The role of Funktionswandel in metamorphopsia

Patients with metamorphopsia perceive objects or faces as being distorted and/or different in size. In most cases, recognition is not impaired. The stimulus specificity, particularly in the case of face perception, has led to the suggestion that metamorphopsia is a deficit at the entry level of category‐specific recognition systems; in this case, the face processing system. An explanation in terms of a visuosensory deficit (i.e. Funktionswandel) that affects the perception of specific stimulus categories has not been systematically evaluated. In this study, we report two patients (MZ and CM) who experienced hemi‐metamorphopsia for faces after a stroke in the posterior part of the brain. Despite the distortions, they could still match and recognize faces. We carried out a detailed evaluation of their visual‐sensory status and found that both MZ and CM had specific problems with discriminating and estimating sizes and shapes, especially in the contralesional visual field. It was concluded that these cases, metamorphopsia was not due to a higher‐order perception impairment specific for faces, but rather of a specific impairment in shape perception in the contralesional visual field that proportionally affects the perception of faces.     

Reconsidering the relationship between parenting and religiosity

This study examined the relation between religiosity and parenting. 311 parents from the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium completed the Post-critical Belief Scale and reported on their style of parenting. Scores for religiosity (as measured by the Exclusion vs Inclusion of Transcendence dimension) were not significantly correlated with parenting styles. In contrast, the way in which religious contents are processed (as measured by the Literal vs Symbolic dimension) was significantly correlated with dimensions of parenting style.     

Evil intent and design responsibility

Mass casualty attacks in recent years have demonstrated the need to include “evil intent” as a design consideration. Three recent actual or potential weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attacks did not involve nuclear bombs or other devices designed as weapons, but rather benign objects used with evil intent. Just as unplanned events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and user misuse have been codified into design requirements based on the likelihood and potential impact of the event, “evil intent” has to become part of the design process for buildings, vehicles, equipment, and other items. The endstate should be reasonable additions to existing codes and standards such that it is clear what is and is not designed for. In the absence of specific design guidance, professionals with appropriate expertise can assess potential for “evil intent” and provide recommendations to design out or warn against this potential harm to public safety, particularly when codified requirements are not present. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003. Author Note: Bart Kemper, PE, is the principal engineer for Kemper Imageering, Inc. A significant portion of his work has been involved in industrial equipment design, product design, and the design and analysis of different security devices as well as performing simulations, computer modelling, reliability studies, blast analyses, and FMEA analyses on commercial equipment, including marine, offshore, and industrial facilities. He is also a US Army Reserve captain in the Corps of Engineers and was mobilized and deployed overseas in February 2003 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a member of the 412^th Engineer Command, headquartered in Vicksburg, Mississippi. A significant portion of his duties involved reviewing intelligence, analyzing potential courses of action, and evaluating risks with regard to Iraqi and Coalition activities in the northern Iraqi oilfields as well as base camp design and infrastructure engineering. This paper is unclassified and has been cleared for publication.     

Use of the high-probability instructional sequence and escape extinction in a child with food refusal

We used the high-probability (high-p) instructional sequence with and without escape extinction in the treatment of food refusal. Acceptance increased and refusal decreased only with the introduction of escape extinction. These results raise important questions about the high-p sequence in the treatment of food refusal.     

Autonomy and Relatedness among Chinese Sojourners and Applicants: Conflictual or Independent Predictors of Well-Being and Adjustment?

Self-Determination Theory argues that relatedness and autonomy represent innate and universally critical needs and that, when satisfied, both needs should yield an independent positive effect on well-being and adjustment for all individuals. In contrast, some cross-cultural perspectives suggest that the pursuit of autonomy hampers the development of satisfying relationships, and such conflicts might be especially problematic for the well-being of individuals in collectivistic societies that value social bonds over the pursuit of uniqueness and independence. The present study sampled Chinese students who had temporarily moved to Belgium to study (i.e., sojourners) and Chinese students involved in the application procedure to study in Belgium (i.e., applicants). Consistent with SDT, the present research shows that the basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence are positively interrelated, that the satisfaction of these three needs predicts unique variance in Chinese students’ psychological well-being, vitality, and depression (i.e., main effects), and that autonomy satisfaction yields a more beneficial effect on vitality and better protects against depressive feelings when relatedness satisfaction is low (i.e., an interaction effect). Finally, mean-level differences in well-being between Chinese sojourners and applicants could be fully accounted by differential need satisfaction.

