Fitting Attitude Analyses of Value and the Partiality Challenge

According to ‘Fitting Attitude’ (FA) analyses of value, for an object to be valuable is for that object to have properties—other than its being valuable—that make it a fitting object of certain responses. In short, if an object is positively valuable it is fitting to favour it; if an object is negatively valuable it is fitting to disfavour it. There are several variants of FA analyses. Some hold that for an object to be valuable is for it to be such that it ought to be favoured; others hold that value is analyzable in terms of reasons or requirements to favour. All these variants of the FA analysis are subject to a partiality challenge: there are circumstances in which some agents have reasons to favour or disfavour some object—due to the personal relations in which they stand to the object—without this having any bearing on the value of the object. A. C. Ewing was one of the first philosophers to draw attention to the partiality challenge for FA analyses. In this paper I explain the challenge and consider Ewing's responses, one of which is preferable to the other, but none of which is entirely satisfactory. I go on to develop an alternative Brentano-inspired response that Ewing could have offered and that may well be preferable to the responses Ewing actually did offer.

The effect of cognitive load and hyperarousal on negative intrusive memories

Clinical theories of post-traumatic stress suggest that encoding processes at the time of a trauma are critical in determining whether intrusive memories will develop. Potential mechanisms that might influence the development of intrusive memories were studied, as was objective memory performance. In an analogue design, 65 participants were randomised to three conditions (cognitive load, hyperventilation, and control), and then watched a film of traumatic content. Intrusive memories were recorded during the experimental phase and at 1-week follow-up. Support was found for the prediction that verbal cognitive load and hyperventilation would facilitate intrusion development immediately following exposure to the trauma film; however, this was not maintained at follow-up. Consistent with cognitive models of post-traumatic stress, thought suppression and the distress associated with intrusive experiences mediated the relationship between distress caused by the film and intrusions at 1-week follow-up. Objective memory testing indicated that the three experimental groups showed similar recall and recognition performance for the content of the film; however, relative to the control group, individuals in the cognitive load condition were significantly less able to place film scenes in the correct order.     

Mortality salience and the desire for offspring

Research on terror management theory (TMT) illustrates that following mortality salience (MS) people defend their cultural worldviews and bolster self-esteem to transcend death. Recently, research additionally showed that MS increased self-reports of the number of children desired in Dutch men but not in Dutch women. We conducted three studies to further investigate the role of desire for offspring in terror management. In Study 1, we conceptually replicated previous findings for Germany and found increased desire for offspring following MS in both men and women. Extending prior research Study 2 revealed that following MS not only was the accessibility of death-related thoughts increased, but also the accessibility of thoughts related to offspring. Finally, Study 3 suggested that the MS effect on ingroup bias was eliminated under conditions of offspring salience. Relating these findings to TMT, anticipated or actual offspring is discussed as a buffer against existential anxiety.     

A preliminary note: campus subgroup membership and football game day attire

Differences were found in college women's attire at football games by organizational identification, perceived organizational prestige, game day attendance, and fashion opinion leadership. Factors of clothing choice were Fashion Consciousness, Desire for Comfort, Desire for Uniqueness, and Expression of School Spirit.     

Memory for goal-directed sequences of actions: Is doing better than seeing?

Verb-object phrases are usually remembered better if they have been enacted during study than if theyhave been learned verbally or if one has observed another person enact the phrases. Researchers have explained this well-established enactment effect by assuming that enactment leaves an additional motor code enhancing memory. We assume instead that enactment provokes excellentitem-specific processing at t he expense of processing relations between items. Thus, if recall were to depend on this relational processing that is hindered by enactment, enactment should not be a more effective encoding strategy than observation. We tested this hypothesis by analyzing the recall of sequences of related actions. In two experiments, we found no recall advantage of enactment over observing another person perform, though both encoding tasks were superior to verbal learning. Organization was best after observation. These findings imply that learning by viewing is not inferior to learning by doing.     

Twenty-two-month-olds discriminate fluent from disfluent adult-directed speech

Deviation of real speech from grammatical ideals due to disfluency and other speech errors presents potentially serious problems for the language learner. While infants may initially benefit from attending primarily or solely to infant-directed speech, which contains few grammatical errors, older infants may listen more to adult-directed speech. In a first experiment, Post-verbal infants preferred fluent speech to disfluent speech, while Pre-verbal infants showed no preference. In a second experiment, Post-verbal infants discriminated disfluent and fluent speech even when lexical information was removed, showing that they make use of prosodic properties of the speech stream to detect disfluency. Because disfluencies are highly correlated with grammatical errors, this sensitivity provides infants with a means of filtering ungrammaticality from their input.     

Multimodal action representation in human left ventral premotor cortex

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural systems responding to the sight and to the sound of an action. Subjects saw a video of paper tearing in silence (V), heard the sound of paper tearing (A), and saw and heard the action simultaneously (A + V). Compared to a non-action control stimulus, we found that hearing action sounds (A) activated the anterior inferior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus in addition to primary auditory cortex. The anterior inferior frontal gyrus, which is known to be activated by environmental sounds, also seems to be involved in recognizing actions by sound. Consistent with previous research, seeing an action video (V) compared with seeing a non-action video activated the premotor cortex, intraparietal cortex, and the pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus. An A + V facilitation effect was found in the ventral premotor cortex on the border of areas 44, 6, 3a, and 3b for the action stimuli but not for the control stimuli. This region may be involved in integrating multimodal information about actions. These data provide evidence that the ventral premotor cortex may provide an action representation that abstracts across both agency (self and other) and sensory modality (hearing and seeing). This function may be an important precursor of language functions.     

Working alliance for clients with social anxiety disorder: relationship with session helpfulness and within-session habituation

It has been suggested that a strong working alliance encourages clients to take risks during therapy (Raue, Castonguay, & Goldfried, 1993). This encouragement may be important for clients who fear negative evaluations as they engage in risk-taking elements of therapy. This study examined the relationship between working alliance, session helpfulness and measures of emotional processing in 18 clients undergoing cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for social anxiety disorder. Results indicate a positive correlation between client-rated, but not observer-rated, working alliance and session helpfulness. Moderate levels of working alliance were associated with higher initial anxiety and deeper within-session habituation. Overall, a strong alliance was associated with clients engaging with the session and finding the session helpful. Implications for the use of CBT for social anxiety are discussed.     

Explaining prejudice toward the mentally ill: A test of sociopolitical,demographic, and socioeconomic factors

People with mental disorders often face prejudices that can further deteriorate their condition. We tested whether Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), and Belief in a Just World (BJW), and characteristics of the mentally ill predict such prejudices. Both in a general population sample and a sample of health professionals and trainees, SDO, but not RWA and BJW, predicted more prejudice, although this pattern was less pronounced among health professionals/trainees. BJW interacted with the targets' gender in Study 1, predicting less empathy toward a male but not toward a female mentally ill person. In Study 2, depressed individuals were blamed more for their illness than those with schizophrenia or cancer. Implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed.