KNOWLEDGE HAPPENS: WHY ZAGZEBSKI HAS NOT SOLVED THE MENO PROBLEM

I argue that Linda Zagzebski's proposed solution to the Meno Problem faces serious challenges. The Meno Problem, roughly, is how to explain the value that knowledge, as such, has over mere true belief. Her proposed solution is that believings—when thought of more like actions—can have value in virtue of their motivations. This meshes nicely with her theory that knowledge is, essentially, virtuously motivated true belief. Her solution fails because it entails that, necessarily, all knowledge is motivated in a way that resembles the motivation of actions. Crucially, Zagzebski says the value derived from motivation comes from certain laudable feelings—like love of truth (she is explicit that love is a feeling). But there are possible cases of knowledge—probably some of which are actual—in which subjects do not or cannot experience these feelings.     

Family therapy as a treatment for children: a critical review of outcome research.

The value of family therapy as a treatment for child psychopathology is considered by reviewing pertinent outcome research. Fourteen studies that met three criteria are included in the review: (a) a child or adolescent was the identified patient or referral; (b) therapy included at least one parent and the child; and (c) outcome was evaluated in terms of the child's symptoms. There are major shortcomings in most of the available data, with only two well-controlled studies. Some empirical evidence does exist that family therapy is an effective treatment for children; the data from studies of adolescents are especially encouraging. However, insufficient data are available for comparing the relative merits of conjoint family treatment and individual child therapy. If the value of family therapy as a treatment alternative or, ideally, as the "treatment of choice" for a referred individual child is to be established, more and better controlled comparative outcome studies will be necessary. Suggestions for future research are presented emphasizing the need for a developmental perspective by recommending, for example, the use of factorial designs in which the intervenaction of treatment and age can be analyzed.     

Object Relations and the Development of Values

Values acquisition as a part of the therapeutic interaction that occurs between client and therapist is a clear and focused representation of what naturally occurs between people who influence one another. As the relationship develops in therapy, and the client begins to trust the therapist, he or she also becomes inclined to emulate that therapist in greater or lesser degrees. From an object relations point of view, a developmental process unfolds between these two people, which reflects the means by which a person realizes his or her value system. The discussion begins with the etiology of identification, because according to this viewpoint, the process described above begins, and is supported by, the dynamics of identification. Referring specifically to the ideas of Heinz Kohut, the authors describe the mechanisms of idealization as the intrapsychic process most basic to the final formation of values.     

Functional anatomy of the null hypothesis and of tests of it

The author compared simulations of the "true" null hypothesis (zeta) test, in which sigma was known and fixed, with the t test, in which s, an estimate of sigma, was calculated from the sample because the t test was used to emulate the "true" test. The true null hypothesis test bears exclusively on calculating the probability that a sample distance (mean) is larger than a specified value. The results showed that the value of t was sensitive to sampling fluctuations in both distance and standard error. Large values of t reflect small standard errors when n is small. The value of t achieves sensitivity primarily to distance only when the sample sizes are large. One cannot make a definitive statement about the probability or "significance" of a distance solely on the basis of the value of t.     

Modeling Individual Damped Linear Oscillator Processes with Differential Equations: Using Surrogate Data Analysis to Estimate the Smoothing Parameter

Among the many methods available for modeling intraindividual time series, differential equation modeling has several advantages that make it promising for applications to psychological data. One interesting differential equation model is that of the damped linear oscillator (DLO), which can be used to model variables that have a tendency to fluctuate around some typical, or equilibrium, value. Methods available for fitting the damped linear oscillator model using differential equation modeling can yield biased parameter estimates when applied to univariate time series. The degree of this bias depends on a smoothing–like parameter, which balances the need for increasing smoothing to minimize error variance but not smoothing so much as to obscure change of interest. This article explores a technique that uses surrogate data analysis to select such a parameter, thereby producing approximately unbiased parameter estimates. Furthermore the smoothing parameter, which is usually researcher-selected, is produced in an automated manner so as to reduce the experience required by researchers to apply these methods. Focus is placed on the damped linear model; however, similar issues are expected with other differential equation models and other techniques in which parameter estimates depend on a smoothing parameter. An example using affect data from the Notre Dame Longitudinal Study of Aging (2004) is presented, which contrasts the use of a single smoothing parameter for all individuals versus use of a smoothing parameter for each individual.     

