The Tractarian Operation N and Expressive Completeness

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, I visit the Fogelin–Geach-dispute, criticizeMiller's interpretation of the Geachian notationN(x:N(fx)) and conclude that Fogelin's argumentagainst the expressive completeness of the Tractariansystem of logic is unacceptable and that the adoptionof the Geachian notation N(x:fx) would not violate TLP5.32. Second, I prove that a system of quantificationtheory with finite domains and with N as the solefundamental operation is expressively complete. Lastly, I argue that the Tractarian system is apredicate-eliminated many-sorted theory (withoutidentity) with finite domains and with N as the solefundamental operation, and thus is expressivelycomplete.     

Making sense of mentoring or mentoring making sense? Reflections on the mentoring process by adult mentors with young people†

This paper sets out to look at the processes of mentoring from the perspectives of adult mentors who were interviewed as part of a wider study of young people's perceptions and understandings of informal mentoring processes. It seeks to clarify the processes of mentoring within the context of the ‘risk society’ by posing the question, how do young people and mentors perceive these processes? What do mentors get out of the mentoring relationship? Findings from a qualitative study of informal mentoring relationships are drawn on to suggest that the mentors perceive the experience of being identified as a mentor and the processes of mentoring in highly positive terms. It is argued that this provides a form of ‘cultural capital for mentors’ in helping them to make sense of the challenges and dilemmas they face as adults. It is concluded that this finding has important implications for the design of mentoring interventions with young people. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of health disparities among transgender adults in Colorado (USA) by race and income

Transgender individuals face heightened risks for discrimination, harassment, and violence that impact their psychosocial well-being and physical health. However, few studies have thoroughly examined the general physical and mental health of transgender adults or within-group health differences by race/ethnicity and income. To that end, after controlling for health insurance status, age, and engagement in exercise, this study asks: (a) Are transgender people of color more likely than White transgender individuals to experience poor health outcomes? and (b) Is lower annual household income among transgender adults associated with poorer health outcomes? The study analyzes secondary data from a survey of transgender adults (N = 417) in one state in the western United States using multiple linear regression and logistic regression models. Results showed that transgender people of color had significantly greater odds than their White counterparts of having arthritis/rheumatoid arthritis/gout/lupus/fibromyalgia, or asthma but lower odds of being told by a provider that they had depression. Having a lower income was significantly associated with worse general health as well as multiple indicators of poor physical and mental health, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. We discuss implications for health care delivery for transgender people and for future research.     

Developmental continuity? Crawling,cruising, and walking

This research examined developmental continuity between "cruising" (moving sideways holding onto furniture for support) and walking. Because cruising and walking involve locomotion in an upright posture, researchers have assumed that cruising is functionally related to walking. Study 1 showed that most infants crawl and cruise concurrently prior to walking, amassing several weeks of experience with both skills. Study 2 showed that cruising infants perceive affordances for locomotion over an adjustable gap in a handrail used for manual support, but despite weeks of cruising experience, cruisers are largely oblivious to the dangers of gaps in the floor beneath their feet. Study 3 replicated the floor-gap findings for infants taking their first independent walking steps, and showed that new walkers also misperceive affordances for locomoting between gaps in a handrail. The findings suggest that weeks of cruising do not teach infants a basic fact about walking: the necessity of a floor to support their body. Moreover, this research demonstrated that developmental milestones that are temporally contiguous and structurally similar might have important functional discontinuities.     

Newborns' preference for goal-directed actions

The central role of sensory-motor representations in cognitive functions is almost universally accepted. However, determining the link between motor execution and its sensory counterpart and when, during ontogenesis, this link originates are still under investigation. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether at birth this link is already present and 2-day-old newborns are able to discriminate between visual cues indicating goal-directed or non-goal-directed actions. Here, with a preferential looking technique, a hand grasping a ball was the observed movement and we orthogonally manipulated the three factors necessary to successfully reach the goal: (a) presence of the ball, (b) direction of the arm movement, and (c) hand shaping. Results indicated that newborns orient more frequently and look longer at a hand shape for whole hand prehension but only when the movement is directed away from the body and toward the external world. In addition, newborns prefer the away from the body movement only when the object is present. We argue that newborns prefer a movement directed toward the external world only when it may develop into a purposeful movement because of the presence of the to-be-grasped object. Overall, our results support the existence of primitive sensory-motor associations since the first days after birth.     

Competence in Coping with Future-Related Stress in Adolescents from France,Italy, Great Britain,and Germany

The present study investigated how European adolescents cope with perceived future-related stress. Altogether 3,154 adolescents (mean age of 15 years) from four countries (n = 1,071 Italians, n = 1,433 Germans, n = 308 French, and n = 341 British) participated in the study. They completed the Problem Questionnaire, which assesses future-related stress, and the CASQ, which assesses how three coping styles (active coping, internal coping, and withdrawal) are used to deal with future-related stress. German and British adolescents showed low levels of stress, whereas French and Italian adolescents had high levels. All adolescents anticipated future-related problems but did not portray their futures negatively. In addition, they dealt with future-related stress actively and showed high levels of coping competence. Adolescents used active coping strategies most frequently, followed by thinking about possible solutions. Dysfunctional coping strategies (e.g., withdrawal) were used much less often. The effects of age, gender, and family variables on stress perception and coping style were negligible. Overall, our findings highlight the tenets of positive psychology by revealing that adolescents are concerned about their futures and that they show high agency in dealing with future-related problems. Further, the findings are relevant for positive youth development programs, especially those which endorse positive orientation to the future and coping competence.     

The Communicative Experience: Between Inexpressibile and Elusive

This is a commentary on Cornejo’s Intersubjectivity as co-phenomenology: from the holism to the being-in-the-world-with-others, co-phenomenology, in which meaning is defined as a construal of phenomenological experience, not an individual creation, but rather an intersubjective one. In this paper the basic question is how language expresses the world and things and, consequently, what vision of the world is expressed by language and what relationship it creates with the real. Language lives for and by this constant aspiration to say the inexpressible and it tries to express the driving inner movement of the real through references and interlacing, by multiplying the relational threads of meanings. For example, the phonetic gesture performs for the speaker and his listener a certain structuring of experience, a certain modulation of existence. This is a communicative dimension in which meaning is always a process. It is the situation of co-feeling between subjects, in which understanding is achieved, as defined by Cornejo in his essay. Words, vowels, phonemes from this analysis are not only the conceptual and the final sense of words, but also their emotional sense, are ways to sing the world and they represent the emotional essence.

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Voluntary and involuntary attention have different consequences: the effect of perceptual difficulty

We propose that voluntary and involuntary attention affect different mechanisms and have different consequences for performance measured in reaction time. Voluntary attention enhances the perceptual representation whereas involuntary attention affects the tendency to respond to stimuli in one location or another. In a spatial-cueing paradigm, we manipulated perceptual difficulty and compared voluntary and involuntary attention. For the voluntary-attention condition, the spatial cue was predictive of the target location, whereas in the involuntary-attention condition it was not. Increasing perceptual difficulty increased the attention effect with voluntary attention, but decreased it with involuntary attention. Thus voluntary and involuntary attention have different consequences when perceptual difficulty is manipulated and hence are probably caused by different mechanisms.