Why do they exercise less? Barriers to exercise in high-anxiety-sensitive women

Anxiety sensitivity (AS; fear of arousal sensations) is a risk factor for mental and physical health problems, including physical inactivity. Because of the many mental and physical health benefits of exercise, it is important to better understand why high-AS individuals may be less likely to exercise. The present study's aim was to understand the role of barriers to exercise in explaining lower levels of physical exercise in high-AS individuals. Participants were undergraduate women who were selected as high (n = 82) or low (n = 72) AS. High-AS women participated in less physical exercise and perceived themselves as less fit than low-AS women. Mediation analyses revealed that barriers to exercise accounted for the inverse relationships between AS group and physical exercise/fitness levels. Findings suggest that efforts to increase physical exercise in at-risk populations, such as high-AS individuals, should not focus exclusively on benefits to exercise but should also target reasons why these individuals are exercising less.     

Why won’t she sleep? Screen exposure and sleep patterns in young infants

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends infants’ exposure to electronic screen-based media be minimized; however, more research is needed to understand effects of viewing screen-based media. Here, we examine relations between media use and sleep. Data were collected from mothers when their infants (N = 429) were four months of age. Mothers answered questions about the time their infants spent watching electronic screen-based media. Exposure to electronic screen-based media was negatively associated with nighttime sleep (but not daytime sleep), such that an hour of screen time was associated with nearly 13 min less sleep on a typical night.     

Why conceptual competence won’t help the non-naturalist epistemologist

Abstract

Non-naturalist normative realists face an epistemological objection: They must explain how their preferred route of justification ensures a non-accidental connection between justified moral beliefs and the normative truths. One strategy for meeting this challenge begins by pointing out that we are semantically or conceptually competent in our use of the normative terms, and then argues that this competence guarantees the non-accidental truth of some of our first-order normative beliefs. In this paper, I argue against this strategy by illustrating that this competence based strategy undermines the non-naturalist’s ability to capture the robustly normative content of our moral beliefs.     

Why the Canberra plan won’t help you do serious metaphysics

Jackson (From metaphysics to ethics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998) argues that conceptual analysis plays a modest, albeit crucial, role in ‘serious metaphysics’: roughly, the project of demystifying phenomena we take to be mysterious by locating them in the natural world. This defence of conceptual analysis is associated with ‘the Canberra Plan’, a philosophical methodology that has its roots in the works of both Lewis (J Philos 67(13):427–446, 1970, Australas J Philos 50:249–258, 1972) and Jackson (Monist 77:93–110, 1994, 1998). There is, however, a distinction to be drawn between conceptual analysis, as it is typically employed in the Canberra plan, and a version of it defended by Jackson himself. In this paper, I elucidate this distinction, and employ examples from the history of science to argue the use of the former, but not the latter, incurs certain problems of conceptual change. Moreover, I also argue neither can be used to undertake serious metaphysics—the former because of the aforementioned problems, and the latter due to the machinery it employs to solve them.     

That dog won’t fit: body size awareness in dogs

Animal Cognition - With very few exceptions, no coherent model of representing the self exists for nonhuman species. According to our hypothesis, understanding of the Self as an object’ can...     

Value seeking and prediction-decision inconsistency: Why don’t people take what they predict they’ll like the most?

In this research, it is proposed that, when making a choice between consumption goods, people do not just think about which option will deliver the highest consumption utility but also think about which choice is most consistent with rationales—beliefs about how they should make decisions. The present article examines a specific rationale, value seeking. The value-seeking rationale refers to the belief that one should choose the option in a choice set that has the highest monetary value. Studies 1 and 2 show that value seeking could lead to a prediction-decision inconsistency, predicting a high consumption utility from one option but choosing another option. Study 3 shows that the prediction-decision inconsistency could be created even by “illusory” (as opposed to truly monetary) values and that the inconsistency could be turned on or off through empirical manipulation.     

Why ‘non-mental’ won’t work: on Hempel’s dilemma and the characterization of the ‘physical’

Recent discussions of physicalism have focused on the question how the physical ought to be characterized. Many have argued that any characterization of the physical should include the stipulation that the physical is non-mental, and others have claimed that a systematic substitution of ‘non-mental’ for ‘physical’ is all that is needed for philosophical purposes. I argue here that both claims are incorrect: substituting ‘non-mental’ for ‘physical’ in the causal argument for physicalism does not deliver the physicalist conclusion, and the specification that the physical is non-mental is irrelevant to the task of formulating physicalism as a substantive, controversial thesis.

Why doesn’t feedback correct Vierordt’s law?

Vierordt [(1868). Der zeitsinn nach versuchen. Tübingen: Laupp] observed that participants over-reproduce short durations and under-reproduce long durations within a test range of sample durations (Vierordt’s law). Similar phenomena have been reported for sensory and other processing (e.g. [Helson (1964 Helson, H. (1964). Adaptation-level theory. New York, NY: Harper &; Row. [Google Scholar]). Adaptation-level theory. New York: Harper &; Row; Stevens, and Greenbaum (1966). Regression effect in psychophysical judgment. Perception &; Psychophysics, 1, 439–446]. Performance feedback (knowledge of results) does not correct this performance distortion although it does correct other errors. In Experiment 1, I tested the hypothesis that a random presentation order of the standard durations makes feedback on one trial inappropriate for the next trial preventing correction of the Vierordt effect. In Experiment 2, participants performed two consecutive reproductions after each standard duration. Having the opportunity to immediately utilize the feedback from the first reproduction did not eliminate the Vierordt effect, although participants did attempt to correct the error on the first reproduction. In Experiment 3, the Vierordt effect was reduced in a blocked presentation design. Feedback produced more veridical performance. I conclude that the resistance of the Vierordt effect to correction by feedback may result, in part, from feedback on a given trial being misapplied to correcting performance on the next trial. Ironically, the Vierordt effect, which produced the differing directions and magnitudes of performance errors reported by the feedback, may be what prevents feedback from correcting for the Vierordt effect.     

