Analysis of unreplicated three-way classifications,with applications to rater bias and trait independence

The seven analysis-of-variance mean squares for an unreplicated three-way classification may be written as linear combinations of a mean variance and three mean covariances. Formulas are presented for computing the mean variances and mean covariances from linear combinations of mean squares. The relevance of these formulas for assessing rater biases and trait independence is discussed, a numerical example is provided, and proposed extensions are briefly noted.The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a contract with the United States Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The assistance of Sister M. Jacinta Mann, S. C., at one stage of this investigation is gratefully acknowledged.     

'The World is the Totality of Things, Not of Facts': A Strawsonian Reply to Searle

John R. Searle (1995; 1998, Ch. 9) claims that P.F. Strawson's well known objections to correspondence theories of truth (Strawson 1950) can be side-stepped, if we regard the correspondence theorist's facts as 'conditions in the world' (1998, p. 392) rather than as complex objects. In response, I claim both that Searle's notion of a 'condition in the world' is obscure, and that such conditions cannot be the facts of a correspondence theorist on account of their being unsuited for truthmaking.
The failure of Searle's attempt to come up with a correspondence theory which evades Strawson's objections does not indicate that we should seek to formulate a correspondence theory in some other way. I argue that that the correspondence theorists's truthmaker axiom is improperly motivated, and, in the light of this, suggest that facts be treated as true propositions rather than as items which make propositions true. The article ends with a defence of this position against two recent objections.     

The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children's and adults' graded judgements of argument-structure overgeneralization errors

Participants (aged 5-6 yrs, 9-10 yrs and adults) rated (using a five-point scale) grammatical (intransitive) and overgeneralized (transitive causative)(1) uses of a high frequency, low frequency and novel intransitive verb from each of three semantic classes [Pinker, S. (1989a). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]: "directed motion" (fall, tumble), "going out of existence" (disappear, vanish) and "semivoluntary expression of emotion" (laugh, giggle). In support of Pinker's semantic verb class hypothesis, participants' preference for grammatical over overgeneralized uses of novel (and English) verbs increased between 5-6 yrs and 9-10 yrs, and was greatest for the latter class, which is associated with the lowest degree of direct external causation (the prototypical meaning of the transitive causative construction). In support of Braine and Brooks's [Braine, M.D.S., & Brooks, P.J. (1995). Verb argument strucure and the problem of avoiding an overgeneral grammar. In M. Tomasello & W. E. Merriman (Eds.), Beyond names for things: Young children's acquisition of verbs (pp. 352-376). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum] entrenchment hypothesis, all participants showed the greatest preference for grammatical over ungrammatical uses of high frequency verbs, with this preference smaller for low frequency verbs, and smaller again for novel verbs. We conclude that both the formation of semantic verb classes and entrenchment play a role in children's retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors.     

The relationship of maternal mentalization and executive functioning to maternal recognition of infant cues and bonding

The study examined associations between maternal mentalization ability, executive functioning, recognition of infant cues, and bonding in a non‐clinical sample of mothers. It employed a correlational design. Sixty‐four mothers of young infants completed assessments of mentalization ability, executive functioning, and bonding. Photographs of infant facial expressions were utilized to assess ability to recognize infant cues of emotion, but this was not found to correlate with either maternal mentalization or executive functioning ability. Whilst a trend towards a significant positive relationship between mothers' cued ability to attribute mental states and their ability to recognize infant facial expressions was observed, no significant relationships were found between bonding scores and performance on the executive functioning and mentalization measures. The present study contributes to our current understanding of the influence of maternal cognitive factors, specifically mentalization and executive functioning, on the development of the mother–infant relationship. Future research, methodological issues, and clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Familial patterns and the origins of individual differences in synaesthesia

