KNOWLEDGE, SPEAKER AND SUBJECT

I contrast two solutions to the lottery paradox concerning knowledge: contextualism and subject-sensitive invariantism. I defend contextualism against an objection that it cannot explain how 'knows' and its cognates function inside propositional attitude reports. I then argue that subject-sensitive invariantism fails to provide a satisfactory resolution of the paradox.     

On the Gendered Nature of Mobile Phone Culture in Israel

Data from surveys and personal interviews were used to analyze gendered patterns and contexts of the mobile phone use of Israelis. The findings suggest that the mobile phone has become an everyday, highly regarded, multipurpose interpersonal communication device rather than a working tool. Both men and women discussed their perceptions of the role of the mobile phone in their lives in quite a traditional gendered manner—activity and technological appropriation for men and dependency and domesticity for women. At the same time, the actual phoning habits and attitudes of users point to a pattern of domestication of the mobile phone and even feminization of its consumption.     

Predicting complex syntactic structure in real time: Processing of negative sentences in Russian

In Russian negative sentences the verb’s direct object may appear either in the accusative case, which is licensed by the verb (as is common cross-linguistically), or in the genitive case, which is licensed by the negation (Russian-specific “genitive-of-negation” phenomenon). Such sentences were used to investigate whether case marking is employed for anticipating syntactic structure, and whether lexical heads other than the verb can be predicted on the basis of a case-marked noun phrase. Experiment 1, a completion task, confirmed that genitive-of-negation is part of Russian speakers’ active grammatical repertoire. In Experiments 2 and 3, the genitive/accusative case manipulation on the preverbal object led to shorter reading times at the negation and verb in the genitive versus accusative condition. Furthermore, Experiment 3 manipulated linear order of the direct object and the negated verb in order to distinguish whether the abovementioned facilitatory effect was predictive or integrative in nature, and concluded that the parser actively predicts a verb and (otherwise optional) negation on the basis of a preceding genitive-marked object. Similarly to a head-final language, case-marking information on preverbal noun phrases (NPs) is used by the parser to enable incremental structure building in a free-word-order language such as Russian.     

Measuring Competence and Dysfunction in Preschool Children: Source Agreement and Component Structure

Agreement between parents and teachers on ratings of three domains of behaviors exhibited by preschool children and the structural relations between these domains were measured. Parents and teachers rated the behaviors of a socioeconomically diverse sample of 610 children; ratings were obtained from parents at three time points and from teachers at two time points. The results indicated little agreement between sources on the ratings of individual child behaviors; however, ratings within a source were stable over time. Principal components analyses of source ratings combined and separately indicated virtually identical and independent three-component solutions comprised of a coping competence, externalizing behavior, and internalizing behavior component. These data suggest that competence and dysfunction develop in response to different contextual demands and underscore the importance of measuring each domain of behavior in clinical and research settings.     

A picture is worth a thousand words: a comparison of pupils’ images of intelligence in Finnish and Russian Karelia

The study set out to examine Finnish and Russian children’s images of intelligence as contextualized in the systems of the school and gender. Finnish and Russian pupils, aged 11–12 years, were asked to draw pictures of an intelligent and an ordinary pupil and a good and an ordinary pupil. A distinctive feature shared by the children in both countries was that intelligent pupils were depicted as positively orientated to knowledge and studies and as similar to good pupils. The Russian children’s pictures emphasized academic performance, suggesting that the contribution of the school to children’s representations was greater in Russia than in Finland. In regard to gender appearance, the intelligent pupil was usually pictured in gender-neutral or childish features, suggesting that being defined as intellectually competent entailed deviating from the heterosexual ideal. In the discussion, the ambivalence associated with social definitions of intelligence is addressed.     

Internet-based treatment of depression: a randomized controlled trial comparing guided with unguided self-help

Internet-delivered self-help for depression with therapist guidance has shown efficacy in several trials. Results from meta-analyses suggest that guidance is important and that self-help programs without support are less effective. However, there are no direct experimental comparisons between guided and unguided internet-based treatments for depression. The present study compared the benefits of a 10-week web-based unguided self-help treatment with the same intervention complemented with weekly therapist support via e-mail. A waiting-list control group was also included. Seventy-six individuals meeting the diagnostic criteria of major depression or dysthymia were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) was used as the primary outcome measure. Secondary outcomes included general psychopathology, interpersonal problems, and quality of life. Sixty-nine participants (91%) completed the assessment at posttreatment and 59 (78%) at 6-month follow-up. Results showed significant symptom reductions in both treatment groups compared to the waiting-list control group. At posttreatment, between-group effect sizes on the BDI-II were d = .66 for unguided self-help versus waiting-list and d = 1.14 for guided self-help versus waiting-list controls. In the comparison of the two active treatments, small-to-moderate, but not statistically significant effects in favor of the guided condition were found on all measured dimensions. In both groups, treatment gains were maintained at 6-month follow-up. The findings provide evidence that internet-delivered treatments for depression can be effective whether support is added or not. However, all participants were interviewed in a structured diagnostic telephone interview before inclusion, which prohibits conclusions regarding unguided treatments that are without any human contact.     

Measuring the approximate number system

Recent theories in numerical cognition propose the existence of an approximate number system (ANS) that supports the representation and processing of quantity information without symbols. It has been claimed that this system is present in infants, children, and adults, that it supports learning of symbolic mathematics, and that correctly harnessing the system during tuition will lead to educational benefits. Various experimental tasks have been used to investigate individuals' ANSs, and it has been assumed that these tasks measure the same system. We tested the relationship across six measures of the ANS. Surprisingly, despite typical performance on each task, adult participants' performances across the tasks were not correlated, and estimates of the acuity of individuals' ANSs from different tasks were unrelated. These results highlight methodological issues with tasks typically used to measure the ANS and call into question claims that individuals use a single system to complete all these tasks.     

Ten- and twelve-month-olds' visual anticipation of orientation and size during grasping

The anticipation of two object dimensions during grasping was investigated in 10- and 12-month-olds. We presented objects varying in both orientation and size and analyzed infants’ anticipatory hand configurations. We found in Experiment 1 that nearly all of the 12-month-olds (94%), but less than half of the 10-month-olds (40%), anticipated both dimensions before touching the object. Experiment 2 ruled out the possibility that this behavior resulted from the infants’ inability to anticipate the size of the stimuli. Thus, integrating two object dimensions during reaching seems to be difficult for 10-month-olds. In addition, we found a sequential adjustment when two dimensions were considered: Infants first adjusted the orientation and then the size. The implications of our findings concerning the planning and execution of grasping movements are discussed.