The Logic of Plausible Reasoning: A Core Theory

The paper presents a core theory of human plausible reasoning based on analysis of people's answers to everyday questions about the world. The theory consists of three parts:

• 1 a formal representation of plausible inference patterns; such as deductions, inductions, and analogies, that are frequently employed in answering everyday questions;
• 2 a set of parameters, such as conditional likelihood, typicality, and similarity, that affect the certainty of people's answers to such questions; and
• 3 a system relating the different plausible inference patterns and the different certainty parameters.

This is one of the first attempts to construct a formal theory that addresses both the semantic and parametric aspects of the kind of everyday reasoning that pervades. all of human discourse.     

A framework for assessing program institutionalization

This article presents a framework for assessing the institutionalization of programmatic innovations in nonprofit community agencies and in schools. Institutionalization is the attainment of long-term viability and integration of innovations in organizations. Institutionalization is often characterized as the final stage in an innovation diffusion process. The framework was derived from a qualitative study of ten health promotion programs that were innovations in their host organizations. The framework is a two dimensional matrix: one dimension consists of organizational subsystems; the other consists of levels of institutionalization termed passages, routines, and niche saturation. The cells of the matrix are the basis for assessing program institutionalization. Robert M. Goodman is a research assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health. Currently, Dr. Goodman directs a four-year intervention study on the dissemination of tobacco prevention curricular funded by the National Cancer Institute. Allan Steckler is an associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health. Dr. Steckler is also the principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute tobacco prevention study.     

Task Specificity in the Use of Words in Mathematics: Evidence from Bilingual Problem Solvers

Mathematics is often said to be a different language in itself. Three experiments were conducted to show some evidence for this common notion. It was hypothesized that in math word problem solving, people interpret words like “more” and “less” in specialized ways that are specific to the task of math word problem solving. Subjects were given texts with quantitative information, but the texts were framed either as math problems or as stories, and were written either in English or Filipino. Subjects were then asked to verify statements that describe quantitative relations given in the text; these relations either stated an exact or an inexact quantitative difference. The verification responses and verification times in three experiments show that subjects more often accepted the inexact difference as true when the text was framed as a story compared to when framed as a problem. These results support the hypothesis that the use of the specialized meaning is specific to the task of solving word problems in math. The data were equivocal about the role of the language used in the operation of this knowledge. The results were discussed in terms of the implications of specificity of knowledge, context sensitivity, and the possible role of language use in the process of learning and developing mathematical knowledge.     

Effects of tobacco smoking, schizotypy and number of pre-exposures on latent inhibition in healthy subjects

Latent inhibition is a slowing of learning about a stimulus that when previously experienced had no consequences. This study investigated the effects of tobacco smoking and personality traits on a latent inhibition task. Two-hundred and five healthy adults performed an auditory masking task during which half of them were pre-exposed to bursts of white noise. All subjects were then asked to detect an association of the white noise with a change on a computer screen. Subjects who had heard the white noises before were slower to learn the association than subjects who had not, i.e. they showed latent inhibition. Latent inhibition was stronger when subjects were pre-exposed to 10 rather than 6 bursts of white noise. Latent inhibition was reduced in subjects who smoked tobacco and in non-smoking subjects who scored highly on a schizotypy questionnaire. These two effects were independent. We conclude that tobacco smoking should be taken into account in interpreting the results of human latent inhibition studies.     

Five minutes after death: A study of beliefs and expectations

This paper examines the beliefs and expectations that a sample of 508 people hold about the first five minutes after death. A substantial minority believed that they will experience the main elements of the neardeath experience (NDE). In general these elements were cited more frequently than were Biblical images. Six percent of the sample said that postmortem survival for them will be a negative and disturbing experience. We discuss these results in terms of their methodological implications for other survey work and their theoretical contribution toward our understanding of negative NDEs.     

Adrenergic nervous system alteration and ethanol-induced narcosis in long-sleep and short-sleep mice

Long-sleep (LS) and short-sleep (SS) mice were pretreated with either propranolol or phentolamine, followed by a hypnotic dose of ethanol. Pretreatment with propranolol, but not phentolamine, significantly reduced ethanol sleep time in LS mice. The SS mice were not affected. In a second study propranolol pretreatment was given subsequent to ethanol at various doses, different for each line, that produced similar sleep time durations in both lines. Under these conditions, propranolol decreased sleep time in both LS and SS mice. These data lend support to the idea that noradrenergic mechanisms play a role in the mediation of the hypnotic effects of ethanol.     

Perceived punishment and reward values of supervisor actions

The study investigated employee perceptions about the reward or punishment values inherent in a variety of supervisor actions. Actions viewed as most rewarding were generally actions that possessed (a) public visibility, (b) tangibility, (c) implied esteem, and (d) long-term implications. Actions viewed as punishing or aversive involved similar characteristics. Visibility appeared to be most strongly related to perceived severity. In contrast with suggestions in the literature (cf. León, 1981), substantial levels of agreement among raters were found for aversive as well as rewarding actions. Also reviewed are characteristics of leader actions that received mixed ratings from respondents.     

Second guesses and the attention-switching model for successiveness discrimination

The present note demonstrates that Baron’s (1971) second-guess data are not inconsistent with the basic assumptions of Kristofferson’s attention-switching model.