Mental Causation and the Paradoxes of Explanation

In this paper I will discuss Kims powerful explanatory exclusion argument against the causal efficacy of mental properties. Baker and Burge misconstrue Kims challenge if they understand it as being based on a purely metaphysical understanding of causation that has no grounding in an epistemological analysis of our successful scientific practices. As I will show, the emphasis on explanatory practices can only be effective in answering Kim if it is understood as being part of the dual-explanandum strategy. Furthermore, a fundamental problem of the contemporary debate about mental causation consists in the fact that all sides take very different examples to be paradigmatic for the relation between psychological and neurobiological explanations. Even if we should expect some alignment in the explanatory scope of neurobiology and psychology/folk-psychology, there is no reason to expect that all mental explanations are exempted by physical explanations, since they do not in general explain the same phenomena.     

The facial pattern of disgust, appetence, excited joy and relaxed joy: an improved facial EMG study

The purpose of the study was to investigate the facial muscle pattern of disgust in comparison to appetence and joy, using an improved facial EMG method. We analyzed the activity of nine facial muscles in forty healthy subjects. The subject group was randomly divided into two groups (oversaturated vs. hungry) of ten women and ten men each. Four different emotions (disgust, appetence, excited-joy and relaxed-joy) were induced by showing pictures from the IAPS. Pre-visible facial muscle activity was measured with a new facial EMG. A Visual Analog Scale (VAS) was established. Disgust is represented by a specific facial muscle pattern involving M.corrugator and M.orbicularis oculi, clearly distinguishing it from the facial patterns of appetence and joy. The intensity of disgust is stronger in a state of hunger than under oversaturation and is altogether stronger in females than in males. Our findings indicate the possibility to explore the entire emotion system successfully through a state-of-the-art psychophysiological method like our EMG device.     

Does the Quine/duhem Thesis Prevent Us from Defining Analyticity?

Quine claims that holism (i.e., the Quine-Duhem thesis) prevents us from defining synonymy and analyticity (section 2). In Word and Object, he dismisses a notion of synonymy which works well even if holism is true. The notion goes back to a proposal from Grice and Strawson and runs thus: R and S are synonymous iff for all sentences T we have that the logical conjunction of R and T is stimulus-synonymous to that of S and T. Whereas Grice and Strawson did not attempt to defend this definition, I try to show that it indeed gives us a satisfactory account of synonymy. Contrary to Quine, the notion is tighter than stimulus-synonymy – particularly when applied to sentences with less than critical semantic mass (section 3). Now according to Quine, analyticity could be defined in terms of synonymy, if synonymy were to make sense: A sentence is analytic iff synonymous to self-conditionals. This leads us to the following notion of analyticity: S is analytic iff, for all sentences T, the logical conjunction of S and T is stimulus-synonymous to T; an analytic sentence does not change the semantic mass of any theory to which it may be conjoined (section 4). This notion is tighter than Quine's stimulus-analyticity; unlike stimulus-analyticity, it does not apply to those sentences from the very center of our theories which can be assented to come what may, even though they are not synthetic in the intuitive sense (section 5).     

Parent-child sexual discussion: perceived communicator style and subsequent behavior

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between perceived parental sexual communicator style and adolescent sexual behavior and information accuracy. Two hundred thirty-four college students provided data on their perceptions of parental sexual communicator style as well as self-reports of sexual behavior and knowledge across three time frames (junior high school, high school, and college). Significant relationships were found between perceived parental sexual communicator styles and sexual activity, contraceptive use, and sexual knowledge accuracy. In addition, significant differences were found between males and females on their sexual knowledge accuracy (females reported a higher level of sexual knowledge than did males). The findings are discussed, and recommendations for future research in the area of parent-adolescent sexual communication are offered.     

Psychiatry under tyranny: A report on the political abuse of Romanian psychiatry during the ceausescu years

Romanians suffered incredible deprivations of every sort during the decades of Communist dictatorship. Most of the country’s 1,000 psychiatrists, and most of their patients, were victimized by the political system. A few psychiatrists actively engaged in practices amounting to torture. Many, however, became willing or unwilling participants in the political abuse of their profession. Such political abuses were fostered by abusive legislation and abusive law enforcement by the secret police. Abuses included: mass detentions in psychiatric hospitals of dissidents and political undesirables; abusive interpretation of the laws in detaining persons not suffering from mental illness; false, politically motivated diagnoses and treatment; and detention in secret facilities.     

