Effects of time of day and information importance on adults' memory for a short story

An experiment is reported that tested subjects' memory for information in a short story, either immediately after hearing the story or after a delay of one week. The story was presented, and the subjects tested, either in the morning or in the afternoon. The results showed that, although there was no overall effect of time of day of presentation on recall, relatively more important information from the story was recalled after a delay following presentation in the late afternoon, and more unimportant information following original presentation in the morning. The time of day of the delayed recall test did not have any effect on performance.     

Children's syllogistic reasoning

Most theories of the development of deductive ability propose that children acquire formal rules of inference. An alternative theory assumes that reasoning consists of constructing a mental model of the situation described in the premises, scanning the model for an informative conclusion, and then searching for alternative models that refute this conclusion. Hence, performance should reflect two principal factors: the difficulty of constructing a model, which depends on the “figure” of the premises, and the number of models that have to be evaluated to respond correctly. In Experiment 1, two groups of children (9- to 10- and 11- to 12-year-olds) drew conclusions from 20 pairs of syllogistic premises. The results confirmed that children are affected both by figure and by number of models. Experiment 2 corroborated these findings for all 64 possible forms of syllogistic premises. The development of reasoning ability may therefore depend on the acquisition, not of formal rules of logic, but of procedures for manipulating models.     

Responding to Allegations of Unethical Conduct

Although relatively few professional counselors will be accused during their careers of unethical conduct, all are susceptible to such charges. This article explains the process used by boards in reviewing charges of unethical conduct, gives advice regarding actions that accused counselors might take to protect themselves legally and emotionally, and offers preventive steps that should be taken to avoid such charges.     

Game theory and belief in God

In the last few decades game theory has emerged as a powerful tool for examining a broad range of philosophical issues. It is unsurprising, then, that game theory has been taken up as a tool to examine issues in the philosophy of religion. Economist Steven Brams (1982), (1983) and (2007), for example, has given a game theoretic analysis of belief in God, his main argument first published in this journal and then again in both editions of his book, Superior Beings. I have two main aims in this paper, one specific and one general. My specific aim is to show that Brams’ application of game theory to examine belief in God is, in particular, deeply flawed in two respects. My general aim is to show that any game-theoretic model in which a human being and God are players can only succeed at the cost of abandoning the assumption that God is omnibenevolent.