The Bearable Lightness of Being

How are philosophical questions about what kinds of things there are to be understood and how are they to be answered? This paper defends broadly Fregean answers to these questions. Ontological categories—such as object, property, and relation—are explained in terms of a prior logical categorization of expressions, as singular terms, predicates of varying degree and level, etc. Questions about what kinds of object, property, etc., there are are, on this approach, reduce to questions about truth and logical form: for example, the question whether there are numbers is the question whether there are true atomic statements in which expressions function as singular terms which, if they have reference at all, stand for numbers, and the question whether there are properties of a given type is a question about whether there are meaningful predicates of an appropriate degree and level. This approach is defended against the objection that it must be wrong because makes what there depend on us or our language. Some problems confronting the Fregean approach—including Frege’s notorious paradox of the concept horse—are addressed. It is argued that the approach results in a modest and sober deflationary understanding of ontological commitments.     

Social and Personal Factors as Predictors of Earthquake Preparation: The Role of Support Provision,Network Discussion,Negative Affect,Age, and Education1

Panel data collected in 1991 as part of the University of Southern California Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG) were used to predict reported preparation activities prior to and in response to the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake. In late 1994 and early 1995, 163 panelists (representing 107 multigenerational families) were interviewed by phone about their earthquake experiences. The best 1991 predictor of pre‐quake preparation was the extent of instrumental support respondents provided to network members. Earthquake preparation activities undertaken after the quake were associated with the amount and cost of damage experienced during the quake, 1991 neuroticism scores, age (inversely), and having preparedness encouraged by multiple network sources. The results highlight the importance of social roles (e.g., support provision) and discussion by informal network sources in the adoption of public health and safety messages.     

Visual versus kinesthetic mental imagery: Efficacy for the retention and transfer of a closed motor skill in young children

The main purposes of this study were (a) to compare the effects of mental imagery combined with physical practise and specific physical practise on the retention and transfer of a closed motor skill in young children; (b) to determine the mental imagery (visual vs. kinesthetic), which is the most efficient for retention and transfer of a closed motor skill; and (c) to verify the relationship between movement image vividness and motor performance. As for the secondary purpose, it was to compare the effects of gender on motor learning. Participants (n = 96) were selected from 3 primary schools. These participants were divided into 6 groups and submitted to different experimental conditions. The experimental task required the participants to throw, with the nondominant hand (left hand), a ball toward a target composed of 3 concentric circles. The results demonstrated that performance obtained by the mental imagery (visual or kinesthetic) combined with physical practise group was, during the retention phase, equivalent to that produced by the specific physical practise group but significantly superior during the transfer of closed motor skill. These results showed the potential benefits of mental imagery as a retention strategy intended for motor skills and performance enhancement. Such results could be explained by the similarity of 3 principal functional evidences shared by mental and physical practise: behavioural, central, and peripheral (as suggested by Holmes & Collins, 2001). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

Two Spirit: Counseling Native American Gay,Lesbian, and Bisexual People

The cultural world of the Two Spirit, the traditional role of Native individuals believed to possess both male and female spirit, is explored in both “old ways” and current‐day experiences. Cultural beliefs and meanings around sexual identity are discussed from a Native perspective with recommendations for counseling Two Spirit clients. El mundo cultural del Doble‐espíritu, el rol tradicional de indígenas que se creía que poseían espíritus masculinos y femeninos, se explora en formas tradicionales y experiencias actuales. Creencias culturales y significados acerca de la identidad sexual se analizan desde una perspectiva indígena con recomendaciones para el asesoramiento de clientes Doble‐espíritu.     

Causal-based property generalization

A central question in cognitive research concerns how new properties are generalized to categories. This article introduces a model of how generalizations involve a process of causal inference in which people estimate the likely presence of the new property in individual category exemplars and then the prevalence of the property among all category members. Evidence in favor of this causal-based generalization (CBG) view included effects of an existing feature's base rate (Experiment 1), the direction of the causal relations (Experiments 2 and 4), the number of those relations (Experiment 3), and the distribution of features among category members (Experiments 4 and 5). The results provided no support for an alternative view that generalizations are promoted by the centrality of the to-be-generalized feature. However, there was evidence that a minority of participants based their judgments on simpler associative reasoning processes.     

Identifying children with learning disabilities: When is a discrepancy severe?

Identification of children with learning disabilities is based on the notion of a significant discrepancy between ability and achievement. Current federal guidelines do not specify the extent of such discrepancies but indicate they should be “severe”. Local education agencies have adopted criteria suggested by professionals or formulated their own operational criteria for identification of learning disabled children. In this research, we examined the extent to which identification as learning disabled is a function of the criteria used to define “severe discrepancy”, and the extent to which different classifications would result from use of different criteria. A school district made identification decisions for 51 students referred because they were experiencing academic difficulties; they found 24 students LD. The school identification decisions, based on application of a severe discrepancy on the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery, did not correlate with decisions based on application of the federal definition. Implications for decision-making practices are discussed.     

Experiencing double-bind conflict: A semantic differential assessment of interaction perceptions

Four interaction-perception perspectives of the fictitious target of a double-bind conflict were provided by four groups of subjects. The perspectives included perceptions of a daughter about herself and her father (the double-bind source), and her estimates of his perceptions of both himself and her. As predicted, the target saw herself as weak but “good”, and as cooperative and highly frustrated, while attributing all the opposite characteristics to the source, who was seen as strong but “bad”, and uncooperative and not frustrated. Further, it was found that she believed he saw himself as strong and very good, but frustrated and moderately cooperative. These observations are consistent with a hypothesis that double-bind experiences result in frustration and mixed feelings toward one's self and the source of the dilemma. It was also concluded that the target's belief that her father would not recognize her weakness, nor her cooperativeness, nor her frustration, and would disinterestedly evaluate her as neither good nor bad resulted from the inconsistent and contradictory communications which had contributed to the double bind.     

THE ROLE OF REFERENTIAL SPEECH IN SIGN LEARNING BY MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN: A COMPARISON OF TOTAL COMMUNICATION AND SIGN-ALONE TRAINING

We conducted two experiments to assess the role of referential speech during sign training in which the spoken words corresponding to signs were receptively known to the participants. An alternating treatments design was used to compare sign acquisition across two teaching conditions in which referents were presented either with or without the corresponding verbal label. During the first experiment, signs were taught concurrently; during the second experiment, signs within each of the respective conditions were taught in a serial fashion. In both experiments, signs taught by total communication were acquired faster than those taught by sign-alone training.