Goldman and the foundations of social epistemology

This essay argues that Alvin I. Goldman's truth-linked theory of group knowledge (veritism) omits individual components of social cognition, that all group based theories of knowledge lead to scepticism, and that if any sense is to be made of social knowledge, it must be done on individualist lines. I argue that Goldman's veritism can be reconstructed by adopting a reliabilist theory,social reliabilism. And I argue that Goldman's objections to a particular sort of consensualism are not telling. So there are now two plausible and competing theories of social knowledge-social reliabilism and consensualism.I am grateful to Keith Lehrer and Alvin Goldman for their criticisms of previous drafts of this paper.     

FOUNDATIONS OF A KANTIAN THEORY OF PUNISHMENT

It has recently been argued that there is probably no theory of punishment to be found in Immanuel Kant's writings, but that “if one selects carefully among the many remarks and insights that Kant has left us about crime and punishment, one might even be able to build such an edifice from the bricks provided.”¹ In this paper, I seek to provide part of a foundation of a Kantian theory of punishment, one which is consistent with many, if not all, of Kant's own insights on justice. Finally, I assess the plausibility of Kant's view.     

Paradoxical decrease of imitation performance with age in children

Imitation development was studied in a cross-sectional design involving 174 primary-school children (aged 6–10), focusing on the effect of actions' complexity and error analysis to infer the underlying cognitive processes. Participants had to imitate the model's actions as if they were in front of a mirror (‘specularly’). Complexity varied across three levels: movements of a single limb; arm and leg of the same body side; or arm and leg of opposite body sides. While the overall error rate decreased with age, this was not true of all error categories. The rate of ‘side’ errors (using a limb of the wrong body side) paradoxically increased with age (from 9 years). However, with increasing age, the error rate also became less sensitive to the complexity of the action. This pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that older children have the working memory (WM) resources and the body knowledge necessary to imitate ‘anatomically’, which leads to additional side errors. Younger children might be paradoxically free from such interference because their WM and/or body knowledge are insufficient for anatomical imitation. Yet, their limited WM resources would prevent them from successfully managing the conflict between spatial codes involved in complex actions (e.g. moving the left arm and the right leg). We also found evidence that action side and content might be stored in separate short-term memory (STM) systems: increasing the number of sides to be encoded only affected side retrieval, but not content retrieval; symmetrically, increasing the content (number of movements) of the action only affected content retrieval, but not side retrieval. In conclusion, results suggest that anatomical imitation might interfere with specular imitation at age 9 and that STM storages for side and content of actions are separate.     

Examining the influence of group diversity on the functioning of community-based participatory research partnerships: A mixed methods study

Public health has endorsed the use of community-based participatory research (CBPR) to address health inequities involving diverse and marginalized communities. However, few studies have examined how group diversity among members of CBPR partnerships influenced how well the partnerships achieve their goals of addressing health inequities through equitable collaboration. We conducted secondary, convergent, mixed methods analysis to (1) evaluate the association between group diversity and participatory decision-making within CBPR partnerships, and (2) identify the perceived characteristics, benefits, and challenges of group diversity within CBPR partnerships. Using data from a cross-site study of federally funded CBPR partnerships, we analyzed and integrated data from surveys of 163 partnerships (n = 448 partners) and seven in-depth case study interviews (n = 55 partners). Quantitatively, none of the measured characteristics of group diversity was associated with participatory decision-making within the partnerships. Qualitatively, we found that partnerships mainly benefited from membership differences in functional characteristics (e.g., skillset) but faced challenges from membership differences in sociocultural characteristics (e.g., gender and race). The integrated findings suggest the need to further understand how emergent group characteristics and how practices that engage in group diversity contribute to collective functioning of the partnerships. Attention to this area can help promote health equity achievements of CBPR partnerships.     

Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications

We examine the idea that an individual’s employability subsumes a host of person-centered constructs needed to deal effectively with the career-related changes occurring in today’s economy. We argue that employability represents a form of work specific (pro)active adaptability that consists of three dimensions—career identity, personal adaptability, and social and human capital. Reciprocal relationships among these dimensions are also discussed. The impact of employability on organizational behavior is illustrated through applications to the research literatures on job loss and job search.     