Why don’t synaesthetic colours adapt away?

Synaesthetes persistently perceive certain stimuli as systematically accompanied by illusory colours, even though they know those colours to be illusory. This appears to contrast with cases where a subject??s colour vision adapts to systematic distortions caused by wearing coloured goggles. Given that each case involves longstanding systematic distortion of colour perception that the subjects recognize as such, how can a theory of colour perception explain the fact that perceptual adaptation occurs in one case but not the other? I argue that these cases and the relationship between them can be made sense of in light of an existing view of colour perception. Understanding colours as ways in which objects and surfaces modify light, perceived through grasping patterns and variations in colour appearances, provides a framework from which the cases and their apparent disanalogy can be predicted and explained. This theory??s ability to accommodate these cases constitutes further empirical evidence in its favour.     

Barriers to children’s walking to school in Iranian and Chinese samples

Factors that contribute to children’s walking to school have been investigated in previous research, which primarily focussed on socio-economic variables in high income countries. There is a general lack of studies which have examined mode choice differences on school trips in low and middle income countries. Focusing on parental social cognitive variables in addition to household socio-economic characteristics, the present study is among the first to compare barriers to children’s walking in daily commuting to schools across samples from two middle income countries: Iran and China. A self-administered questionnaire was devised and distributed among primary school pupils (7–9 years old) in Mashhad, Iran and Nanjing, China. The children were asked to take the questionnaires to their parents to complete and return the filled forms. A total of 671 (response rate of 90 percent) and 224 (response rate of 82 percent) completely filled questionnaires were returned in Mashhad and Nanjing, respectively. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed that parents in Mashhad perceived higher risk and reported more worry of children being involved in road crashes when walking to school. Analyses revealed more safety favourable parental attitudes in the Chinese sample, compared to the Iranian sample. Parental attitudes towards transport safety were safer in the sample from Nanjing as compared to Mashhad. Hierarchical binary logistic regression showed that walking time from home to school and parental worry about road crashes were negatively associated with children’s walking to school in both samples. In the Iranian sample, results suggested that while household car ownership and higher family income were associated with a decreased probability that a child walk to school, the total number of children in the household increased the probability of walking to school.     

Why it doesn’t matter to metaphysics what Mary learns

The Knowledge Argument of Frank Jackson has not persuaded physicalists, but their replies have not dispelled the intuition that someone raised in a black and white environment gains genuinely new knowledge when she sees colors for the first time. In what follows, we propose an explanation of this particular kind of knowledge gain that displays it as genuinely new, but orthogonal to both physicalism and phenomenology. We argue that Mary’s case is an instance of a common phenomenon in which something new is learned as the result of exploiting representational resources that were not previously exploited, and that this results in gaining genuinely new information.     

Why can’t I change Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony?

Philosophical Studies - Musical works change. Bruckner revised his Eighth Symphony. Ella Fitzgerald and many other artists have made it acceptable to sing the jazz standard “All the Things...     

Physical education teachers in Australia: Why do they stay?

Studies related to reasons why teachers stay are far less frequent than those reporting reasons to leave. This study assessed the factors that satisfied PE teachers and the motivators to stay in PE teaching. Physical educator stayers (N?=?139) responded to a ‘PE Teachers’ Career Intentions Questionnaire’, ‘Basic Satisfaction Needs at Work Scale’ and an open-ended question to ascertain retention motivators. Basic needs satisfaction for competence, autonomy and relatedness support, along with satisfaction for ‘professional interaction’, ‘participation in decision-making’, ‘organisation of teaching’, and ‘respect’ predicted retention. PE teachers gain work-related motivation from their expertise, the opportunity to implement ideas collaboratively, but also the sense of efficacy to control their pedagogy and student outcomes of focus. Supportive policy and actions; not just the absence of career-thwarting stimuli, appear vital for teacher self-efficacy, leading to career fulfillment. Quality mentoring programs may serve to enhance PE teacher satisfaction and are worthy of further investigation.     

Why Didn’t Freud Reject Pfister? A Response to Isabelle Noth and Christoph Morgenthaler

The Freud-Pfister correspondence is in some sense an Urtext for the most friendly debate imaginable between the self-identified “godless Jew” who founded psychoanalysis, and the liberal Swiss pastor who was drawn to psychoanalysis while retaining his belief in God. Why didn’t Freud reject Pfister? This article will probe this question using the tools of psychoanalysis itself. After reviewing Freud’s associations to childhood religion, the Bible, and his father (citing Rizzuto), I am proposing that Pfister functioned unconsciously for Freud not only as an admiring son and disciple, but also a father substitute—much like Freud’s beloved antiquities—who represented both a God and a father who would admire and love him, and carry Freud’s name forward in the Book of Life.     

Why Aren’t More Philosophers Interested in Freud? Re-Evaluating Philosophical Arguments against Psychoanalysis

Philosophia - Despite its profound influence on modern thought, psychoanalysis remains peripheral to the concerns of most analytic philosophers. I suggest that one of the main reasons for this is...