Perceptions of another person's heavy drinking as a function of one's relationship to the drinker a pilot study

Of 301 participants in a telephone survey, 201 could identify a problem drinker within their social networks. In 67 cases the drinker was a partner, in 45 another family member, in 61 a friend, and in 28 a work colleague. Another person's heavy drinking was reported as most disrupting to one's life when that person was a partner or other family member or if one was living in the same residence as the drinker. The exception to this was that reported disruption to respondents' work life was greatest when the drinker was a work colleague. While there appear to be problems for friends and work colleagues, partners and other family members appear to report the most disruption so providing services to family members seems appropriate.     

Background beliefs in Bayesian inference

We report five experiments in which the role of background beliefs in social judgments of posterior probability was investigated. From a Bayesian perspective, people should combine prior probabilities (or base rates) and diagnostic evidence with equal weighting, although previous research shows that base rates are often underweighted. These experiments were designed so that either piece of information was supplied either by personal beliefs or by presented statistics, and regression analyses were performed on individual participants to assess the relative influence of information. We found that both prior probabilities and diagnostic information significantly influenced judgments, whether supplied by beliefs or by statistical information, but that belief-based information tended to dominate the judgments made.     

Interhemispheric communication via direct connections for alternative meanings of ambiguous words

A priming experiment was used to investigate Burgess and Simpson's (1988) claim that interhemispheric cooperation plays an essential role in the interpretation of ambiguous text. In doing so, the merits of two models of interhemispheric cooperation, the homotopic inhibition theory (Cook, 1986) and the direct connections model (Collins & Coney, 1998), were examined. Priming of alternative meanings of ambiguous words was measured using homographs and their dominant (e.g., BARK-DOG) and subordinate meanings (e.g., BARK-TREE) as related pairs in a lexical decision task, with normal university students as subjects. Stimulus pairs were temporally separated by stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 180 and 350 ms and were independently projected to the left or right visual fields (LVF or RVF). At the shorter SOA, priming was restricted to LVF-RVF presentations, with homograph primes directed to the LVF equally facilitating responses to RVF targets which were associated with their dominant and subordinate meanings. This suggests that within 180 ms, a homograph projected to the right hemisphere activates a range of alternative meanings in the left hemisphere. At an SOA of 350 ms, LVF-RVF priming was obtained along with RVF-LVF and RVF-RVF priming. Evidently at this stage of processing, an ambiguous word directed to either hemisphere activates a range of alternative meanings in the contralateral hemisphere, while RVF primes also activate subordinate, but not dominant meanings in the left hemisphere. A homograph directed to the LVF did not activate dominant or subordinate meanings within the right hemisphere at either SOA. Generally, ambiguous words directed to either hemisphere activated a more extensive array of meanings in the contralateral hemisphere than in the hemisphere to which the prime was directed. This confirms the importance of interhemispheric cooperation in generating alternate meanings of ambiguous words. Strong support was found for the direct connections model (Collins & Coney, 1998), but no support for the homotopic inhibition theory (Cook, 1986).     

The pursuit of Leonardo's constraint

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) identified two stimulus situations that cannot be painted faithfully on a canvas: (a) when two objects are located in the same direction with respect to the painter's head, and (b) when parts of a surface are visible to one eye, but occluded from the other eye. He analysed these situations in terms of rays being emitted from the two eyes and, aside from the origin of the rays, the projective geometry he used was correct. His analyses showed that what can be seen from two vantage points cannot be represented on a canvas, because a 'correct' painting must be created from a single 'station point'. He was struck by the consequence of this fact that the depth seen on a canvas cannot match that of viewing the scene with two eyes. Subsequent visual scientists focused on Leonardo's observation about the lack of vivid depth in a picture. We argue that a complete understanding of what we see in the two stimulus situations requires consideration of visual direction in addition to visual depth. More specifically, we argue that the visual directions of the two objects, (a) above, and the visual direction of the monocular areas, (b) above, are dependent upon the constraint that two opaque objects cannot be represented in the same direction. Demonstrations that readers can perform, and that support this argument, are provided on the Perception website at http://www.perceptionweb.com/perc0102/ono.html.     

Regulation of Negative Affect During Mother–Child Problem-Solving Interactions: Adolescent Depressive Status and Family Processes

Despite recent suggestions that depression can be conceptualized as a disorder of affect regulation, relatively little research has focused on affect regulation skills in depressed individuals. This paper investigated whether depressed adolescents (N = 25) differ from nondepressed adolescents (N 25) on two indices of affect regulation (i.e., duration of negative affective states and reciprocity of maternal negative affect) as well as whether these indices are related to microsocial family interactional processes. Analyses revealed that depressed teens differed from their nondepressed peers with regard to duration of negative affective states but not in their likelihood of reciprocating negative affect. Additionally, indices of adolescent affect regulation were related to family interactional processes. Duration of depressive affect was positively associated with maternal display of facilitative behavior contingent on adolescent depressive behavior. Duration of aggressive behavior was inversely related to maternal problem-solving responses to aggressive behavior. Finally, adolescent reciprocity of maternal depressive and aggressive behaviors was strongly associated with mothers' reciprocity of adolescents' negative affective behavior.     

From egocentric to exocentric spatial orientation: development of posture control in bimanual and trunk inclination tasks

The authors investigated the emergence of independent control of body segments in bimanual tasks involving either voluntary or involuntary trunk motion by tracking the transition from an ego- to an exocentric mode of postural control during childhood (i.e., from body-referenced orientation to externally referenced action). A paradigm combining a seated manual task and various trunk manipulations described the coordination strategies used by 24 children at different ages (2 to 9 years) and by adults. The following questions were asked: (a) When do children begin to dissociate upper limb movements from those of the trunk? (b) What segmental strategies are exhibited by each age group (2-3, 4-6, and 7-9 years, and adults)? Kinematic analyses revealed that younger children (2-6 years) used either the trunk or the support surface as reference to orient the limbs. Older children (7-9 years) began to use a gravitational reference frame similar to that of adults; they uncoupled upper limb motion from the trunk in either voluntary or imposed conditions. Young children patterned the forearm trajectory after the initiating segment (support surface or the trunk), thus reducing the degrees of freedom during the dual task. Echoing previous reports, 7-9 years of age appears to be a critical period in which children master postural control and develop an internal representation of body scheme.     

Transmission Failure Failure

I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant, respond to two cases for the view, and argue that the view is false. The first argument for the view neglects the distinction between believing a proposition on the basis of a justification and merely having a justification to believe a proposition. The second argument for the view neglects the position that one 9s justification for believing a conclusion can be one 9s premise for the conclusion, rather than simply one 9s justification for the premise. Finally, the view is false since it is inconsistent with the closure of knowledge as closure is properly understood.     

Free Choice Permission is Strong Permission

Free choice permission, a crucial test case concerning the semantics/ pragmatics boundary, usually receives a pragmatic treatment. But its pragmatic features follow from its semantics. We observe that free choice inferences are defeasible, and defend a semantics of free choice permission as strong permission expressed in terms of a modal conditional in a nonmonotonic logic.