Hospital Chaplaincy Across Denominational, Cultural and Religious Borders: Observations from the German Context

The essay investigates the possibilities and limitations ofcross-denominational, intercultural and inter-religious hospitalchaplaincy. With a view to the actual situation of hospitalchaplaincy in Germany and the economic, social and theologicalconstraints under which it offers its services, the author concludes,that the different Christian denominations must organizationallycooperate and share their work if such services are to survivethe growing pressures. Constructivist cognition theory is invokedfor analyzing the hermeneutical and theological implicationsof inter-denominational, intercultural and inter-religious pastoralcare and counselling. A Lutheran interpretation of the Trinitariandogma provides a foundational frame of reference.     

Combined reasoning by automated cooperation

Different reasoning systems have different strengths and weaknesses, and often it is useful to combine these systems to gain as much as possible from their strengths and retain as little as possible from their weaknesses. Of particular interest is the integration of first-order and higher-order techniques. First-order reasoning systems, on the one hand, have reached considerable strength in some niches, but in many areas of mathematics they still cannot reliably solve relatively simple problems, for example, when reasoning about sets, relations, or functions. Higher-order reasoning systems, on the other hand, can solve problems of this kind automatically. But the complexity inherent in their calculi prevents them from solving a whole range of problems. However, while many problems cannot be solved by any one system alone, they can be solved by a combination of these systems.We present a general agent-based methodology for integrating different reasoning systems. It provides a generic integration framework which facilitates the cooperation between diverse reasoners, but can also be refined to enable more efficient, specialist integrations. We empirically evaluate its usefulness, effectiveness and efficiency by case studies involving the integration of first-order and higher-order automated theorem provers, computer algebra systems, and model generators.     

Effects of race on responses and response latencies in the weapon identification task: a test of six models

The authors consider six models of underlying process in the weapon identification task: The first two are response-time extensions of signal detection models; the last four, of the process dissociation model. Predictions for accuracy data, correct response latencies, and false response latencies are used to discriminate between models. In the present study, racial bias in responses and correct response latency was replicated. New findings were that the direction of bias was reversed in error latency and that errors were faster than correct responses. These findings rule out four models, in particular, the idea that race biases early perception and interpretation of targets. Implications for reducing errors in the weapon identification task and possibilities of discriminating between the remaining two models are discussed.     

Evidence for serial coercion: a time course analysis using the visual-world paradigm

Metonymic verbs like start or enjoy often occur with artifact-denoting complements (e.g., The artist started the picture) although semantically they require event-denoting complements (e.g., The artist started painting the picture). In case of artifact-denoting objects, the complement is assumed to be type shifted (or coerced) into an event to conform to the verb's semantic restrictions. Psycholinguistic research has provided evidence for this kind of enriched composition: readers experience processing difficulty when faced with metonymic constructions compared to non-metonymic controls. However, slower reading times for metonymic constructions could also be due to competition between multiple interpretations that are being entertained in parallel whenever a metonymic verb is encountered. Using the visual-world paradigm, we devised an experiment which enabled us to determine the time course of metonymic interpretation in relation to non-metonymic controls. The experiment provided evidence in favor of a non-competitive, serial coercion process.     

Social presence effects on the stroop task: Boundary conditions and an alternative account

Two studies investigated boundary conditions of an effect of social presence on the Stroop task and its interpretation in terms of an attentional view (P. Huguet, M. P. Galvaing, J. M. Monteil, & F. Dumas, 1999). In this view, social presence leads to attentional focusing, enhancing participants’ ability to screen out the distracting features of Stroop stimuli. As predicted, Stroop interference was found to be reduced by social presence, but an alternative account in which social presence exerts an effect on task selection received more support.     

Syntactic priming in comprehension: the role of argument order and animacy

Two visual-world eye-movement experiments investigated the nature of syntactic priming during comprehension--specifically, whether the priming effects in ditransitive prepositional object (PO) and double object (DO) structures (e.g., "The wizard will send the poison to the prince/the prince the poison?") are due to anticipation of structural properties following the verb (send) in the target sentence or to anticipation of animacy properties of the first postverbal noun. Shortly following the target verb onset, listeners looked at the recipient more (relative to the theme) following DO than PO primes, indicating that the structure of the prime affected listeners' eye gazes on the target scene. Crucially, this priming effect was the same irrespective of whether the postverbal nouns in the prime sentences did ("The monarch will send the painting to the president") or did not ("The monarch will send the envoy to the president") differ in animacy, suggesting that PO/DO priming in comprehension occurs because structural properties, rather than animacy features, are being primed when people process the ditransitive target verb.     

Prime diagnosticity in short-term repetition priming: is primed evidence discounted, even when it reliably indicates the correct answer?

The authors conducted 4 repetition priming experiments that manipulated prime duration and prime diagnosticity in a visual forced-choice perceptual identification task. The strength and direction of prime diagnosticity produced marked effects on identification accuracy, but those effects were resistant to subsequent changes of diagnosticity. Participants learned to associate different diagnosticities with primes of different durations but not with primes presented in different colors. Regardless of prime diagnosticity, preference for a primed alternative covaried negatively with prime duration, suggesting that even for diagnostic primes, evidence discounting remains an important factor. A computational model, with the assumption that adaptation to the statistics of the experiment modulates the level of evidence discounting, accounted for these results.     

Decision noise may mask criterion shifts: Reply to Balakrishnan and MacDonald (2008)

J. D. Balakrishnan and J. A. MacDonald (2008) argue that RTbased measures of signal detection processes provide evidence against signal detection theory’s notion of a flexible decision criterion. They argue that this evidence is immune to the alternative explanation proposed by S. T. Mueller and C. T. Weidemann (2008), that decision noise may mask criterion shifts. We show that noise in response times can produce the same effects as are produced by noise in confidence ratings. Given these results, the evidence is not sufficient to categorically reject the notion of a flexible response policy implemented through shifts in a decision criterion. nt]mis|This research was supported in part by a postdoctoral fellowship to C.T.W. from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).     

When causality shapes the experience of time: Evidence for temporal binding in young children

It is well established that the temporal proximity of two events is a fundamental cue to causality. Recent research with adults has shown that this relation is bidirectional: events that are believed to be causally related are perceived as occurring closer together in time—the so‐called temporal binding effect. Here, we examined the developmental origins of temporal binding. Participants predicted when an event that was either caused by a button press, or preceded by a non‐causal signal, would occur. We demonstrate for the first time that children as young as 4 years are susceptible to temporal binding. Binding occurred both when the button press was executed via intentional action, and when a machine caused it. These results suggest binding is a fundamental, early developing property of perception and grounded in causal knowledge. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQC_MqjxZQQ     

How To Be A Reliabilist

In this paper, I aim to develop a novel virtue reliabilist account of justified belief, which incorporates insights from both process reliabilism and extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Like extant virtue reliabilist accounts of justified belief, the proposed view takes it that justified belief is a kind of competent performance and that competent performances require reliable agent abilities. However, unlike extant versions of virtue reliabilism, the view takes abilities to essentially involve reliable processes. In this way, the proposed view should take a leaf from process reliabilism. Finally, I will provide reason to believe that the view compares favourably with both extant versions of virtue reliabilism and process reliabilism. In particular, I will show that in taking abilities to essentially involve reliable processes, the view has an edge over extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Moreover, I will argue that the proposed view can either solve or defuse a number of classical problems of process reliabilism, including the new evil demon problem, the problem of clairvoyant cases and the generality problem.