Normative Conflicts and The Logic of 'Ought'

On the face of it, normative conflicts are commonplace. Yet standard deontic logic declares them to be logically impossible. That prompts the question, What are the proper principles of normative reasoning if such conflicts are possible? This paper examines several alternatives that have been proposed for a logic of ‘ought’ that can accommodate normative conflicts, and finds all of them unsatisfactory as measured against three criteria of adequacy. It then introduces a new logic that does meet all three criteria, and so allows for the possibility of genuine normative conflicts.     

Neighborhoods for Entailment

This paper presents a neighborhood semantics for logics of entailment. It begins with a minimal system Min that expresses the most fundamental assumptions about the entailment relation, and continues by examining various extensions that reflect further assumptions that might be made about entailment. This leads first to the logic B that is the basic relevant logic, and then to more powerful systems. All of these logics are proved to be sound and strongly complete. With B the neighborhood semantics meets the Routley–Meyer relational semantics for relevant logic; these connections are examined. The minimal and basic entailment logics are shown to have the finite model property, and hence to be decidable.     

Oppression and empowerment: perceptions of violence among urban youth

Youth violence in the United States has emerged as a major concern for communities, policymakers and community researchers. This paper reports on the efforts of a child mental health clinic to build a community consensus around addressing violence that affects youth and all members of the community. We describe and give case examples regarding our approach to acquiring the perspectives of the community, particularly that of youth, discuss key themes and implications that emerged from our work, and offer preliminary recommendations for designing a youth violence prevention initiative in a disenfranchised community. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of prior experience in language acquisition

Learners exposed to an artificial language recognize its abstract structural regularities when instantiated in a novel vocabulary (e.g., Gómez, Gerken, & Schvaneveldt, 2000; Tunney & Altmann, 2001). We asked whether such sensitivity accelerates subsequent learning, and enables acquisition of more complex structure. In Experiment 1, pre-exposure to a category-induction language of the form aX bY sped subsequent learning when the language is instantiated in a different vocabulary. In Experiment 2, while naíve learners did not acquire an acX bcY language, in which aX and bY co-occurrence regularities were separated by a c-element, prior experience with an aX bY language provided some benefit. In Experiment 3 we replicated this finding with a 24-hour delay between learning phases, and controlled for prior experience with the aX bY language's prosodic and phonological characteristics. These findings suggest that learners, and the structure they can acquire, change as a function of experience.     

Use of the high-probability instructional sequence and escape extinction in a child with food refusal

We used the high-probability (high-p) instructional sequence with and without escape extinction in the treatment of food refusal. Acceptance increased and refusal decreased only with the introduction of escape extinction. These results raise important questions about the high-p sequence in the treatment of food refusal.     

Language after temporal or frontal lobe surgery in children with epilepsy

The purpose of this study was to compare language function in children undergoing temporal or frontal lobe surgery to control intractable epilepsy. Language measures (expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, comprehension, reading, spelling, phonemic fluency, and category fluency) were administered to 9 children with frontal lobe epilepsy (mean age: 10.8 +/- 2.7 years) and 10 children with temporal lobe epilepsy (11.5 +/- 2.6 years). The results indicate that no differences exist, in language function, before and after surgery between children with frontal and temporal lobe epilepsy (all p > or = .05). Children with left hemisphere lesions had significantly lower scores than those with right on category fluency and comprehension, but laterality effects were not seen on the other measures. In both groups, language function was not significantly affected by surgery.     

Language Enrichment Teacher Preparation and Practice Predicts Third Grade Reading Comprehension

First and second grade public school teachers were trained through interactive video-conferencing to implement Language Enrichment, an Orton-Gillingham-based literacy instruction. The effectiveness of the linguistically informed training was demonstrated by documenting the longitudinal third grade reading comprehension achievement of their students. Student achievement was measured on the state-mandated achievement test, Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) showed that students whose teachers were trained in Language Enrichment instruction had higher third grade reading comprehension achievement than students whose teachers were not trained. Additionally, a significant effect of the length of Language Enrichment teaching experience of the second grade teacher on third grade reading comprehension was found. Earlier occurring second grade teacher training was associated with higher reading scores than later training. Based on these findings it is suggested that teachers who have content-rich knowledge known to support literacy acquisition can provide reading instruction that results in a level of reading comprehension that is significantly higher than that resulting from teachers who do not have a well-developed domain of knowledge concerning the reading process. This study also indicates that teacher competence was enhanced through practice because student reading achievement of the more-experienced Language Enrichment teachers was higher than that of the less-experienced Language Enrichment teachers.     

Measuring Change During Behavioral Parent Training Using the Parent Instruction-Giving Game with Youngsters (PIGGY): A Clinical Replication

This is the second study to investigate the clinical use of the Parent-Instruction Game with Youngsters (PIGGY) which is a structured observation system derived from the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System II (DPICS-II; Eyberg, Bessmer, Newcomb, Edwards, & Robinson, 1994) and the Behavior Coding System (BCS; Forehand & McMahon, 1981 Forehand , R. L. , & McMahon , R. J. ( 1981 ). Helping the noncompliant child . New York , NY : Guilford Press . [Google Scholar]). In a previous study, the PIGGY demonstrated strong reliability and validity as well as clinical utility (Hupp, Reitman, Forde, Shriver, & Kelley, 2008). The present study is a replication of the previous research on clinical utility by using the PIGGY to monitor changes in parent and child behavior during and after behavioral parent training.     

Detecting Social Desirability Bias Using Factor Mixture Models

Based on the conceptualization that social desirable bias (SDB) is a discrete event resulting from an interaction between a scale's items, the testing situation, and the respondent's latent trait on a social desirability factor, we present a method that makes use of factor mixture models to identify which examinees are most likely to provide biased responses, which items elicit the most socially desirable responses, and which external variables predict SDB. Problems associated with the common use of correlation coefficients based on scales' total scores to diagnose SDB and partial correlations to correct for SDB are discussed. The method is demonstrated with an analysis of SDB in the Attitude toward Interprofessional Service-Learning scale with a sample of students from health-related fields.