A Semantics for Means-end Relations

There has been considerable work on practical reasoning in artificial intelligence and also in philosophy. Typically, such reasoning includes premises regarding means–end relations. A clear semantics for such relations is needed in order to evaluate proposed syllogisms. In this paper, we provide a formal semantics for means–end relations, in particular for necessary and sufficient means–end relations. Our semantics includes a non-monotonic conditional operator, so that related practical reasoning is naturally defeasible. This work is primarily an exercise in conceptual analysis, aimed at clarifying and eventually evaluating existing theories of practical reasoning (pending a similar analysis regarding desires, intentions and other relevant concepts). “They were in conversation without speaking. They didn’t need to speak. They just changed reality so that they had spoken.” Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man     

Teaching a perspective‐taking component skill to children with autism in the natural environment

We evaluated procedures for teaching three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder the perspective‐taking component skill of tacting what others are sensing across all five senses: see, taste, feel, hear, and smell. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, we evaluated a training package consisting of multiple exemplar training, reinforcement, and error correction. The treatment package was implemented in the natural environment and was effective for teaching participants to tact what others sensed. Generalization across untrained stimuli and people was observed from baseline to posttraining for all participants. We discuss how this component skill may be related to teaching further skills related to perspective taking such as tacting what others know, predicting future behavior based upon one's beliefs, and creating false beliefs in others for the purpose of adaptive deceptive behaviors such as keeping secrets, surprises, and bluffing during games.     

Treatment‐as‐Usual for Couples: Trajectories Before and After Beginning Couple Therapy

Couple therapy has been shown to be a meaningful way to improve couples’ relationships. However, less information is known about couples’ functioning prior to entering treatment in community settings, as well as how their relationship functioning changes from initiating therapy onward. This study examined 87 couples who began community‐based couple therapy during a longitudinal study of couples in the military. The couples were assessed six times over the course of 3 years, including time points before and after starting couple therapy. Using an interrupted‐time series design, we examined trajectories across the start of couple therapy in relationship satisfaction, divorce proneness, and negative communication. The results demonstrated that couples’ relationship satisfaction was declining and both divorce proneness and negative communication were increasing prior to entering couple therapy. After starting couple therapy, couples’ functioning on all three variables leveled off but did not show further change, but previous experience in relationship education moderated these effects. Specifically, those who were assigned to the relationship education program (vs. control) demonstrated greater reductions in divorce proneness and greater increases marital satisfaction after starting therapy; however, they also started more distressed.     

Sleep quality, sleep propensity and academic performance

We examined associations between measures of sleep propensity on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, sleep quality on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and academic performance by GPA and grades in introductory psychology for 414 students. In the total sample, neither sleep propensity nor sleep quality correlated with GPA or introductory psychology grades. However, among students carrying a full course load, those reporting poor sleep quality performed less well on academic measures than those reporting a better quality of sleep. Further research is needed to assess the moderating influence of overall demands of daytime functioning on the association between sleep quality and academic performance.     

Explanations versus applications: the explanatory power of valuable beliefs

People hold beliefs that vary not only in their perceived truth, but also in their value to the believer--their meaning, relevance, and importance. We argue that a belief's value is determined, at least in part, by its explanatory power. Highly valuable beliefs are those that can uniquely explain and organize a diverse set of observations. Less valuable beliefs, in contrast, are those that can be explained by other observations, or that explain and organize few observations. The results of three experiments are consistent with these hypotheses. These experiments demonstrate that applying either scientific or religious beliefs to explain other observations increases the perceived value of those beliefs, whereas generating explanations for the existence of beliefs decreases their perceived value. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for people's resistance to explaining their own beliefs, for the perceived value of science and religion, and for culture wars between people holding opposing beliefs.     

Presence of administrators differentially impacts eyewitness discriminability for same- and other-race identifications

Best practice guidelines recommend that eyewitness lineup administrators be blind to a suspect's identity, but no research has investigated whether the mere presence of a lineup administrator impacts eyewitness identification decisions. Informed by social facilitation theory, we predicted that the presence of an audience would differentially impact identification accuracy for same- and other-race identifications. Participants (N = 191) viewed same- and other-race lineups either with an audience or alone. Although the presence of an audience did not directly impact identification accuracy, significant indirect effects indicated that the audience provoked evaluation apprehension which hindered other-race identification accuracy and improved same-race identification accuracy. We suggest that using double-blind lineup procedures may not sufficiently protect eyewitness identification accuracy when making other-race lineup decisions in the presence of others.     

Give and take: syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension

Syntactic priming during language production is pervasive and well-studied. Hearing, reading, speaking or writing a sentence with a given structure increases the probability of subsequently producing the same structure, regardless of whether the prime and target share lexical content. In contrast, syntactic priming during comprehension has proven more elusive, fueling claims that comprehension is less dependent on general syntactic representations and more dependent on lexical knowledge. In three experiments we explored syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Participants acted out double-object (DO) or prepositional-object (PO) dative sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Prime sentences used different verbs and nouns than the target sentences. In target sentences, the onset of the direct-object noun was consistent with both an animate recipient and an inanimate theme, creating a temporary ambiguity in the argument structure of the verb (DO e.g., Show the horse the book; PO e.g., Show the horn to the dog). We measured the difference in looks to the potential recipient and the potential theme during the ambiguous interval. In all experiments, participants who heard DO primes showed a greater preference for the recipient over the theme than those who heard PO primes, demonstrating across-verb priming during online language comprehension. These results accord with priming found in production studies, indicating a role for abstract structural information during comprehension as well as production.     

At the Intersection of Institutional Identity and Type

Journal of Academic Ethics - Positive public perceptions of academic quality and professional ethics are critical to the long-term legitimacy of American colleges and universities. Faculty codes of...     

A latent class regression analysis of men's conformity to masculine norms and psychological distress

How are specific dimensions of masculinity related to psychological distress in specific groups of men? To address this question, the authors used latent class regression to assess the optimal number of latent classes that explained differential relationships between conformity to masculine norms and psychological distress in a racially diverse sample of 223 men. The authors identified a 2-class solution. Both latent classes demonstrated very different associations between conformity to masculine norms and psychological distress. In Class 1 (labeled risk avoiders; n = 133), conformity to the masculine norm of risk-taking was negatively related to psychological distress. In Class 2 (labeled detached risk-takers; n = 90), conformity to the masculine norms of playboy, self-reliance, and risk-taking was positively related to psychological distress, whereas conformity to the masculine norm of violence was negatively related to psychological distress. A post hoc analysis revealed that younger men and Asian American men (compared with Latino and White American men) had significantly greater odds of being in Class 2 versus Class 1. The implications of these findings for future research and clinical practice are examined.