“Cuts in Action”: A High‐Density EEG Study Investigating the Neural Correlates of Different Editing Techniques in Film

In spite of their striking differences with real‐life perception, films are perceived and understood without effort. Cognitive film theory attributes this to the system of continuity editing, a system of editing guidelines outlining the effect of different cuts and edits on spectators. A major principle in this framework is the 180° rule, a rule recommendation that, to avoid spectators’ attention to the editing, two edited shots of the same event or action should not be filmed from angles differing in a way that expectations of spatial continuity are strongly violated. In the present study, we used high‐density EEG to explore the neural underpinnings of this rule. In particular, our analysis shows that cuts and edits in general elicit early ERP component indicating the registration of syntactic violations as known from language, music, and action processing. However, continuity edits and cuts‐across the line differ from each other regarding later components likely to be indicating the differences in spatial remapping as well as in the degree of conscious awareness of one's own perception. Interestingly, a time–frequency analysis of the occipital alpha rhythm did not support the hypothesis that such differences in processing routes are mainly linked to visual attention. On the contrary, our study found specific modulations of the central mu rhythm ERD as an indicator of sensorimotor activity, suggesting that sensorimotor networks might play an important role. We think that these findings shed new light on current discussions about the role of attention and embodied perception in film perception and should be considered when explaining spectators’ different experience of different kinds of cuts.     

The Effects of Feedback and Reflection on the Questioning Style of Untrained Interviewers in Simulated Child Sexual Abuse Interviews

We provided immediate and detailed feedback in a training paradigm in which simulated interviews with computer‐generated avatars were used to improve interviewers' questioning style. Fifty‐nine untrained student/interviewers conducted eight interviews each and were randomly assigned to a control, feedback or feedback and reflection group. Compared to the control group, the groups receiving feedback used a higher percentage of recommended questions and retrieved more relevant details while using a lower percentage of not recommended questions and retrieved less wrong details. Only the groups that received feedback reached a reliable change in the proportion of recommended questions. The reflection intervention proposed in the present study did not enhance training effects above and beyond feedback in the present sample. The present study replicated previous findings regarding the role of feedback in improving the quality of investigative interviews, however, failing to show an effect of reflection. Further studies on different reflection tasks are suggested.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Female Adolescents with Eating Disorders,Parental Psychopathological Risk and Family Functioning

Epidemiological studies on adolescents with eating disorders demonstrate a high prevalence of disordered eating behaviors, with a higher prevalence of eating disorders among girls. Several studies have recently demonstrated an association between female adolescents’ eating disorders, parental psychopathological risk, and an impaired family functioning with poor quality of the relationships among family members. On the basis of these premises, we conducted a cross-sectional study initially recruiting 243 families of female adolescents affected by anorexia nervosa (Group A), bulimia nervosa (Group B), and binge eating disorder (Group C) (average age 14–17) to assess their psychological profile (SCL90-R), specific representations of their family functioning (FACES-IV), and the possible effect of adolescents’ psychological profiles and parents’ psychopathological risk on family functioning. Our results indicate that adolescents and parents in Groups A, B, and C show an unequivocal psychopathological profile; in particular, adolescents with anorexia present the most severe psychopathological risk. Further, our results show that adolescents and their parents differ in their perception of their family functioning. More specifically, adolescents with anorexia perceive their family as highly disengaged, poorly interwoven, and rigid, in addition cohesion and communication qualities are perceived as low. Interestingly, parental psychopathological risk predicts adolescents’ specific perception of their family functioning. These findings may guide clinical interventions as they suggest that distinct maternal psychopathological symptoms can be associated with a variety of clinical configurations in their offspring, whereas paternal psychopathological risk may be present in adolescents suffering from all forms of eating disorders.     

Experimental setting affects the performance of guppies in a numerical discrimination task

A recent study found that guppies (Poecilia reticulata) can be trained to discriminate 4 versus 5 objects, a numerical discrimination typically achieved only by some mammals and birds. In that study, guppies were required to discriminate between two patches of small objects on the bottom of the tank that they could remove to find a food reward. It is not clear whether this species possesses exceptional numerical accuracy compared with the other ectothermic vertebrates or whether its remarkable performance was due to a specific predisposition to discriminate between differences in the quality of patches while foraging. To disentangle these possibilities, we trained guppies to the same numerical discriminations with a more conventional two-choice discrimination task. Stimuli were sets of dots presented on a computer screen, and the subjects received a food reward upon approaching the set with the larger numerosity. Though the cognitive problem was identical in the two experiments, the change in the experimental setting led to a much poorer performance as most fish failed even the 2 versus 3 discrimination. In four additional experiments, we varied the duration of the decision time, the type of stimuli, the length of training, and whether correction was allowed in order to identify the factors responsible for the difference. None of these parameters succeeded in increasing the performance to the level of the previous study, although the group trained with three-dimensional stimuli learned the easiest numerical task. We suggest that the different results with the two experimental settings might be due to constraints on learning and that guppies might be prepared to accurately estimate patch quality during foraging but not to learn an abstract stimulus–reward association.