Can Robert Adams Survive Moral Twin Earth?

Richard Boyd and Robert Adams have both developed semantic accounts of moral terms based on Hilary Putnam's causal regulation theory for natural kind terms, according to which the terms in question refer to the properties which predominantly causally regulated the terms. However, Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have mounted an objection to Boyd's semantics—their Moral Twin Earth argument. If this argument is successful against Boyd then it might be thought that it should also be successful against Adams, given the similarity between their semantic accounts. I will argue in this essay that Adams's semantics is sufficiently different from Boyd's to enable him to survive Moral Twin Earth, but that he is vulnerable to a modified version of Moral Twin Earth that I describe.     

Schools can improve motivational quality: Profile transitions across early foreign language learning experiences

Elementary school is as much about developing attitudes as competence. With this fact in mind, the Japanese national government established a plan to enhance elementary school students’ motivation for learning English. The success of this program has, however, not been empirically tested. This study aimed to assess the longitudinal, discrete development of Japanese elementary school students’ motivation for learning English as a foreign language. A cohort of 513 Japanese elementary students participated in the study across 2 years of school. Students responded to surveys regarding the quality of their motivation at three time points, and their engagement at two time points. Latent profile analysis followed by latent profile transition analysis was used to assess the sample for latent subgroups. With subgroups established at three time points, a Mover–Stayer model was tested to estimate the movement of students among the subgroups across three time points and 2 years of elementary school education. Three theoretically consistent latent subgroups were observed at each of the time points. Based on theory and past empirical research, the subgroups (presented from least to most adaptive) were labeled: Poor Quality, High Quantity, and Good Quality. Across the three measurements, an overall shift of students to higher quantity and quality motivational subgroups was observed. This study provides evidence that the low-stakes, high-interest approach currently undertaken may have the desired effect of improving students’ motivation to learn across 2 years of schooling. Implications for both practice and national policy are discussed.     

Reflective practice and work-based research: a description of micro- and macro-reflective cycles

The role and importance of reflective practice have been thoroughly documented and its benefits are well established. When coupled with research in a higher education context, a similar importance for reflection can be extended to professional development, leadership, and work-based learning. However, the relation of reflective practice to work-based research, specifically when defined as an element of methodology in higher degree research awards, has yet to be fully examined. In this paper, we explore the basic principles of reflective practice as they relate to work-based learning and highlight the interfaces or ‘bridges’ between reflective cycles, showing their centrality to work-based research. As an example of how these principles might be applied, we also introduce the role of each micro- and macro-reflective cycle in the Professional Studies program at University of Southern Queensland, a relatively new academic approach which utilises both work-based learning and work-based research.     

Learner-Centered Counseling Theory: An Innovative Perspective

One of the most useful tools counselors possess is a consistent, effective theoretical orientation. Yet, counselors often experience theory as an academic-only enterprise, rather than a skill-set informed by reason and empiricism. This article presents an alternative approach to learning and harnessing the power of theory to impact clients’ lives.     

Why reread? Evidence from garden-path and local coherence structures

Two eye-tracking experiments were conducted to compare the online reading and offline comprehension of main verb/reduced relative garden-path sentences and local coherence sentences. Rereading of early material in garden-path reduced relatives should be revisionary, aimed at reanalysing an earlier misparse; however, rereading of early material in a local coherence reduced relative need only be confirmatory, as the original parse of the earlier portion of these sentences is ultimately correct. Results of online and offline measures showed that local coherence structures elicited signals of reading disruption that arose earlier and lasted longer, and local coherence comprehension was also better than garden path comprehension. Few rereading measures in either sentence type were predicted by structural features of these sentences, nor was rereading related to comprehension accuracy, which was extremely low overall. Results are discussed with respect to selective reanalysis and good-enough processing.     

From the Couch to the Chair: Applying Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice in Counseling

In this article, the authors offer a contemporary perspective on psychoanalytic theory. The authors present a clinical vignette that illustrates how one analyst applied the principles of transference, countertransference, and resistance in a modern clinical setting. The authors describe how analysis is similar to and different from humanistic counseling and conclude by describing how analytic insights might be applied in the clinical practice of counselors.     

Impairment in risk-sensitive decision-making in older suicide attempters with depression

Suicidal behavior is a potentially lethal complication of late-life depression. In younger adults, suicide has been linked to abnormal decision-making ability. Given that there are substantial age-related decreases in decision-making ability, and that older adults experience environmental stressors that require effective decision-making, we reasoned that impaired decision-making may be particularly relevant to suicidal behavior in the elderly. We thus compared performance on a probabilistic decision-making task that does not involve working memory ("Cambridge Gamble Task") in four groups of older adults: (1) individuals with major depression and a history of suicide attempt (n = 25), (2) individuals with major depression with active suicidal ideation but no suicide attempt (n = 13), (3) individuals with major depression without suicidality (n = 35), and (4) nondepressed control subjects (n = 22). There was a significant effect of group on quality of decision-making, whereby the suicide attempters exhibited poorer ability to choose the likely outcome, compared with the nonsuicidal depressed and nondepressed comparison subjects. There were no group differences in betting behavior. The suicide attempters differed in several aspects of social problem-solving on a self-report scale. Quality of decision-making was negatively correlated with the score on the impulsive/careless problem-solving subscale. These data suggest that older suicide attempters have a deficit in risk-sensitive decision-making, extending observations in younger adults. More specifically, older suicide attempters seem to neglect outcome probability and make poor choices. These impairments may precipitate and perpetuate suicidal crisis in depressed elders. Identification of decision-making impairment in suicidal elders may help with designing effective interventions.