The term synaesthesia has been applied to a range of different sensory-perceptual and cognitive experiences, yet how these experiences are related to each other is not well understood. Not only are there disparate types of synaesthesia, but even within types there are vast individual differences in the way that stimuli induce synaesthesia and in the subjective synaesthetic experience. An investigation of the inheritance patterns of different types of synaesthesia is likely to elucidate whether a single underlying mechanism can explain all types. This study is the first to systematically survey all types of synaesthesia within a familial framework. We recruited 53 synaesthetes and 42% of these probands reported a first-degree relative with synaesthesia. We then directly contacted as many first-degree relatives as possible and collected complete data on synaesthetic status for all family members for 17 families. We found that different types of synaesthesia can occur within the same family and that the qualitative nature of the experience can differ between family members. Our findings strongly indicate that various types of synaesthesia are fundamentally related at the genetic level, but that the explicit associations and the individual differences between synaesthetes are influenced by other factors. Synaesthesia thus provides a good model to explore the interplay of all these factors in the development of cognitive traits in general.     

The recognition heuristic in memory‐based inference: is recognition a non‐compensatory cue?

The recognition heuristic makes the strong claim that probabilistic inferences in which a recognized object is compared to an unrecognized one are made solely on the basis of whether the objects are recognized or not, ignoring all other available cues. This claim has been seriously challenged by a number of studies that have shown a clear effect of additional cue knowledge. In most of these studies, either recognition knowledge was acquired during the experiment, and/or additional cues were provided to participants. However, the recognition heuristic is more likely to be a tool for exploiting natural (rather than induced) recognition when inferences have to be made from memory. In our study on natural recognition and inferences from memory, around 85% of the inferences followed recognition information even when participants had learned three cues that contradicted recognition and when some of the contradictory cues were deemed more valid than recognition. Nevertheless, there were strong individual differences in the use of recognition. Whereas about half of the participants chose the recognized object regardless of the number of conflicting cues—suggestive of the hypothesized noncompensatory processing of recognition—the remaining participants were influenced by the additional knowledge. The former group of participants also tended to give higher estimates of recognition's validity. In addition, we found that the use of recognition for an inference may be affected by whether additional cue knowledge has been learned outside or within the experimental setting. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interacting effects of worry and anxiety on attentional disengagement from threat

Recent work suggests that the ability to disengage attention from threatening information is impaired in people who suffer from anxiety and dysphoria. It has been suggested that this impaired ability to disengage from threat might specifically be associated with the tendency to perseverate about threat (i.e., worry), which is a main characteristic of anxiety disorders and a wide range of other psychopathologies. However, no studies have yet addressed this issue. The present study examined whether trait worry as well as worry intensity after experimental worry induction are associated with impaired ability to disengage attention from threatening cues (angry faces), independently from or in conjunction with anxiety. Sixty-one participants performed a visual cueing experiment that required detection of a target stimulus at one of two possible locations. Prior to the target neutral, happy or angry facial cues appeared at one of these two locations; when there is a relatively long period between the cue and the target (>300 ms), an overall faster responding to invalidly cued trials relative to validly cued trials is believed to indicate inhibition of return (IOR) to a recently attended location. A reduced IOR for angry faces was only found when both trait worry and anxiety were high. When anxiety was kept constant, both trait worry and state worry were associated with enhanced IOR for neutral faces instead. The results seem to suggest that specific threat-related deficiencies in IOR may be a function of the co-occurrence of worry and anxiety.     

The philosophy of simulation: hot new issues or same old stew?

Computer simulations are an exciting tool that plays important roles in many scientific disciplines. This has attracted the attention of a number of philosophers of science. The main tenor in this literature is that computer simulations not only constitute interesting and powerful new science, but that they also raise a host of new philosophical issues. The protagonists in this debate claim no less than that simulations call into question our philosophical understanding of scientific ontology, the epistemology and semantics of models and theories, and the relation between experimentation and theorising, and submit that simulations demand a fundamentally new philosophy of science in many respects. The aim of this paper is to critically evaluate these claims. Our conclusion will be sober. We argue that these claims are overblown and that simulations, far from demanding a new metaphysics, epistemology, semantics and methodology, raise few if any new philosophical problems. The philosophical problems that do come up in connection with simulations are not specific to simulations and most of them are variants of problems that have been discussed in other contexts before. An erratum to this article can be found at