A new theory of content I: Basic content

Philosophers of science as divergent as the inductivist Carnap and the deductivist Popper share the notion that the (logical) content of a proposition is given by its consequence class. I claim that this notion of content is (a) unintuitive and (b) inappropriate for many of the formal needs of philosophers of science. The basic problem is that given this notion of content, for any arbitraryp andq, (p Vq) will count as part of the content of bothp andq. In other words, any arbitraryp andq share some common content. This notion of content has disastrous effects on, for instance, Carnap's attempts to explicate the notion of confirmation in terms of probabilistic favorable relevance, and Popper's attempts to define verisimilitude. After briefly reviewing some of the problems of the traditional notion of content I present an alternative notion of (basic) content which (a) better fits our intuitions about content and (b) better serves the formal needs of philosophers of science.     

Primitive representation and misrepresentation

This paper develops a statistical approach to the problem of primitive representation. Representation of the kind commonly attributed to litmus paper, fuel gauges and tree rings occurs when, so to speak, there is a sufficiently good correlation between two variables. The fundamental distinction between misrepresentation and non-representation is explained in terms of the notion of an informationally useful correlation. The paper further argues that the statistical approach satisfactorily resolves well known puzzles such as Fodor's disjunction problem.     

PERCEPTION OF THE EMOTIONAL CONTENT OF SPEECH BY CANADIAN AND MEXICAN CHILDREN,ADOLESCENTS, AND ADULTS

The study at hand was undertaken to assess and compare the respective abilities of Canadian and Mexican subjects to identify emotion in speech. Canadian and Mexican female teachers, speaking whatever words they wished in their own languages, attempted to simulate four emotional states (i.e., happiness, sadness, love, and anger). After the initial recording, these samples were passed through an electronic filter which removed the semantic content while leaving intact the tonal qualities of the speech. The filtered vocal expressions were played to Canadian and Mexican subjects 5, 9, 13, 17, 25, 45, and 65 years of age. From 5 through 25, there was a progressive increase with age in ability to identify the emotion expressed. Ability did level off, however, and eventually even decreased (such that the 65 year-olds performed less accurately than the other adult groups). Overall, the Mexican subjects were significantly more sensitive to emotion in speech than their Canadian counterparts. As well, both Canadian and Mexican subjects judged speech samples from Mexican speakers more accurately than those from Canadian speakers.     

Cognitive and attentional deficits in children vulnerable to psychopathology

Cognitive and attentional deficits were assessed in children with either a schizophrenic, an affectively disordered or a normal parent. The children were grouped both by their parents' DSM-II diagnoses (broadly defined group of schizophrenics and heterogeneous group of depressives)and by a new set of diagnoses (narrowly defined group of schizophrenics, unipolar depressive group and bipolar group). Children whose parents met the more stringent criteria for schizoprhenia performed somewhat more deviantly than children whose parents met only DSM-II criteria. In addition, the importance of splitting the heterogeneous depressive group into more homogeneous subgroups is indicated by the findings that children of unipolar parents generally could not be distinguished from children whose parents are schizophrenic. On the other hand, children of bipolar parents performed reliably better than children of schizophrenics. These findings are viewed within the context of current high-risk studies and psychological deficit literature and suggest that diagnostic issues require more attention by researchers in these areas.This research was supported by Grant MH 21145 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors are indebted to Lina Jandorf for assistance in testing the children and with the data analyses.     

Sexist attitudes and authoritarian personality characteristics among Australian adolescents

This paper examines the suggestion that sexism is a central feature of authoritarianism among young people. One hundred seventeen Australian adolescent schoolchildren completed questionnaires containing Phillips' (1979a, Child Study Journal, 9, 21–35) measure of classical authoritarianism for children and balanced measures of two other aspects of authoritarianism, namely, directiveness, modified from Ray (1976, Human Relations, 29, 307–325) and attitude to authority, modified from Rigby and Rump (1981, Journal of Psychology, 109, 109–118). Factor analyses of the results for classical authoritarianism replicated Phillips' earlier finding with younger schoolchildren that eight items identified as reflecting a sexist attitude loaded substantially on a first varimax rotated factor. These eight items constituted a reliable sexism scale (α = .80), which correlated significantly with the remainder of the classical authoritarianism scale, after controlling for the contribution of age (partial r = .30). However, the partial correlations with balanced measures of directiveness and attitude to authority were not significant. These results suggest that sexism may be one aspect of authoritarianism, rather than a central feature.     

Educational and career aspirations of sixteen-year-olds Ken

Data obtained at the 16-year stage of the National Child Development Study provide information on the job expectations, aspirations and educational plans of some 12,000 young people in their final year of compulsory schooling. The interrelationships among these measures, and the associations with, for example, sex, social class and ability, are examined.     

An analysis of tactile letter confusions

A confusion matrix of the whole block capital letters of the alphabet was obtained so as to examine the nature of tactile letter recognition, using a 17 by 17 matrix of tactile stimulators placed against blind subjects’ backs. A hierarchical cluster analysis and a nonmetric multidimensional scaling technique were applied to the matrix. The results of the two analyses were consistent with each other and indicated that at least three independent basic letter features—enclosing shapes, vertical parallel lines, andangle of lines—play important parts in tactile letter recognition. Most confusion may be attributable to displacement of the apparent loci, omission or fusion of loci of stimulation, and failure to detect gaps in the tactile letters.     

Imagery ability and the identification of hands: A chronometric analysis

In a replication of Cooper and Shepard's (1975) study of hand recognition, it was found that individual differences in imagery ability had a significant influence on reaction times to such stimuli (Experiment 1). However, it was found (Experiment 2) that individual difference effects were only seen if prior instructions to use imagery were given to the subjects.     

Children's use of sequence information in partially predictable reaction-time sequences

Second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children and adults performed a four-choice reaction time task with partially predictable sequences and 250-, 500-, and 750-msec response-to-stimulus intervals. The relative advantage for in-sequence as opposed to out-of-sequence events was independent of the response-to-stimulus interval for all ages. Children, but not adults, were slower for nonrepeated than repeated out-of sequence events and this advantage for repeated signals decreased as age increased. A second experiment extended the range of intervals tested to zero. Second graders and adults responded to four-choice partially predictable sequences with 0-, 250-, and 500-msec response-to-stimulus intervals. As in the first experiment, the difference between in-sequence and out-of-sequence events did not vary with the response-to-stimulus interval. The results suggest that both children and adults are able to process advance sequence probability information about a subsequent event in parallel with an ongoing response.