Epistemological Open Questions

While there has been a great deal of recent interest in parallels between metaethics and metaepistemology, there has been little discussion of epistemological analogues of the open question argument (hereafter: OQA). This is somewhat surprising—the general trend in recent work is in the direction of emphasizing the continuity between metaethics and metaepistemology, and to treat metanormative questions as arising in parallel in these two normative domains. And while the OQA has been subjected to a wide variety of objections, it is still influential in metaethics. In this paper, I aim to show that an epistemological version of the OQA is just as promising as its moral cousin. That's not to say that I'll unqualifiedly endorse either argument. Rather, my aim is to show that there is just as strong a prima facie (really, secunda facie) case for an OQA in metaepistemology as there is in metaethics—I leave open whether the ultima facie case collapses.     

Introducing the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS)

We introduce the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS), an open-access online stimulus set containing 900 color images depicting a broad spectrum of themes, including humans, animals, objects, and scenes, along with normative ratings on two affective dimensions—valence (i.e., the degree of positive or negative affective response that the image evokes) and arousal (i.e., the intensity of the affective response that the image evokes). The OASIS images were collected from online sources, and valence and arousal ratings were obtained in an online study (total N = 822). The valence and arousal ratings covered much of the circumplex space and were highly reliable and consistent across gender groups. OASIS has four advantages: (a) the stimulus set contains a large number of images in four categories; (b) the data were collected in 2015, and thus OASIS features more current images and reflects more current ratings of valence and arousal than do existing stimulus sets; (c) the OASIS database affords users the ability to interactively explore images by category and ratings; and, most critically, (d) OASIS allows for free use of the images in online and offline research studies, as they are not subject to the copyright restrictions that apply to the International Affective Picture System. The OASIS images, along with normative valence and arousal ratings, are available for download from www.benedekkurdi.com/#oasis or https://db.tt/yYTZYCga.     

The Latent and Manifest Consequences of Work

Jahoda's (1979) distinction between manifest and latent consequences of work was tested on samples of employed and unemployed persons to determine if such a dichotomy can help explain the psychosocial effects of unemployment. Confirmatory factor analysis on data from 393 individuals from two large American cities failed to support the two consequences of work proposed by Jahoda. Instead, these data indicate that an intrinsic versus extrinsic model of work rewards can more accurately account for the patterns among ratings. The model of best fit was equally accurate for the employed and unemployed samples, suggesting that these groups have similar reactions to and reasons for working (or wanting to work). These results indicate that more than financial loss is suffered when jobs are lost involuntarily, and that we can fully understand the debilitating effects of unemployment only when we recognize the full scope of reasons why people work.     

Manifest anxiety and fearfulness in children and adolescents.

The relationship between self-reported fear and anxiety was examined in a large sample of normal Australian children and adolescents. Participants completed the Fear Survey Schedule for Children--Revised (Ollendick, 1983) and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (Reynolds & Richmond, 1978). Following an examination of the internal consistency of these instruments, correlational analyses were conducted on anxiety and fear scores. Fear scores were shown to be sensitive to anxiety, sex, and age groups. Furthermore, discriminant analysis showed that high-anxiety children indicated a greater fear of items related to failure and criticism than did low-anxiety children. Other issues, including the content overlap between the two scales used in the investigation, are discussed.     

A Closer Look at Manifest Consequence

Fine (2007) argues that Frege’s puzzle and its relatives demonstrate a need for a basic reorientation of the field of semantics. According to this reorientation, the domain of semantic facts would be closed not under the classical consequence relation but only under a stronger relation Fine calls “manifest consequence.” I examine Fine’s informally sketched analyses of manifest consequence, showing that each can be amended to determine a class of strong consequence relations. A best candidate relation emerges from each of the two classes, and I prove that the two candidates extensionally coincide. The resulting consequence relation is of independent interest, for it might be held to constitute a cogent standard of reasoning that proceeds under a deficient grasp on the identity of objects.     

Test-retest reliability of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale

Test-retest reliabilities of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale over 1- and 5-wk. intervals were examined for two samples of students, 73 boys and 88 girls in regular sixth, seventh and eighth grade classrooms (11 yr. to 14 yr.). For raw scores the test-retest Pearson r was .88 (1-wk.) and .77 (5-wk.), indicating good reliability. For both samples there was a small difference between test (12.2 for 1-wk. sample; 11.4 for 5-wk. sample) and retest (11.2 for 1-wk. sample; 9.8 for 5-wk. sample) mean raw scores. Implications for test use are discussed.     

Testing Manifest Monotonicity Using Order-Constrained Statistical Inference

Most dichotomous item response models share the assumption of latent monotonicity, which states that the probability of a positive response to an item is a nondecreasing function of a latent variable intended to be measured. Latent monotonicity cannot be evaluated directly, but it implies manifest monotonicity across a variety of observed scores, such as the restscore, a single item score, and in some cases the total score. In this study, we show that manifest monotonicity can be tested by means of the order-constrained statistical inference framework. We propose a procedure that uses this framework to determine whether manifest monotonicity should be rejected for specific items. This approach provides a likelihood ratio test for which the p-value can be approximated through simulation. A simulation study is presented that evaluates the Type I error rate and power of the test, and the procedure is applied to empirical data.