Information processing and aspects of visual attention in children with the DSM-III-R diagnosis “pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified” (PDDNOS): II. sustained attention

A group of 15 nonhyperactive children of normal intelligence with the DSM-III-R diagnosis “pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified” (PDDNOS) performed a sustained attention task. Adopting a cognitive-energetical linear stage model of human information processing, we investigated whether task performances deteriorated due to a diminishing level of arousal, activation, or by the active ‘effortful’ mode of information processing. In comparison to an age-matched group of normal children, the patients showed no sharper decrease in perceptual sensitivity (d'). D' is assumed to be a measure of arousal. However, the children with PDDNOS exhibited large fluctuations in their response bias beta (β), which is assumed to be a measure of activation. During the first part of the task, they shifted between under- and overestimating negative responses. In the latter part of the task this pattern altered to significantly overestimating the number of negative responses. This indicates that the patients were not able to appropriately tune to the task-inherent response probability. Moreover, as compared to the control children, the patients showed a significantly sharper decrease in hit rate with time on task, despite the fact that feedback was given on the errors. The findings are interpreted as an increasing loss of the ability to control the response bias due to difficulties in maintaining the voluntary effortful mode of processing information with prolonged time on task.     

Cognitive components of troubleshooting strategies

This study investigated the kinds of knowledge necessary to learn an important troubleshooting strategy, elimination. A total of 50 college-level students searched for the source of failures in simple digital networks. Production system modelling suggested that students using a common but simpler backtracking strategy would learn the more advanced elimination strategy if they applied certain domain-specific knowledge and the general-purpose problem-solving strategy of reductio ad absurdum. In an experiment, students solved network troubleshooting problems after being trained with either the domain-specific knowledge, the reductio ad absurdum strategy, both types of knowledge, or neither. Students needed both the domain-specific and general knowledge identified by the models in order to significantly increase their elimination use.     

Beyond Millianism

In Beyond Rigidity, Soames attempts to defend Millianism by articulating a novel account of the semantics and pragmatics of sentences containing names. Soames uses this account both to respond to the objection that Millianism unintuitively allows the unrestricted substitution of coreferential names in propositional attitude contexts, and to generate a positive argument for Millianism. I argue that the positive argument fails, and that Soames’s account of the semantics and pragmatics of sentences containing names is inconsistent with Millianism.

Attitudes of Potential Providers Towards Preconceptional Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Screening

To determine the attitudes of potential providers (general practitioners and Community Health Service workers) towards preconceptual cystic fibrosis (CF) carrier screening and to determine which factors are associated with a positive attitude. A survey was conducted among 200 general practitioners (GPs) and 134 Community Health Service (CHS) workers. Fifty-two percent of the eligible GPs participated and 84% of the CHS workers. Fifty-five percent of the GPs and 73% of the CHS workers had a positive attitude towards routinely offering CF carrier screening, and more than 80% were in favor of informing the target population about the possibility of having a CF carrier test. A positive attitude was associated with (a) high perceived severity of CF, (b) religion (nonreligious compared to Reformed), (c) low perceived barriers, and (d) high perceived test reliability. The care providers who are most likely to be involved in a preconceptual CF carrier screening program, i.e. GPs and CHS workers, generally have a positive attitude towards the implementation of such a program.     

Art as the Silence of the World. An Attempt at a Phenomenological Interpretation

This paper provides an analysis of the paradoxical definition of art as the silence of the world, as presented in Maurice Blanchot’s The Space of Literature. The definition is analysed phenomenologically, by treating the world as the universal horizon of all experiences. The paper presents two possible interpretations of Blanchot’s statement. First, a possibility is considered that, according to Blanchot, in genuine artistic experience the mundane everyday life falls silent, and an autonomous fictional world opens up. The paper argues that while Blanchot does oppose art to everyday life, this interpretation is insufficient. Firstly, because on the basis of the phenomenological premise, all possible worlds fall within the universal world-horizon, and secondly, the function Blanchot attributes to art is considerably more radical, as when he speaks about the directedness of art outside of all possible worlds. While such an aim may seem impossible from the viewpoint of the phenomenological premise, the second part of the paper demonstrates that it can indeed be meaningfully interpreted on the basis of Martin Heidegger’s transcendent approach to the world. According to this interpretation, while the phenomenological premise prevents all discussion of places and experiences outside the world, a liminal experience can nevertheless be discussed. If this is true, it is not an entity within the world which opens up, but rather the world-horizon itself in the form of an anxious silence.