Cutting it (too) fine

It is widely held that propositions are structured entities. In The Nature and Structure of Content (2007), Jeff King argues that the structure of propositions is none other than the syntactic structure deployed by the speaker/hearers who linguistically produce and consume the sentences that express the propositions. The present paper generalises from King’s position and claims that syntax provides the best in-principle account of propositional structure. It further seeks to show, however, that the account faces serve problems pertaining to the fine individuation of propositions that the account entails. The ‘fineness of cut’ problem has been raised by Collins (The unity of linguistic meaning, 2007) and others. King (Philos Stud 163(3):763–781, 2013) responds to these complaints in ways this paper rebuts. Thus, the very idea of structured propositions is brought into doubt, for the best in-principle account of such structure appears to fail.     

THE EFFECTS OF VIDEO MODELING ON STAFF IMPLEMENTATION OF A PROBLEM‐SOLVING INTERVENTION WITH ADULTS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

We investigated the effects of video modeling on the percentage of correctly implemented problem‐solving steps by staff in a group home for adults with developmental disabilities, using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across participants. The treatment consisted of staff watching a video model demonstrating the correct implementation of a problem‐solving intervention (i.e., teaching clients to identify problems, possible solutions, and consequences to each solution, and to choose the best solution). The percentage of correctly implemented problem‐solving steps increased for all participants, and the effect was maintained over time, generalized to novel problems, and generalized from role play with a researcher to actual clients.     

General or specific? The memory–experience gap for individuals diagnosed with a major depressive disorder or a social phobia diagnosis,and individuals without such diagnoses

ABSTRACT

Psychological treatment and assessment necessarily rely on patients’ recall. Yet several empirical studies have documented a gap between memory and real-life experience (i.e., memory–experience gap; MeG). We investigated and compared the MeG of sadness, social anxiety, happiness, and physical activity for participants diagnosed with a major depressive disorder (MDD), a social phobia (SP), and participants without such diagnoses (CG). The study included 118 participants diagnosed with a MDD, 47 with a SP, and 119 CG. Using event-sampling methods (ESM), participants were asked via smartphone to report their experiences throughout a week and then to recall those again retrospectively at the end of the study week. Results indicate significant differences in the MeG with respect to the experience that was salient to them (e.g., MDD group – sadness; SP group – social anxiety; CG group – happiness). Furthermore, all groups showed a MeG for physical activity and, the results indicate significant group differences in the magnitude of the MeGs.

This study demonstrated the presence of a MeG in individuals in a MDD, SP, and CG group and in positive and negative affective experiences. Differential patterns across the samples contribute to a better understanding of this gap and its implications.     

Coping with bullying in the workplace

The purpose of the study was to investigate the 1-year prevalence of bullying in the form of repeated exposure to slander and/or nasty teasing in Danish workplaces, and to analyse whether respondents subjected to bullying use the same coping strategies as respondents who are not subjected to bullying. The results show that approximately 2% of the Danish employees are subjected to bullying at work. We compared the use of coping strategies in three groups: a non-exposed group, a somewhat exposed group, and a very exposed group (i.e., bullied). The results showed no linear association between the three groups, but a difference between being exposed and not exposed. The results seem to indicate that it is not necessarily the quantity of the negative acts that cause the change in behaviour but more the fact of being exposed to such acts.     

Temperament, distraction, and learning in toddlerhood

The word- and nonword-learning abilities of toddlers were tested under various conditions of environmental distraction, and evaluated with respect to children's temperamental attentional focus. Thirty-nine children and their mothers visited the lab at child age 21-months, where children were exposed to fast-mapping word-learning trials and nonlinguistic sequential learning trials. It was found that both word- and nonword-learning were adversely affected by the presentation of environmental distractions. But it was also found that the effect of the distractions sometimes depended on children's level of attentional focus. Specifically, children high in attentional focus were less affected by environmental distractions than children low in attentional focus when attempting to learn from a model, whereas children low in attentional focus demonstrated little learning from the model. Translationally, these results may be of use to child health-care providers investigating possible sources of cognitive and language delay.     

See what you’ve done! Active touch affects the number of perceived visual objects

Previous research has shown that visual perception is affected by sensory information from other modalities. For example, sound can alter the visual intensity or the number of visual objects perceived. However, when touch and vision are combined, vision normally dominates—a phenomenon known asvisual capture. Here we report a cross-modal interaction between active touch and vision: The perceived number of brief visual events (flashes) is affected by the number of concurrently performed finger movements (keypresses). This sensorimotor illusion occurred despite little ambiguity in the visual stimuli themselves and depended on a close temporal proximity between movement execution and vision.     

Interventions to Address the Academic Impairment of Children and Adolescents with ADHD

There exists a strong link between ADHD and academic underachievement. Both the core behavioral symptoms of ADHD and associated executive functioning deficits likely contribute to academic impairment. Current evidence-based approaches to the treatment of ADHD (i.e., stimulant medication, clinical behavior therapy and classroom behavioral interventions) have demonstrated a robust impact on behavioral variables such as attention and disruptive behavior within classroom analogue settings; however, their efficacy in improving academic outcomes is much less clear. Although surprisingly few treatment outcome studies of ADHD have attempted to incorporate interventions that specifically target academic outcomes, the studies that are available suggest that these interventions may be beneficial. The state of the treatment literature for addressing academic impairment in children and adolescents with ADHD will be reviewed herein, as well as limitations of current research, and directions for future research.     

Confirmatory factor analyses of DSM-IV Cluster C personality disorder criteria

Notwithstanding its research and clinical relevance, the dimensionality and validity of the DSM-IV avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders (PDs) criteria is still a largely unexplored topic. The aim of this study was to test the factor structure for DSM-IV Cluster C PD criteria in a sample of 641 consecutively admitted outpatients. Factor analysis results suggested that avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive PDs share a common latent dimension, and supported the three-factor structure of both observer and self-report ratings of DSM-IV Cluster C PD criteria. The pattern of factor loadings, however, was different from the one expected according to the DSM-IV classification.     

Social networks and college drinking: probing processes of social influence and selection

This study used a three-wave panel design (N = 119 complete cases for all waves) to test for social influence and selection in the relation of college students' heavy drinking and that of their social networks. Evidence emerged for both social influence and selection, leading the authors to probe more specialized issues related to each. Results regarding social influence revealed, further, that greater presence in the network of individuals that the focal respondent considered "drinking buddies" was predictive of one's own later drinking, controlling for potential confounds. Network demographic characteristics associated with a "risky" (i.e., heavy-drinking) network also were documented. An additional finding, important for selection, was that wave-to-wave change in average network drinking appeared to result primarily from network members with different drinking levels being added to and dropped from the network. Findings are discussed in the context of the recent renaissance in social-network research.     

Individual performance based on cognitive experimental measurements? The case of inhibition of return

Inhibition of Return (IOR) is a mechanism whereby the attentional system favors novel locations by inhibiting already scanned ones. In spatial attention tasks, it commonly occurs when the interval between cue onset and target onset is longer than 300 ms. The positive difference between reactions in the valid condition and those in the invalid one shows that responses to target stimuli are slower following a valid cue than responses to target stimuli following an invalid cue. IOR is a very robust phenomenon at the group mean level; however, this study demonstrates that its standard error of measurement is extremely high, which seriously challenges any attempt to interpret an individual score as representing the characteristics of a subject's attention system. Furthermore, this reliability problem might diminish the likelihood of finding differences between groups and conditions. The study shows that these problems may be partially corrected by employing the back-to-center paradigm.