IS A COMPLETE BIOCOGNITIVE ACCOUNT OF RELIGION FEASIBLE?

The biological and cognitive approach to religion has matured somewhat and reveals interesting results. Nevertheless, some questions arise about its foundation and development. The essay offers a review of current research in the cognitive field, focusing on its conclusions, the internal discussions, and the problems that need more study or correction. Emphasis is placed on a more intricate account of the factors involved in religious experience, discussing the proper use of the discoveries of biocognitive research and the limits that should be placed on said conclusions.     

Adjustment to and satisfaction with retirement: two of a kind?

Multiactor panel data on 778 Dutch employees were used to examine adjustment to and satisfaction with retirement. Regression analyses revealed that adjustment and satisfaction are related, but not identical. Adjustment problems arise from preretirement anxiety about the social consequences of retirement and from a lack of control over the decision. Retirement satisfaction is primarily related to the individual's access to key resources: finances, health, and the marital relationship. The study shows that the retirement transition is multidimensional. The transition involves two developmental challenges: adjustment to the loss of the work role and the social ties of work, and the development of a satisfactory postretirement lifestyle. Making a distinction between these two aspects of the retirement experience is important for a better understanding of the psychological process following retirement.     

Using morphology when spelling in a shallow orthographic system: The case of Spanish

Deep orthographies usually represent morphology and phonology simultaneously; both resources are necessary for spelling. In shallow orthographies, such as Spanish, phonology would be enough to spell most words. However, morphological knowledge may also take part in spelling. This study examined how Spanish children in 1st (N = 148), 2nd (N = 155) and 3rd grade (N = 155) use morphological information to spell plural nouns and verbs. A word dictation task was designed. The task included high and low frequency plural nouns ending in “s” (morphological “-s” condition) and verbs in the 2nd person ending in “s” (morphological “-s” condition). A lexical condition including words with a final “s” which was not morphologically motivated was used as a control condition (lexical “-s” condition). The results show that, although Spanish spelling is influenced by phonology, morphological information is also used. These results are discussed in relation to current models of word spelling.     

Soul–life–knowledge: The young Mannheim’s way to sociology

This essay discusses a less known period of Karl Mannheim’s life, namely the period he spent in Hungary. I attempt to point out that the career of the young Mannheim, starting from a philosophical interest and continuing with a sociological one, is continuous. His first published works and letters prove that in the period preceding his emigration to Germany in 1919 he was concerned with questions that received their mature form in his sociology of knowledge. They include primarily the question of culture, that of perspective-boundedness (relativity) of cognition, interpretation and the problem of intellectuals. Despite changing disciplines from philosophy to sociology, the continuity of his oeuvre can be shown.     

Variation in the Use of Pronouns as a Function of the Topic of Argumentation in Young Writers Aged 11 Years

In our view, the ability to impose moral values which may be, to some extent, either shared or conflictual, influences the strategy adopted when writing argumentative texts. Our hypothesis is that the greater the socio-moral distance between the writers’ representations (the writers in this case being children) and those of the recipients (here the parents), the more likely it is that writing will be successful. Three topics derived from a preliminary experiment and corresponding to significant differences in opinion between children and parents were tested in a population of 11-year-old pupils. The pupils had to write a letter designed to convince their parents about one of these topics. We analyzed the texts in order to identify the different configurations in the frequencies of use of the pronouns (frequencies of Je (I), Tu (You), Il (He), On (One/We)) and adverbs. These frequencies differed depending on the topic that was being written about (the moral context that is mobilized).

Auditory and haptic systems for in-car speed management – A comparative real life study

Field experiments with ISA (intelligent speed adaptation) were carried out in Hungary and Spain in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Twenty private vehicles in each country were equipped with two kinds of systems: (1) support via an active accelerator pedal (AAP) and (2) warning via beep signals and a flashing red light when the speed limit was exceeded (BEEP). The test drivers drove for a month with both systems installed in each car. Speed was continually logged in all the vehicles and the test drivers were interviewed about their acceptance and experiences of the systems. The results show that both systems reduced the mean and 85 percentile speeds, but that the AAP was more effective. There was no long-lasting effect on speeds when the systems were removed. After the trial half of the drivers were willing to keep an ISA system, but more drivers wanted to keep the BEEP-system even though it showed lower satisfaction ratings than the AAP. The results indicate no major differences between the countries despite the workload being perceived to be higher in Hungary than in Spain.     

ONESC: A database of orthographic neighbors for Spanish read by children

In this article, we present a database of orthographic neighbors for words that Spanish children read during elementary education. The reference dictionary for lexical entries and frequencies (which had its origin in Martínez & García, 2004) comprises approximately 100,000 words and is the result of accumulating the words read by a sample of children from first to sixth grades. Using the criterion for orthographic neighbors described by Coltheart, Davelaar, Jonasson, and Besner (1977), we present basic statistics related to neighborhood size as a function of the positions of divergent letters, the cumulative frequency of the neighbors, and the numbers of neighbors of higher, lower, and equal frequency. We also attempt to illustrate and unravel the nature of the relationships among the variables neighborhood size, length, and frequency in the distribution of neighbors. The database described in this article is available at www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Attitudes of Potential Providers Towards Preconceptional Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Screening

To determine the attitudes of potential providers (general practitioners and Community Health Service workers) towards preconceptual cystic fibrosis (CF) carrier screening and to determine which factors are associated with a positive attitude. A survey was conducted among 200 general practitioners (GPs) and 134 Community Health Service (CHS) workers. Fifty-two percent of the eligible GPs participated and 84% of the CHS workers. Fifty-five percent of the GPs and 73% of the CHS workers had a positive attitude towards routinely offering CF carrier screening, and more than 80% were in favor of informing the target population about the possibility of having a CF carrier test. A positive attitude was associated with (a) high perceived severity of CF, (b) religion (nonreligious compared to Reformed), (c) low perceived barriers, and (d) high perceived test reliability. The care providers who are most likely to be involved in a preconceptual CF carrier screening program, i.e. GPs and CHS workers, generally have a positive attitude towards the implementation of such a program.     

Equational Characterization of the Subvarieties of BL Generated by t-norm Algebras

In this paper we show that the subvarieties of BL, the variety of BL-algebras, generated by single BL-chains on [0, 1], determined by continous t-norms, are finitely axiomatizable. An algorithm to check the subsethood relation between these subvarieties is provided, as well as another procedure to effectively find the equations of each subvariety. From a logical point of view, the latter corresponds to find the axiomatization of every residuated many-valued calculus defined by a continuous t-norm and its residuum. Actually, the paper proves the results for a more general class than t-norm BL-chains, the so-called regular BL-chains.