Truth-Maker Semantics for Intuitionistic Logic

I propose a new semantics for intuitionistic logic, which is a cross between the construction-oriented semantics of Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov and the condition-oriented semantics of Kripke. The new semantics shows how there might be a common semantical underpinning for intuitionistic and classical logic and how intuitionistic logic might thereby be tied to a realist conception of the relationship between language and the world.     

Manual coordination with intermittent targets: Velocity information for prospective control

Tracking a moving target requires that information concerning the current and future state of a target is available, allowing prospective control of the tracking effector. Eye movement research has shown that prospective visual tracking is achievable during conditions of both visible and occluded targets. The ability to track visually occluded targets has been interpreted as individuals integrating target velocity into eye movement motor plans. It has not been fully established that velocity plays a similar role in other types of tracking behavior. To examine whether target velocity is also used in manual tracking, numerical predictions and a validation experiment were conducted. Predictions indicated that, if individuals utilize target velocity during coordination, increases in visual occlusion periods should yield increased phase lag between target and hand, proportional to the occlusion period. Predictions also suggest that increased occlusion yields increased coordination variability. An experiment having participants coordinate with the same stimuli and occlusion conditions was conducted to verify the predictions. Comparison of prediction and experimental results provides strong agreement that individuals use target velocity to prospectively control coordinated movements.     

A re-investigating of the religious orientation-moral reasoning relationship: a relational developmental systems perspective

This study re-investigates the relationship between religious orientation and Kohlberg’s moral reasoning among students at a midwestern (USA) university. Multiple regression analyses revealed that quest-oriented religiosity was significantly positively related to principled moral reasoning, as consistently found in previous studies, while intrinsic religious orientation showed no relation to principled moral reasoning. We discuss our findings through a lens of relational developmental systems theory, suggesting that a more integrative measure is needed to better understand the complex relationship between religious orientation and moral reasoning.     

An Examination of a Functional Mixed-Effects Modeling Approach to the Analysis of Longitudinal Data

Growth curve modeling is one of the main analytical approaches to study change over time. Growth curve models are commonly estimated in the linear and nonlinear mixed-effects modeling framework in which both the mean and person-specific curves are modeled parametrically with functions of time such as the linear, quadratic, and exponential. However, when more complex nonlinear trajectories need to be estimated and researchers do not have a priori knowledge of an appropriate functional form of growth, parametric models may be too restrictive. This paper reviews functional mixed-effects models, a nonparametric extension of mixed-effects models that permit both the mean and person-specific curves to be estimated without assuming a prespecified functional form of growth. Details of the model are presented along with results from a simulation study and an empirical example. The simulation study showed functional mixed-effects models performed reasonably well under various conditions commonly associated with longitudinal panel data, such as few time points per person, irregularly spaced time points across persons, missingness, and nonlinear trajectories. The usefulness of functional mixed-effects models is illustrated by analyzing empirical data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999.     

Sleep disruption explains age-related prospective memory deficits: implications for cognitive aging and intervention

The high prevalence of sleep disruption among older adults may have implications for cognitive aging, particularly for higher-order aspects of cognition. One domain where sleep disruption may contribute to age-related deficits is prospective memory—the ability to remember to perform deferred actions at the appropriate time in the future. Community-dwelling older adults (55–93 years, N = 133) undertook assessment of sleep using actigraphy and participated in a laboratory-based prospective memory task. After controlling for education, sleep disruption (longer awakenings) was associated with poorer prospective memory. Additionally, longer awakenings mediated the relationship between older age and poorer prospective memory. Other metrics of sleep disruption, including sleep efficiency and wake after sleep onset, were not related to prospective memory, suggesting that examining the features of individual wake episodes rather than total wake time may help clarify relationships between sleep and cognition. The mediating role of awakening length was partially a function of greater depression and poorer executive function (shifting) but not retrospective memory. This study is among the first to examine the association between objectively measured sleep and prospective memory in older adults. Furthermore, this study is novel in suggesting sleep disruption might contribute to age-related prospective memory deficits; perhaps, with implications for cognitive aging more broadly. Our results suggest that there may be opportunities to prevent prospective memory decline by treating sleep problems.     

Temporal lobe epilepsy and the selective reminding test: the conventional 30-minute delay suffices

Conventional memory assessment may fail to identify memory dysfunction characterized by intact recall for a relatively brief period but rapid forgetting thereafter. This study assessed learning and retention after 30-min and 24-hr delays on auditory and visual selective reminding tests (SRTs) in right (n=20) and left (n=22) temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and controls (n=49). The left TLE group performed significantly worse than controls on all 3 trials of both tests. The right TLE group differed from the controls on all 3 visual SRT trials and on learning for the auditory SRT. There were no between-groups differences in rate of information lost at the 30-min versus the 24-hr delay. At the individual level, there was no difference in the percentage of patients versus controls who demonstrated isolated memory impairment at the 24-hr delay. Accelerated forgetting over 24 hr is uncommon in TLE patients.     

The relative benefit of word context is a constant proportion of letter identification time

Letter identification is reduced when the target letter is surrounded by other, flanking letters. This visual crowding is known to be impacted by physical changes to the target and flanks, such as spatial frequency content, polarity, and interletter spacing. There is also evidence that visual crowding is reduced when the flanking letters and the target letter form a word. The research reported here investigated whether these two phenomena are independent of each other or whether the degree of visual crowding impacts the benefit of word context. Stimulus duration thresholds for letters presented alone and for the middle letters of 3-letter words and nonwords were determined for stimuli presented at the fovea and at the periphery. In Experiment 1, the benefit of word context was found to be the same at the fovea, where visual crowding is minimal, and at the periphery, where visual crowding is substantial. In Experiment 2, visual crowding was manipulated by changing the interletter spacing. Here, too, the benefit of word context was fairly constant for the two retinal locations (fovea or periphery), as well as with changes in interletter spacing. These data call into question both the idea that the benefit of word context is greater when stimulus quality is reduced (as is the case with visual crowding) and the idea that words are processed more effectively when they are presented at the fovea.     

Where the Girls (and Women) Are

This paper takes up a theoretical and empirical investigation of how two community-based projects for young women both create safety from community and domestic violence but how, in the process, discourses of multicultural inclusion define one site, and racist discourses of exclusion float through the other site. By relying on two intensive qualitative case studies of community-based organizations for girls, one exclusively White and working class and the other expressly multicultural and antiracist, we try to identify those structures and practices that support feminist, but inadvertently racist, work and those structures and practices that enable, at once, feminist and antiracist consciousness and praxis.     

Four psychoanalytic perspectives: a study of differences in interpretive interventions

This research study was designed to test two main hypotheses: (1) there are detectable differences in interpretive style among classical, Kleinian, Kohutian, and Kernbergian analysts; and (2) the nature of these differences can be discerned and described. The methodology consists of three phases of data collection. The statistical findings are presented, along with clinical examples, followed by a discussion of their implications.