined over the years, largely through the work of Bandura, and the contention to date has been that behavioural improvement is brought about by vicarious processes (Bandura, 1969). However, since a modelling procedure by necessity involves exposure to a phobic object it is possible that vicarious processes are in fact redundant and that improvement is affected by ‘straightforward’ extinction processes. In short the contention is that interaction with a model disguises the fact that the modelling situation is no more than a modified flooding session. In one of the few studies to test this hypothesis Bandura, Grusec and Menlove (1967) found that exposure alone resulted in some gains for dog-phobic children, but that these changes were neither as great nor as stable as those achieved by similar children in a modelling treatment. Other indirect evidence for this hypothesis can be found by-relating the amount of exposure to the phobic object to outcome in modelling studies. Despite obvious difficulties in cross-trial comparison, rate of success for longer exposure treatments would constitute some support, albeit very tentative, for this hypothesis. Unfortunately, few of the studies contained enough reliable information on the relevant variables to reveal much. Bandura et al. (1967) used 80 min of exposure in all, with success rates of 70%, whilst less exposure time resulted in worse outcome in studies by Spiegler et al. (1969) and Ritter (1969). However, against this, Hill et al. (1968) and Rimm and Mahoney (1969) both report good results with brief participant modelling. The fact that participant modelling seems to be more beneficial than symbolic modelling, may be regarded as some support for the exposure hypothesis, since presumably exposure in these cases is more intense.However, these studies are largely indirect and one test of the hypothesis requires a comparison between groups one of which is exposed to both phobic object and model interaction (symbolic modelling) and one of which is exposed just to the phobic object.     

What Are Quantities?

This paper presents a view of quantities as ‘adverbial’ entities of a certain kind—more specifically, determinate ways, or modes, of having length, mass, speed, and the like. In doing so, it will be argued that quantities as such should be distinguished from quantitative properties or relations, and are not universals but are particulars, although they are not (Fregean) objects, either. A main advantage of the adverbial view over its rivals will be found in its superior explanatory power with respect to both certain fundamental principles of quantity and ordinary quantitative reasoning involving quantitative relations like three times as long as and 2 metres longer than.     

Are adjustments insufficient?

Many judgmental biases are thought to be the product of insufficient adjustment from an initial anchor value. Nearly all existing evidence of insufficient adjustment, however, comes from an experimental paradigm that evidence indicates does not involve adjustment at all. In this article, the authors first provide further evidence that some kinds of anchors (those that are self-generated and known to be incorrect but close to the correct answer) activate processes of adjustment, whereas others (uncertain anchors provided by an external source) do not. It is then shown that adjustment from self-generated anchors does indeed tend to be insufficient, both by comparing the estimates of participants starting from different anchor values and by comparing estimates with actual answers. Thus, evidence is provided of adjustment-based anchoring effects similar to the accessibility-based anchoring effects observed in the traditional anchoring paradigm, supporting theories of social judgment that rely on mechanisms of insufficient adjustment.     

Are beliefs signals?

Eric Funkhouser argues that beliefs can function as social signals. I argue that Funkhouser’s argument for this conclusion rests on a problematic definition of “signal,” and that on standard definitions, the imperceptibility of beliefs disqualifies them from counting as signals. However, I also argue that Funkhouser’s insights about the social functions of beliefs can be true even if his claim that beliefs are signals is false.     

Are Fallacies Vices?

Why are some arguments fallacious? Since argumentation is an intellectual activity that can be performed better or worse, do we evaluate arguments simply in terms of their content, or does it also make sense to evaluate the arguer in light of the content put forward? From a ‘virtue’ approach, I propose understanding fallacies as having some link with intellectual vice(s). Drawing from recent work by Paul Grice, Linda Zagzebski, Andrew Aberdein, and Douglas Walton, this essay argues that if there is some sense of argumentation where an argument is (1) truth-propagating and not (2) put forward in order to ‘win’, fallacies may be the vicious element in arguments that undermines (1), most often because the arguer’s goal is only (2). From this perspective, fallacies may not only be improper ‘moves’ in an argument, but may also reveal something lacking in the arguer’s intellectual character.     

Are Lesbians Women?

I argue that Mordque Wittig's view that lesbians are not women neglects the complexities involved in the composition of the category “woman.” I develop an articulation of the concept “woman” in the contemporary United States, with thirteen distinct defining characteristics, none of which are necessary nor sufficient. I argue that Wittig's emphasis on the material production of “woman” through the political regime of heterosexuality, however, is enormously fruitful for feminist and queer strategizing.     

Are affordances normative?

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - In this paper we explore in what sense we can claim that affordances, the objects of perception for ecological psychology, are related to normativity....