Completeness and Cut-Elimination for First-Order Ideal Paraconsistent Four-Valued Logic

Studia Logica - In this study, we prove the completeness and cut-elimination theorems for a first-order extension F4CC of Arieli, Avron, and Zamansky’s ideal paraconsistent four-valued logic...     

Beethoven’s last piano sonata and those who follow crocodiles: Cross-domain mappings of auditory pitch in a musical context

Though auditory pitch is customarily mapped in Western cultures onto spatial verticality (high–low), both anthropological reports and cognitive studies suggest that pitch may be mapped onto a wide variety of other domains. We collected a total number of 35 pitch mappings and investigated in four experiments how these mappings are used and structured. In particular, we inquired (1) how Western subjects apply Western and non-Western metaphors to “high” and “low” pitches, (2) whether mappings applied in an abstract conceptual task are similarly applied by listeners to actual music, (3) how mappings of spatial height relate to these pitch mappings, and (4) how mappings of “high” and “low” pitch associate with other dimensions, in particular quantity, size, intensity and valence. The results show strong agreement among Western participants in applying familiar and unfamiliar metaphors for pitch, in both an abstract, conceptual task (Exp. 1) and in a music listening task (Exp. 2), indicating that diverse cross-domain mappings for pitch exist latently besides the common verticality metaphor. Furthermore, limited overlap between mappings of spatial height and pitch height was found, suggesting that, the ubiquity of the verticality metaphor in Western usage notwithstanding, cross-domain pitch mappings are largely independent of that metaphor, and seem to be based upon other underlying dimensions. Part of the discrepancy between spatial height and pitch height is that, for pitch, “up” is not necessarily “more,” nor is it necessarily “good.” High pitch is only “more” for height, intensity and brightness. It is “less” for mass, size and quantity. We discuss implications of these findings for music and speech prosody, and their relevance to notions of embodied cognition and of cross-domain magnitude representation.     

Prisoners’ competence to die: hunger strike and cognitive competence

Several bioethicists have recently advocated the force-feeding of prisoners, based on the assumption that prisoners have reduced or no autonomy. This assumed lack of autonomy follows from a decrease in cognitive competence, which, in turn, supposedly derives from imprisonment and/or being on hunger strike. In brief, causal links are made between imprisonment or voluntary total fasting (VTF) and mental disorders and between mental disorders and lack of cognitive competence. I engage the bioethicists that support force-feeding by severing both of these causal links. Specifically, I refute the claims that VTF automatically and necessarily causes mental disorders such as depression, and that these mental disorders necessarily or commonly entail cognitive impairment. Instead, I critically review more nuanced approaches to assessing mental competence in hunger strikes, urging that a diagnosis of incompetence be made on a case-by-case basis—a position that is widely shared by the medical community.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in meaning selection: Evidence from the disambiguation of homophonic vs. heterophonic homographs

Research investigating hemispheric asymmetries in meaning selection using homophonic homographs (e.g., bank), suggests that the left hemisphere (LH) quickly selects contextually relevant meanings, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) maintains a broader spectrum of meanings including those that are contextually irrelevant (e.g., Faust & Chiarello, 1998). The present study investigated cerebral asymmetries in maintaining the multiple meanings of two types of Hebrew homographs: homophonic homographs and heterophonic homographs (e.g., tear). Participants read homographs preceded by a biasing, or a non-biasing sentential context, and performed a lexical decision task on targets presented laterally, 1000 ms after the onset of the sentence-final ambiguous prime. Targets were related to either the dominant or the subordinate meaning of the preceding homograph, or unrelated to it. When targets were presented in the LVF/RH, dominant and subordinate meanings, of both types of homographs, were retained only when they were supported by context. In a non-biasing context, only dominant meanings of homophonic homographs were retained. Alternatively, when targets were presented in the RVF/LH, priming effects for homophonic homographs were only evident when meanings were supported by both context and frequency (i.e., when context favored the dominant meaning). In contrast, heterophonic homographs resulted in activation of dominant meanings, in all contexts, and activation of subordinate meanings, only in subordinate-biasing contexts. The results challenge the view that a broader spectrum of meanings is maintained in the right than in the left hemisphere and suggest that hemispheric differences in the time course of meaning selection (or decay) may be modulated by phonology.     

