General problems of questioning research

Summary This paper outlines certain minimum conditions for setting up experimental research on questioning. A discussion is given of the problems involved in using the same kinds of question as in natural interactions, creating a naturalistic exchange between questioner and respondent, and enabling people to use other inquiry strategies besides questioning. It is argued that these issues merit attention not only because of methodological concerns, but also because they are likely to lead to important insights about questioning.     

Cognitive orientation and physical disease or health

This paper deals with a new approach to physical disease and health based on the theory of cognitive orientation (CO) (Kreitler and Kreitler, 1976, 1982). It presents an outline of the theory which is a comprehensive cognitive-motivational model of behaviour describing how cognitive contents and processes bring about the elicitation of behaviour. The theory generated a methodology for the prediction of behaviour that has been applied in different domains ofhealth psychology. Studies are described dealing with behaviours affecting health (quitting smoking, smoking, overeating, undergoing examinations for the early detection of breast cancer), behaviours of the individual in the role of sick person (hospitalization for safeguarding pregnancy, getting information on a cancer ward), aetiologies of physiopathologies (coronary heart disease, diabetes, vaginal infections) and disorders (menstrual and sexual disorders, and infertility in women), recovery and rehabilitation (from chronic pain, and following MI), and general health orientation. Finally, the outlines of an emergent CO model of physiopathology are presented, specifying how cognitions affect health, and in which sense the processes involved in physiopathology resemble and differ from those involved in the elicitation of overt behaviours.     

Zu Einem Methodologischen Interpretationskonstruktionismus

Interpretari necesse est (Interpretation is necessary). This slogan is summarizing the methodological and epistemological essay concentrating on what can be called a transcendental interpretationism and a methodological interpretationism. This approach is combining a pragmatic interpretive approach with a constitutional quasi Kantian but more pluralistic and flexible epistemology. It takes up the assets of Nietzsches radical interpretationism without ending up in an interpretationist idealism. Though a basic fundamental insight is a statement of the interpretation-impragnatedness of any knowledge and experience whatsoever, there is nevertheless a possibility to combine a kind of critical realism with this interpretationist approach. Though we are always obliged to use interpretation-dependent epistemological schemata and concepts as well as theories (we have no non-interpretive concepts, theories and ways of gaining and constructing knowledge), we have still, for practical reasons, to presuppose an external independent world which can however only be described in interpretation-dependent terms. Even this epistemological model is certainly an interpretive one. If we distinguish between different levels of more or less variable interpretations (we cannot, by our very biological constitution, change primary interpretations built in to our biological constitution and make-up of sense-organs etc.), we can analyse and define truth as a relation between different levels and types of interpretations. The ideal of truth makes some sense of a concept of correspondence, though in the last analysis it is a combination of coherence-theoretical and pragmatic-constructivist ideas. — The model of an epistemological interpretationism has the advantage (by contradistinction, e.g., with critical rationalism) to be consistently applied to itself: The interpretive epistemology is certainly but an interpretational model itself. — The sketched interpretationism has certain similarities with Nelson Goodman's constructive interpretive pluralism and Hilary Putnam's internal realism, although there are slight, but decisive differences to be carefully observed. The differences have to do with the mentioned practical realism and the presupposition of one world in which we live. The similarities are greater with respect to internal realism. A decisive difference is only that you cannot, according to methodological and transcendental interpretationism, compel somebody towards the uniqueness of language use. There are always degrees of freedom and variation to change the usage of signs. There is no socially intended uniqueness and compulsory usage of signs and their meanings. Even within the language community the rules are always only conventionally realized and actualized. There is no real correspondence between signs and signs (or interpretive constructs, for that matter). Any correspondence whatsoever can only refer to interpretational constructs itself. Any classification, verification, selection and identification of facts, even any thinking of data and facts as such is in the last analysis dependent on interpretations. Even the conception of an epistemological subject is but an interpretational construct on a higher level.     

Direction-specific motion thresholds for abnormal image shifts during saccadic eye movement

Eye movements were monitored and a target circle subtending an angle of 7^o was made to move during and dependent on the eye movements. Thresholds of detection of the resulting abnormal image displacements were obtained. Thresholds were low when both the eyes and the target moved either horizontally or vertically. They were higher by a factor of two or more when the eye movements and the target motions were not in the same plane. In the latter conditions, two processes account for the detection of target motion. One is a compensation process where the extent of that component of the motion of the retinal image of the target which is parallel to the eye movement is compared with the extent of the eye movement. The other process detects an angle between the plane of the target image motion and the plane of the eye movement. Our results indicate that the higher thresholds occurred when detection of this angle was required.     

FACTOR ANALYSIS OF A NEUROTICISM INVENTORY

The Lidvall neuroticism inventory is comprised of 25 questions referring to symptoms presumed to be connected with manifest neurotic anxiety. It was presented to 377 persons, an unscreened group with respect to neurotic symptoms, and a factor analysis with rotation to simple structure was performed.—Four factors could be identified: (1) manifest neurotic anxiety, (2) neurotic difficulties in interpersonal relations, (3) neurasthenic symptoms and (4) obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The factor scales were correlated with Neuroticism and Extraversion in MPI. Neuroticism was shown to be a heterogeneous factor. The correlation between Factor (2) and Extraversion was high.     

Nieuwentijt und der teleologische Gottesbeweis

Ohne ZusammenfassungVortrag bei der Gedächtnisfeier am 31. Aug. 1954 in Purmerend     

Large numbers,Knuth's arrow notation,and Ramsey theory

Synthese - In the children's book ``The Phantom Tollbooth'' by Norton Juster one can find the following passage: ``Yes, please,'' said Milo. ``Can you show me the biggest number...