Empathic deficits and alexithymia in trauma-related impulsive aggression

Our long term interest is to develop a developmental model of impulsive aggression based on a confluence of social, psychological and biological features. This approach incorporates neurobiological research, which has identified language processing deficits as a unique characteristic of impulsive aggressors and extends it to include emotional deficits. As an initial test of this hypothesis, we examined whether empathy and alexithymia were associated with impulsive aggression. Regressions were performed to explore the associations among impaired empathy, alexithymia, impulsive aggression, verbal and physical general aggression. Among impulsive aggressive veterans (n = 38) recruited from a VA trauma clinic, alexithymia predicted impulsive aggression and empathic deficits predicted verbal aggression. Neither emotional awareness deficit predicted general physical aggression in this middle-aged sample. Results suggested that empathic deficits were associated with general verbal aggression, but alexithymia was uniquely associated with impulsive aggression. Consideration of alexithymia in impulsive aggression has implications for its etiology, prevention and treatment. Published in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Philosophy, the “unknown knowns,” and the public use of reason

There are not only true or false solutions, there are also false questions. The task of philosophy is not to provide answers or solutions, but to submit to critical analysis the questions themselves, to make us see how the very way we perceive a problem is an obstacle to its solution. This holds especially for today’s public debates on ecological threats, on lack of faith, on democracy and the “war on terror”, in which the “unknown knowns”, the silent presuppositions we are not aware of, determine our acts.     

Premarital Sex and Marital Satisfaction of Middle Aged Men and Women: A Study of Married Lithuanian Couples

A study was conducted to investigate possible links between current marital satisfaction and age of onset of sexual intercourse, having an experience of premarital intercourse, the number of premarital sexual partners, and having an experience of premarital cohabitation. A convenience sample of subjects consisted of 41 middle-aged married Lithuanian couples. Marital satisfaction was measured by a 16-item Marital Satisfaction Scale developed by the principle investigators of this study. Results indicated no significant relationship between the experience of premarital sexual intercourse and marital satisfaction of men or women. However, men, who had more premarital partners and cohabitation experience, were less satisfied with their marriages. For women, younger onset of sexual activity and larger number of premarital partners was related to lower marital satisfaction.     

Fathers' and mothers' speech to young infants

Fathers' and mothers' speech to infants was obtained during face-to-face interaction in a laboratory setting. Thirty-two father-infant pairs and 40 mother-infant pairs participated. Infants were divided equally by sex and among two age groups with mean ages of 3 and 9 months. Parental utterances were transcribed from videotapes. The utterances were analyzed in terms of their structure and content. There were many similarities in the structure of fathers' and mothers' speech. The speech of both parents was highly repetitive and contained many questions. There were also similarities in the content of fathers' and mothers' speech. Their belief in the infants' ability to think, feel, and act like persons was evident in their speech to the infants. The age of the infant was a significant factor in the analysis of many of the content categories. The sex of the infant and the sex of the parent were also significant factors in several of the analyses.This paper is based on a thesis submitted by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master's degree. Some of the data reported here were obtained under a grant from the Spencer Foundation to the second author.     

Gödel’s Natural Deduction

This is a companion to a paper by the authors entitled “Gödel on deduction”, which examined the links between some philosophical views ascribed to Gödel and general proof theory. When writing that other paper, the authors were not acquainted with a system of natural deduction that Gödel presented with the help of Gentzen’s sequents, which amounts to Ja?kowski’s natural deduction system of 1934, and which may be found in Gödel’s unpublished notes for the elementary logic course he gave in 1939 at the University of Notre Dame. Here one finds a presentation of this system of Gödel accompanied by a brief reexamination in the light of the notes of some points concerning his interest in sequents made in the preceding paper. This is preceded by a brief summary of Gödel’s Notre Dame course, and is followed by comments concerning Gödel’s natural deduction system.     

Positive Representation of Gay Characters in Movies for Reducing Homophobia

This study addresses the effect of narratives offering a positive depiction of gay men on the audience’s change in attitude towards homosexuality. Specifically, it analyzes the relationship of character identification, inter-group contact, religiosity and gender with homophobia reduction. One hundred and fifty students of a Serbian University (M_Age = 22.13, SD = 2.28) filled in a questionnaire measuring socio-demographic information and the instrument H25 assessing homophobia. Two months later, they watched a movie depicting gay men in a positive manner and completed a questionnaire containing the homophobia scale and questions related to identification with the main character, inter-group contact and religiosity. The results showed that watching the movie is related to a reduction of homophobia and that character identification and inter-group contact are negatively correlated with homophobia, whereas religiosity is positively correlated with it. Results also show that there is a negative correlation between religiosity and the attitude change induced by the movie, and that men express higher level of homophobia than women. The study contributes to the knowledge of the mechanisms reducing homophobia through media.     

Rules of Meaning and Practical Reasoning

Can there be rules of language which serve both to determine meaning and to guide speakers in ordinary linguistic usage, i.e., in the production of speech acts? We argue that the answer is no. We take the guiding function of rules to be the function of serving as reasons for actions, and the question of guidance is then considered within the framework of practical reasoning. It turns out that those rules that can serve as reasons for linguistic utterances cannot be considered as normative or meaning determining. Acceptance of such a rule is simply equivalent to a belief about meaning, and does not even presuppose that meaning is determined by rules. Rules that can determine meaning, on the other hand, i.e., rules that can be regarded as constitutive of meaning, are not capable of guiding speakers in the ordinary performance of speech acts.     

Temperament and behaviour problems in children: A multilevel analysis of cross-cultural differences

Early temperament attributes have been linked to emerging behaviour problems and significant long-term consequences; however, these relations are rarely examined cross-culturally. The present study addresses this gap, employing multilevel modelling to explain within- and between-culture variances with respect to temperament predicting a spectrum of behaviour problems across 14 nations from the Joint Effort Toddler Temperament Consortium (JETTC). A total of 865 children between 17 and 40 months, with approximately equal age distribution across this developmental period and about equivalent representation of genders, were recruited from 14 nations. Greater negative emotionality was associated with more internalizing problems, whereas higher surgency and effortful control predicted fewer internalizing difficulties. Controlling for age and gender, temperament explained significant within- and between-culture variances in internalizing and externalizing problems (at the broad-band and fine-grained levels), as well as sleep problems. For internalizing difficulties, temperament accounted for more between-culture variance. In contrast, for externalizing difficulties, temperament accounted more for how individuals within the same culture differed from their same-culture counterparts. The within-culture findings suggest universal patterns of temperament-problem relations, informing cultural adaptation of interventions; between-culture findings enhance understanding of the implications of the cultural niche for normative behaviour and adjustment.