Effects of textual response prompts for adolescents in a substance abuse treatment program

Adolescents in a drug and alcohol treatment facility had behavioral deficits in having essential items ready for organized group adventure activities. Checklists (i.e., textual response prompts) were introduced. The data from five participants showed increases in the percentage of required items ready. Generalization was demonstrated across checklists for different activities, across staff and peer leaders, and a different day of the week. Performance was also maintained when the checklist was removed. It was concluded that the use of checklists can be a reliable and efficient strategy to improve performance in adolescents with a substance abuse history. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two models of unawareness: comparing the object-based and the subjective-state-space approaches

This article attempts to motivate a new approach to anti-realism (or nominalism) in the philosophy of mathematics. I will explore the strongest challenges to anti-realism, based on sympathetic interpretations of our intuitions that appear to support realism. I will argue that the current anti-realistic philosophies have not yet met these challenges, and that is why they cannot convince realists. Then, I will introduce a research project for a new, truly naturalistic, and completely scientific approach to philosophy of mathematics. It belongs to anti-realism, but can meet those challenges and can perhaps convince some realists, at least those who are also naturalists.     

Comparison of classical and modern methods for measuring and correcting for acquiescence

Likert-type self-report scales are frequently used in large-scale educational assessment of social-emotional skills. Self-report scales rely on the assumption that their items elicit information only about the trait they are supposed to measure. However, different response biases may threaten this assumption. Specifically, in children, the response style of acquiescence is an important source of systematic error. Balanced scales, including an equal number of positively and negatively keyed items, have been proposed as a solution to control for acquiescence, but the reasons why this design feature worked from the perspective of modern psychometric models have been underexplored. Three methods for controlling for acquiescence are compared: classical method by partialling out the mean; an item response theory method to measure differential person functioning (DPF); and multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) with random intercept. Comparative analyses are conducted on simulated ratings and on self-ratings provided by 40,649 students (aged 11–18) on a fully balanced 30-item scale assessing conscientious self-management. Acquiescence bias was explained as DPF and it was demonstrated that: the acquiescence index is highly related to DPF; balanced scales produce scores controlled for DPF; and MIRT factor scores are highly related to scores controlled for DPF and the random intercept is highly related to DPF.     

Recovering Early Modern Women Writers

Feminist work in the history of philosophy has been going on for several decades. Some scholars have focused on the ways philosophical concepts are themselves gendered. Others have recovered women writers who were well known in their own time but forgotten in ours, while still others have firmly placed into a philosophical context the works of women writers long celebrated within other disciplines in the humanities. The recovery of women writers has challenged the myth that there are no women in the history of philosophy, but it has not eradicated it. What, we may ask, is impeding our progress? This paper argues that so often we treat early modern women philosophers’ texts in ways that are different from, or inconsistent with, the explicit commitments of the analytic tradition, and in so doing, we may be triggering our audiences to reject these women as philosophers, and their texts as philosophical. Moreover, this is the case despite our intention to achieve precisely the opposite effect.     

Appreciation as Audience Response: Exploring Entertainment Gratifications Beyond Hedonism

This article elaborates upon the notion of media enjoyment in the context of film viewing by proposing a complementary type of gratification that we conceptualize as appreciation. Three studies were conducted to tap into the multidimensionality of viewers' entertainment gratifications with a special focus on the domain of more serious, poignant, and pensive media experiences typically associated with genres such as drama, history, documentary, or art films. These studies provide evidence of and measurement for gratifications related to fun and suspense, but also gratifications related to moving and thought‐provoking entertainment experiences, with all three gratifications leading to perceptions of entertainment having a more long‐lasting or enduring effect. The results are discussed with regard to the theoretical conceptualization of entertainment gratification.     

The Sign Redeemed: A Study in Christian Fundamental Semiotics

A Christian engagement with the question of the nature of the sign has to begin in a theology of the creation. Signs exhibit features of both reference and address. The meaning of the incarnation is that in a world of God's making the referring signs which constitute the world also implicitly function as divine address. The words of institution of the Lord's Supper, taken as an integral part of the Passion narrative, are the fulfilment of this addressive function of the world and thus also mark the point at which the Church is constituted as the human community who are called to receive the divine address.