The logic sense: exploring the role of executive functioning in belief and logic-based judgments

Abstract

The Default Interventionist account suggests that by default, we often generate belief-based responses when reasoning and find it difficult to draw the logical inference. Recent research, however, shows that in some instances belief judgments take longer, are more prone to error and are more affected by cognitive load. One interpretation is that some logical inferences are available automatically and require intervention in order to respond according to beliefs. In two experiments, we investigate the effortful nature of belief judgments and the automaticity of logical inferences by increasing the inhibitory demands of the task. Participants were instructed to judge conclusion validity, believability and either font colour or font style, to increase the number of competing responses. Results showed that conflict more strongly affects judgments of believability than validity and when inhibitory demands are increased, the validity of an argument impacts more on belief judgments. These findings align with the new Parallel Processing model of belief bias.     

Neo-Aristotelian Social Justice: An Unanswered Question

In this paper I assess the possibility of advancing a modern conception of social justice under neo-Aristotelian lights, focussing primarily on conceptions that assert a fundamental connection between social justice and eudaimonia. After some preliminary remarks on the extent to which a neo-Aristotelian account must stay close to Aristotle’s own, I focus on Martha Nussbaum’s sophisticated neo-Aristotelian approach, which I argue implausibly overworks the aspects of Aristotle’s thought it appeals to. I then outline the shape of a deeper and more general, and as yet unanswered, problem facing neo-Aristotelian accounts: how to justify the claim that the point of a just society is to assist or enable its members to flourish.     

Key questions regarding work engagement

This article discusses the concept of work engagement and summarizes research on its most important antecedents. The authors formulate 10 key questions and shape a research agenda for engagement. In addition to the conceptual development and measurement of enduring work engagement, the authors discuss the importance of state work engagement. Further, they argue that the social context is crucial and may set the stage for a climate for engagement with an important role for management. Engaged employees conserve their own engagement through a process of job crafting. After discussing possible dark sides of engagement and the relationship between engagement and health, the article closes with a discussion of organizational interventions to increase work engagement.     

Group mate absence,dissimilarity, and individual absence: Another look at “monkey see,monkey do”

In this study, we examined whether the alignment of individual and group absence depended on an individual's similarity or dissimilarity with his or her group mates. The study hypotheses were tested with organizational data, involving 1382 employees from 181 work groups. Our criterion was individual absence frequency, observed over a 12-month period. Dissimilarity indices fororganizational tenure and union affiliation were computed from organizational records. We found that the relation between group mate absence and individual absence was moderated by dissimilarity with respect to union affiliation (but not tenure dissimilarity), such that those with low union dissimilarity scores were more likely to align their absence behaviour with that of their group mates.     

Re-expanding the phenomenology of hallucinations: lessons from sixteenth-century Spain

The paradigm within which hallucinations are studied, and the explanatory frameworks employed, may bias the phenomenological analysis of these experiences. After introducing the new term, hallucination, this paper undertook an inter-disciplinary study of the phenomenology of hallucinations identified by the sixteenth-century theologians, St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila. It was examined whether the phenomenological properties they highlighted are identified and addressed by contemporary psychological research. Many of these properties were indeed found to be acknowledged and studied by contemporary research in psychiatric patients, as well as in healthy individuals during hypnagogia, near-death experiences and at times of stress. However, many experiences, such as “internal voices,” “soundless voices,” and “voices that save,” were found to be neglected by contemporary research, as was the potential for hallucinations to communicate novel/original information. Finally, it was examined how these phenomenological insights may be “front-loaded” into future experimental designs.     

Adult Age Invariance in Sentence Unitization

We examined age differences on a letter detection task that was performed on four-word sentences in order to examine how letter-level and word-level processing is integrated with sentence-level unitization. Sentence-level unitization is defined as the formation of a sentence-level code that delays access to letter-level or word-level codes. There was a consistent word-frequency disadvantage for both age groups in which it took longer to detect letters within high and medium high frequency words than in low frequency words. This finding suggested that word-level and letter-level input channels were involved in a parallel “horse race” to the central processor while simultaneously outputting codes to the sentence-level at the second tier of processing. The present data also revealed that both age groups showed a larger relative increase in reaction time for letter detection for the fourth word position compared to the third word position on syntactically “intact” sentences relative to syntactically “scrambled” sentences. These data indicated that both age groups formed sentence-level codes that made letter-level codes more difficult to access. Finally, older adults' data showed a larger cost than younger adults' data for scrambled sentences than for intact sentences. These results suggest that older adults are more reliant on a syntactical processor that facilitates the parafoveal preview during the reading of syntactically intact sentences. These data suggest that whereas there are age differences in the perceptual processing of letters and words, sentence unitization and syntactical processing remain intact with increasing adult age.     

Can Studies of Autism Teach us About Consciousness of the Physical and the Mental?

Abstract

Most scientists and theorists concerned with the problem of consciousness focus on our consciousness of the physical world (our sensations, feelings, and awareness). In this paper I consider our consciousness of the mental world (our thoughts about thoughts, intentions, wishes, and emotions).The argument is made that these are two distinct forms of consciousness, the evidence for this deriving from studies of autism. Autism is a severe childhood psychiatric condition in which individuals may be conscious of the physical world but not of the mental world. Relevant experimental evidence is described, including some recent neuroimaging studies pointing towards the neural basis of our consciousness of the mental.     

Coaching preferences of adolescent youths and their parents

Abstract

This study compared preferred coaching styles of children and their parents using the Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS; Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980). The LSS preferred form was revised and then administered to children ranging from 10 to 18 years of age who competed in summer youth sport leagues and to one parent within each family unit (n = 239). A doubly multivariate repeated measure MANOVA revealed a significant multivariate difference for adolescent athletes and their parents on the five subscales of the LSS. Discriminant function and univariate analyses indicated that male and female children and their parents differed on autocratic and democratic behavior and children had a significantly higher score on democratic behavior and social support than did their parents. Parents, coaches, and researchers in youth sports could use the revised LSS to determine children-athletes’ preferences for coaching styles and for developing more effective programs.