A decision model for steady-state choice in concurrent chains

Grace and McLean (2006) proposed a decision model for acquisition of choice in concurrent chains which assumes that after reinforcement in a terminal link, subjects make a discrimination whether the preceding reinforcer delay was short or long relative to a criterion. Their model was subsequently extended by Christensen and Grace (2008, 2009a, 2009b) to include effects of initial- and terminal-link duration on choice. We show that an expression for steady-state responding can be derived from the decision model, which enables a model for choice that provides an account of archival data that is equal or superior to the contextual choice model (Grace, 1994) and hyperbolic value-added model (Mazur, 2001) in terms of goodness of fit, parsimony, and parameter invariance. The success of the steady-state decision model validates the strategy of understanding acquisition phenomena as a bridge toward explaining choice at the molar level.     

Words: what are they, and do animals have them?

Since the word is not a well-defined entity like the sentence, one looks for findings that may help to clarify it. The effect of nonsense words on the young child's sorting of taxonomic versus thematic alternatives is said to be such a finding. A young child given, say, duck as a sample, goose and nest as alternatives, picks nest (thematic alternative), whereas the older child picks goose (taxonomic). However, if told the duck is called "ZLT" in Croatian, and asked to "find another ZLT", the young child shifts to goose. Markman and Hutchinson (1984) claim this demonstrates that young children know that words are "names of object categories" (and that this knowledge protects them against false hypotheses, facilitating their acquisition of words). In the present study, we applied the Markman et al. procedure to young "language-trained" chimpanzees. The animals were at an early stage of training, having used "words" solely in the function "X goes with Y", or "if shown X, get Y". Although these functions are notably weaker than "X is the name of a category", the animals showed a thematic-taxonomic shift, thus behaving like young children. The Markman-Hutchinson interpretation of the shift effect is unsatisfactory in two respects: (1) the shift effect can be explained without attributing any knowledge of what a word is to either creature, child or ape; more important (2), the interpretation does not address the main question: what is a "name" and what does a child think it is? We conclude with a discussion of what a word is, appealing to information retrieval on the one hand, and intention to refer on the other.     

The frequentist implications of optional stopping on Bayesian hypothesis tests

Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is the most commonly used statistical methodology in psychology. The probability of achieving a value as extreme or more extreme than the statistic obtained from the data is evaluated, and if it is low enough, the null hypothesis is rejected. However, because common experimental practice often clashes with the assumptions underlying NHST, these calculated probabilities are often incorrect. Most commonly, experimenters use tests that assume that sample sizes are fixed in advance of data collection but then use the data to determine when to stop; in the limit, experimenters can use data monitoring to guarantee that the null hypothesis will be rejected. Bayesian hypothesis testing (BHT) provides a solution to these ills because the stopping rule used is irrelevant to the calculation of a Bayes factor. In addition, there are strong mathematical guarantees on the frequentist properties of BHT that are comforting for researchers concerned that stopping rules could influence the Bayes factors produced. Here, we show that these guaranteed bounds have limited scope and often do not apply in psychological research. Specifically, we quantitatively demonstrate the impact of optional stopping on the resulting Bayes factors in two common situations: (1) when the truth is a combination of the hypotheses, such as in a heterogeneous population, and (2) when a hypothesis is composite—taking multiple parameter values—such as the alternative hypothesis in a t-test. We found that, for these situations, while the Bayesian interpretation remains correct regardless of the stopping rule used, the choice of stopping rule can, in some situations, greatly increase the chance of experimenters finding evidence in the direction they desire. We suggest ways to control these frequentist implications of stopping rules on BHT.     

