The variety of consequence,according to Bolzano

Contemporary historians of logic tend to credit Bernard Bolzano with the invention of the semantic notion, of consequence, a full century before Tarski. Nevertheless, Bolzano's work played no significant rôle in the genesis of modern logical semantics. The purpose of this paper is to point out three highly original, and still quite relevant themes in Bolzano's work, being a systematic study of possible types of inference, of consistency, as well as their meta-theory. There are certain analogies with Tarski's concerns here, although the main thrust seems to be different, both philosophically and technically. Thus, if only obliquely, we also provide some additional historical perspective on Tarski's achievement.     

Book reviews

Byrne, R. W. and Whiten, A. (Eds.) (1988). Machiavellian intelligence: Social expertise and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes, and humans. Oxford: Clarendon press. Pp. xiv + 413. ISBN 0-19-852175-8, £25.00 (paperback).

Dudai, Y. (1989). The neurobiology of memory. Concepts, findings, trends. Oxford: Oxford University press. pp. xi + 340. ISBN 0-19-854261-5, £40.00 (hardback), ISBN 0-19-854229-1, £18.00 (paperback).

Richards, R. J. (1987). Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, Pp. xvii + 700. ISBN 0-226-71199-4. £23.95.

Archer, T. & Nilsson, L. (Eds.) (1989). Aversion, avoidance and anxiety: Perspectives on aversively motivated behavior. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pp. 491. ISBN 0-8058-0132-4. £29.95     

Comment on Björn Sahlberg’s paper

This paper is a comment on Björn Sahlberg’s paper on the function of training analysis in the Swedish psychoanalytic association and discusses some aspects of the candidates’ personal analysis and supervision. The paper further suggests some possible sources for inspiration and perspective on organizational and educational issues, for example taking an interest in the epistemology of professions, in what the concept of ‘reflection-in-action’ could mean in the training situation, or in empirical research about the educational models and the practice of psychoanalysis.     

When preschoolers follow their eyes and older children follow their noses: visuo‐olfactory social affective matching in childhood

Recognition of emotional facial expressions is a crucial skill for adaptive behavior that most often occurs in a multi‐sensory context. Affective matching tasks have been used across development to investigate how people integrate facial information with other senses. Given the relative affective strength of olfaction and its relevance in mediating social information since birth, we assessed olfactory–visual matching abilities in a group of 140 children between the ages of 3 and 11 years old. We presented one of three odor primes (rose, fish and no‐odor, rated as pleasant or unpleasant by individual children) before a facial choice task (happy vs. disgusted face). Children were instructed to select one of two faces. As expected, children of all ages tended to choose happy faces. Children younger than 5 years of age were biased towards choosing the happy face, irrespective of the odor smelled. After age 5, an affective matching strategy guided children's choices. Smelling a pleasant odor predicted the choice of happy faces, whereas smelling the unpleasant or fish odor predicted the choice of disgusted faces. The present study fills a gap in the developmental literature on olfactory‐visual affective strategies that affect decision‐making, and represents an important step towards understanding the underlying developmental processes that shape the typical social mind.     

The role of sparsely distributed representations in familiarity recognition of verbal and olfactory materials

We present the generalized signal detection theory (GSDT), where familiarity is described by a sparse binomial distribution of binary node activity rather than by normal distribution of familiarity. Items are presented in a distributed representation, where each node receives either noise only, or signal and noise. An old response (i.e., a “yes” response) is made if at least one node receives signal plus noise that is larger than the activation threshold, and item variability is determined by the distribution of activated nodes as the threshold is varied. A distinct representation leads to better performance and a lower ratio of new to old item variability, than a more distributed and less distinct representations. Here we apply the GSDT to empirical data on verbal and olfactory memory and suggest that verbal memory relies on a distinct neural item representation, whereas olfactory memory has a fuzzy neural representation leading to poorer memory and inducing a larger ratio of new to old item variability.     

Songs to syntax: the linguistics of birdsong

Unlike our primate cousins, many species of bird share with humans a capacity for vocal learning, a crucial factor in speech acquisition. There are striking behavioural, neural and genetic similarities between auditory-vocal learning in birds and human infants. Recently, the linguistic parallels between birdsong and spoken language have begun to be investigated. Although both birdsong and human language are hierarchically organized according to particular syntactic constraints, birdsong structure is best characterized as 'phonological syntax', resembling aspects of human sound structure. Crucially, birdsong lacks semantics and words. Formal language and linguistic analysis remains essential for the proper characterization of birdsong as a model system for human speech and language, and for the study of the brain and cognition evolution.     

Exploring consumer adoption of a high involvement eco‐innovation using value‐belief‐norm theory

Environmental problems are increasingly becoming everyday issues of international organizations, national governments, and individual consumers. In consumer behavior research considerable effort has been focused on understanding environmentally significant behaviors. One such research stream uses the value‐belief‐norm theory (VBN) to explain and predict a number of relatively low involvement proenvironmental consumer behaviors such as household energy use. However, many consumer behaviors with significant impact on the environment are categorized as high involvement behaviors where VBN theory has not yet been employed. The aim of this paper is to arrive at a better understanding of consumer adoption of a high involvement eco‐innovation using VBN theory. As an example of a high involvement eco‐innovation the alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) which runs on fossil oil‐alternative fuels such as electricity and biofuels is used. A representative sample of adopters and non‐adopters of these vehicles in Sweden were surveyed. Differences between adopters and non‐adopters on sociodemographic and VBN factors were analyzed and the explanatory ability of the different factors on adoption was analyzed using logistic regression. The results showed that early adopters had a higher level of education and were much more likely to live in multi‐person households compared to non‐adopters. In terms of attitudinal factors, adopters exhibited higher levels of proenvironmental values, beliefs, and personal norms (PNs). Furthermore the results established that VBN factors were successful in explaining the early adoption of a high involvement eco‐innovation such as the AFV. The implications for consumer research, public policymakers, and for marketers of eco‐innovations are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spiritual care as eHealth: a systematic review

A systematic review was undertaken of the literature on the use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT's) in the provision and support of religious and spiritual care in healthcare. Indexes such as Medline, PsychoINFO and Proquest Religion were searched. The review found little systematic study of the effectiveness of the Internet and other ICT's in religious and spiritual care. It is believed that the results of this review provide a basis for promise spiri care in the further explora of the potential and of ICT's for tual healthcare.