Divine foreknowledge and Newcomb's paradox

Conclusion Newcomb's Paradox thus serves as an illustrative vindication of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. A proper understanding of the counterfactual conditionals involved enables us to see that the pastness of God's knowledge serves neither to make God's beliefs counterfactually closed nor to rob us of genuine freedom. It is evident that our decisions determine God's past beliefs about those decisions and do so without invoking an objectionable backward causation. It is also clear that in the context of foreknowledge, backtracking counterfactuals are entirely appropriate and that no alteration of the past occurs. With the justification of the one box strategy, the death of theological fatalism seems ensured. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A0985044 00003     

Causal Inference from Noise

Correlation is not causation is one of the mantras of the sciences—a cautionary warning especially to fields like epidemiology and pharmacology where the seduction of compelling correlations naturally leads to causal hypotheses. The standard view from the epistemology of causation is that to tell whether one correlated variable is causing the other, one needs to intervene on the system—the best sort of intervention being a trial that is both randomized and controlled. In this paper, we argue that some purely correlational data contains information that allows us to draw causal inferences: statistical noise. Methods for extracting causal knowledge from noise provide us with an alternative to randomized controlled trials that allows us to reach causal conclusions from purely correlational data.     

A Review of Interventions Designed to Increase Sharing Behaviors in Children with Social Delays or Deficits

Sharing materials is a complex social behavior that may lead to long-term development of friendships and concomitant increases in related prosocial behaviors. Given the complexities of sharing behaviors, children with social delays or deficits may not recognize when, how, and with whom to share. Because children with social delays or deficits, especially those with disabilities, may not engage in typical sharing behaviors, and because these behaviors are important, identifying interventions for sharing and related social behaviors are crucial. The purpose of this review was to identify sharing interventions, evaluate methodological rigor, and assess intervention effectiveness. Twenty single-case designs published in 11 articles were included. Some studies reported variable results and had considerable methodological limitations. Results of high-quality studies are promising and provide a foundation for future research on sharing behaviors.     

Health Care Expenditure and Economic Growth in SAARC Countries (1995–2012): A Panel Causality Analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between health care expenditure (HCE) and economic growth and to the causality between HCE and economic growth in the selected South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries by employing the Panel cointegration and panel causality analysis over the period 1995–2012. Per capita income, labor force, literacy rate, and elderly population of age 65 and above are used an independent variables, as these variables are considered as main indicator of human and physical capital. For examining the time series properties of the data and long run relationships between HCE and economic growth, the panel unit root and panel cointegration tests are employed. The panel Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) method is used to estimate long run parameters, whereas the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) method is employed to estimate the short run parameters. For the panel causality among HCE and per capita GDP, a new technique developed by Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) is used. The results reveal that income elasticity of HCE is less than unity in the long run as well as in the short run. Furthermore, there is an evidence of unidirectional causality running from per capita GDP to HCE in the South Asian countries in the short run. Two-way causation between per capita GDP, labor force, literacy rate, and elderly population of age 65 and above is also observed. We also found two-way causality between labor force, elderly population of age 65 and health care expenditure.     

Developing rich and quickly accessed knowledge of an artificial grammar

In contrast to prior research, our results demonstrate that it is possible to acquire rich, highly accurate, and quickly accessed knowledge of an artificial grammar. Across two experiments, we trained participants by using a string-edit task and highlighting relatively low-level (letters), medium-level (chunks), or high-level (structural; i.e., grammar diagram) information to increase the efficiency of grammar acquisition. In both experiments, participants who had structural information available during training generated more highly accurate strings during a cued generation test than did those in other conditions, with equivalent speed. Experiment 2 revealed that structural information enhanced acquisition only when relevant features were highlighted during the task using animation. We suggest that two critical components for producing enhanced performance from provided model-based knowledge involve (1) using the model to acquire experience-based knowledge, rather than using a representation of the model to generate responses, and (2) receiving that knowledge precisely when it is needed during training.     

Does suppressing negative emotion impair subsequent emotions? Two experience sampling studies

Motivation and Emotion - Suppression is one of the most commonly studied emotion-regulation strategies and a variety of studies have shown that suppression of emotions is associated with adverse...     

Anxiety symptom interpretation in high-anxious, defensive high-anxious, low-anxious and repressor sport performers

For the first time in a sport setting this study examined the intensity and direction of the competitive state anxiety response in collegiate athletes as a function of four different coping styles: high-anxious, defensive high-anxious, low-anxious and repressors. Specifically, the study predicted that repressors would interpret competitive state anxiety symptoms as more facilitative compared to high-anxious, defensive high-anxious, and low-anxious performers. Separate Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVA) were performed on the intensity and direction subscales of the modified Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2). A significant main effect was identified for trait worry revealing that low trait anxious athletes reported lower intensities of cognitive and somatic anxiety and higher self-confidence and interpreted these as more facilitative than high trait anxious athletes. The prediction that performers with a repressive coping style would interpret state anxiety symptoms as more facilitative than performers with non-repressive coping styles was not supported.     

Emotional exchange in mother-child dyads: stability, mutual influence, and associations with maternal depression and child problem behavior.

This study examined the stability of the child and maternal affective expression and maternal responsiveness and the mutual influence of child and maternal expression of emotion. The authors tested whether maternal depression and child problem behavior were associated with the pattern of emotional exchange within the mother-child dyads. The sample consisted of 69 mother-child dyads (children aged 2-5 years), with 32 of the mothers having childhood-onset depression. Mothers were mostly stable in their affective expression (positive and negative) and responsiveness, whereas children were only stable in positive expression. Within the dyads, mothers seemed to play a more important role in regulating children's later emotional expression. Maternal depression was associated with concurrent maternal responsiveness and their reduced positive expression over time. Results are discussed in relation to the differential function of parental general positivity and responsiveness and the interpersonal transmission of emotional problems.     

Considerations for the Use of Sentence Completion Tests

Often, sentence completion tests are administered to clients without a clear sense of the clinical questions to be investigated, and, therefore, the appropriate sentence completion instrument to be used. The multitude of forms that have evolved in the last fifty years have made it difficult for clinicians to make informed decisions about which form to use and for what purpose. This article presents ten general guidelines or considerations for the effective use of this popular but sometimes misused psychological assessment method. Practitioners are urged to consider such issues as oral versus written presentation of items, item content in terms of positive or negative stimulus pull, the structure of sentence stems, the original purpose of a given test in regard to intended population and theoretical orientation of the author, and the empirical validity of tests.