Shared minds: How mothers and infants co-construct early patterns of choice within intentional communication partnerships

The qualitative research method of case study inquiry is employed to investigate different patterns observed in early communicative interactions between two infants and their mothers. These mothers and babies were similar in significant ways: Both mothers were observed to be competent, well-functioning adults and reported no communicative or parenting dysfunction: both infants were evaluated as developing normally in terms of their cognitive level and acquisition of communication behaviors. However, a difference was observed between the dyads in their effectiveness in contributing to the infants' development as intentional communicators. The extent to which an infant and mother “share minds” is proposed as accounting for the observed difference. This phenomenon of “shared minds” is examined by observing the process of choice co-construction engaged in by mothers and infants during communication. It is concluded that characteristics of these early co-constructions influence the way in which the young child begins to act with intention and to interpret him- or herself and others as intentional communicative beings. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Completion of binary statements by children at three academic levels

This study was designed to examine the strategy employed by school-aged subjects when completing binary statements. Thirty-two incomplete binary statements representing four statement conditions (true affirmative, true negative, false affirmative, and false negative) were administered to 120 children randomly selected from three academic levels. A response-index change model is postulated as representing the strategy employed by these school-aged subjects when completing binary statements. According to this model, the factor that causes response time to differ across the four statement conditions is the number of times the child is required to change the set of his response index. The child begins the task of completing a binary statement by reading and encoding the incomplete statement. He then selects the numeral that corresponds to the adjective “odd” or “even” contained in the predicate of the incomplete statement. The child’s response index is now set to respond with this numeral. What the child does at this point will depend upon the type of statement condition with which he is working. If the child is completing a TA statement, no response-index change is required. He simply gives as his answer the numeral to which his response index is set. If the child is completing an FA statement or a TN statement, one response-index change is required. If the child is completing an FN statement, two response-index changes are required.     

The many null distributions of person fit indices

This paper deals with the situation of an investigator who has collected the scores ofn persons to a set ofk dichotomous items, and wants to investigate whether the answers of all respondents are compatible with the one parameter logistic test model of Rasch. Contrary to the standard analysis of the Rasch model, where all persons are kept in the analysis and badly fittingitems may be removed, this paper studies the alternative model in which a small minority ofpersons has an answer strategy not described by the Rasch model. Such persons are called anomalous or aberrant. From the response vectors consisting ofk symbols each equal to 0 or 1, it is desired to classify each respondent as either anomalous or as conforming to the model. As this model is probabilistic, such a classification will possibly involve false positives and false negatives. Both for the Rasch model and for other item response models, the literature contains several proposals for a person fit index, which expresses for each individual the plausibility that his/her behavior follows the model. The present paper argues that such indices can only provide a satisfactory solution to the classification problem if their statistical distribution is known under the null hypothesis that all persons answer according to the model. This distribution, however, turns out to be rather different for different values of the person's latent trait value. This value will be called ability parameter, although our results are equally valid for Rasch scales measuring other attributes.As the true ability parameter is unknown, one can only use its estimate in order to obtain an estimated person fit value and an estimated null hypothesis distribution. The paper describes three specifications for the latter: assuming that the true ability equals its estimate, integrating across the ability distribution assumed for the population, and conditioning on the total score, which is in the Rasch model the sufficient statistic for the ability parameter.Classification rules for aberrance will be worked out for each of the three specifications. Depending on test length, item parameters and desired accuracy, they are based on the exact distribution, its Monte Carlo estimate and a new and promising approximation based on the moments of the person fit statistic. Results for the likelihood person fit statistic are given in detail, the methods could also be applied to other fit statistics. A comparison of the three specifications results in the recommendation to condition on the total score, as this avoids some problems of interpretation that affect the other two specifications.The authors express their gratitude to the reviewers and to many colleagues for comments on an earlier version.     

