Interventionist counterfactuals

A number of recent authors (Galles and Pearl, Found Sci 3 (1):151?C182, 1998; Hiddleston, No?s 39 (4):232?C257, 2005; Halpern, J Artif Intell Res 12:317?C337, 2000) advocate a causal modeling semantics for counterfactuals. But the precise logical significance of the causal modeling semantics remains murky. Particularly important, yet particularly under-explored, is its relationship to the similarity-based semantics for counterfactuals developed by Lewis (Counterfactuals. Harvard University Press, 1973b). The causal modeling semantics is both an account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals, and an account of which inferences involving counterfactuals are valid. As an account of truth conditions, it is incomplete. While Lewis??s similarity semantics lets us evaluate counterfactuals with arbitrarily complex antecedents and consequents, the causal modeling semantics makes it hard to ascertain the truth conditions of all but a highly restricted class of counterfactuals. I explain how to extend the causal modeling language to encompass a wider range of sentences, and provide a sound and complete axiomatization for the extended language. Extending the truth conditions for counterfactuals has serious consequences concerning valid inference. The extended language is unlike any logic of Lewis??s: modus ponens is invalid, and classical logical equivalents cannot be freely substituted in the antecedents of conditionals.     

Truthmaking without necessitation

I propose an account truthmaking that provides truthmakers for negative truths. The account replaces Truthmaker Necessitarianism with a ??Duplication Principle??, according to which a suitable entity T is a truthmaker for a proposition p just in case the existence of an appropriate counterpart of T entails the truth of p, where the counterpart relation is cashed out in terms of qualitative duplication. My account captures an intuitive notion of truthmakers as ??things the way they are??, validates two appealing principles about entailment and containment proposed by David Armstrong, and invalidates the controversial Disjunction Thesis.     

Probation officers' perceptions of youths' risk of reoffending and use of risk assessment in case management

Juvenile probation officers (JPOs) are required to make numerous decisions about the case management of young offenders on a daily basis. This multi-site study examined JPOs' (N?=?64) perceptions of the typical youth's risk of reoffending before implementation of a risk/needs assessment (RNA) tool, and their self-reported, case management decision-making after implementation of an RNA tool. Results indicated that JPOs tended to overestimate the likely base rates of reoffending while RNA tool estimates were more accurate. Further, most JPOs appeared to be making service referral and placement decisions commensurate with youths' risk levels, regardless of whether they claimed to use the RNA tool in their decisions. Variability in application of risk to case management practices was more a function of the probation office than of the specific JPO. Implications for use of risk assessment in juvenile probation are discussed. Copyright ? 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Made This Way for a Reason”: Body Satisfaction and Spirituality

Nine female participants shared their experiences of body satisfaction, spiritual beliefs, and the intersection of these domains. Using phenomenological inquiry, the authors identified 6 themes in participant interviews. The authors discuss ways in which this study extends previous research, in addition to providing suggestions for counseling practice.     

Women's Spirituality Across the Life Span: Implications for Counseling

Women's spirituality has unique characteristics that are often ignored within the spirituality literature. The authors review the literature on women's spirituality to reveal the major themes women have identified as relevant to their spiritual journeys across the life span. Implications for counseling and ideas for practice are included after major themes are examined.     

Heuristics in medical and non-medical decision-making

Pairs of hypothetical medical and non-medical problems were given to 44 pediatric residents at three levels of hospital training. Each problem was designed to detect a specific heuristic-based bias in making diagnoses. Discounting, disregarding base rate, and over-confidence in contextually embedded redundant information were more evident on medical than on non-medical problems. In particular, a greater number of third-year residents disregarded base-rate information than did first- and second-year residents on medical but not on non-medical problems. On medical problems, a greater number of first-year residents expressed greater confidence in redundant information that was contextually embedded than in information that was presented in a listed format. Over one-third of the residents confused prospective and retrospective probabilities; three-fourths showed evidence of augmentation; virtually all residents expressed greater confidence in a diagnosis based on redundant rather than on non-redundant listed information. These latter effects were consistent across training level and occurred on both medical and non-medical problems. The results are discussed in terms of prototype theory and the nature of medical training.     

“If a girl doesn't say ‘no’…”: young men,rape and claims of ‘insufficient knowledge’

Most psychological theories of rape tend to stress factors internal to both rapists and their victims in accounting for the phenomenon. Unlike such theories, social psychological and feminist accounts have drawn attention to social and cultural factors as productive of rape, and have criticized psychological accounts on the grounds that they often serve, paradoxically, to cement pre‐existing ‘common‐sense’. In this paper we examine the ways in which young Australian men draw upon widely culturally shared accounts, or interpretative repertoires, of rape to exculpate rapists. In particular, we discuss the reliance placed on a ‘lay’ version of Tannen's 1992 ‘miscommunication model’ of (acquaintance) rape and detail the use of this account—the claim that rape is a consequence of men's ‘not knowing’—as a device to accomplish exculpation. Implications of our methods for capturing young people's understanding of sexual coercion, rape and consent, and for the design of ‘rape prevention’ programmes, are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Increasing CREB in the auditory thalamus enhances memory and generalization of auditory conditioned fear

Although the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) is essential for conditioned auditory fear memory, an emerging theme is that plasticity in multiple brain regions contributes to fear memory formation. The LA receives direct projections from the auditory thalamus, specifically the medial division of the medial geniculate nucleus (MGm) and adjacent posterior intralaminar nucleus (PIN). While traditionally viewed as a simple relay structure, mounting evidence implicates the thalamus in diverse cognitive processes. We investigated the role of plasticity in the MGm/PIN in auditory fear memory. First we found that auditory fear conditioning (but not control manipulations) increased the levels of activated CREB in both the MGm and PIN. Next, using viral vectors, we showed that exogenously increasing CREB in this region specifically enhanced formation of an auditory conditioned fear memory without affecting expression of an auditory fear memory, formation of a contextual fear memory, or basic auditory processing. Interestingly, mice with increased CREB levels in the MGm/PIN also showed broad auditory fear generalization (in contrast to control mice, they exhibited fear responses to tones of other frequencies). Together, these results implicate CREB-mediated plasticity in the MGm/PIN in both the formation and generalization of conditioned auditory fear memory. Not only do these findings refine our knowledge of the circuitry underlying fear memory but they also provide novel insights into the neural substrates that govern the degree to which acquired fear of a tone generalizes to other tones.