Seeing what you ought to see: The role of contextual factors in the social perception of achievement emotions

To assess the impact of context information on emotion perception, participants saw a picture of a male or female person with either a neutral, happy or sad facial expression and received information about the context in which the picture was taken. Their task was to rate the emotion actually expressed in the photo (i.e., focal emotions) as well as emotions not actually expressed (i.e., non-focal emotions) and inferences extracted from them. We predicted and found that context information affected both the perception of emotions and the inferences that the observers drew from them. Perceivers used context information in order to make sense of what was perceived to the extent that in the case of neutral expressions and for non-focal emotions, they “see” things that do not actually exist.     

Nothing gained: An explorative study of the long‐term effects of perceived maternal feeding practices on women's and men's adult BMI,body image dissatisfaction,and disordered eating

The objective of the studies presented here was the prediction of adult body mass index (BMI), body image dissatisfaction, and disordered eating from recalled maternal child feeding practices. Studies 1 and 2 sampled women from the community, and found that recalled childhood feeding practices predicted both current BMI and current disordered eating. Daughters whose mothers pressured them to eat as children had lower BMIs as adults. The more a mother was concerned about her daughter's weight as a child, and the more she restricted fatty food intake, the less the woman was satisfied with her current body image. Disordered eating of adult women was positively related to their mothers' restriction of their fatty food intake as children, and negatively related to the mothers' monitoring of their food intake as children. Combining the samples and subdividing them into four BMI intervals showed that the obese women were higher on all but one of the recalled maternal child feeding practices, as well as on disordered eating and body dissatisfaction. Age was found to be positively related to BMI and drive for thinness, but not to body dissatisfaction or disordered eating, with older women having higher BMI and more drive for thinness. Study 3 sampled adult men from the community and found that recalled maternal child feeding practices predicted adult BMI and disordered eating for men, as well as for women. Considerable sex differences were found for all study variables. Recollection of maternal child feeding practices may have a formative role in the development of body image, disordered eating, and BMI for men and women, even into adulthood.     

Modifying supervisory practices to improve subunit safety: a leadership-based intervention model

This article presents a leadership-based intervention model designed to modify supervisory monitoring and rewarding of subordinates' safety performance. Line supervisors received weekly feedback based on repeated episodic interviews with subordinates conceming the cumulative frequency of their safety-oriented interactions. This information identified the priority of safety over competing goals such as speed or schedules. Section managers received the same information and used it to communicate (high) safety priority. They also were trained to conduct episodic interviews to provide intermittent feedback after intervention, tuming safety priority into an explicit performance goal. Safety-oriented interaction increased significantly in the experimental groups but remained unchanged in the control groups. This change in safety-oriented interaction was accompanied by significant (and stable) changes in minor-injury rate, earplug use, and safety climate scores during the postintervention period.     

Narrative analysis in developmental social and linguistic pathologies: dissociation between emotional and informational language use

This study examined the use of emotional and informational aspects of language in populations that demonstrate developmental social-emotional and linguistic pathologies. We tested high-functioning autistic (HFA) individuals because this group reveals deficiencies in social-emotional and informative aspects of language as well as abnormalities in sociability. We tested Williams syndrome (WS) individuals because of the claim that the social-emotional aspects of language use and sociability are differentially preserved in the context of mental retardation. We compared the performance of these two groups with two groups of control children (7- and 11-year-olds). All of the participants viewed a slide show depicting an event and were asked to retell the story. These narratives were coded for emotional and informational elements. The results showed that on measures of emotional elements, the WS group patterned with the control groups and only the HFA participants received lower scores, while on the informational elements, the two pathological groups did not differ, and both were lower than the controls. The results suggest that the preservation of language among WS individuals is specific for the emotional aspects of language.     

Teaching a thinking strategy: Transfer across domains and self learning versus class-like setting

The purpose of this study is to investigate two issues related to the teaching of thinking skills: (1) transfer across domains; and (2) comparison between individual learning of a thinking strategy and ‘class-like’ setting, which consists of a didactic intervention that takes place in small groups. A microgenetic design was used, in which community college students engaged in investigation of problems (each student participated in 20 sessions). It was found that: (1) the control of variables strategy that was taught in the context of a problem in one domain transferred fully to a new problem in the same domain, hut transferred less well to an isomorphous problem in a different domain; (2) the ‘class-like’ setting contributed to improved performance (as measured by the frequency of valid inferences), with the didactic intervention seeming to contribute to this improvement; and (3) the learning environment described in this study had a larger effect on ‘slower learners’ than on ‘faster learners’. It is proposed to teach for enhanced transfer by focusing explicitly on recognition of underlying logical structures of content-rich contexts.