Defending the Content Approach to Aesthetic Experience

This article defends the content approach to aesthetic experience. It begins by sketching this approach to aesthetic experience. It then rehearses certain recent criticisms of the view by Alan Goldman and attempts to rebut them. One of those criticisms raises a long‐standing concern about the author's account that has recently been called the “qua” problem. The article concludes by putting this issue to rest.     

The Problem of Relevance and the Future of Philosophy of Religion

Despite the growth in research in philosophy of religion over the past several decades, recent years have seen a number of critical studies of this subfield in an effort to redirect the methods and topics of inquiry. This article argues that in addition to problems of religious parochialism described by critics such as Wesley Wildman, the subfield is facing a problem of relevance. In responding to this problem, it suggests that philosophers of religion should do three things: first, be critically self‐aware about their aims of inquiry; second, investigate concepts used by other philosophers, scientists, and religious studies scholars to identify and dispel confusion about religions; and third, following the model of applied ethics, work to clarify concepts and advance arguments of contemporary practical urgency.     

Effect of motivation on academic fluency performance in survivors of pediatric medulloblastoma

It has been proposed previously that extrinsic motivation may enable survivors of childhood medulloblastoma to significantly improve aspects of neurocognitive performance. In healthy populations, enhanced motivation has been shown to promote academic fluency, a domain likely more relevant to the educational outcomes of pediatric medulloblastoma survivors than academic skill development. The present study investigates the effect of enhanced extrinsic motivation on fluent (i.e., accurate and efficient) academic performance in pediatric medulloblastoma survivors. Participants were 36 children, ages 7–18, who had completed treatment for medulloblastoma. Participants completed a neuropsychological battery that included administration of equivalent tasks on Forms A and B of the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Half were randomly assigned to an incentive condition prior to the administration of Form B. Provision of a performance-based incentive resulted in statistically significant improvement, but not normalization of function, in performance on measures of academic fluency. No demographic, treatment-related, academic, neuropsychological, or self-perception variables predicted response to incentive. Findings suggest that academic performance of survivors may significantly improve under highly motivating conditions. In addition to implications for educational services, this finding raises the novel possibility that decreased motivation represents an inherent neuropsychological deficit in this population and provides a rationale for further investigation of factors affecting individual differences in motivational processes. Further, by examining effort in a context where effort is not inherently suspect, present findings also significantly contribute to the debate regarding the effects of effort and motivation on neuropsychological performance.     

Teacher stress and burnout in Australia: examining the role of intrapersonal and environmental factors

Social Psychology of Education - Concerns regarding high rates of teacher stress and burnout are present globally. Yet there is limited current data regarding the severity of stress, or the role of...     

The elephant in the room: attention to salient scene features increases with comedic expertise

Cognitive Processing - What differentiates the joke writing strategy employed by professional comedians from non-comedians? Previous MRI work found that professional comedians relied to a greater...     

The effects of video modeling with voiceover instruction on accurate implementation of discrete-trial instruction

The present study replicates and extends previous research on the use of video modeling (VM) with voiceover instruction to train staff to implement discrete-trial instruction (DTI). After staff trainees reached the mastery criterion when teaching an adult confederate with VM, they taught a child with a developmental disability using DTI. The results showed that the staff trainees' accurate implementation of DTI remained high, and both child participants acquired new skills. These findings provide additional support that VM may be an effective method to train staff members to conduct DTI.     

The causal role of phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge in learning to read: combining intervention studies with mediation analyses

There is good evidence that phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge are reliable longitudinal predictors of learning to read, though whether they have a causal effect remains uncertain. In this article, we present the results of a mediation analysis using data from a previous large-scale intervention study. We found that a phonology and reading intervention that taught letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness produced significant improvements in these two skills and in later word-level reading and spelling skills. Improvements in letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness at the end of the intervention fully mediated the improvements seen in children's word-level literacy skills 5 months after the intervention finished. Our findings support the conclusion that letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness are two causal influences on the development of children's early literacy skills.     

Rape Myth Acceptance: A Comparison of Military Service Academy and Civilian Fraternity and Sorority Students

Although both the military and fraternities have been theorized to be characterized by norms and attitudes that serve to legitimize violence against women, no previous work has examined the potential similarity and differences in rape-supportive beliefs of these 2 environments or the people drawn to them. Further, the belief systems of women within these organizations have received little attention. As such, the current study sought to serve as an initial exploration of the rape-supportive belief systems of people drawn to these groups. Participants were recruited from students entering 2 military service academies (U.S. Military Academy, n = 1,169, 1,003 men, 166 women; U.S. Naval Academy, n = 1,916, 1,551 men, 365 women) and fraternities and sororities at a Midwestern university (n = 393, 188 men, 205 women). All participants completed the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale–Short Form. Consistent with previous findings related to gender, men were more accepting of rape myths than women. Further, there was more variability in the levels of rape myth acceptance among military service academy and fraternity men than among military service academy and sorority women. Although across all groups the women expressed significantly lower levels of rape myth acceptance than the men, women and men from the United States Military Academy were more closely aligned in their beliefs than women and men from the other samples. Implications for sexual assault prevention education are discussed.     

I Knew It All Along,Unless I Had to Work to Learn What I Know

After receiving knowledge regarding some topic, people usually overestimate their prior topic knowledge. Two experiments investigated whether people would claim less prior knowledge if they worked to earn their present knowledge. In Study 1, students finishing a psychology course claimed less precourse psychology knowledge if they reported devoting more effort toward the course. In Study 2, the knew-it-all-along effect was stronger for participants who were simply given the answers to questions than for participants who studied for 20 minutes to learn the answers. Both cognitive and motivational factors can account for the observed effects of effort investment on retrospective knowledge judgments.