Introduction to the essays on Kurt H. Wolff

Introduction to the essays on Kurt H. Wolff     

The effect of first response complexity on the psychological refractory period: A reanalysis

The effect of first signal complexity on the delay of the second response within the paradigm of PRP has been the subject of several recent papers. The results show that, for the same interstimulus interval, the more complex the first reaction, the more the second response is delayed. This paper reports a reanalysis of the data presented by these investigators in terms of comparable response-stimulus intervals. The implications for theories of limited attention are discussed.     

A beginner's guide to the problem-oriented first family interview

The large volume and diversity of family therapy resources can often confuse trainees who are in need of more abbreviated guidelines for managing their clinical responsibilities. This paper presents a structured outline of a problem-oriented first family interview for the family therapy supervisor and the beginning family therapist. We view the first interview as an integrated process including the important tasks preceding and following the initial family meeting. After the goals that shape the work of the first interview are described, a step-by-step guide to the twelve phases of the interview is presented: telephoning; forming hypotheses; the greeting; the social phase; identifying the problem; observing family patterns; defining goals; contracting; checklist; revising hypotheses; contacting the referral person; and gathering records. This approach to the first interview integrates a variety of structural and strategic procedures. The guide, intended for use in conjunction with close supervision, may serve as a foundation on which beginning therapists can build their unique styles.     

Some recent essays in the history of the philosophy of mathematics: A critical review

Research was partially supported by NSF grant DIR 9011694.     

A reconsideration of Freud's essays on sexuality and their clinical implications

This paper considers some of the concisely presented material of the second of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905a), on "Infantile Sexuality." The author puts forward the view that infantile sexuality may be thought of not simply as an immature stage that must be passed through, but also as a pool of psychic experiences upon which mature personality organization can continually draw, in dynamic oscillation among different mental positions. The link between infantile sexuality and the structuring of the psychic apparatus, discussed in the first and third of the Three Essays ("The Sexual Aberrations" and "The Transformations of Puberty"), raises questions that are still open to further research.     

A Muslim response to the ELCA document

This piece offers a Muslim perspective on the new interreligious engagement statement from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).     

A timid response to the consequence argument

In this paper, I challenge the Consequence Argument for Incompatibilism by arguing that the inference principle it relies upon is not well motivated. The sorts of non-question-begging instances that might be offered in support of it fall short.     

Effects of response rate, reinforcement frequency, and the duration of a stimulus preceding response-independent food

Food-reinforced key pecking in the pigeon was maintained under a four-component multiple schedule. In two components, responding was maintained at high rates under a random-ratio schedule. In the other two components, responding was maintained at low rates under a schedule that specified a minimum interresponse time. For both high and low response rates, one of the schedule components was associated with a high reinforcement frequency and the other components with a lower reinforcement frequency. During performance under these schedules, a stimulus terminated by access to response-independent food was periodically presented. The duration of this pre-food stimulus was 5, 30, 60, or 120 sec. Changes in rate of key pecking during the pre-food stimulus were systematically related to baseline response rate and the duration of the stimulus. Both high and low response rates were increased during the 5-sec stimulus. At longer stimulus durations, low response rates were unaffected and high response rates were decreased during the stimulus. For two of three pigeons, high response rates maintained under a lower frequency of reinforcement tended to be decreased more than high response rates maintained under a higher reinforcement frequency. In general, the magnitude of decrease in high response rates was inversely related to the duration of the pre-food stimulus.     

Assessing the use of multiple sources in student essays

The present study explored different approaches for automatically scoring student essays that were written on the basis of multiple texts. Specifically, these approaches were developed to classify whether or not important elements of the texts were present in the essays. The first was a simple pattern-matching approach called "multi-word" that allowed for flexible matching of words and phrases in the sentences. The second technique was latent semantic analysis (LSA), which was used to compare student sentences to original source sentences using its high-dimensional vector-based representation. Finally, the third was a machine-learning technique, support vector machines, which learned a classification scheme from the corpus. The results of the study suggested that the LSA-based system was superior for detecting the presence of explicit content from the texts, but the multi-word pattern-matching approach was better for detecting inferences outside or across texts. These results suggest that the best approach for analyzing essays of this nature should draw upon multiple natural language processing approaches.     

A Muslim response to Harnack

Mohamed Ali, an Indian Muslim political activist of the 1920s, hoped to articulate an empowering perspective for his generation of Indian Muslims. He found Harnack's critique of the history of Christian dogma a suggestive basis for a new image of the relation of Islam to the religious life of the centuries before the Prophet Muhammad. He wanted to create a scheme for a ‘Federation of Faiths’ which would enable Indian Muslims to co‐operate in the new India with persons of other traditions. The article explains the context of Mohamed Ali's thought. Although his perspective lost momentum in India after the collapse of the non‐cooperation and Khilaft movements, it may be that a reconsideration of his ideas would be useful in the context of inter‐religious dialogue.