‘Everybody makes errors’: The intersection of De Morgan's Logic and Probability, 1837 – 1847

For Ivor Grattan-Guinness on the occasion of his retirement. The work of Augustus De Morgan on symbolic logic in the mid-nineteenth century is familiar to historians of logic and mathematics alike. What is less well known is his work on probability and, more specifically, the use of probabilistic ideas and methods in his logic. The majority of De Morgan's work on probability was undertaken around 1837?–?1838, with his earliest publications on logic appearing from 1839, a period which culminated with the publication of his Formal Logic in 1847. This article examines the overlap between his work on probability theory and logic during the earliest period of his interest in both.     

Toward a Better Understanding of Psychological Well‐Being in Dementia Caregivers: The Link Between Marital Communication and Depression

To read this article's abstract in both Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, please visit the article's full‐text page on Wiley InterScience ( http://interscience.wiley.com/journal/famp ). Dementia research has frequently documented high rates of caregiver depression and distress in spouses providing care for a partner suffering from dementia. However, the role of marital communication in understanding caregiver distress has not been examined sufficiently. Studies with healthy couples demonstrated an association between marital communication and the partners' psychological well‐being, depressiveness, respectively (e.g., Heene, Buysee, & Van Oost, 2005 ). The current study investigates the relationship between caregiver depression and communication in 37 couples in which the wives care for their partners with dementia. Nonsequential and sequential analyses revealed significant correlations between caregiver depression and marital communication quality. Caregivers whose husbands used more positive communication reported less depression and distress. Additionally, caregiver depression was negatively correlated with rates of positive reciprocal communication indicating dependence between the couples' interaction patterns. This study is one of the first to illustrate the relevance of spousal communication in understanding caregiver distress and depression.     

Retention of a Time Pressure Heuristic in a Target Identification Task

S. Rice and D. Keller (2009) previously reported that participants who were put under time pressure tended to comply more with a diagnostic aid than participants who were not put under time pressure. The present study investigates whether or not learning the benefits of this time pressure heuristic carries over to a second session. Seventy-two New Mexico State University students performed a simulated target-detection task, assisted by a 95% reliable diagnostic aid. Participants were exposed to the following conditions, which were composed of two sessions: speeded–speeded, unspeeded–speeded, speeded–unspeeded, or unspeeded–unspeeded. Results showed that participants who completed the speeded condition for Session 1 performed just as well in the 2nd session regardless of whether or not they were put under time pressure. Participants found that complying with the aid was beneficial to overall performance and continued to comply in a 2nd session even when allowed more time to overrule the aid.     

Using Potential Performance Theory to Test Five Hypotheses About Meta-Attribution

The aim of this study was to compare the reaction times and errors of Spanish children with developmental dyslexia to the reaction times and errors of readers without dyslexia on a masked lexical decision task with identity or repetition priming. A priming paradigm was used to study the role of the lexical deficit in dyslexic children, manipulating the frequency and length of the words, with a short Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA = 150 ms) and degraded stimuli. The sample consisted of 80 participants from 9 to 14 years old, divided equally into a group with a developmental dyslexia diagnosis and a control group without dyslexia. Results show that identity priming is higher in control children (133 ms) than in dyslexic children (55 ms). Thus, the “frequency” and “word length” variables are not the source or origin of this reduction in identity priming reaction times in children with developmental dyslexia compared to control children.     

Defending the Objective List Theory of Well‐Being

The objective list theory of well‐being holds that a plurality of basic objective goods directly benefit people. These can include goods such as loving relationships, meaningful knowledge, autonomy, achievement, and pleasure. The objective list theory is pluralistic (it does not identify an underlying feature shared by these goods) and objective (the basic goods benefit people independently of their reactive attitudes toward them). In this paper, I discuss the structure of this theory and show how it is supported by people's considered judgments. I then respond to three objections. First, I argue that there is no conceptual reason to favor a monistic theory of well‐being over a pluralistic one (such as the objective list theory). Second, I argue that states of affairs can benefit people even though they hold no positive reactive attitudes toward them. And, third, I argue that objective list theorists can identify a fairly‐determinate list of basic goods.     

Spatial correspondence and relation correspondence: grouping factors that influence perception of the Ternus display

We cite two different perceptual-correspondence principles whose emphasis can help to disambiguate the otherwise ambiguous Ternus display in apparent movement (a display that can alternately be seen in one of two possible configurations). One of these principles is spatial correspondence, which emphasizes the maintenance of similar stimulus elements in given locations over time. The other principle is relation correspondence, which emphasizes the maintenance of the inter-organization of stimulus elements across frames. Each of four experiments reported here made use of a different stimulus feature (eg element color or element texture) to emphasize these different correspondence principles in Ternus displays. As predicted, an emphasis upon spatial correspondence resulted in an increase in reports of element movement compared to a featureless control condition. Emphasis on relation correspondence resulted in an increase in reports of group movement. Extensions and limitations of the use of these principles to explain apparent movement are discussed.     

The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Training on the Grieving Process and Emotional Well-Being of Chronic Pain Patients

Losses in relationships, work, and other areas of life often accompany the physical discomfort of chronic pain. Often the depth and intensity of the grief associated with chronic pain are overlooked or possibly misdiagnosed and treated as depression. We used an 8-week mindfulness meditation program to determine its effectiveness in addressing the grieving process among 39 patients diagnosed with chronic pain. Eighteen patients volunteered to be in a comparison group. The study was conducted in a regional hospital's pain clinic and patients completed the Response to Loss Scale (measuring grief), the Beck Depression Inventory, and the State Trait Anxiety Inventory. Results indicated that the treatment group advanced significantly more quickly through the initial stages of grieving than the comparison group. In addition, the treatment group demonstrated significant reductions in depression and state anxiety, but no significant differences emerged when comparing groups on the final stages of grieving or trait anxiety.     

Believe It Or Not: Religious and Other Paranormal Beliefs in the United States

Paranormal beliefs are often divided between those that are central to traditional Christian doctrine, such as the belief in heaven and hell, and those that are commonly associated with the supernatural or occult, such as the belief in ESP and psychic healing. This study employs data from a recent nationwide random sample general population survey to catalog the social correlates of paranormal beliefs and to examine the relationships between religious and other paranormal beliefs. The results indicate that standard social background factors do a poor job of accounting for who believes in paranormal phenomena and that the importance of specific background factors changes dramatically from phenomenon to phenomenon. The results also show that the correlations between belief in religious phenomena and other paranormal phenomena are largely insignificant. These findings call into question many prevailing theories about paranormal beliefs.