A Puzzle for Particulars?

In this paper we examine a puzzle recently posed by Aaron Preston for the traditional realist assay of property (quality) instances. Consider Socrates (a red round spot) and red₁—Socrates’ redness. For the traditional realist, both of these entities are concrete particulars. Further, both involve redness being `tied to’ the same bare individuator. But then it appears that red₁ is duplicated in its ‘thicker’ particular (Socrates), so that it can’t be predicated of Socrates without redundancy. According to Preston, this suggests that a concrete particular and its property instances aren’t genuinely related. We argue that Preston’s proffered solution here—to treat property instances as “mental constructs”—is fraught with difficulty. We then go on to show how, by fine-tuning the nature of bare particulars, treating them as abstract modes of things rather than concrete particulars, the traditional realist can neatly evade Preston’s puzzle.

Core information processing deficits in developmental dyscalculia and low numeracy

There are two different conceptions of the innate basis for numerical abilities. On the one hand, it is claimed that infants possess a 'number module' that enables them to construct concepts of the exact numerosities of sets upon which arithmetic develops (e.g. Butterworth, 1999; Gelman & Gallistel, 1978). On the other hand, it has been proposed that infants are equipped only with a sense of approximate numerosities (e.g. Feigenson, Dehaene & Spelke, 2004), upon which the concepts of exact numerosities are constructed with the aid of language (Carey, 2004) and which forms the basis of arithmetic (Lemer, Dehaene, Spelke & Cohen, 2003). These competing proposals were tested by assessing whether performance on approximate numerosity tasks is related to performance on exact numerosity tasks. Moreover, performance on an analogue magnitude task was tested, since it has been claimed that approximate numerosities are represented as analogue magnitudes. In 8-9-year-olds, no relationship was found between exact tasks and either approximate or analogue tasks in normally achieving children, in children with low numeracy or in children with developmental dyscalculia. Low numeracy was related not to a poor grasp of exact numerosities, but to a poor understanding of symbolic numerals.     

The moderating effects of stimulus valence and arousal on memory suppression

This study examined the separate and combined effects of stimulus valence and arousal on retrieval inhibition. Participants performed Anderson and Green's (2001) memory suppression task with stimuli varying across dimensions of valence and arousal. Memory was tested through free and cued recall as well as speeded recognition. Results showed that both stimulus valence and arousal influenced the extent to which participants successfully inhibited retrieval, but not in the ways anticipated. Specifically, the strongest inhibition effects were for highly arousing, pleasant words. In addition, unpleasant stimuli that were suppressed were better recalled during both cued and free-recall tasks than pleasant stimuli that were suppressed. Across all tests of memory performance, there were no significant differences between the experimental conditions for highly arousing, unpleasant words. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

"Elicitation hooks": a discourse analysis of chaplain-patient interaction in pastoral and spiritual care

The article considers the communicative role of the hospital chaplain and maps some of the language strategies deployed to facilitate disclosure of the patients' concerns and achieve enhanced spiritual care. These include: i) involvement, ii) politeness and iii) encouraging disclosure or exploring emotion.     

Testing different types of genotype-environment correlation: an extended children-of-twins model

This study presents an extended children-of-twins model, which allowed the authors to test the direction of the association between parenting and child adjustment. Three mechanisms were examined: direct phenotypic influence of parenting on child behavior (controlling for both parental and child genotype), passive genotype-environment correlation, and evocative genotype-environment correlation. This model was tested with Monte Carlo simulations. The authors generated data sets consisting of 1,000 twin parent pairs together with their children and 1,000 twin children pairs together with their parents. These simulated data sets were then used to estimate the model, and the procedure was repeated 1,000 times. The simulation results showed that this model recovered the true values of parameters with high precision. The model was also applied to an observed data set to analyze, as a first example, the association between maternal emotional overinvolvement and child internalizing problems. The results showed that this association was best explained by evocative genotype-environment correlation.     

Sensitivity and bias under conditions of equal and unequal academic task difficulty

We conducted an experimental analysis of children's relative problem-completion rates across two workstations under conditions of equal (Experiment 1) and unequal (Experiment 2) problem difficulty. Results were described using the generalized matching equation and were evaluated for degree of schedule versus stimulus control. Experiment 1 involved a symmetrical choice arrangement in which the children could earn points exchangeable for rewards contingent on correct math problem completion. Points were delivered according to signaled variable-interval schedules at each workstation. For 2 children, relative rates of problem completion appeared to have been controlled by the schedule requirements in effect and matched relative rates of reinforcement, with sensitivity values near 1 and bias values near 0. Experiment 2 involved increasing the difficulty of math problems at one of the workstations. Sensitivity values for all 3 participants were near 1, but a substantial increase in bias toward the easier math problems was observed. This bias was possibly associated with responding at the more difficult workstation coming under stimulus control rather than schedule control.     

Distinguishing automatic and controlled components of attitudes from direct and indirect measurement methods

Distinct automatic and controlled processes are presumed to influence social evaluation. Most empirical approaches examine automatic processes using indirect methods, and controlled processes using direct methods. We distinguished processes from measurement methods to test whether a process distinction is more useful than a measurement distinction for taxonomies of attitudes. Results from two studies suggest that automatic components of attitudes can be measured directly. Direct measures of automatic attitudes were reports of gut reactions (Study 1) and behavioral performance in a speeded self-report task (Study 2). Confirmatory factor analyses comparing two-factor models revealed better fits when self-reports of gut reactions and speeded self-reports shared a factor with automatic measures versus sharing a factor with controlled self-report measures. Thus, distinguishing attitudes by the processes they are presumed to measure (automatic versus controlled) is more meaningful than distinguishing based on the directness of measurement.     

Searching for an environmental effect of parental alcoholism on offspring alcohol use disorder: a genetically informed study of children of alcoholics

The children-of-twins design was used to isolate a potentially causal environmental impact of having an alcoholic parent on offspring alcohol use disorder, by an examination of whether the children of alcoholics were at a higher risk for alcohol use disorders than were the children of nonalcoholic parents, even after correlated familial factors were controlled. Participants were 1,224 male and female twins from 836 twin pairs selected from the Australian Twin Registry, 2,334 of the twins' 18-39-year-old offspring, and 983 spouses of the twins. Lifetime histories of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) alcohol use disorders were obtained by structured, psychiatric, telephone interviews conducted individually with each of the family members. Comparisons of the offspring of twins who were discordant for alcoholism indicated that there was no longer a statistically significant difference between the children of alcoholics and the children of nonalcoholics after genetic and family environmental factors correlated with having an alcoholic parent were controlled. The results of this study suggest that the direct causal effect of being exposed to an alcoholic parent on offspring alcohol use disorder is modest at best.     

H.M.'s personal crossword puzzles: understanding memory and language

The amnesic patient H.M. has been solving crossword puzzles nearly all his life. Here, we analysed the linguistic content of 277 of H.M.'s crossword-puzzle solutions. H.M. did not have any unusual difficulties with the orthographic and grammatical components inherent to the puzzles. He exhibited few spelling errors, responded with appropriate parts of speech, and provided answers that were, at times, more convincing to observers than those supplied by the answer keys. These results suggest that H.M.'s lexical word-retrieval skills remain fluid despite his profound anterograde amnesia. Once acquired, the maintenance of written language comprehension and production does not seem to require intact medial temporal lobe structures.