When knowledge is not enough: the phenomenon of goal neglect in preschool children

We argue that the concept of goal neglect can be fruitfully applied to understand children's potential problems in experimental tasks and real-world settings. We describe an assessment of goal neglect developed for administration to preschool children and report data on two measures derived from this task alongside the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) and an opposite color response inhibition task. The propensity to neglect initial task cues was uniquely linked to response inhibition, whereas neglect of a later cue was uniquely linked to the DCCS. Additional evidence suggests that recovery from neglect can occur and shows that goal neglect varies with the cognitive transparency of the signifying cue. Data demonstrate the importance of, and place constraints on, current theories of information regulation and foreground the notion of graded representations in working memory and executive functioning.     

No-harm contracts: a review of what we know

Few events in the practice of a mental health clinician can be as devastating as the suicide of a client. Although suicide is a rare occurrence, clinicians face assessment of clients' risk for harming themselves on a regular basis. One well-accepted and widely practiced intervention for suicidal ideation is the use of no-harm contracts (NHC), although opinions about NHCs range from enthusiasm to apathy. The existing research does not support the use of such contracts as a method for preventing suicide, nor for protecting clinicians from malpractice litigation in the event of a client suicide.     

Chinese Landscape Painting and the Study of Being: An Imagined Encounter Between Martin Heidegger and Xia Gui

In this paper, we pose a speculative encounter between Heidegger and the Chinese Song Dynasty landscape painter Xia Gui. Our intention is to reassess Heidegger’s theory of the fourfold. By placing the concept in a cross-cultural context, we argue that Heidegger was essentially correct in that the world is structured as a fold between interrelated elements. At the same time, we challenge the quantity and quality of the folded elements. If one turns to the work of Xia Gui in conjunction with relevant Daoist texts, what one finds is a threefold structure to the world, composed of earth, sky, and mortals without Heidegger’s emphasis on divinities. In conclusion, we suggest that studying the folding structure of the world ought to be done through cultural comparisons of philosophical and aesthetic traditions in order to understand the potentiality for worldhood as an xfold.     

A Global Dialogue on Learning and Studying

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Sexual Minority Stress and Social Support Explain the Association between Sexual Identity with Physical and Mental Health Problems among Young Lesbian and Bisexual Women

Bisexual women report more physical and psychological health problems than lesbian women do, which may be attributed to greater sexual minority stress and less social support. However, many studies combine lesbian and bisexual women into a single group. The current study examined if sexual minority stress and social support mediated the association between women’s sexual identity (lesbian or bisexual) and health-related outcomes. A total of 650 U.S. young adult lesbian (n?=?227) and bisexual (n?=?423) women completed an online survey about sexual minority stress, social support, and physical and mental health problems. Bisexual women reported more physical and mental health problems. A sequential mediation model showed that bisexual women reported greater sexual minority stress than lesbian women, which in turn was associated with less social support, which was associated with more physical and mental health problems. Greater sexual minority stress and lower social support may help explain why bisexual women report more health-related problems than lesbian women. The results of the present study support the importance of examining risk and protective factors for health problems separately for lesbian and bisexual women. Health-related intervention programs that target sexual minority women may need to be tailored differently for lesbian and bisexual women.

     

Peer interaction and maltreated children: Social network and epigenetic models

The epigenetic and social network models of social development are discussed. The relative efficacy of the two approaches is put to empirical test by examining the relationship between inadequate attachment relationships and subsequent peer interaction. Infants in a day care center who either had or had not experienced maltreatment were observed with their mothers and with peers. The social network model was supported in that there were few differences between maltreated and non-maltreated infants on peer interaction behavior while the expected differences obtained on mother-infant interaction variables. The use of day care for maltreated children is recommended.     

A computational unification of cognitive behavior and emotion

Existing models that integrate emotion and cognition generally do not fully specify why cognition needs emotion and conversely why emotion needs cognition. In this paper, we present a unified computational model that combines an abstract cognitive theory of behavior control (PEACTIDM) and a detailed theory of emotion (based on an appraisal theory), integrated in a theory of cognitive architecture (Soar). The theory of cognitive control specifies a set of required computational functions and their abstract inputs and outputs, while the appraisal theory specifies in more detail the nature of these inputs and outputs and an ontology for their representation. We argue that there is a surprising functional symbiosis between these two independently motivated theories that leads to a deeper theoretical integration than has been previously obtained in other computational treatments of cognition and emotion. We use an implemented model in Soar to test the feasibility of the resulting integrated theory, and explore its implications and predictive power in several task domains.     

Interpreting conjunctions

The interpretation generated from a sentence of the form P and Q can often be different to that generated by Q and P, despite the fact that and has a symmetric truth-conditional meaning. We experimentally investigated to what extent this difference in meaning is due to the connective and and to what extent it is due to order of mention of the events in the sentence. In three experiments, we collected interpretations of sentences in which we varied the presence of the conjunction, the order of mention of the events, and the type of relation holding between the events (temporally vs. causally related events). The results indicated that the effect of using a conjunction was dependent on the discourse relation between the events. Our findings contradict a narrative marker theory of and, but provide partial support for a single-unit theory derived from Carston (2002). The results are discussed in terms of conjunction processing and implicatures of temporal order.