A note on erotic arousal value of moving and stationary human forms

For subhuman vertebrates there already exists a huge body of information on male and female courtship behaviour and in many instances the impact of movement patterns on the prospective partner has been assessed. However, little information is available on the erotic impact of human movement patterns.In analysing erotic preferences by means of the phallometric method, moving vs. still pictures has been a factor in a variety of studies. Kolá?ský and Madlafousek (1973) compared the erotic responses of normal and sexually deviant males to filmed courtship behaviour, non-erotic activities and stills of the same female. They found that dynamically presented filmed courtship patterns were more arousing for normal heterosexual males than stills on which no particular activity was shown, and that these stills were more arousing than movie pictures of nonerotic activities.In a study of classical conditioning, McConaghy (1970) found he could not condition positive penile responses to geometric figures when using still pictures of nude females as unconditioned stimuli, but that this was possible when using movies. He concluded that the movie pictures had a greater impact on his Ss than the stills and supported this impression with another study in which he compared responses to movies and stills of nude females (McConaghy, 1973). However, the persons on the movies were not identical with those on the stills and the depicted behavioural configurations varied widely. In the following study, results are reported on the erotic value of a relatively simple movement pattern, namely walking towards the viewer and smiling, vs. a still picture of the same person smiling.     

Experimental analysis of pedophilia

It was hypothesized that the population of pedophiles differs from that of males who prefer physically mature partners, in respect of the proportion of bisexual members in each group. Bisexuality was assessed by means of a verbal scale and by recording penile volume changes during the presentation of movie clips of nude males and females. Results supported the hypothesis.An earlier finding of a difference between pedophiles and males who prefer physically mature partners, in respect to feminine gender identity, was retested using the Feminine Gender Identity Scale (for males). It could be confirmed only for homosexual males and therefore cannot be accepted as a general difference between pedophiles and persons who prefer physically mature partners.     

Developmental changes in personal goal orientation from young to late adulthood: from striving for gains to maintenance and prevention of losses

Using a multimethod approach, the authors conducted 4 studies to test life span hypotheses about goal orientations across adulthood. Confirming expectations, in Studies 1 and 2 younger adults reported a primary growth orientation in their goals, whereas older adults reported a stronger orientation toward maintenance and loss prevention. Orientation toward prevention of loss correlated negatively with well-being in younger adults. In older adults, orientation toward maintenance was positively associated with well-being. Studies 3 and 4 extend findings of a self-reported shift in goal orientation to the level of behavioral choice involving cognitive and physical fitness goals. Studies 3 and 4 also examine the role of expected resource demands. The shift in goal orientation is discussed as an adaptive mechanism to manage changing opportunities and constraints across adulthood.     

An Anatomy of Political Beliefs: A Study of Their Centrality, Confidence, Contents, and Epistemic Authority

The present study is a simultaneous investigation of the contents of political beliefs and their characteristics among Israeli students. In addition, it examines their perceived use of information sources. The results indicate that political beliefs regarding the Israeli-Arab conflicts are organized systematically around the dove/hawk dimension. Also, a positive relationship was found between centrality of beliefs and confidence in them; between well-defined political identification and centrality and confidence; and between agreement with the beliefs and confidence. Finally, the results show that the perceived use of information sources is related to political identification. The performed investigation demonstrates the importance of combining the study of the contents of beliefs with that of their characteristics, since the latter have important implications for understanding individuals' cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions.     

The relative consistency of system RRC* and some of its extensions

We present a relative consistency proof for second order systemRRC* and for certain important extensions of this system. The proof proceeds as follows: we prove first the equiconsistency of the strongest of such extensions (viz., systemH RRC*+(/CP**)) with second order systemT ^* . Now, N. Cocchiarella has shown thatT ^* is relatively consistent to systemT*+Ext; clearly, it follows thatH RRC*+(/CP**) is relatively consistent toT*+E _xt. As an immediate consequence, the relative consistency ofRRC* and the other extensions also follows, being all of them subsystems ofH RRC*+(/CP**).I am grateful to the referee for some modifications suggested to an earlier draft of this paper.Presented byMelvin Fitting     

Supracompact inference operations

When a proposition is cumulatively entailed by a finite setA of premisses, there exists, trivially, a finite subsetB ofA such thatB B entails for all finite subsetsB that are entailed byA. This property is no longer valid whenA is taken to be an arbitrary infinite set, even when the considered inference operation is supposed to be compact. This leads to a refinement of the classical definition of compactness. We call supracompact the inference operations that satisfy the non-finitary analogue of the above property. We show that for any arbitrary cumulative operationC, there exists a supracompact cumulative operationK(C) that is smaller thenC and agrees withC on finite sets. Moreover,K(C) inherits most of the properties thatC may enjoy, like monotonicity, distributivity or disjunctive rationality. The main part of the paper concerns distributive supracompact operations. These operations satisfy a simple functional equation, and there exists a representation theorem that provides a semantic characterization for this family of operations. We examine finally the case of rational operations and show that they can be represented by a specific kind of model particularly easy to handle.     

A Temporal Logic for Sortals

With the past and future tense propositional operators in its syntax, a formal logical system for sortal quantifiers, sortal identity and (second order) quantification over sortal concepts is formulated. A completeness proof for the system is constructed and its absolute consistency proved. The completeness proof is given relative to a notion of logical validity provided by an intensional semantic system, which assumes an approach to sortals from a modern form of conceptualism.     

A Two Dimensional Tense-modal Sortal Logic

We consider a formal language whose logical syntax involves both modal and tense propositional operators, as well as sortal quantifiers, sortal identities and (second order) quantifiers over sortals. We construct an intensional semantics for the language and characterize a formal logical system which we prove to be sound and complete with respect to the semantics. Conceptualism is the philosophical background of the semantic system.