In pursuit of the proper null: Reply to

Chen argued that the proper null hypothesis for free-choice studies examining shifts in choice was 66.7%. Sagarin and Skowronki (2009) questioned the appropriateness of this value, noting that it was based on an unwarranted assumption that subjects always choose preferred options over less preferred options. In this paper, we respond to the points raised by Chen and Risen (2009), noting that: (a) violations of an additional unwarranted assumption (perfect transitivity) also move the proper null hypothesis towards 50%; (b) the validation of pretest measures would enable researchers to estimate an upper bound on the proper null; (c) the “blind” choice methodology proposed by Sagarin and Skowronski places the null unambiguously at 50%; and (d) Sagarin and Skowronski correctly call for null-hypothesis tests where needed. In the end, we again endorse the idea that this debate is best resolved empirically, but we believe the empirical avenues available are wider than those endorsed by Chen and Risen.     

The parameter preferences of acquired motor programs for rapid,discrete movements: I. Transfer of training

Sixty subjects made discrete movements to visual targets without concurrent visual feedback. After 160 acquisition trials with a single target/movement, subjects were divided into five groups for transfer. The major independent variable was the relationship between the acquisition and transfer movements. For three groups, extent, duration, or velocity was the same in acquisition and in transfer, with the other two parameters changing. For the remaining two groups, either all parameters were changed or no parameters were changed (i.e., subjects performed the same movement). It was found that, as long as one parameter remained the same, subjects performed as well as if nothing were changed. Only when all parameters were changed did performance deteriorate. The results are in direct contrast to those of Newell and Zelaznik (1980) and provide no support for their conclusion that velocity is a more important parameter than movement duration or extent.     

Verb argument information used in a prodrop language: An experimental study in Japanese

Japanese is an SOV, head-final language with phonologically null arguments. Due to these characteristics, any (or all) of the arguments classified by a verb may be null. Consequently, verb argument information which Japanese readers/listeners receive overtly is sometimes incomplete. Furthermore, the arguments in a string may or may not belong to the same clause, and the disambiguating verb argument information does not become available until the end of a clause. These characteristics pose a question of whether or not verb argument information is a useful source of information for on-line syntactic processing in Japanese. An experiment using three types of complex NPs was designed specifically to examine whether Japanese readers use the argument structure information, or alternatively, they simply use minimal attachment in on-line processing of syntactically ambiguous structures. The reading times of three types of complex NPs suggest that native speakers of Japanese indeed utilize verb argument information, and they do so immediately. This finding supports the hypothesis that the Japanese language is processed in the similar way to English in that verb argument information functions as an important source of information in on-line processing. The difference between processing English and processing Japanese is that the former has a mechanism which keeps track of null arguments as well as overt ones.This research was supported in part by a grant to Mineharu Nakayama by the College of Humanitiesm The Ohio State University. A portion of this paper was presented at the CUNY Sentence Processing Conference (1992). I would like to thank Paul G. Gorrell, Julie E. Boland, Laurie A. Stowe, Mineharu Nakayama, and Jerry Packard for their useful comments and discussions.     

Optimizing the Use of Vision in Manual Aiming: The Role of Practice

The purpose of this study was to determine how subjects learn to adjust the characteristics of their manual aiming movements in order to make optimal use of the visual information and reduce movement error. Subjects practised aiming (120 trials) with visual information available for either 400 msec or 600 msec. Following acquisition, they were transferred to conditions in which visual information was available for either more or less time. Over acquisition, subjects appeared to reduce target-aiming error by moving to the target area more quickly in order to make greater use of vision when in the vicinity of the target. With practice, there was also a reduction in the number of modifications in the movement. After transfer, both performance and kinematic data indicated that the time for which visual information was available was a more important predictor of aiming error than the similarity between training and transfer conditions. These findings are not consistent with a strong “specificity of learning” position. They also suggest that, if some sort of general representation or motor programme develops with practice, that representation includes rules or procedures for the utilization of visual feedback to allow for the on-line adjustment of the goal-directed movement.     

