Development of the deontic advantage in reasoning: Reply to Cummins

In response to Cummins’s report that comments on our article (Dack & Astington, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2011, Vol. 110, pp. 94–114), this article clarifies our perspective on what constitutes the deontic advantage, and notes similarities and differences between Cummins’s perspective and our own. Like Cummins, we believe that young children are capable of deontic reasoning and that methodological factors alone cannot explain this ability. However, we maintain that it is important to be precise about methodology in order to facilitate investigation of how the deontic advantage changes over developmental time, and this question is our main interest, although as yet incompletely answered. Contrary to Cummins, we do not think that existing data can speak to the issue of the potential innateness of deontic reasoning. We also disagree with Cummins’s perspective on norm versus normative proposition and with some of her comparisons between deontic and epistemic phenomena.     

Universalism in cultural history and the meaning of the Russian Revolution: on some aspects of cultural theory in the work of Mikhail Lifšic

Mikhail Lif?ic (1905–1983) is one of the most contradictory and to this date poorly understood authors of the Soviet era. He represented an independent Marxist position, but one internally characterized by the tense relationship between Marxism and the philosophy of Hegel. This relationship, concerning historical philosophical questions, is the subject of this essay. In the 1930s, as “historical materialism” was canonized in the USSR, a development that Soviet civilization understood as the “beginning of the end of (universal) history”, Lif?ic drafted a different, skeptical summary of the revolutionary era. However, he remained loyal to both the concept of universal history and the examination of Russian-Soviet cultural history within the framework of this concept. With the help of a text from Lif?ic from the 1930s as well as his later (early 1980s) reflection and remembrance of the ideological debates of the 1930s, this essay will show that Lif?ic’ reconstruction of idealism in Marxism was no accident, but rather a necessary movement in thought. This, in turn, enabled him to give a new account of the historical experience of the October Revolution.     

Phonological Processing and Right Minus Left Hand Skill

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that children at the left of the distribution of right minus left (R-L) hand skill are at risk for poor phonological processing. In the first experiment, individual assessments of spoken rhyme awareness were made in 5- to 8-year-olds. In the second experiment, a group test of word order memory for spoken confusable and nonconfusable items was given to 9- to 11-year-olds. Evidence of poorer phonological processing in those at the left of the R-L distribution was found in both experiments. Rhyme judgements and word order memory were both associated with reading ability, but reading did not interact with effects for hand skill. A group test of homophone comprehension was given to the same children tested for word order memory. Homophone errors did not differ between hand skill groups, showing a dissociation between the two tasks for R-L hand difference. The findings suggest that some risks for phonological processing could be due to normal genetic variation associated with the hypothesized rs + gene (Annett, 1972, 1978).     

Assessing Language Competence: Guidelines for Assisting Persons With Limited English Proficiency in Research and Clinical Settings

Current guidelines indicate that therapeutic interactions must be in the client's primary language. This article addresses the ethical dilemmas faced by monolingual clinicians and researchers who must assess the foreign language competence of an interpreter. Guidelines are proposed for assessing language competence of staff in clinical and research settings. Las directrices actuales indican que la interacción terapéutica debe tomar lugar en el primer idioma del cliente. Este artículo trata los dilemas éticos que confrontan los clínicos e investigadores monolingües que tienen que asesorar la competencia linguística de un intérprete. Se proponen directrices para el asesoramiento linguístico de personal en escenarios clínicos y de investigación.     

Perceived organizational support and employees’ well-being: the mediating role of organizational dehumanization

Perceived organizational support (POS) has been found to predict important organizational outcomes such as increasing employees’ well-being. In this research, we examine a new underlying mechanism of the relationship between POS and employees’ well-being, that is, employees’ perceptions that their organization dehumanizes them. This proposition was tested across two studies. Using an experimental design manipulating POS in a laboratory setting, Study 1 indicated that in the high POS condition, the subsequent feelings of being dehumanized by the organization were lower than in the low POS condition. More importantly, organizational dehumanization perceptions were found to mediate the POS condition and satisfaction link. Furthermore, using a sample of 1209 employees, results of Study 2 indicated that organizational dehumanization mediates the relationship between POS and three indicators of employees’ well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, and psychosomatic strains). Implications for research on both organizational support theory and dehumanization theory are discussed.     

Association of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function with neuropsychological performance in children with mild/moderate asthma.

The present study examines the relationship between hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function and child psychological/neuropsychological function in a group of children with mild to moderate asthma. The goal of the study was to determine whether child neuropsychological functioning and psychological functioning were associated with cortisol production in response to adrenocorticotropic hormone(ACTH) stimulation when assessed as area under the curve. Data for this study were gathered from 63 children who participated in an ancillary study within the Childhood Asthma Management Program (CAMP) during the pre-randomization phase of the CAMP trial. At 2 of the 8 CAMP clinical centers participants completed an ACTH stimulation test after an overnight stay in the General Clinical Research Center. Gender differences on baseline cortisol and change in cortisol 30 minutes after infusion of ACTH were present. Results further indicated significant associations between cortisol production and measures of child neuropsychological function. Stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that cortisol change could be predicted by measures of gender, working memory, and arousal maintenance, providing support for the hypothesis that cortisol plays a modest role in the neuropsychological function of children with mild and moderate asthma. In contrast, cortisol production was not associated with child reports of psychological functioning. Limitations to the methods employed in this study are discussed.     

How generative drawing affects the learning process: An eye‐tracking analysis

Generative drawing is a learning strategy in which students draw illustrations while reading a text to depict the content of the lesson. In two experiments, students were asked to generate drawings as they read a scientific text or read the same text on influenza with author‐provided illustrations (Experiment 1) or to generate drawings or write verbal summaries as they read (Experiment 2). An examination of students' eye movements during learning showed that students who engaged in generative drawing displayed more rereadings of words, higher proportion of fixations on the important words, higher rate of transitions between words and workspace, and higher proportion of transitions between important words and workspace than students given a text lesson with author‐generated illustrations (Experiment 1) or students who were asked to write a summary (Experiment 2). These findings contribute new evidence to guide theories for explaining how generative drawing affects learning processes.     

Mental health and mediumship: an interpretative phenomenological analysis

There is a lack of research examining the mental health of practicing mediums, yet the nature of mediumship work inherently presents a number of challenges to the mental health of practitioners. In this study, we aimed to gain an understanding of how mediums experience their mental health in relation to their mediumistic practice and how they recognise and respond to psychological difficulties experienced by their clients. Fourteen mediums from the North West of England took part in one-to-one interviews, which were transcribed and subject to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Four themes were identified: from past traumas to mediumistic identity; spirit makes sense, mental illness is chaos; being resilient but vulnerable; and ethical mediumistic practice. The research highlights the value of not dismissing or attempting to change appraisals of valued aspects of mediums’ anomalous experiences. However, the findings do indicate that support for exposure to clients’ difficulties might be helpful.     

Age of acquisition and name agreement as predictors of mean response latencies in picture naming of French adults

We studied the influence of five variables on picture naming latencies in French adult subjects: frequency, age of acquisition and length of words, name agreement in oral naming, and visual complexity of pictures. 140 pictures were presented to 56 subjects with control of individual factors (age, educational level, gender). Naming latency was measured as the time from picture onset until keystroke corresponding to the begin of verbal production. The results of simple and multiple regression analyses show that only two variables make independent contributions to mean response latency: age of acquisition and name agreement. Such state of affairs confirms similar findings obtained with English speaking subjects.