Am I guilty or not? Deontological guilt,uncertainty, and checking behavior

Literature suggests that checking behaviors are aimed at reducing feelings of uncertainty both in clinical samples with obsessive‐compulsive disorder and in general population. Previous studies also showed that deontological guilt is an emotion often associated with obsessive‐compulsive disorder. Thus, the aim of the current study was to investigate the differences in checking behaviors in the condition of high versus low uncertainty, by exploring the moderating role of deontological versus altruistic guilt. Participants were 108 undergraduate Italian university students who took part in a visual search task designed to elicit checking behavior. Ahead of the visual task, participants were administered one scenario in order to manipulate either deontological or altruistic guilt. The results showed that in the condition of uncertainty, compared with the condition of certainty, participants spent more time in checking behaviors and that such a difference was more consistent when participants experienced deontological rather than altruistic guilt. Limitations and further directions are discussed.     

Antonyms and Paradoxes

Adjectives can be gradable or non-gradable and this aspect of their meaning is responsible for their different distribution and also for their classification into two different classes of antonyms. Non-gradable antonyms are called contradictories: they are neither true nor false together and exclude any middle term; gradable antonyms are called contraries: they are not simultaneously true, but may be simultaneously false. While with contraries a negative disjunction (neque...neque) can define an intermediate level, with contradictories it simply means that either term of the disjunction is excluded. There are however some Latin examples, such as neque vivus neque mortuus (`neither alive nor dead'), where the negation of a contradictory pair is used to convey a third, intermediate value. This third possibility is precisely what gives place to a paradox. Such an intermediate level can be defined also by terms like semivivus, semianimis (`half-dead'). Following Ducrot's theory on argumentation, such terms represent an argumentative attenuation, not with respect to life, rather with respect to death. With contradictories, in fact, the use of semi-, like the use of negation, gives the assertion of the opposite term as a result.     

What Can Bilingual Children Tell Us About the Developmental Relationship Between Vocabulary and Grammar?

Strong correlations between vocabulary and grammar are well attested in language development in monolingual and bilingual children. What is less clear is whether there is any directionality in the relationship between the two constructs, whether it is predictive over time, and the extent to which it is affected by language input. In the present study, we analyzed data from 100 bilingual children with English as an additional language who were tested on measures of vocabulary breadth and depth, morphology, and syntax at three time points at 6-month intervals from the age of 5;8. We used bivariate growth models to test the directionality of the relationship between vocabulary breadth and depth, and measures of morphology and syntax; testing bilingual children allowed us to use measures of English input as covariates in the analyses. All the models showed a correlation between vocabulary and grammar, but no correlation between their growth slopes, suggesting that vocabulary and grammar grow independently. Three of the four bivariate models showed a significant correlation between the intercept of grammar skills and the slope of vocabulary growth. Length of exposure to English predicted the intercept of vocabulary breadth and grammar, suggesting that children exposed to English earlier had larger vocabularies and better morpho-syntactic skills. Current English input predicted the intercept of both measures of vocabulary as well as the slope for vocabulary depth, the only measure for which there was a significant relationship between intercept and slope, suggesting a Matthew effect for this dimension of vocabulary. All materials, data, and code are available at https://osf.io/x3wht/ . Research highlights

• Vocabulary breadth and morphological and syntactic skills increased linearly for all participants, without any difference between lower and higher achieving children.
• Vocabulary depth grew more over time for those children with deeper vocabulary knowledge and higher levels of current English input at the start of the study.
• All of the bivariate growth models showed a correlation between vocabulary and grammar, but failed to show any correlation between their growth.
• Significant relationships between the intercept of grammar and the growth of vocabulary showed steeper lexical growth in children with better grammar skills.
• Length of exposure to English had an effect on morphological and syntactic skills, while only current English input had an effect on vocabulary depth.

     

Scaffolding knowledge

In this article I argue that often propositional knowledge is acquired and retained by extensive reliance on physical and social scaffolds that create an environment or niche conducive to knowledge. It is incumbent on epistemologists to subject these aids to epistemic assessments. I show that several of the activities involved in the creation of niches within which inquiry can thrive are carried out by whole cultures. New generations benefit from inheriting these niches whilst being able to improve upon them to the advantage of their descendants. Finally, I highlight that the growth of human epistemic achievements is often due to increased outsourcing of cognitive effort and epistemic powers onto impersonal physical and social structures so that human beings can succeed more by contributing less to the solution of problems.     

Singing more,singing harsher: occurrence of nonlinear phenomena in a primate’ song

Animal Cognition - Nonlinear phenomena (NLP) in animal vocalizations arise from irregularities in the oscillation of the vocal folds. Various non-mutually exclusive hypotheses have been put forward...     

Support for rejection and reception policies toward asylum seekers in Italy: The role of conservative ideologies and legitimizing myths

ABSTRACT

Based on Social Dominance Theory (SDT), this study investigates the relationships between ideologically conservative attitudes (social dominance orientation, SDO; right-wing authoritarianism, RWA), legitimizing myths (false belief in asylum seekers as bogus; perception of in-group threats), and citizens’ support for restricted reception and rejection of asylum policies. A sample of 539 people living in Italy filled in an anonymous questionnaire administered using a cross-sectional design. The results support the expectations, showing that people high in SDO and RWA were more likely to hold the belief that asylum seekers are making false claims and to perceive that the latter pose a threat to the in-group, which in turn increased support for both of restrictive policies. Findings suggest that conservative ideologies can positively affect citizens’ support for restrictive asylum seeker policies based on both rejection and restricted reception by supplying ideological justification for not accommodating them in the host society.