“One is what one does”: from pragmatic to performative disclosure of the who

Continental Philosophy Review - After taking into consideration the most relevant criticisms questioning the capacity of the thinking “I” to grasp itself in a transparent and...     

Individual differences in the linguistic competence of referential and expressive subjects

The aim of this work was to examine individual differences in referential and expressive style through a longitudinal study. The composition of the first 50 words, communicative gestures, the conversational style of dyads and the percentage of vocabulary produced from 12 to 24 month-olds were analyzed. The vocabulary was collected through interviews to parents and sessions of mother-infant interaction in the laboratory. Significant differences in the proportion of common nouns and frozen phrases between referential and expressive children in the frequency of communicative gestures and style conversation were found. Thus, referential children and their mothers used more pointing gestures than the expressive children and their mothers. Additionally, mothers of referential children used completing more frequently.     

Identification of partially presented meaningless patterns: effect of completeness and distinctiveness

The role of parts versus that of wholes in a visual perception has been debated for a century as two opposite approaches, namely, an analytic and holistic. In two psychophysical experiments we investigated whether the stimulus completeness or distinctiveness is essential for identification of the partially presented patterns under brief presentation conditions. For this purpose, a special class of stimuli was constructed in such a way that the patterns could be divided into informative and redundant parts. The first experiment clearly demonstrated the importance of the redundant part for effective pattern identification for the majority of subjects. The second experiment revealed the direct dependence of identification accuracy of the patterns on their completeness (2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 elements). Familiarisation of subjects with the test stimuli influenced the strength of this dependence.     

Reciprocated and unreciprocated dyadic peer preferences and academic achievement of Israeli and immigrant students: a longitudinal study

The authors used a longitudinal design to investigate 2 major issues: first, whether popularity with classmates results in better academic achievement or academic achievement improves popularity with classmates; and second, how time affects in-group and out-group contacts in the elementary school. The authors studied these issues by means of an interactive measure of reciprocated and unreciprocated contacts with peers. This measure indicated the extent to which aspirations for close relations were fulfilled or not fulfilled by each member of a dyad. Participants were 305 fifth- and sixth-grade Israeli students and 100 immigrant classmates. Results indicated (a) higher academic achievement predicted higher numbers of bids for reciprocal contacts in class but not higher numbers of bids for contacts that were not reciprocated; (b) a higher level of unreciprocated bids for contact seemed to have a detrimental effect on academic performance; (c) teachers tended to rate as more adjusted to school the immigrant students who were willing to engage in more intensive reciprocated contacts with Israeli peers; and (d) reciprocated contacts tended to increase whereas unreciprocated contacts were inclined to decrease as a function of time. These changes over time were more prominent for the dominant hosts than for their migrant classmates.     

Interlinguistic conflict: Word–word Stroop with first and second language colour words

The congruency (or Stroop) effect is a standard observation of slower and less accurate colour identification to incongruent trials (e.g. “red” in green) relative to congruent trials (e.g. “red” in red). This effect has been observed in a word–word variant of the task, when both the distracter (e.g. “red”) and target (e.g. “green”) are colour words. The Stroop task has also been used to study the congruency effect between two languages in bilinguals. The typical finding is that the congruency effect for L1 words is larger than that for L2 words. For the first time, the present report aims to extend this finding to a word–word variant of the bilingual Stroop task. In two experiments, French monolinguals performed a bilingual word–word Stroop task in which target word language, language match, and congruency between the distracter and target were manipulated. The critical manipulation across two experiments concerned the target language. In Experiment 1, target language was manipulated between groups, with either French (L1) or English (L2) target colour words. In Experiment 2, target words from both languages were intermixed. In both experiments, the congruency effect was larger when the distracter and target were from the same language (language match) than when they were from different languages (language mismatch). Our findings suggested that this congruency effect mostly depends on the language match between the distracter and target, rather than on a target language. It also did not seem to matter whether the language-mismatching distracter was or was not a potential response alternative. Semantic activation of languages in bilinguals and its implications on target identification are discussed.

     

BONE MARROW TRANSPLANTATION IN A PATIENT WHO EXPERIENCED TORTURE IN A PRISONER OF WAR CAMP: NARCISSISM AND SURVIVAL

Post-traumatic stress disorder has been described as a syndrome from which an individual may suffer as a result of extraordinary trauma. Torture of prisoners of war in Serbian camps during the war in Croatia is just such a stressful situation that requires mobilization of all defense mechanisms of an individual. The authors present a case study of a former prisoner of war who acquired acute myelogenous leukemia several months after release and was treated with bone marrow transplantation. On release the patient was medically examined, like all prisoners of war, and the findings did not suggest any disease. Because of the situation, the patient was in psychotherapeutic observation and treatment after his illness was diagnosed and throughout the transplantation treatment.     

La diferenciación masculino-femenino: Un mito y una realidad

Resumen

El artículo se propone realizar un estudio teórico acerca de las repercusiones psíquicas y sociales de la diferenciación sexual, tomando como marco de referencia la interpretación dada por la perspectiva cognitiva a partir del concepto de «esquema basado en la dicotomía del género».

El enfoque cognitivo destaca la importancia que ejerce la identificación psico-sexual en la adquisición y desarrollo de las ideas de «masculinidad» y «femineidad». Este proceso de partición del mundo en dos clases sexuales diferenciadas ha resultado doblemente pernicioso tanto para varones como para mujeres, empobreciendo, por un lado, el desarrollo global de la personalidad e impidiendo, por otro, el entendimiento entre sus respectivas visiones del mundo.     

Bigger Not Better: Unpacking Future Expenses Inflates Spending Predictions

People often underestimate their future personal spending. Across four studies we examined an “unpacking” intervention to reduce this bias. Participants predicted spending for an upcoming week (Study 1), a weekend (Study 2a), a vacation (Study 2b), and for weeks versus self-nominated events (Study 3), and subsequently reported actual spending. In each case, unpacking the details of expected expenses increased spending predictions. In contexts where predictions tended to be too low (Study 1, 3), unpacking eliminated underestimation bias. However, in contexts where predictions were already unbiased, unpacking introduced an overestimation bias (Study 2, 3). Unpacking appears to make predictions bigger, not necessarily better.     

Abstract argumentation and explanation applied to scientific debates

Abstract argumentation has been shown to be a powerful tool within many fields such as artificial intelligence, logic and legal reasoning. In this paper we enhance Dung’s well-known abstract argumentation framework with explanatory capabilities. We show that an explanatory argumentation framework (EAF) obtained in this way is a useful tool for the modeling of scientific debates. On the one hand, EAFs allow for the representation of explanatory and justificatory arguments constituting rivaling scientific views. On the other hand, different procedures for selecting arguments, corresponding to different methodological and epistemic requirements of theory evaluation, can be formulated in view of our framework.