Reason claims and contrastivism about reasons

Contrastivism about reasons is the view that ‘reason’ expresses a relation with an argument place for a set of alternatives. This is in opposition to a more traditional theory on which reasons are reasons for things simpliciter. I argue that contrastivism provides a solution to a puzzle involving reason claims that explicitly employ ‘rather than’. Contrastivism solves the puzzle by allowing that some fact might be a reason for an action out of one set of alternatives without being a reason for that action out of a different set of alternatives.     

A Psychometric Evaluation of the Approach and Avoidance of Alcohol Questionnaire Among Alcohol-Dependent Patients Attending Residential Treatment

Despite research suggesting that alcohol-dependent individuals have both craving and avoidant tendencies for alcohol, few studies have measured self-report tendencies using the Approach and Avoidance of Alcohol Questionnaire (AAAQ). The goal of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the AAAQ using a sample of adults receiving 12 step-based residential treatment for alcohol dependence. As part of a larger study, 100 adults receiving residential treatment completed the AAAQ and several other assessments shortly after treatment admission. Analyses of the AAAQ examined its factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent and predictive validity. A maximum likelihood estimation factor analysis using oblique rotation produced 3 factors accounting for 69 % of the variance. A confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the 3-factor model was a moderate fit for data from a second sample of patients. Internal consistency was fairly high and convergent validity was demonstrated by relationships with another scale of alcohol craving, time since last drink, and quantity and frequency of pre-treatment alcohol use. Regarding predictive validity, the level of approach tendencies on the AAAQ was significantly related to abstinence status during the first 6 months following treatment. Avoidance level was not related to abstinence. The results largely replicated past studies utilizing outpatient samples and suggest that the AAAQ shows promise as a psychometrically sound, internally reliable self-report craving measure for individuals with alcohol dependence.     

The Relation of Parent and Child Gender to Parental Tolerance of Child Disruptive Behaviors

Parental tolerance has been defined as the degree to which a parent tends to be annoyed by his or her child’s disruptive behavior. The purpose of the current study is to examine the relation of both parent and child gender to parental tolerance of child disruptive behaviors. Participants were 150 parents with 3–6 year-old at-risk children (47.5 % girls) who sought help with parenting of their child’s oppositional defiant behaviors. Tolerance was measured by the difference between parent ratings of intensity on 36 disruptive behaviors and whether each behavior was identified as a problem (resulting in a score of either high, expected, or low tolerance). A 2 (child gender) by 2 (parent gender) analysis of variance was conducted on the tolerance score. A significant interaction between child and parent gender emerged: Mothers were equally tolerant of boys’ and girls’ oppositional defiant behavior but fathers were more tolerant of boys’ than girls’ oppositional behavior. Exploratory analyses suggested that this interaction may be qualified by clinical status of the child. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Searching through the hierarchy: How level of target categorization affects visual search

Does the same basic-level advantage commonly observed in the categorization literature also hold for targets in a search task? We answered this question by first conducting a category verification task to define a set of categories showing a standard basic-level advantage, which we then used as stimuli in a search experiment. Participants were cued with a picture preview of the target or its category name at either superordinate, basic, or subordinate levels, then shown a target-present/absent search display. Although search guidance and target verification was best using pictorial cues, the effectiveness of the categorical cues depended on the hierarchical level. Search guidance was best for the specific subordinate-level cues, whereas target verification showed a standard basic-level advantage. These findings demonstrate different hierarchical advantages for guidance and verification in categorical search. We interpret these results as evidence for a common target representation underlying categorical search guidance and verification.