Language and the use of language

Antony Flew's ‘A Strong Programme for the Sociology of Belief (Inquiry 25 {1982], 365–78) critically assesses the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge defended in David Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery. I argue that Flew's rejection of the epistemological relativism evident in Bloor's work begs the question against the relativist and ignores Bloor's focus on the social relativity of mathematical knowledge. Bloor attempts to establish such relativity via a sociological analysis of Frege's theory of number. But this analysis only succeeds if the rejection of an explanatory theory entails that there are reasonable grounds for the rejection of the set of propositions which that theory was intended to explain. I argue against such an entailment, and thus against Bloor's attempt to relativize mathematical knowledge.     

Self-verification as a mediator of mothers' self-fulfilling effects on adolescents' educational attainment

This research examined whether self-verification acts as a general mediational process of self-fulfilling prophecies. The authors tested this hypothesis by examining whether self-verification processes mediated self-fulfilling prophecy effects within a different context and with a different belief and a different outcome than has been used in prior research. Results of longitudinal data obtained from mothers and their adolescents (N=332) indicated that mothers' beliefs about their adolescents' educational outcomes had a significant indirect effect on adolescents' academic attainment through adolescents' educational aspirations. This effect, observed over a 6-year span, provided evidence that mothers' self-fulfilling effects occurred, in part, because mothers' false beliefs influenced their adolescents' own educational aspirations, which adolescents then self-verified through their educational attainment. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.     

Brooding rumination and attentional biases in currently non-depressed individuals: an eye-tracking study

Both rumination and attentional biases have been proposed as key components of the RDoC Negative Valence Systems construct of Loss. Although theorists have proposed that rumination, particularly brooding rumination, should be associated with increased sustained attention to depression-relevant information, it is not clear whether this link would be observed in a non-depressed sample or whether it is specific to brooding versus reflective rumination. To address these questions, the current study examined the link between brooding rumination and attentional biases in a sample of non-depressed individuals (n?=?105). Attentional biases were assessed using eye tracking during a passive viewing task in which participants were presented with 2?×?2 arrays of angry, happy, sad, and neutral faces. In line with predictions, higher levels of brooding rumination were associated with greater sustained attention to sad faces and less sustained attention to happy faces. These results remained significant after controlling for participants’ prior history of major depression and current nonclinical level of depressive symptoms, suggesting that the link between brooding rumination and attentional biases is at least partially independent of current or past depression.     

Cognitive Therapy for Command Hallucinations: Not a Quasi-Neuroleptic

Command hallucinations (CH) are a distressing and high-risk group of symptoms that have long been recognised but little understood, with few effective treatments. In this paper we report and discuss the efficacy of cognitive therapy (CT) modified in accordance with ‘social rank theory,’ in a single blind randomised controlled trial. 38 patients with command hallucinations were randomly allocated to CT or treatment as usual and followed up for 6 then 12 months. Large reductions in compliance behaviour were obtained (effect size = 0.97) favouring the CT group. Other significant differences were found and maintained at 6 months follow up.     

Enlarging the Societal Pie Through Wise Legislation

ABSTRACT— We offer a psychological perspective to explain the failure of governments to create near-Pareto improvements. Our tools for analyzing these failures reflect the difficulties people have trading small losses for large gains: the fixed-pie approach to negotiations, the omission bias and status quo bias, parochialism and dysfunctional competition, and the neglect of secondary effects. We examine the role of human judgment in the failure to find wise trade-offs by discussing diverse applications of citizen and government decision making, including AIDS treatment, organ-donation systems, endangered-species protection, subsidies, and free trade. Our overall goal is to offer a psychological approach for understanding suboptimality in government decision making.     

Predicting athletic performance from cardiovascular indexes of challenge and threat

This study examined the relationship between pre-performance motivational states (challenge vs. threat) and subsequent performance in athletic competition. Prior to the season, college baseball and softball players imagined and gave a speech about a specific baseball/softball playing situation while cardiovascular indexes of challenge and threat were recorded. These physiological challenge/threat indexes significantly predicted athletic performance during the subsequent season, such that players who experienced challenge in the laboratory performed better relative to those who experienced threat. The implications for personnel selection and the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat are discussed.     

Photographs of facial expression: Accuracy, response times, and ratings of intensity

Equal numbers of male and female participants judged which of seven facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutrality, sadness, and surprise) were displayed by a set of 336 faces, and we measured both accuracy and response times. In addition, the participants rated how well the expression was displayed (i.e., the intensity of the expression). These three measures are reported for each face. Sex of the rater did not interact with any of the three measures. However, analyses revealed that some expressions were recognized more accurately in female than in male faces. The full set of these norms may be downloaded fromwww.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Does making a conversation asynchronous reduce the negative impact of phone call on driving?

Mobile phone use at the wheel has a proven negative impact on driving. This paper aims to assess whether using an answerphone instead of a normal phone reduces this negative impact. The answerphone makes communication asynchronous and splits it into three disconnected and successive phases: interaction with the voice interface, listening to the message and answering, which have been evaluated separately.The experiment was conducted on a fixed base simulator, with 30 participants (half male and female, aged from 18 to 50 years, driving at least 5000 km per year).The results show better scores for correct responses to stimuli for answerphone communications than for phone communications, although response times were higher in both communication conditions than in the driving alone condition. When the three phases of answerphone use were compared, interacting with the answerphone and listening to the message were found to be significantly less disturbing than answering, in terms of correct responses and response times.By making the conversation asynchronous, the answerphone avoids direct interaction between driver and caller. The fact that communication is under the driver’s control allows him/her to pace the interaction better. Lastly, splitting up the conversation into different phases decreases the overall task difficulty.     

Further examination of the convergent and discriminant validity of the student–teacher relationship scale

Two studies extended psychometric research on the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS) with kindergarten and preschool children (N₁ = 60–71; N₂ = 35) and their teachers. These studies used a multi‐method approach to replicate and extend previous findings concerning the convergent validity of the STRS Closeness, Conflict, and Dependency scale and to further examine the discriminant validity of the STRS. Study 1 investigated convergence between the STRS scales and child‐ and peer‐reports of the same constructs based on a multi‐trait multi‐method approach. Study 2 examined the pattern of associations between the STRS and indicators of teacher–child relationship quality rated by external observers. Support was found for the convergent validity and to a lesser extent the discriminant validity of the STRS Closeness and Conflict scale. For the STRS Dependency scale, additional research remains necessary. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.