Do MacDonald and MacDonald Solve the Problem of Mental Causal Relevance?

Ever since Davidson first articulated and defended anomalous monism, nonreductive physicalists have struggled with the problem of mental causation. Considerations about the causal closure of the physical domain and related principles about exclusion make it very difficult to maintain the distinctness of mental and physical properties while securing a causal role for the former. Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the underlying metaphysics and ontology of the mental causation debate to gain traction on this issue. Cynthia MacDonald and Graham MacDonald have followed suit and argue that the solution to the nonreductivist’s troubles lies in a particular metaphysical view of events. They claim that an appropriately formulated property exemplification account of events resolves the problem and secures the causal relevance of mental properties. I argue that while this approach might get us the causal efficacy of mental events, it does not provide the sought-after causal relevance of mental properties. I show that the reason MacDonald and MacDonald stumble on the problem of causal relevance is—ironically—due to features of their view of events.     

The effects of list composition and perceptual fluency on judgments of learning (JOLs)

The perceptual fluency hypothesis proposes that items that are easier to perceive at study will be given higher memorability ratings, as compared with less fluent items. However, prior research has examined this metamemorial cue primarily using mixed-list designs. Furthermore, certain memory effects are moderated by the design (mixed list vs. pure list) used to present stimuli. The present study utilized mixed as well as pure lists to assess whether judgments of learning based on perceptual fluency are relative or absolute and whether people are sensitive to differences in recall produced by variation in list composition. Using font size and generation manipulations, Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the effect of perceptual fluency on metamemory is relative in nature, occurring only in mixed lists. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that metamemory is insensitive to the effect of list composition on recall. These findings are consistent with the assumptions of Koriat’s (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 126: 349-370, 1997) cue-utilization framework, that JOLs reflect a comparative process and are insensitive to cues pertaining to conditions of learning.     

Aristotle's Syllogistic and Core Logic

I use the Corcoran–Smiley interpretation of Aristotle's syllogistic as my starting point for an examination of the syllogistic from the vantage point of modern proof theory. I aim to show that fresh logical insights are afforded by a proof-theoretically more systematic account of all four figures. First I regiment the syllogisms in the Gentzen–Prawitz system of natural deduction, using the universal and existential quantifiers of standard first-order logic, and the usual formalizations of Aristotle's sentence-forms. I explain how the syllogistic is a fragment of my (constructive and relevant) system of Core Logic. Then I introduce my main innovation: the use of binary quantifiers, governed by introduction and elimination rules. The syllogisms in all four figures are re-proved in the binary system, and are thereby revealed as all on a par with each other. I conclude with some comments and results about grammatical generativity, ecthesis, perfect validity, skeletal validity and Aristotle's chain principle.     

Type D personality predicts poor medication adherence in myocardial infarction patients

Type D personality, the combination of negative affectivity (NA) and social inhibition (SI), is an emerging risk factor in cardiovascular disease. This study aimed to examine one possible behavioural mechanism to explain the link between Type D and ill-health. It was hypothesised that Type D personality would predict medication adherence in myocardial infarction (MI) patients. In a prospective study, 192 MI patients (54 females and 138 males) completed measures of Type D personality and provided demographic and medical information 1 week post-MI, and then 131 patients went on to complete a self-report measure of medication adherence 3 months post-MI. It was found that Type D personality predicts adherence to medication, after controlling for demographic and clinical risk factors. Critically, the constituent components of Type D, NA and SI, interact to predict medication adherence, after controlling for the effects of each component separately. Poor adherence to medication may represent one mechanism to explain why Type D cardiac patients experience poor clinical outcome, in comparison to non-Type D patients. Interventions, which target the self-management of medication, may be useful in these high-risk patients.     

What,and Where,Luck is: A Response to Jennifer Lackey

In ‘What Luck Is Not’, Lackey presents counterexamples to the two most prominent accounts of luck: the absence of control account and the modal account. I offer an account of luck that conjoins absence of control to a modal condition. I then show that Lackey's counterexamples mislocate the luck: the agents in her cases are lucky, but the luck precedes the event upon which Lackey focuses, and that event is itself only fortunate, not lucky. Finally I offer an account of fortune. Fortune is luck-involving, and therefore easily confused with luck, but it is not itself lucky.     

Self-relevance enhances the benefits of attention on perception

ABSTRACT

Considerable efforts have focused on elucidating the influence that self-relevance exerts on perceptual decision-making. To explore this issue further, the current research explored the extent to which stimulus applicability facilitates the benefits of covert attention on early visual processing. In two experiments, we manipulated the personal-relevance of peripheral cues (i.e., geometric shapes) that preceded the appearance of target stimuli (i.e., Gabors) and asked participants to report the orientation of the stimulus with the highest contrast. The results revealed a significant effect of self-relevance on task performance. First, compared to cues associated with a friend or stranger, self-relevant cues enhanced the apparent contrast of a stimulus. Second, the benefits of self-relevance were most pronounced when cues pertained to identities that were significant (vs. trivial or irrelevant) to observers. Together, these findings demonstrate that self-relevance potentiates the benefits of transient attention on stimulus processing.     

How to Gain Eleven IQ Points in Ten Minutes: Thinking Aloud Improves Raven's Matrices Performance in Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Few studies have examined the impact of age on reactivity to concurrent think-aloud (TA) verbal reports. An initial study with 30 younger and 31 older adults revealed that thinking aloud improves older adult performance on a short form of the Raven's Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998 Bors, D. A. and Stokes, T. L. 1998. Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices: Norms for first-year university students and the development of a short form. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58: 382–398. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382) but did not affect other tasks. In the replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age = 73.0) performed the Raven's Matrices and three other tasks to replicate and extend the findings of the initial study. Once again older adults performed significantly better only on the Raven's Matrices while thinking aloud. Performance gains on this task were substantial (d = 0.73 and 0.92 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively), corresponding to a fluid intelligence increase of nearly one standard deviation.     

What's in a Forename? Cue Familiarity and Stereotypical Thinking

Recent research has characterized categorical thinking as an essential component of the person perception process. Yet relatively little is known about the myriad factors that moderate the accessibility of this mode of thought. With regard to this we hypothesized that the subjective familiarity of a person's forename may play an important role in triggering categorical thinking. Specifically, category-based knowledge may be more accessible when triggered by familiar than unfamiliar forenames. We report the results of three experiments that supported this prediction. Relative to unfamiliar names, participants required less time to verify the gender of familiar forenames (Experiment 1) and semantic priming was more pronounced when stereotype-related material followed the presentation of familiar than unfamiliar items (Experiment 2). Also, familiar forenames attracted more extreme gender-based evaluations than their unfamiliar counterparts (Experiment 3). We consider the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings for a variety of issues in person perception.     

Unreinforced Conditional Selection by Two-Year-Olds in A Six-Comparison Matching Task

The Psychological Record - Four normally developing 2-year-old children were exposed to a story in which six novel characters appeared and were named. To assess learning of the character name...