A psychoanalytic approach to language delay: When autistic isn't necessarily autism

This paper describes family work with four children from different ethnic backgrounds presenting with autistic features in the context of delayed or deviant language development and, in one case, elective mutism. It begins by describing how psychoanalytic approaches to language development have tended to see the process as underpinned by symbol formation as a compensation for loss of the object. This is contrasted with an approach which, following Bion, emphasizes language development as an aspect of a broad process concerned with enabling emotional experience to become thought. I also emphasize the significance of the survival and development of the self in achieving separation. In the case studies, the paper highlights the degree of trauma in the parents' backgrounds, which had impeded them from containing their children's developmental anxieties. The parents' telling their stories was both valuable to them and enabled them to become more emotionally available to their children. In all cases the work promoted language development and autistic features disappeared or waned considerably after relatively brief intervention. The conclusions discuss the relevance of these findings to the autistic child population, and the value of child psychotherapy to differential diagnosis within the autistic spectrum.     

The power law repealed: The case for an exponential law of practice

The power function is treated as the law relating response time to practice trials. However, the evidence for a power law is flawed, because it is based on averaged data. We report a survey that assessed the form of the practice function for individual learners and learning conditions in paradigms that have shaped theories of skill acquisition. We fit power and exponential functions to 40 sets of data representing 7,910 learning series from 475 subjects in 24 experiments. The exponential function fit better than the power function in all the unaveraged data sets. Averaging produced a bias in favor of the power function. A new practice function based on the exponential, the APEX function, fit better than a power function with an extra, preexperimental practice parameter. Clearly, the best candidate for the law of practice is the exponential or APEX function, not the generally accepted power function. The theoretical implications are discussed.     

Task analysis in curriculum design: a hierarchically sequenced introductory mathematics curriculum

A method of systematic task analysis is applied to the problem of designing a sequence of learning objectives that will provide an optimal match for the child's natural sequence of acquisition of mathematical skills and concepts. The authors begin by proposing an operational definition of the number concept in the form of a set of behaviors which, taken together, permit the inference that the child has an abstract concept of "number". These are the "objectives" of the curriculum. Each behavior in the defining set is then subjected to an analysis that identifies hypothesized components of skilled performance and prerequisites for learning these components. On the basis of these analyses, specific sequences of learning objectives are proposed. The proposed sequences are hypothesized to be those that will best facilitate learning, by maximizing transfer from earlier to later objectives. Relevant literature on early learning and cognitive development is considered in conjunction with the analyses and the resulting sequences. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which the curriculum can be implemented and studied in schools. Examples of data on individual children are presented, and the use of such data for improving the curriculum itself, as well as for examining the effects of other treatment variables, is considered.     

Learning artificial orthographies: Further evidence of a nonanalytic acquisition procedure

Previous research (Byrne, 1984) showed that adults who learned to read an orthography representing phonetic features (voicing, place of articulation) did not readily obtain usable knowledge of the mapping of phonetic features onto orthographic elements, as evidenced by failure to generalize to partially new stimuli. The present Experiment 1 used a different method of detecting learning savings during acquisition. Subjects learned a set of complex symbols standing for phones, with the elements representing voicing and place. In a second acquisition set, the signs for voicing were reversed. Learning speed was not affected, which was consistent with the claim that feature-element links went unnoticed in initial acquisition. In Experiment 2, some subjects were instructed to "find the rule" embodied in the orthography. None did, and acquisition rates were no different from those of uninstructed subjects. In Experiment 3, subjects had 4 h of training on the orthography, with consistent feature-symbol mapping for half of the subjects and arbitrary pairings for the remainder. No reaction time advantage emerged in the consistent condition, which is further evidence of nonanalytic acquisition. The results are related to data from children learning to read.