The Philosophical Use and Misuse of Science

Science is our best way of finding out about the natural world, and philosophers who write about that world ought to be sensitive to the claims of our best science. There are obstacles, however, to outsiders using science well. We think philosophers are prone to misuse science: to give undue weight to results that are untested; to highlight favorable and ignore unfavorable data; to give illegitimate weight to the authority of science; to leap from scientific premises to philosophical conclusions without spelling out their relevance; to treat mere resonance between a scientific theory and a philosophical view as empirical evidence for the philosophical view. This article identifies and illustrates some of the ways in which philosophers misuse science, explains why these pitfalls are easy to fall into, and concludes with suggestions for avoiding them.     

The language of online leadership: gender and youth engagement on the internet

This study examines the JUNIOR SUMMIT online community, which consisted of 3,062 adolescents representing 139 countries, varying SES, and a range of experience with computers. The online forum culminated in the election of 100 delegates. By analyzing the messages posted before results of the election were announced, we explore whether language use predicts who was elected as a leader, as well as gender differences in leadership style. Results indicate that the young online leaders do not adhere to adult leadership styles of contributing many ideas, sticking to task, and using powerful language. On the contrary, while the young people elected as delegates do contribute more, their linguistic style is likely to keep the goals and needs of the group as central--by referring to the group rather than to themselves, and by synthesizing the posts of others rather than solely contributing their own ideas. Furthermore, both boy and girl leaders follow this pattern of interpersonal language use. These results reassure us that young people can be civically engaged and community minded, while indicating that these concepts themselves may change through contact with the next generation.     

How capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) quantify objects and substances

Humans and nonhuman animals appear to share a capacity for nonverbal quantity representations. But what are the limits of these abilities? Results of previous research with human infants suggest that the ontological status of an entity as an object or a substance affects infants' ability to quantify it. We ask whether the same is true for another primate species-the New World monkey Cebus apella. We tested capuchin monkeys' ability to select the greater of two quantities of either discrete objects or a nonsolid substance. Participants performed above chance with both objects (Experiment 1) and substances (Experiment 2); in both cases, the observed performance was ratio dependent. This finding suggests that capuchins quantify objects and substances similarly and do so via analog magnitude representations.     

Gender and Changes in Trauma Narrative Following CBT for PTSD

Our study explored whether the characteristics of pretreatment trauma narratives could be used as indicators of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity before treatment. We also studied whether pretreatment characteristics could predict treatment efficacy. Although several studies suggest that fragmentation, proportion of internal events, and length in trauma narratives are associated with PTSD symptomatology, there are contradictions in the findings. Given the differences in trauma response between men and women, we considered the potential influence of gender. Before beginning a cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment, 66 participants verbally recounted their traumatic event during a diagnostic interview. After treatment, 48 participants once again provided a trauma narrative. PTSD symptom severity was assessed using the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale. Linear regression analyses revealed that none of the pretreatment characteristics predicted treatment efficacy. Furthermore, the length of the trauma narrative was the only pretreatment characteristic that correlated with pretreatment PTSD symptomatology. This suggests that more severe symptomatology is associated with shorter narratives. We only found a significant gender difference in narrative length, which was longer in women than in men. Our findings not only highlight the need for additional research on the link between trauma narratives and PTSD symptomatology, but also stress the necessity of considering gender in this field of research. This could allow for enhanced treatments to target gender-specific needs, thus leading to more individualized care for PTSD patients.     

Evidence for graded central processing resources in a sequential movement task

In the present experiment, we examined slowing of the individual key presses of a familiar keying sequence by four different versions of a concurrent tone counting task. This was done to determine whether the same cognitive processor that has previously been assumed by the dual processor model (DPM) to initiate familiar keying sequences and assist in their execution, is involved also in the central processes of a very different task (viz. identifying tones and counting target tones). The present results confirm this hypothesis. They also suggest that in this particular situation the central processing resources underlying the cognitive processor can be distributed across the central processes of different tasks in a graded manner, rather than that they continue to behave like a single, central processor that serially switches between the central processes of the concurrently performed tasks. We argue that the production of highly practiced movement sequences can be considered automatic in the sense that execution of familiar movement sequences can continue without cognitive control once they have been initiated.     

High working memory capacity favours the use of finger counting in six-year-old children

In this study, we show that 6-year-old children with high working memory capacity are more likely to use their fingers in an addition task than children with lower capacity. Moreover and as attested by a strong correlation between finger counting and accuracy in the arithmetic task, finger counting appears to be a very efficient strategy. Therefore, discovering the finger counting strategy seems to require a large amount of working memory resources, which could lack in low-span children. Furthermore, when children with low working memory capacities use their fingers to solve addition problems, they more often use the laborious counting-all strategy than children with higher capacities who use more elaborated procedures such as the Min strategy. Consequently, we suggest that explicit teaching of finger counting during the first years of schooling should be promoted because it could help less gifted children to overcome their difficulties in arithmetic.     

ONGOING WORK WITH SARAH: A 13‐YEAR‐OLD GIRL SUFFERING FROM ANOREXIA NERVOSA

The following is a reflection upon the challenges presented to an in‐patient nursing team in their care of Sarah. The intention is to illustrate the value of application of psychoanalytic theory to this case in order to increase nurses' understanding of the internal world of our young patient, thereby improving nursing care, supervision and minimizing potential adverse impact of such a damaged young person upon the quality of care on the unit as a whole. All names have been changed and some background details have been altered or omitted to protect identities.     

Putting the Burden of Proof in Its Place: When Are Differential Allocations Legitimate?

It is widely assumed that legitimate differential allocations of the burden of proof are ubiquitous: that in all cases in which opposing views are being debated, one side has the responsibility of proving their claim and if they fail, the opposing view wins by default. We argue that the cases in which one party has the burden of proof are exceptions. In general, participants in reasoned discourse are all required to provide reasons for the claims they make. We distinguish between truth‐directed and non‐truth‐directed discourse, argue that the paradigm contexts in which there are legitimate differential allocations of the burden of proof (law and formal debate) are non‐truth‐directed, and suggest that in truth‐directed contexts, except in certain special cases, differential allocation of the burden of proof is not warranted.     

A Study of the Use and Interpretation of Standardized Suicide Risk Assessment: Measures within a Psychiatrically Hospitalized Correctional Population

The reliability, validity, and utility of the Adult Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire (ASIQ), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS), and Reasons for Attempting Suicide Questionnaire (RASQ) with correctional mental health populations was evaluated. Evidence was found indicating good to excellent reliability for all measures. Each of the measures significantly differentiated multiple attempters from single attempters and nonattempters, providing evidence of convergent and divergent validity. Logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic analyses revealed strong associations between multiple attempts and the ASIQ, BSS, and RASQ, but not the BHS. Implications for suicide risk assessment processes in correctional settings are discussed.