A set of semantic norms for German and Italian

The psychological community frequently investigates semantic norms of properties produced by native speakers after being presented concept words, and these norms are of great value for a wide variety of psychological experiments. This paper presents a new set of norms that includes a collection of properties from a production experiment for the German and the Italian languages. Stimuli consisted of 50 concrete objects taken from 10 different concept classes. The data comprise annotations of semantic relation types and several statistical measures, which facilitate the comparison of the two target languages.     

Indeterminacy of fair infinite lotteries

In ‘Fair Infinite Lotteries’ (FIL), Wenmackers and Horsten use non-standard analysis to construct a family of nicely-behaved hyperrational-valued probability measures on sets of natural numbers. Each probability measure in FIL is determined by a free ultrafilter on the natural numbers: distinct free ultrafilters determine distinct probability measures. The authors reply to a worry about a consequent ‘arbitrariness’ by remarking, “A different choice of free ultrafilter produces a different ... probability function with the same standard part but infinitesimal differences.” They illustrate this remark with the example of the sets of odd and even numbers. Depending on the ultrafilter, either each of these sets has probability 1/2, or the set of odd numbers has a probability infinitesimally higher than 1/2 and the set of even numbers infinitesimally lower. The point of the current paper is simply that the amount of indeterminacy is much greater than acknowledged in FIL: there are sets of natural numbers whose probability is far more indeterminate than that of the set of odd or the set of even numbers.     

Biopsychosocial correlates of weight status perception in Australian adolescents

This study examined the utility of the biopsychosocial model to predict accuracy of weight status perception among Australian adolescents. The factors included in this framework were: age, gender, and BMI-z (biological factors); satisfaction with body weight and shape (psychological factors); socioeconomic status, peer weight (social factors). Cross-sectional data, including measured height and weight, and self-reported weight status, was obtained from 2954 adolescents (mean age = 14.6, 56% male) who participated in the It's Your Move! study. Accuracy of weight status perception was associated with gender, BMI-z, SES, and weight and shape satisfaction. Gender differences in weight status perception were moderated by satisfaction with weight. In boys, weight satisfaction was associated with perceived healthy weight; in girls, it was associated with perceived healthy weight and underweight. Moderately overweight adolescents are most at risk of underestimating their weight status and could benefit from education about the boundaries of the healthy weight range.     

Counseling and Guidance in Non-Public Schools

The provision of counseling and guidance services in the secondary schools of one of the nation's largest non-public school systems is examined and compared with services offered in publicly supported schools from the same geographical area. Findings indicate that the non-public school lags far behind the public school in the provision of counseling services for its pupils and that the persons assigned to counsel in non-public schools are not as well qualified as the public school counselors. This lag is traced to a difference in financial support, and a recommendation is made to investigate methods of solving this problem.     

The logical structure of linguistic commitment II: Systems of relevant commitment entailment

In The Logical Structure of Linguistic Commitment I (The Journal of Philosophical Logic 23 (1994), 369–400), we sketch a linguistic theory (inspired by Brandom's Making it Explicit) which includes an expressivist account of the implication connective, : the role of is to make explicit the inferential proprieties among possible commitments which proprieties determine, in part, the significances of sentences. This motivates reading (A B) as commitment to A is, in part, commitment to B. Our project is to study the logic of . LSLC I approximates (A B) as anyone committed to A is committed to B, ignoring issues of whether A is relevant to B. The present paper includes considerations of relevance, motivating systems of relevant commitment entailment related to the systems of commitment entailment of LSLC I. We also consider the relevance logics that result from a commitment reading of Fine's semantics for relevance logics, a reading that Fine suggests.     

Leisure patterns among retired workers: Spillover or compensatory trends?

Leisure behavior patterns after retirement were compared retrospectively with those of the preretirement period. The data, which related to former industrial and service workers in Israel, were examined within the context of the spillover and compensatory hypotheses, with retirement representing a non work sphere. Findings revealed a spillover effect, characterized by a high degree of passive, solitary leisure behavior both before and after retirement.     

Anxiety and aggression of high and low assertive persons following conflict

This experiment examined changes in anxiety and differences in aggression for high and low assertive women when different degrees of conflict were encountered. As predicted, low assertive women were intially more uneasy or anxious than high assertive women when they were placed in a conflictual situation. When the level of actual conflict was low, the level of anxiety of low assertive women decreased. However, when the actual level of conflict was high the anxiety level of low assertive women remained unchanged. These results were taken as support for the fear of conflict hypothesis which predicted that the reduction in anxiety for low assertive persons is contingent upon whether or not the anticipated conflict is actually encountered. The results also indicated that high assertive women were not significantly more aggressive than low assertive women. This finding provided support for Galassi's position that assertiveness and aggression are distinct concepts.     

SUPERVALUATION FIXED-POINT LOGICS OF TRUTH

Michael Kremer defines fixed-point logics of truth based on Saul Kripke’s fixed point semantics for languages expressing their own truth concepts. Kremer axiomatizes the strong Kleene fixed-point logic of truth and the weak Kleene fixed-point logic of truth, but leaves the axiomatizability question open for the supervaluation fixed-point logic of truth and its variants. We show that the principal supervaluation fixed point logic of truth, when thought of as consequence relation, is highly complex: it is not even analytic. We also consider variants, engendered by a stronger notion of ‘fixed point’, and by variant supervaluation schemes. A ‘logic’ is often thought of, not as a consequence relation, but as a set of sentences – the sentences true on each interpretation. We axiomatize the supervaluation fixed-point logics so conceived.