The motivations for Walter Burley’s theory of the proposition

Walter Burley (born c. 1275; died. c. 1344) claims throughout his career that the mind can make a statement (propositio) out of things. Since things include entities that exist outside of the mind, Burley appears to be claiming that the mind can form a statement out of things that exist outside of it. Most scholars of Burley offer a deflationary reading of this claim, arguing that it confuses two distinct but closely related philosophical issues: the nature of propositional content, on the one hand, and the role of facts in a compelling account of truth, on the other. But I argue that Burley means exactly what he says: that the mind can, quite literally, form statements out of things that exist outside of it. In Burley’s account, statements of this sort function as the propositional contents of our thoughts and written or uttered sentences. This account of propositional content is motivated by three more fundamental theses to which Burley is committed: referentialism, compositionality, and a claim about truth-conditionality I call intellectualism.     

Profiles of Rater Dis/Agreement within Universal Screening in Predicting Distal Outcomes

Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment - The success of a comprehensive and integrated school mental health system is dependent on data to inform decision-making. Universal screening...     

Post-traumatic stress symptoms of children and adolescents exposed to the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake: A longitudinal study of 5-HTTLPR genotype main effects and gene–environment interactions

Experiencing disasters causes severe mental disorders, among which post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the most common. We conducted a longitudinal study to examine the effect of 5-hydroxyl tryptamine transporter gene-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) genotype on child and adolescent PTSD symptom course after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. We genotyped 963 participants who personally experienced the earthquake. PTSD symptoms were measured by University of California, Los Angeles PTSD reaction index at 2.5, 3.5, 4.5 and 5.5 years after the earthquake, respectively. Latent growth model was utilised to examine the main effect and gene–environment interaction effect of 5-HTTLPR on PTSD's symptom course. 5-HTTLPR genotype predicted initial PTSD symptom severity (β = 0.108, p = .019) and rates of symptom recovery (β = −0.120, p = .031) between 2.5 and 5.5 years. Compared with L′ allele carriers, those with S′S′ genotype showed higher initial symptom severity but also faster recovery rate. 5-HTTLPR genotype only predicted symptom severity at 2.5 years after the earthquake, after controlling for sex, age, ethnicity and trauma severity (β = 0.108, p = .019). This is the first evidence of the effect of 5-HTTLPR genotype on child and adolescent PTSD symptoms longitudinally, offering a novel perspective on the effect of 5-HTTLPR on PTSD symptom development following trauma exposure.     

The effects of leader illegitimacy on leaders' and subordinates' responses to relinquishing power decisions

This research examined how leader illegitimacy affects leaders' and subordinates' responses to relinquishing power decisions. The processes underlying responses to leader illegitimacy and relinquishing power were also examined. Across four studies, participants were placed in leader roles (Studies 1a/1b) or subordinate roles (Studies 2a/2b) in an online competition. In Studies 1a/1b, participants assigned a leadership role learned, via a leadership skills test, that their leadership was illegitimate or legitimate. By contrast, in Studies 2a/2b, participants assigned a subordinate role were confronted with either an illegitimate leader who retained their power after performing poorly or a legitimate leader who received the leader role after a poor‐performing leader had relinquished their power. Results demonstrated that leaders who felt they did not belong in their leadership role relinquished more power when their leadership was illegitimate (vs. legitimate) and subordinates who felt less in control and greater anger supported illegitimate (vs. legitimate) leaders less.     

Computing the real solutions of Fleishman's equations for simulating non-normal data

Fleishman's power method is frequently used to simulate non-normal data with a desired skewness and kurtosis. Fleishman's method requires solving a system of nonlinear equations to find the third-order polynomial weights that transform a standard normal variable into a non-normal variable with desired moments. Most users of the power method seem unaware that Fleishman's equations have multiple solutions for typical combinations of skewness and kurtosis. Furthermore, researchers lack a simple method for exploring the multiple solutions of Fleishman's equations, so most applications only consider a single solution. In this paper, we propose novel methods for finding all real-valued solutions of Fleishman's equations. Additionally, we characterize the solutions in terms of differences in higher order moments. Our theoretical analysis of the power method reveals that there typically exists two solutions of Fleishman's equations that have noteworthy differences in higher order moments. Using simulated examples, we demonstrate that these differences can have remarkable effects on the shape of the non-normal distribution, as well as the sampling distributions of statistics calculated from the data. Some considerations for choosing a solution are discussed, and some recommendations for improved reporting standards are provided.     

Competition or Community? The Backstage Experience of Men in Bodybuilding Competitions

Bodybuilding is an increasingly popular sport in the United States. Across fields of psychology, history, sociology, and anthropology, bodybuilding has been examined as being related to, or as manifestly being, a pathology. Extant work on men who are bodybuilders are often built on the assumption that narcissism, self-doubt, and insecurity are the driving forces for men’s involvement. The present study sought to examine the experiences of eleven men who have competed in bodybuilding competitions. In contrast to the dominant academic discourse on bodybuilding as an embodiment of toxic masculinity or as a reaction to underlying feelings of inferiority, the study participants described friendly, supportive competition contexts. That such feelings were found backstage, as opposed to in a gym, strengthens the need for a more nuanced distinction between bodybuilding as a culture, and bodybuilding as a sport. This study disrupts dominant narratives of bodybuilding as pathological and contributes to work on the construction of gender and masculinity in sport. The present work suggests a scholarly approach to men’s bodybuilding in an open and nuanced manner that does not focus on pathologizing bodybuilding or competition.

     

Repulsed by violence: disgust sensitivity buffers trait, behavioral, and daily aggression

Many models of aggression include negatively valenced emotions as common elicitors of aggressive behavior. Yet, the motivational direction of these emotions is not taken into account. The current work explored whether sensitivity to a negative emotion associated with behavioral avoidance-disgust-will predict lower levels of aggression. Five studies tested the hypothesis that disgust sensitivity predicts less aggression. In Study 1 (N = 92), disgust sensitivity predicted less trait physical and verbal aggression. In Study 2 (N = 268), participants high in disgust sensitivity were less likely to behave aggressively towards a stranger on a reaction-time task. In Study 3 (N = 51), disgust sensitivity was associated with less intimate partner violence inclinations. Study 4 (N = 247) replicated this effect longitudinally. In Study 5 (N = 166), each domain of disgust (i.e., moral, sexual, and pathogen disgust) had a buffering effect on daily aggression when daily experiences activated those specific domains. These results highlight the usefulness of considering the motivational direction of an emotion when examining its influence on aggression.