Intuitions about declining marginal utility

In two studies, subjects judged the desirability of distributions of life expectancy or money. Their judgments showed declining marginal utility. That is, they were less sensitive to changes at the high end of each scale. Subjects also made utility ratings of the outcomes of individuals. And they made ratings of the distributions when these were described in terms of utility ratings rather than goods (years or dollars). The judgments of utility ratings showed equivalent declining marginal utility, even though they were based on utilities that themselves declined marginally. People extend their intuition about declining marginal utility to utility itself, as if utility had utility that declined marginally. In one experiment, a similar result was found with gambles: people are risk averse for utility as well as for money. We argue that this is an overextension of a reasonable heuristic and that this heuristic may account for one classic objection to utilitarian distributions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Joint presentation reduces the effect of emotion on evaluation of public actions

In four experiments conducted on the world wide web, subjects evaluated the priority of policies presented separately or presented jointly in pairs, and/or reported their emotional responses to the problem that each policy addressed. Strength of emotional responses was more strongly related to priority when policies were presented separately than when they were presented jointly. We found evidence for one mechanism that could produce these results: joint presentation increases the evaluability of the policies, thus increasing the influence of cognitive evaluations of importance on priority judgements, and reducing the relative influence of emotional responses. We also found evidence that importance can affect emotional responses. We found no evidence for other mechanisms in which the emotions evoked by one item spread to the other item in joint presentation. The role of evaluability points to the applied value of evaluating policies in the context of alternatives.     

Contingent Resistances Methodology: Analyzing Resistance in Parents' and Daughters' Choice of an All‐Girl Middle School

Contemporary perspectives on dominance and resistance as multifaceted and dialogical call for a similarly dialogical methodology, as reflected in Saukko's concept of contingent resistances. Compared to much of the past resistance research, contingent resistances sets forth an expanded vision of dialogicality in research design and in the interpretation of actor's meanings. Our purpose is to illustrate three implications of this methodology: (i) polyvocality—a comparison of perspectives of two groups of actors; (ii) consideration of the full range of meanings relevant to the action with particular attention to reactions from the local context; and (iii) interpretations of resistance that are firmly grounded in narrators' meanings. The analysis is based on interviews with parents and their young adolescent daughters about their decision to attend a new all‐girl college‐preparatory public school located in southwestern USA. Expanding on past studies of girls' school choice, we show how parents and daughters create different meanings of this decision, largely based on interactions with their peers. Although both parents and daughters emphasized academic opportunity as their main reason for the school choice, daughters, unlike parents, were confronted with violating peer femininity/heteronormativity norms. Thus, the decision required resistance on the part of daughters in a way that it did not for parents. We view contingent resistances as a useful methodological framework in a range of areas where questions of resistance are at stake. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Groundless Truth

Abstract

?We defend two claims: (1) if one is attracted to a strong non-maximalist view about truthmaking, then it is natural to construe this as the view that there exist fundamental truths; (2) despite considerable aversion to fundamental truths, there is as yet no viable independent argument against them. That is, there is no argument against the existence of fundamental truths that is independent of any more specific arguments against the ontology accepted by the strong non-maximalist. Thus there is no argument that the strong non-maximalist herself will find dialectically motivating.     

The Role of Tentativeness in Perceiving Architecture and Art: A Far-from-Equilibrium Ecological Perspective

Two experiments examined performance in collision avoidance situations. In both experiments participants were asked to initiate a discrete maneuver to avoid a collision at the last possible moment. The affordances of the situations were varied as a function of vehicle dynamics and the functional consequences associated with responding too late or too early. The results were examined in the context of a 2-dimensional functional state space with dimensions associated with optical angle and optical expansion rate. The patterns of performance showed that the actions were consistent with decision rules that could be specified in terms of linear functions of the two optical variables. In most cases, performance at early stages of learning suggested that people were using an Expansion Rate Criterion. With practice, people would tune to a decision rule that was appropriate for the specific vehicle dynamics tested. The results are discussed in relation to the role of three factors in shaping ultimate performance: (a) tasks constraints (i.e., affordances), (b) information constraints (i.e., optical structure), and (c) experience (i.e., learning).     

A Truthmaker Indispensability Argument

Recently, nominalists have made a case against the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument for mathematical Platonism by taking issue with Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment. In this paper I propose and defend an indispensability argument founded on an alternative criterion of ontological commitment: that advocated by David Armstrong. By defending such an argument I place the burden back onto the nominalist to defend her favourite criterion of ontological commitment and, furthermore, show that criterion cannot be used to formulate a plausible form of the indispensability argument.     

Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System

The purpose of the current study was to examine the performance of children with and without ADHD in time reproduction tasks involving varying durations and modalities. Twenty children with ADHD and 20 healthy controls completed time reproduction tasks in three modalities (auditory, visual, and a unique combined auditory/visual condition) and six durations (1 second, 4 seconds, 12 seconds, 24 seconds, 48 seconds, and 60 seconds). Consistent with our predictions, we found main effects of group (participants with ADHD were significantly less accurate than those without ADHD), duration (accuracy decreased as temporal duration increased), and modality (responses in the combined condition were more accurate than those in the auditory condition, which in turn were more accurate than those in the visual condition). Furthermore, predicted interactions between group and duration (the discrepancy in performance between the two groups grew as temporal duration increased), and group and modality (the modality effect was of greater for participants with ADHD) were supported. A marginal, nonsignificant interaction between group, modality, and duration was also found. These findings are discussed in relation to current theory on the nature of cognitive deficits evident in individuals with ADHD, and methodological limitations are noted.     

Test Review: Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition (WISC-IV)

Objective: Evaluate neuropsychological functioning in children with non-syndromic cleft of the lip and/or palate (NSCL/P) through profile variance within type of cleft and comparisons to controls.

Methods: Children ages 7 to 17 years participated; 66 had a diagnosis of NSCL/P and 87 were healthy controls. Neuropsychological tests of language, visual-perceptual, executive functioning, and memory skills were administered. Between- and within-group differences were assessed.

Results: Within cleft types, children with NSCLP had an even profile with equal Verbal and Performance IQ (VIQ and PIQ, respectively). Children with non-syndromic cleft palate only (NSCP) had significantly lower VIQ than PIQ, while children with non-syndromic cleft lip only (NSCL) showed a nonsignificant trend for higher VIQ than PIQ. Overall, subjects with NSCL/P performed lower on measures of expressive language and verbal memory than controls.

Conclusions: While deficits in verbal and memory skills for children with NSCL/P remain apparent, there is still uncertainty around the possible influence of cleft type on the pattern of deficits.     

Developmental normative data for the Baron-Hopkins Board test of spatial location memory

Developmentally appropriate domain-specific tests with strong psychometric properties for preschoolers are lacking and infrequently developed. Baron’s modification of the Hopkins Board test (B-HB) to assess spatial location learning and recall in 3- and 6-year-old children has shown promise in the study of young children born prematurely. Current study data were analyzed on 172 typically developing children at age 3 years and 193 at age 6 years, born at term (≥ 37 weeks; ≥ 2500 grams). Statistically significant gender differences were found and data stratification of T-scores and percentile ranks are provided for each of the eight B-HB measures. The B-HB’s strong interrater reliability (99.5%), low-to-moderate test-retest reliability across the 3-year age span, Pearson correlations showing criterion validity, and differential functioning from other selective attention and visuospatial/visuoperceptual tests provide initial normative data for this novel measure of spatial location memory in young children.