Heidegger and the Supposition of a Single,Objective World

Christina Lafont has argued that the early Heidegger's reflections on truth and understanding are incompatible with ‘the supposition of a single objective world’. This paper presents her argument, reviews some responses that the existing Heidegger literature suggests (focusing, in particular, on work by John Haugeland), and offers what I argue is a superior response. Building on a deeper exploration of just what the above ‘supposition’ demands (an exploration informed by the work of Bernard Williams and Adrian Moore), I argue that a crucial assumption that Lafont and Haugeland both accept must be rejected, namely, that different ‘understandings of Being’ can be viewed as offering ‘rival perspectives’ on a common subject‐matter. I develop this case by drawing on an alternative account of what a Heideggerian ‘understanding of Being’ might be like.     

Change in Symptoms and Personal Construct Structure in Anxiety Disorders: A Preliminary Study on the Effects of Constructivist Therapy

In recent years, constructivist psychotherapy has evolved as a plausible treatment for different disorders. The present study aimed to explore the effectiveness of this therapy in terms of symptom improvement and changes in the personal construct system. Forty-seven anxiety clients received brief integrative constructivist therapy. Scores on symptom and personal construct measures decreased after the treatment, but not all of them showed a statistically significant change. The percentage of clients with implicative dilemmas decreased after psychotherapy. The results provide preliminary support for the effectiveness of brief constructivist psychotherapy as a treatment for anxiety disorders in primary care services. Several limitations are acknowledged. Further controlled research is needed.     

Acting knowingly: effects of the agent's awareness of an opportunity on causal attributions

According to difference-based (e.g. counterfactual/covariational) models of causal judgement, the epistemic state of the agent should not affect judgements of cause. Four experiments examined opportunity chains in which a physical event (distal cause) enabled a subsequent proximal cause to produce an outcome. All four experiments showed that when the proximal cause was a human action, it was judged as more causal if the agent was aware of his opportunity than if he was not or if the proximal cause was a physical event. The first two experiments showed that these preferences could not be explained in terms of differences in perceived conditional probability (whether from the observer's or the agent's point of view), social controllability or perceptions of the causal sequence as forming a single unit. The third experiment showed that awareness affected the perceived deliberateness with which the action brought the outcome about but not its perceived voluntariness. The fourth experiment showed that when the outcome was intended, the perceived deliberateness of the agent's action was a plausible mediator of the effect of awareness of opportunity on causal preference. We conclude that awareness of the opportunity allows inferences about the deliberate production of the outcome when the action is voluntary, which in turn influence causal judgements.     

Culture and the distinctiveness motive: constructing identity in individualistic and collectivistic contexts

The motive to attain a distinctive identity is sometimes thought to be stronger in, or even specific to, those socialized into individualistic cultures. Using data from 4,751 participants in 21 cultural groups (18 nations and 3 regions), we tested this prediction against our alternative view that culture would moderate the ways in which people achieve feelings of distinctiveness, rather than influence the strength of their motivation to do so. We measured the distinctiveness motive using an indirect technique to avoid cultural response biases. Analyses showed that the distinctiveness motive was not weaker-and, if anything, was stronger-in more collectivistic nations. However, individualism-collectivism was found to moderate the ways in which feelings of distinctiveness were constructed: Distinctiveness was associated more closely with difference and separateness in more individualistic cultures and was associated more closely with social position in more collectivistic cultures. Multilevel analysis confirmed that it is the prevailing beliefs and values in an individual's context, rather than the individual's own beliefs and values, that account for these differences.     

The emotional impact of bullying and cyberbullying on victims: a European cross-national study

Past research has demonstrated the effects of bullying can be severe and long term for the individuals involved. The main aim of this study is to analyze the emotional impact on victims of traditional bullying, both direct and indirect forms, and of cyberbullying through mobile phones and the Internet. A sample of 5,862 adolescents from three different countries, Italy (N = 1,964), Spain (N = 1,671), and England (N = 2,227), responded to a questionnaire that asked if they had experience of various forms of bullying, and the consequent emotional impact. The results show that both traditional bullying and cyberbullying have a significant prevalence in the samples. Emotional responses are linked to types of bullying. Analysis of answers identified specific emotional profiles for the different types of bullying and cyberbullying. Direct bullying and cyberbullying via mobile phone showed similar profiles, and also indirect bullying and cyberbullying using the Internet. Similarities and differences between profiles are discussed and some hypotheses are presented to explain the results. In addition, school grade, gender, country, and severity of bullying episodes were related to the specific emotional profiles of each type of bullying. Aggr. Behav. 38:342‐356, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mechanisms of developmental change in infant categorization