Translation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Assessment Instruments Used in Psychological Research With Children and Families

With the increased globalization of psychology and related fields, having reliable and valid measures that can be used in a number of languages and cultures is critical. Few guidelines or standards have been established in psychology for the translation and cultural adaptation of instruments. Usually little is reported in research publications about the translation and adaptation process thus making it difficult for journal readers and reviewers to adequately evaluate the equivalency and quality of an instrument. In this study, issues related to the translation and adaptation of assessment instruments for use in other cultures and/or languages are addressed. Existing literature on translation is reviewed and examples from the clinical child and family psychology field are given to illustrate relevant issues. Suggestions are made for avoiding common translation errors.     

The Pragma-Dialectical Approach to the Fallacies Revisited

This article explains the design and development of the pragma-dialectical approach to fallacies. In this approach fallacies are viewed as violations of the standards for critical discussion that are expressed in a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse. After the problem-solving validity in resolving differences of opinion of the rules of this code has been discussed, their conventional validity for real-life arguers is demonstrated. Starting from the extended version of the theory in which the strategic maneuvering taking place in argumentative discourse is included, the article explains that the violations of the rules that are committed in the fallacies involve derailments of strategic maneuvering. This culminates in a discussion of the exploitation of hidden fallaciousness as an unreasonable way of increasing the effectiveness of argumentative discourse – a vital topic of research in present-day pragma-dialectics.

     

When “All the Five Circles” are Four: New Exercises in Domain Restriction

The domain of a quantifier is determined by a variety of factors, which broadly speaking fall into two types. On the one hand, the context of utterance plays a role: if the focus of attention is on a particular collection of kangaroos, for example, then “Q kangaroos” is likely to range over the individuals in that set. On the other hand, the utterance itself will help to establish the quantificational domain, inter alia through presuppositions triggered within the sentence. In this paper, we concentrate our attention on constructions like the following, in which “the square to which ... ” is the critical presupposition trigger:

1. (i)
   Q circles ...
    
2. (ii)
   Q of these circles ...
    
3. (iii)
   Q of these five circles ... ... have the same colour as the square to which they are connected.
    

Many theories predict that all instances of these schemata will give rise to the presupposition that every circle is connected to a square. We present an analysis which predicts that these sentences should generally be accepted in a context in which not all the circles are connected to a square, with one exception only: if a quantified sentence is of type (iii) and Q is non-intersective, then the sentence should be more likely to be rejected. Furthermore, we predict that manipulating the context so as to make the connected circles more or less salient should have an effect on statements with non-intersective quantifiers only. These predictions were tested in a series of experiments.     

Iconicity and the Emergence of Combinatorial Structure in Language

In language, recombination of a discrete set of meaningless building blocks forms an unlimited set of possible utterances. How such combinatorial structure emerged in the evolution of human language is increasingly being studied. It has been shown that it can emerge when languages culturally evolve and adapt to human cognitive biases. How the emergence of combinatorial structure interacts with the existence of holistic iconic form‐meaning mappings in a language is still unknown. The experiment presented in this paper studies the role of iconicity and human cognitive learning biases in the emergence of combinatorial structure in artificial whistled languages. Participants learned and reproduced whistled words for novel objects with the use of a slide whistle. Their reproductions were used as input for the next participant, to create transmission chains and simulate cultural transmission. Two conditions were studied: one in which the persistence of iconic form‐meaning mappings was possible and one in which this was experimentally made impossible. In both conditions, cultural transmission caused the whistled languages to become more learnable and more structured, but this process was slightly delayed in the first condition. Our findings help to gain insight into when and how words may lose their iconic origins when they become part of an organized linguistic system.