Computer‐Mediated Communication Effects on Disclosure,Impressions, and Interpersonal Evaluations: Getting to Know One Another a Bit at a Time

This investigation examined how computer‐mediated communication (CMC) partners exchange personal information in initial interactions, focusing on the effects of communication channels on self‐disclosure, question‐asking, and uncertainty reduction. Unacquainted individuals (N = 158) met either face‐to‐face or via CMC. Computer‐mediated interactants exhibited a greater proportion of more direct and intimate uncertainty reduction behaviors than unmediated participants did, and demonstrated significantly greater gains in attributional confidence over the course of the conversations. The use of direct strategies by mediated interactants resulted in judgments of greater conversational effectiveness by partners. Results illuminate some microstructures previously asserted but unverified within social information processing theory (Walther, 1992), and extend uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975) to CMC interaction.     

Teaching Different Tasks Using Different Stimuli in a Heterogeneous Small Group

The effectiveness of a simultaneous prompting procedure was evaluated in a heterogeneous small group using different tasks and different stimuli for each student. Participants included four middle school students whose functioning levels ranged from typically developing to moderate and severe disabilities. A multiple probe design across behaviors and replicated across students was used. Observational learning maintenance, and generalization also were assessed. Results indicate that the procedure was successful in teaching all four students their targeted stimuli as well as some of the non-targeted stimuli (i.e., observational learning). Students maintained and generalized their information with a high degree of accuracy. Limitations of the study and future research implications are discussed.     

Creativity and Aging: Personal Journals and the Creation of Self

This article considers the writing of personal journals as a process through which an individual constructs a linguistic representation of one's self, with the self constituting a narrative. Rather than a fixed narrative, one's life exists as a narrative subject to revision and reinterpretation. Through journal writing, then, one constructs and reconstructs his or her identity. Berman finds the value in personal journals not only in the themes that surface but also in the creative process they reveal. In this article, he examines passages from five journalists that demonstrate this process of creating and revising meaning in one's life.     

On the Question 'Do Numbers Exist?'

Since we know that there are four prime numbers less than 8 we know that there are numbers. This 'short argument' is correct but it is not an ontological claim or part of philosophy of mathematics. Both realists (Quine) and nominalists (Field) reject the short argument and adopt the idea that the existence of numbers might be posited to explain known mathematical truths. Philosophers operate with a negative conception of what numbers are: they are not in space and time, not related causally to us, not perceivable, etc. This preliminary outlook does not actually characterize a kind of existing thing at all. It creates the atmosphere of weirdness characteristic of both fictionalism and Platonism. Positing things for the sake of explanation makes sense in empirical contexts, but the intelligibility of positing cannot not survive the move to philosophy of mathematics. Modal realism is a model for the unsatisfactory thinking that generates ontological commitment in mathematics.