The structure of lexical concepts

Jerry Fodor (Concepts: Where cognitive science went wrong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) famously argued that lexical concepts are unstructured. After examining the advantages and disadvantages of both the classical approach to concepts and Fodor’s conceptual atomism, I argue that some lexical concepts are, in fact, structured. Roughly stated, I argue that structured lexical concepts bear a necessary biconditional entailment relation to their structural constituents. I develop this account of the structure of lexical concepts within the framework of Pavel Tichy’s (The foundations of Frege’s logic. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1988) theory of constructions. I argue that concepts are constructions which can be combined by way of Tichy’s construction-forming operations of composition and closure and an additional operation, simplification, which I propose in section 6. The last of these construction-forming operations plays a central role in my account of lexical concept structure. Stated generally, structured lexical concepts are a result of simplifying their structural constituents.     

Common language effect size for correlations

The Pearson correlation coefficient can be translated to a common language effect size, which shows the probability of obtaining a certain value on one variable, given the value on the other variable. This common language effect size makes the size of a correlation coefficient understandable to laypeople. Three examples are provided to demonstrate the application of the common language effect size in interpreting Pearson correlation coefficients and multiple correlation coefficients.     

An investigation of the impact of young children's self‐knowledge of trustworthiness on school adjustment: A test of the realistic self‐knowledge and positive illusion models

The study aimed to examine the relationship between self‐knowledge of trustworthiness and young children's school adjustment. One hundred and seventy‐three (84 male and 89 female) children from school years 1 and 2 in the United Kingdom (mean age 6 years 2 months) were tested twice over 1‐year. Children's trustworthiness was assessed using: (a) self‐report at Time 1 and Time 2; (b) peers' reports at Time 1 and Time 2; and (c) teacher‐reports at Time 2. School adjustment was assessed by child‐rated school‐liking and the Short‐Form Teacher Rating Scale of School Adjustment (Short‐Form TRSSA). Longitudinal quadratic relationships were found between school adjustment and children's self‐knowledge, using peer‐reported trustworthiness as a reference: more accurate self‐knowledge of trustworthiness predicted increases in school adjustment. Comparable concurrent quadratic relationships were found between teacher‐rated school adjustment and children's self‐knowledge, using teacher‐reported trustworthiness as a reference, at Time 2. The findings support the conclusion that young children's psychosocial adjustment is best accounted for by the realistic self‐knowledge model ( Colvin & Block, 1994 ).     

Irish norms for the SCORE‐15 and 28 from a national telephone survey

In this study a 29‐item version of the systemic clinical outcome and routine evaluation (SCORE), which contained all items from the SCORE‐15 and SCORE‐28, was used to develop norms for both the 15 and the 28 versions of the SCORE from the same sample. In a random digit dialling telephone survey, a stratified national random sample of 403 adults living in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland completed the SCORE and brief measures of family and personal adjustment. Using receiver operating characteristic curve analyses, cut‐off points for the SCORE‐28 and 15 were found to identify families of children with significant emotional and behavioural problems. We also established 90^th percentile points and percentages of cases falling above each scale point for both versions of the SCORE. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that, for both versions of the SCORE, the data fit the three factor solutions found in previous studies. The SCORE scales also had significant correlations with measures of family, parental and child adjustment, and negligible correlations with socioeconomic variables and social desirability response set.