Coming to terms: quantifying the benefits of linguistic coordination

Sharing a public language facilitates particularly efficient forms of joint perception and action by giving interlocutors refined tools for directing attention and aligning conceptual models and action. We hypothesized that interlocutors who flexibly align their linguistic practices and converge on a shared language will improve their cooperative performance on joint tasks. To test this prediction, we employed a novel experimental design, in which pairs of participants cooperated linguistically to solve a perceptual task. We found that dyad members generally showed a high propensity to adapt to each other's linguistic practices. However, although general linguistic alignment did not have a positive effect on performance, the alignment of particular task-relevant vocabularies strongly correlated with collective performance. In other words, the more dyad members selectively aligned linguistic tools fit for the task, the better they performed. Our work thus uncovers the interplay between social dynamics and sensitivity to task affordances in successful cooperation.     

Child Involvement in Interparental Conflict and Child Adjustment Problems: A Longitudinal Study of Violent Families

This study examined whether child involvement in interparental conflict predicts child externalizing and internalizing problems in violent families. Participants were 119 families (mothers and children) recruited from domestic violence shelters. One child between the ages of 7 and 10 years in each family (50 female, 69 male) completed measures of involvement in their parents’ conflicts, externalizing problems, and internalizing problems. Mothers completed measures of child externalizing and internalizing problems, and physical intimate partner violence. Measures were completed at three assessments, spaced 6 months apart. Results indicated that children’s involvement in their parents’ conflicts was positively associated with child adjustment problems. These associations emerged in between-subjects and within-subjects analyses, and for child externalizing as well as internalizing problems, even after controlling for the influence of physical intimate partner violence. In addition, child involvement in parental conflicts predicted later child reports of externalizing problems, but child reports of externalizing problems did not predict later involvement in parental conflicts. These findings highlight the importance of considering children’s involvement in their parents’ conflicts in theory and clinical work pertaining to high-conflict families.     

Development through interruptions and reparations – A case study of a dual challenging psychotherapy

The aim of this study was to understand how relational difficulties in psychotherapy may be handled to represent possibilities for change. Temporary interruptions and subsequent reestablishment of contact were chosen as the strategic focus in one severely challenging case of long term psychodynamic psychotherapy where outcome was known to be good. Interruptions and reestablishments were conceptualised by how the informants gave meaning to them. The choice of focus represented a strategic selection of events in the course of therapy where the regulation of the alliance by the therapist as well as by the patient was at stake. A detailed case record was studied and interviews with patient and therapist were conducted. A hermeneutical-phenomenological approach was used to analyse the material. The narrative dimension was important in structuring and interpreting the data. It was shown how important relational difficulties, such as mutual incompatible expectations and demands was handled both on a structural and interpersonal level, and some important steps and hallmarks of the healing process was identified. Close inspection of the course of events in psychotherapies is seen as a promising method for bringing a better understanding of how change processes unfold.     

Negative affectivity,perceived occupational stress,and health during organisational restructuring: A follow-up study

Abstract

This paper presents a survey of the relationships among multiple indicators of perceived occupational stress, trait negative affectivity, and later mental and physical health symptoms, among 157 Australian public servants during organisational restructuring. It was hypothesised that individual differences in negative affectivity would inflate the relationships between perceived stress and later strain as assessed by health symptoms in the follow-up phase. The possible role of negative affectivity in moderating the stress-strain relationships was also investigated. Multiple regression analyses conducted with depressive and physical health outcomes separately indicate that the only significant predictors of depressive symptoms were negative affectivity and role insufficiency, whereas the significant predictors of physical health symptoms were role ambiguity, physical environment, and negative affectivity. None of the interaction terms involving occupational stress and negative affectivity was found to be significant Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the research literature on work stress, particularly the role of negative affectivity in inflating the stress-strain relationship and indications for future research.     

Nonresponse in Employee Attitude Surveys: A Group-Level Analysis

Purpose

Given the common practice of using employee attitude surveys as a group-level intervention, this study used a group-level approach to examine the relationship between group satisfaction and group nonresponse.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Samples from four large organizations enabled job satisfaction scores to be aggregated to the work group level and correlated with group-level response rates. Additional regression analysis was conducted to control for a number of confounding variables at the group level.

Findings

Aggregate job satisfaction showed significant associations with group-level response rates across each of the samples examined. Work groups with higher aggregate job satisfaction had significantly higher response rates. Regression analyses showed that, in addition to job satisfaction, work group size, heterogeneity in tenure, and heterogeneity in gender composition all had significant effects on response rates.

Implications

Social influence processes may operate at the group level to increase homogeneity of job-relevant attitudes and similarity in survey response behavior. Future research should be designed to investigate the effects of group-level variables on nonresponse.

Originality/Value

The current study adds to the literature by demonstrating that work group variables may play an important role in explaining nonresponse in employee attitude surveys. Because the processes underlying survey response are likely to be different at different levels of analysis, the investigation of nonresponse as a group-level phenomenon creates new opportunities for research and practice.