Relevance differently affects the truth,acceptability, and probability evaluations of “and”, “but”, “therefore”, and “if–then”

In this study, we investigate the influence of reason-relation readings of indicative conditionals and “and”/“but”/“therefore” sentences on various cognitive assessments. According to the Frege–Grice tradition, a dissociation is expected. Specifically, differences in the reason-relation reading of these sentences should affect participants’ evaluations of their acceptability but not of their truth value. In two experiments we tested this assumption by introducing a relevance manipulation into the truth-table task as well as in other tasks assessing the participants’ acceptability and probability evaluations. Across the two experiments, a strong dissociation was found. The reason-relation reading of all four sentences strongly affected their probability and acceptability evaluations, but hardly affected their respective truth evaluations. Implications of this result for recent work on indicative conditionals are discussed.     

A guideline for integrating dynamic areas of interests in existing set-up for capturing eye movement: Looking at moving aircraft

Today, capturing the behavior of a human eye is considered a standard method for measuring the information-gathering process and thereby gaining insights into cognitive processes. Due to the dynamic character of most task environments there is still a lack of a structured and automated approach for analyzing eye movement in combination with moving objects. In this article, we present a guideline for advanced gaze analysis, called IGDAI (Integration Guideline for Dynamic Areas of Interest). The application of IGDAI allows gathering dynamic areas of interest and simplifies its combination with eye movement. The first step of IGDAI defines the basic requirements for the experimental setup including the embedding of an eye tracker. The second step covers the issue of storing the information of task environments for the dynamic AOI analysis. Implementation examples in XML are presented fulfilling the requirements for most dynamic task environments. The last step includes algorithms to combine the captured eye movement and the dynamic areas of interest. A verification study was conducted, presenting an air traffic controller environment to participants. The participants had to distinguish between different types of dynamic objects. The results show that in comparison to static areas of interest, IGDAI allows a faster and more detailed view on the distribution of eye movement.     

The World Mission Conference 2018: An Approach from Germany

World Mission Conferences (WMC) have always included missionary calls and an analysis of the present‐day situation, 1 and frequently have provided important input for the debate on the mission of the churches throughout the world and in Germany. The upcoming WMC in Arusha, Tanzania, therefore raises high expectations. The following considerations attempt to sketch the subject in the context of the situation in the German church and society and to point to possible links with what is known about the programme of the WMC.     

Self-Attributed Importance of Spiritual Practices in Catholic Pastoral Workers and their Association with Life Satisfaction

Although much is known about the frequency of the spiritual activities of pastoral workers, less is known related to how important specific spiritual and existential practices are to pastoral workers personally or existentially. This part of the German Pastoral Ministry Study analyzed (1) which forms of spiritual activities were regarded as important, (2) how the perceived importance of religious practices related to frequency of engagement in spiritual practices, and (3) how these practices contributed to the life satisfaction of ordained priests and of non-ordained pastoral workers. Participants included 1826 Catholic pastoral workers, composed of 65% priests and 35% (non-ordained) pastoral assistants and parish expert workers. Prosocial-Humanistic practices scored highest in importance, followed by Gratitude/Awe, Existentialistic practices, and Religious practices; specific forms of Spiritual Mind-Body practices were not relevant. Differences in the frequency and ascribed importance of spiritual practices between ordained and non-ordained pastoral workers were identified, as well as a surprising lack of connection between religious practices and their proclaimed importance, particularly of Prosocial-Humanistic and Gratitude/Awe practices. These findings may stimulate further research into the underlying causes of these differences between priests and other pastoral workers and between the frequency and importance of spiritual practices in all groups, which in the researchers’ opinion indicate challenging inconsistencies with regard to the ideals of religious vocations.     

Measuring perceived ceiling height in a visual comparison task

When judging interior space, a dark ceiling is judged to be lower than a light ceiling. The method of metric judgments (e.g., on a centimetre scale) that has typically been used in such tasks may reflect a genuine perceptual effect or it may reflect a cognitively mediated impression. We employed a height-matching method in which perceived ceiling height had to be matched with an adjustable pillar, thus obtaining psychometric functions that allowed for an estimation of the point of subjective equality (PSE) and the difference limen (DL). The height-matching method developed in this paper allows for a direct visual match and does not require metric judgment. It has the added advantage of providing superior precision. Experiment 1 used ceiling heights between 2.90?m and 3.00?m. The PSE proved sensitive to slight changes in perceived ceiling height. The DL was about 3% of the physical ceiling height. Experiment 2 found similar results for lower (2.30?m to 2.50?m) and higher (3.30?m to 3.50?m) ceilings. In Experiment 3, we additionally varied ceiling lightness (light grey vs. dark grey). The height matches showed that the light ceiling appeared significantly higher than the darker ceiling. We therefore attribute the influence of ceiling lightness on perceived ceiling height to a direct perceptual rather than a cognitive effect.     

Hoops and Barns: a new dilemma for Sosa

Synthese - This paper critically assesses Sosa’s normative framework for performances as well as its application to epistemology. We first develop a problem for one of Sosa’s central...     

Early intervention in the family system: A framework and review

A framework for understanding the effect of early intervention on family structure and functioning is presented. The framework uses five sets of variables to characterize families: Their ecology; and the values, roles, personalities, and interactions of family members. Twenty research studies that met criteria of having comparison/control groups, beginning intervention either prenatally or during the first 3 months of infancy, and directing intervention to family functioning are abstracted and examined in detail. Successful and unsuccessful studies are compared as to population and nature of intervention. Two criteria of success are used: (1) The commonly used criterion of any positive change; (2) a more rigorous criterion of change in at least three areas of family functioning, based on the assumption that more pervasive change will have more lasting influence on child development. Application of the first criterion found that 75% of early family focused intervention studies showed a successful outcome. Application of the latter criterion found that 50% showed a successful outcome. Further, there were no significant differences between successful and unsuccessful studies as to target group or type of intervention. The review suggests that early intervention targeted at family functioning is effective and that a more pervasive and sustained effect is likely if the intervention includes at least 11 or more contacts over at least a 3-month period.     

Thinking around the corner: the development of planning abilities

The ability to plan and search ahead is essential for problem solving in most situations in everyday life. To investigate the development of planning and related processes, a sample of four- and five-year-old children was examined in a variant of the Tower of London, a frequently used neuropsychological assessment tool of planning abilities. The applied problems either required searching ahead for optimal solution or were solvable by pure step-by-step forward processing. Furthermore, the ambiguity of subgoal ordering was varied.Results revealed an age-related effect of search depth: the four-year olds’ planning accuracy was particularly decreased in problems demanding search ahead, while five-year olds mastered both problem types equally well. Interestingly, this interaction between age and search depth could not be accounted for by measures of working memory and inhibition. Differential effects of age were also found for subgoal ordering with respect to initial planning and movement execution times. In sum, planning abilities showed considerable development during late kindergarten age that appeared to be specifically associated with the integration and back-validation of the anticipated consequences of internally modeled actions. The present study demonstrates that a careful consideration of problem structure may greatly enhance the insights gained from the application of a routinely used assessment tool, the Tower of London. This may be especially advantageous when addressing specific subpopulations such as children or clinical samples.