Relevant implication and the case for a weaker logic

We collect together some misgivings about the logic R of relevant inplication, and then give support to a weak entailment logic DJ^d. The misgivings centre on some recent negative results concerning R, the conceptual vacuousness of relevant implication, and the treatment of classical logic. We then rectify this situation by introducing an entailment logic based on meaning containment, rather than meaning connection, which has a better relationship with classical logic. Soundness and completeness results are proved for DJ^d with respect to a content semantics, which embraces the concept of meaning containment.Dedicated to Robert K. Meyer on the occasion of his 60th birthdayThis paper was presented to the Australasian Association for Logic Conference, A.N.U., Canberra, in July, 1992. This Conference commemorated the 60th birthday of Robert K. Meyer, in recognition of the enormous contribution he has made to Logic, especially to Relevant Logic, and of the general lift he has given to the field in his adopted country, Australia. This paper owes its inspiration to Robert Meyer's Farewell to Entailment [37] and his earlier Why I am not a Relevantist [35]. This paper also owes a great deal to Richard Sylvan who has consistently supported weaker relevant logics at a time when stronger relevant logics were in vogue (see especially [47], Chapter 3). In writing this paper, I have also benefited from conversations with Nuel Belnap, Michael Dunn, Kit Fine and Alasdair Urquhart during a period of study leave in 1991. I also thank Robert Meyer, Michael Dunn, Martin Bunder and John Slaney for useful comments on my conference paper. I would also like to thank the referees of this Journal for their helpful comments, which led me to make substantial improvements to this paper.     

Prevalence of ADHD and comorbid disorders among elementary school children screened for disruptive behavior

In the context of a school-based prevention of conduct disorder program, 7,231 first- through fourth-grade children were screened for cross-setting disruptive behavior. Frequencies of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders and patterns of comorbidity were assessed. We also examined the association of psychiatric diagnosis with child and parent characteristics to determine differential risk based on diagnostic subgroups. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) were the most frequent diagnoses. Mood and anxiety disorders were infrequent as single diagnoses. Patterns of comorbidity demonstrated that both externalizing and internalizing disorders commonly cooccurred with ADHD. More severe degrees of psychopathology and psychosocial risk accrued to the subgroup of youths with ADHD plus a comorbid externalizing disorder.This study was supported by grant MN-46584 from the National Institute of Mental Health.     

Disputing clients' irrational beliefs

This paper describes and illustrates a conceptual framework developed to assist novice REBT therapists with enlarging their disputational repertoire. First, four disputational strategies are described and illustrated. Then four disputational styles of presenting the strategies to the client are also described and illustrated. Then the disputational strategies and the disputational styles are combined within a conceptual framework to assist the developing REBT therapist in generating a variety of disputes for a single IB. Finally, the conceptual framework is applied to the IB of the case of Karen from Dryden and Digiuseppe'sPrimer on Rational Emotive Therapy to yield thirty-two separate disputes (sixteen disputes for the premise of the IB, and sixteen disputes for the derivative) of the IB.     

Active and passive avoidance following the administration of systemic DSP4, xylamine, or p-chloroamphetamine

Groups of rats were administered either DSP4 (50 mg/kg, ip), xylamine (50 mg/kg, ip), or p-chloroamphetamine (2 X 10 mg/kg, ip), either 2 weeks or 1 week before the testing of two-way active avoidance. DSP4 and xylamine, the selective noradrenaline (NA) neurotoxins, caused a two-way avoidance impairment but p-chloroamphetamine, the selective 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) neurotoxin, did not do so. Pretreatment with desipramine (20 mg/kg, ip) blocked the avoidance impairment caused by DSP4 and xylamine treatment. Neither DSP4 nor xylamine caused any alteration of passive avoidance retention. The biochemical analyses indicated severe NA, but not 5-HT, depletions in the DSP4 and xylamine conditions and drastic 5-HT, but not NA, depletions in the p-chloroamphetamine conditions. These results confirm and extend earlier findings concerning the role of NA in avoidance behavior.     

Saccade latency and warning signals: Effects of auditory and visual stimulus onset and offset

Previous studies have found that a nonspecific visual event occurring at the fovea 50–150 msec after the onset of a peripheral target delayed the initiation of the saccade to that target. The present studies replicated and extended this finding by studying the effects of both visual and auditory warning signals, by examining the effects of onset and offset warning on manual response latency, and by investigating the effects of presenting the warning events in the periphery of the visual field. The results indicated that the interfering effects occur with visual but not auditory stimuli, with saccades but not motor responses, and when the visual warning event occurs either foveally or in the subject’s periphery. Implications for the processes involved are discussed.     

The more,the better?: Number of decisions as a determinant of memorability

Three experiments tested alternative explanations to the Johnson-Laird, Gibbs, and deMowbray (1978) proposal that the number of decisions made about a word is a major determinant of its memorability. The alternatives considered were increased processing time, retrieval aids, and the number of positive decisions. In Experiment 1, subjects made a speeded classification about each word for a category defined by three properties. Though items with more target properties were processed longer and better remembered, within a property level processing time was not associated with better memory. In Experiment 2, subjects received three properties, but different groups responded “Yes” to words with all three properties, words with any of the three properties, or whether words had each of the properties. As predicted by the number-of-decisions hypothesis, but not by the other hypotheses, with an increasing number of target properties, recall generally increased in the ALL group, decreased in the ANY group, and remained constant in the EACH group. In Experiment 3, this recall pattern was replicated with a different set of two target properties. The number-of-decisions notion is contrasted to the elaboration principle, and a simple model is proposed. It is concluded that the number of decisions is a useful technique for investigating within-level encoding differences