Basic Self-Knowledge: Answering Peacocke’s Criticisms of Constitutivism

Constitutivist accounts of self-knowledge argue that a noncontingent, conceptual relation holds between our first-order mental states and our introspective awareness of them. I explicate a constitutivist account of our knowledge of our own beliefs and defend it against criticisms recently raised by Christopher Peacocke. According to Peacocke, constitutivism says that our second-order introspective beliefs are groundless. I show that Peacocke’s arguments apply to reliabilism not to constitutivism per se, and that by adopting a functionalist account of direct accessibility a constitutivist can avoid reliabilism. I then argue that the resulting view is preferable to Peacocke’s own account of self-knowledge.     

The Objectivity of Values: Invariance without Explanation

This paper develops and motivates minimalism about the objectivity of values: the objectivity of values is no more, and no less, than invariance with respect to possible differences in attitudes. Thus the relation of invariance need not have any particular explanation, or, indeed, any explanation at all, for values to count as fully objective. Values need not be metaphysically real, simply in order to be objective, as according to traditional realist views. But we should not suppose, as some recent writers do, that there is no special issue of objectivity to consider: the issue of objectivity is the issue whether or how values vary with our attitudes.     

The factor structure of the CVLT-C in pediatric epilepsy.

The current study used archival data to evaluate the fit of six latent variable models, originally generated by Donders (1999), for the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C; Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, & Ober, 1994) in a large (N = 289) sample of pediatric epilepsy cases presenting at three tertiary treatment centers. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we found that a model including factors of Attention Span, Learning Efficiency, Free Delayed Recall, Cued Delayed Recall, and Inaccurate Recall demonstrated the best relative fit for our data. These findings are consistent with those reported by Donders (1999) in his reanalysis of the CVLT-C standardization sample data, supporting the validity of this factorial model in pediatric epilepsy populations.     

Risk factors associated with suicide attempts and other self-injury among Hong Kong adolescents

This study examined 1,361 Chinese adolescents who reported self-injurious behaviors. Groups A and B both acknowledged deliberate self-injury, but only Group A had made a suicide attempt. Group C reported accidental self-injury. Deliberate self-injurers (Groups A and B) were more frequently girls, older, and with more suicidal ideation. Group A had more psychopathology, environmental and suicide-related risk factors than group B and C. Group C had higher depressive symptoms than noninjured controls. The study clarifies differences among self-injurious behavior groups based on expressed deliberate self-injury and self-reported suicide attempt. These three groups appear to present a continuum of risk.     

Does mood state change risk taking tendency in older adults?

No study has been conducted to evaluate the influences of age differences on specific moods for risk taking tendencies. This study examined the patterns of risk taking tendencies among younger and older persons in 3 transient affective states: positive, neutral, and negative moods. By means of viewing happy, neutral, or sad movie clips, participants were induced to the respective mood. Risk taking tendencies were measured with decision tasks modified from the Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire (N. Kogan & M. A. Wallach, 1964). Consistent with the affect infusion model (J. P. Forgas, 1995), risk taking tendency was greater for those individuals who were in a happy mood than for those who were in a sad mood, for both young and older participants. However, an asymmetrical effect of positive and negative mood on risk taking tendency was identified among both the young and older participants, but in opposite directions. These results are consistent with the predictions of the negativity bias and the positivity effect found in young and older adults, respectively, and are interpreted via information processing and motivation effects of mood on the decision maker.     

How is the boss's mood today? I want a raise

Other people's incidental feelings can influence one's decision in a strategic manner. In a sequential game in which proposers moved first by dividing a given pot of cash (keeping 50% or 75% of the pot) and receivers responded by choosing the size of the pot (from 0 dollars to 1 dollar), proposers were more likely to make an unfair offer (i.e., to keep 75% of the pot) if they were told that receivers had watched a funny sitcom, rather than a movie clip portraying anger, in an unrelated study prior to the game playing. However, when proposers were told that receivers knew proposers had this affective information, the effect dissipated. In other words, a proposer expects a happy receiver to be more accommodating or cooperative than an angry receiver as long as the happy receiver does not realize that the proposer may be trying to benefit from the receiver's current incidental feelings.     

Who do you look like? Evidence of facial stereotypes for male names

The present research provides evidence that people use facial prototypes when they encounter different names. In Experiment 1, participants created face exemplars for fifteen common male names, subsets of which were endorsed as good examples by a second set of participants. These most typical faces were morphed to create face-name prototypes. In Experiment 2, participants matched one of the names to each of the prototype faces from Experiment 1. Participants’ matching choices showed convergence in naming the prototypes for many of the names. Experiment 3 utilized these same prototypes in a learning task designed to investigate if the face-name associations revealed in Experiment 2 impacted the learnability of the names. Participants learned face-name pairings that had a higher association (based on frequencies from Experiment 2) faster than pairings with a low association. Results suggest a more direct relationship between faces and names than has been previously proposed.     

Effects of motivations and gender on adolescents' self-disclosure in online chatting.

This study investigated the effect of motivations for online chatting and gender factors in self-disclosure in adolescents' online chatting. Participants were 260 high school students (128 female, 132 male) who participated in online chatting. The results revealed that self-disclosure in online chatting differed by motivation, but gender was not a significant variable for explaining self-disclosure.     

Same-Sex and Other-Sex Peer Reports: Unique Contributors to Understanding Children’s School Adjustment

The present study proposed to understand how same-sex and other-sex peer nominations relate differently to teacher reports of children’s behaviors and measures of children’s friendships. Students provided peer nominations, mutual friend data, and social network data. Teachers rated students’ antisocial behavior and social competence. As expected, other-sex peer social preference scores predicted teacher ratings of antisocial behavior, while same-sex peer social preference scores predicted data on friendships and social groups. Unexpectedly, both same and other sex peer nominations predicted children’s teacher-rated social competence. Findings suggest that other-sex peers offer a unique perspective on children’s social behavior that is neither superfluous nor unimportant to understanding children’s psychosocial adjustment.