Computational models are tools for testing mechanistic theories of learning and development. Formal models allow us to instantiate theories of cognitive development in computer simulations. Model behavior can then be compared to real performance. Connectionist models, loosely based on neural information processing, have been successful in capturing a range of developmental phenomena, in particular on-line within-task category learning by young infants. Here we describe two new models. One demonstrates how age dependent changes in neural receptive field sizes can explain observed changes in on-line category learning between 3 and 10 months of age. The other aims to reconcile two conflicting views of infant categorization by focusing on the different task requirements of preferential looking and manual exploration studies. A dual-memory hypothesis posits that within-task category learning that drives looking time behaviors is based on a fast-learning memory system, whereas categorization based on background experience and assessed by paradigms requiring complex motor behavior relies on a second, slow-learning system. The models demonstrate how emphasizing the mechanistic causes of behaviors leads to discovery of deeper, more explanatory accounts of learning and development.     

Short-term forgetting without interference

In the 1st reported experiment, we demonstrate that auditory memory is robust over extended retention intervals (RIs) when listeners compare the timbre of complex tones, even when active or verbal rehearsal is difficult or impossible. Thus, our tones have an abstract timbre that resists verbal labeling, they differ across trials so that no "standard" comparison stimulus is built up, and the spectral change to be discriminated is very slight and therefore does not shift stimuli across verbal categories. Nonetheless, performance in this nonverbal immediate memory task was better at short (1-, 2-, or 4-s) than long (8-, 16-, or 32-s) RIs, an outcome predicted by temporal distinctiveness theory whereby at long RIs, tones are closer in time to tones on previous trials. We reject this account in the 2nd experiment, where we demonstrate that the ratio of RI to intertrial interval makes absolutely no difference to performance. We suggest that steady forgetting is consistent with a psychoacoustically derived conception of an auditory memory (the timbre memory model) that embodies time-based forgetting in the absence of feature-specific interference.     

Predicting Well-Being From Personality in Adolescents and Older Adults

The relationship between personality and well-being is dynamic and therefore should be examined within aging perspective. In study presented here we compared the prediction of well-being from personality in two samples?C223 adolescents attending high-school (16?C19?years; M?=?16.94, SD?=?0.51) and 134 older adults (54?C90?years; M?=?77.20, SD?=?7.39) living in retirement home or at home. Different aspects of well-being were included in the study. Subjective well-being was measured with Index of Well-Being, but also self-esteem and loneliness were included as measures of psychological well-being. Personality (measured with FFPI; Hendriks et al. in Pers Individ Dif 27:307?C325, 1999) significantly predicted indicators of well-being (Self-Esteem, Loneliness and Index of Well-Being) in both samples, with emotional stability and extraversion as most pronounced predictors. Personality explained more variance of well-being in adolescents than in older adults, and more variance in eudaimonic than hedonic aspects of well-being.     

Biases in evaluation of neutral words due to motor compatibility effect

This study aims to demonstrate the effect of action fluency on emotional evaluation, specifically to show that neutral words can be evaluated positively or negatively depending on motor activity and evaluative setting. Right-handers naturally tend to associate positive (negative) valence to the right (left) part of space (Casasanto, 2009). We extend these associations to lateralized behaviors by studying the combined effect of motor fluency of lateral arm movements and the evaluative scale on the subjective evaluation of neutral words. Three experiments evidenced that, for right-handers, the realization of fluent rightward arm movements and the use of an evaluative scale congruent with their valence/laterality associations (left negative, right positive) led to a positive evaluation of neutral words, while non-fluent leftward movements and an incongruent scale led to a negative evaluation. This study demonstrates that emotion–action associations are experience-based, and influenced by functional and situational constraints.