II—Jason Stanley

ABSTRACT The central claim is that Hornsby's argument that semantic knowledge is practical knowledge is based upon a false premise. I argue, contra Hornsby, that speakers do not voice their thoughts directly. Rather, our actions of voicing our thoughts are justified by decisions we make (albeit rapidly) about what words to use. Along the way, I raise doubts about other aspects of the thesis that semantic knowledge is practical knowledge.     

Subjective contours 1900–1990: Research trends and bibliography

Abibliography on subjective contours and a brief summary of trends in research-on-thin problem are presented. The bibliography covers the years 1900–1990 and contains 445 entries, each briefly annotated with a code that indicates the general content and theoretical orientation of the item.     

Insight without awareness: On the interaction of verbalization, instruction and practice in a simulated process control task

Four experiments in which subjects learned to control two versions of a complex simulated process control task show that verbalizable knowledge of procedures used to perform these tasks is very limited and is acquired late in learning. Individual learning curves associated with these tasks showed sudden improvements in performance, which were not accompanied by a similar increase in verbalizable knowledge. It was also found that verbal instructions consisting of exemplar memorization, strategies for rule induction, simple heuristics, and experts' instructions were all effective in enhancing novice subjects' performance. A theoretical framework is proposed in which subjects draw on two separate but interacting knowledge structures to perform these tasks. One knowledge structure is based on memory for past experiences (close analogies), and the other is based on one's current mental model of the task. Implicit sets of competing rules that control response selection are derived from both sources of knowledge. It is suggested that dissociations between task performance and verbalizing occur because memory-based processing tends to have more control over response selection because of its greater specificity, whereas a mental model tends to be the preferred mode for verbal reporting because of its greater accessibility.     

Mechanisms used by young children in the making of empathic judgments

Forty-four preschool children ranging from three to five years of age received a series of stones in which the protagonists experience happiness, sadness, or fear These protagonists were portrayed as either similar or dissimilar to the child, and the situations depicted were either familiar or unfamiliar to him/her as well The children's task was to infer the emotions experienced by the protagonists Results indicate that children were more accurate in judging the emotions of similar target persons than they were for dissimilar ones Familiarity with the situation, on the other hand, had no effect on accuracy Children were more accurate in identifying happiness and sadness than they were in judging fear, and age was positively related to judgmental accuracy for the former two but not for the latter These results help to resolve the controversy arising from earlier studies of empathy development which failed to disentangle the similarity and familiarity dimensions     

Accessibility of case and gender contrasts for agent--object assignment in Broca's aphasics and fluent anomics

Yugoslav agrammatic Broca's aphasics, fluent anomics, and control subjects were tested for comprehension of agent-object relations in a series of simple Serbo-Croatian sentences in the conversational past tense, consisting of two nouns and a transitive action verb. The availability of two closed class cues--case contrasts and gender contrasts--as well as the availability of an open class lexical cue--animacy contrasts--was varied across sentences. An analysis of subjects' agent-object assignments yielded the following results: Both Broca's aphasics and fluent anomics showed a selective impairment in sensitivity to closed class morphology, although anomics were considerably less impaired than Broca's aphasics. This finding was interpreted as evidence for a non-syndrome-dependent vulnerability of abilities to process closed class morphology for comprehension. In addition, the pattern of agent-object assignments for Broca's aphasics revealed that the degree to which they were able to access the two closed class cues depended on a convergence of the various cues to agent-object relations. In particular, a convergence of case and gender contrasts had an interactive effect on Broca's responses: Gender agreement cues were accessed only in the presence of convergent case contrasts. Conversely, sensitivity to case contrasts was dramatically heightened in the presence of convergent gender contrasts. These results were consistent with a view that the two cues function as intrasentential "primes" or "retrieval cues" for one another.     

Time went by so slowly: Overestimation of event duration by males and females

In three experiments, 469 subjects watched a short videotape of a bank robbery and later estimated the duration of the tape. Subjects invariably overestimated the durations. Accuracy of time estimation was unrelated to amount of free recall (Experiment 1) or accuracy of memory (Experiment 2). Females overestimated to a greater degree than males (Experiments 2 and 3). A more stressful version of the event produced greater overestimates than a less stressful version (Experiment 3). The relationship between induced arousal and time estimation appears to be different for men and women.     

The Effectiveness of Encounter Groups: Implications of Research for Counselling Practice

In the past decade, encounter groups have become a widely recognised technique of intervention for counsellors. Empirical research on encounter groups is confusing. Trends in research are obscured by a diversity of definitions, methodologies and subjects. This review considers the most significant research on the effectiveness of encounter groups, focusing on positive and negative effects, leader behaviour, group characteristics, participant characteristics, and the maintenance of change. Conclusions are drawn relating the research to practice, with some suggested guidelines for use of encounter groups in counselling interventions.     

The effects of perceptual set on the shape and apparent depth of subjective contours

Two experiments showed the influence of perceptual set on the perception of subjective contours. In the first, the perceived shape of a subjective-contour figure (a minimal version of the Ehrenstein configuration) was varied by altering the observer’s viewing set. The second experiment showed that apparent depth emerged in subjective-contour figures when observers were set to perceive the illusory contours.     

A comparison of five methods of illusion measurement

The relative efficiency of five techniques of illusion measurement were tested on parametric variations of the Mueller-Lyer and Ebbinghaus figures. The methods of average error, reproduction, and selection from a graded series all showed significant effects of configurational variations. The subjective scaling techniques each failed to measure adequately changes in illusion magnitude for one illusion configuration. The suitability of the tested measures for group administration is also discussed.