Infinite lies and explanatory ties: idealization in phase transitions

Synthese - Infinite idealizations appear in our best scientific explanations of phase transitions. This is thought by some to be paradoxical. In this paper I connect the existing literature on the...     

History Assessments of Thinking: A Validity Study

This article reports a validity study of History Assessments of Thinking (HATs), which are short, constructed-response assessments of historical thinking. In particular, this study focuses on aspects of cognitive validity, which is an examination of whether assessments tap the intended constructs. Think-aloud interviews with 26 high school students were used to examine the thinking elicited by 8 HATs and multiple-choice versions of these tasks. Results showed that although both HATs and multiple-choice items tapped historical thinking processes, HATs better reflected student proficiency in historical thinking than their multiple-choice counterparts. Item format also influenced the thinking elicited, with multiple-choice items eliciting more instances of construct-irrelevant reasoning than the constructed-response versions. Implications for history assessment are discussed.     

Transient attention does increase perceived contrast of suprathreshold stimuli: a reply to Prinzmetal, Long, and Leonhardt (2008)

Carrasco, Ling, and Read (2004) showed that transient attention increases perceived contrast. However, Prinzmetal, Long, and Leonhardt (2008) suggest that for targets of low visibility, observers may bias their response toward the cued location, and they propose a cue-bias explanation for our previous results. Our response is threefold. First, we outline several key methodological differences between the studies that could account for the different results. We conclude that the cue-bias hypothesis is a plausible explanation for Prinzmetal et al.'s (2008) results, given the characteristics of their stimuli, but not for the studies by Carrasco and colleagues, in which the stimuli were suprathreshold (Carrasco, Ling, & Read, 2004; Fuller, Rodriguez, & Carrasco, 2008; Ling & Carrasco, 2007). Second, we conduct a study to show that the stimuli used in our previous studies are not near-threshold, but suprathreshold (Experiment 1, Phase 1). Furthermore, we found an increase in apparent contrast for a high-contrast stimulus when it was precued, but not when it was postcued, providing more evidence against a cue-bias hypothesis (Experiment 1, Phase 2). We also show that the visibility of the stimuli in Prinzmetal et al. (2008) was much lower than that of Carrasco, Ling, and Read, rendering their stimuli susceptible to their cue-bias explanation (Experiment 2). Third, we present a comprehensive summary of all the control conditions used in different labs that have ruled out a cue bias explanation of the appearance studies. We conclude that a cue-bias explanation may operate with near-threshold and low-visibility stimuli, as was the case in Prinzmetal et al. (2008), but that such an explanation has no bearing on studies with suprathreshold stimuli. Consistent with our previous studies, the present data support the claim that attention does alter the contrast appearance of suprathreshold stimuli.     

A face recognition by similarity (FRBS) conjecture

Cohen (1963) investigated free recall in two lists of words. The first contained unrelated words. The second comprised words drawn from several semantic categories, where the number of categories was equal to the number of words in the first list. He found that recall of unrelated words was equal to the recall of categories. The face recognition by similarity (FRBS) conjecture proposes that this relation cannot be applied to face recognition. Following Cohen's design, two different experimental situations for generating two target faces were constructed. The findings showed that the number of correct recognitions of specific facial features belonging to the first target face (e.g., nose, chin) was greater than or equal to the number of categories of visually similar facial features belonging to the second target face (e.g., different long noses, round chins). In addition, theoretical underpinnings for the FRBS conjecture were suggested.     

Research Report: Self-harming behaviour: from lay perceptions to clinical practice

Self-harm is a complex phenomena that occurs in many different settings. Multi-factorial explanations predominate in the literature and accounts of treatment reflect this diversity, ranging through psychobiological and psycho-social theories. This study aims to identify, describe and interpret some of the accounts and understandings of self-harm from a cross section of the general population and then relate this to clinical practice. Q Methodology is used to explore various competing viewpoints of lay people in understanding and treating people who self-harm. Eight different accounts were produced from the Explanation Q-sort. All but the Biological account described self-harm as a coping strategy, utilized in response to feelings of helplessness following social interaction and were therefore psycho-social in nature. There were four treatment/policy viewpoints that were all psycho-social in nature. These were influenced by humanistic and cognitive types of therapy and were united by the importance of empathy, positive regard and empowerment. These viewpoints are fully explored in this study. Common themes and factors connecting the explanations and treatment Q-sorts are discussed. These findings are then discussed in terms of their implications to current working practice and further initiatives and research projects.     

Young people generating a repertoire of counselling psychology: Talking theory

This paper is concerned with how young people, who are trained as peer supporters in British secondary schools, construct a counselling repertoire. Issues of identity, boundaries and the dilemma of advice giving are all raised when pupils aged 14-17 talk about their roles in peer support. It becomes evident that young people's constructions of themselves and their schemes reflect the assimilation of both traditional psychological theories and contemporary counselling culture. In essence, their scheme may be marketed as a counselling/advising service, which could lead the young people to take on the role of 'counsellors'. On the other hand, their scheme may be promoted as a listening and/or support service and this will lead to young people questioning their role in the scheme. This paper will introduce these issues. This research is taken from an ongoing PhD project which uses language based research as its methodology.     

Naïve Comprehension and Contracting Implications

In his paper [6], Greg Restall conjectured that a logic supports a naïve comprehension scheme if and only if it is robustly contraction free, that is, if and only if no contracting connective is definable in terms of the primitive connectives of the logic. In this paper, we present infinitely many counterexamples to Restall's conjecture, in the form of purely implicational logics which are robustly contraction free, but which trivialize naïve comprehension.     

Multitimescale dynamical interactions between speech rhythm and gesture

Temporal patterns in human movement, and in speech in particular, occur on multiple timescales. Regularities in such patterns have been observed between speech gestures, which are relatively quick movements of articulators (e.g., tongue fronting and lip protrusion), and also between rhythmic units (e.g., syllables and metrical feet), which occur more slowly. Previous work has shown that patterns in both domains can be usefully modeled with oscillatory dynamical systems. To investigate how rhythmic and gestural domains interact, an experiment was conducted in which speakers performed a phrase repetition task, and gestural kinematics were recorded using electromagnetic articulometry. Variance in relative timing of gestural movements was correlated with variance in rhythmic timing, indicating that gestural and rhythmic systems interact in the process of planning and producing speech. A model of rhythmic and gestural planning oscillators with multifrequency coupling is presented, which can simulate the observed covariability between rhythmic and gestural timing.     

Transferability of a role-oriented interest Inventory from men to women in church-related occupations

This study considers the feasibility of using the Inventory of Religious Activities of Interests and the extensive data for men associated therewith in the counseling of women who may be interested in entering occupations related to the Protestant Church. Mean scores on the ten scales of the Inventory for men and women in nine categories of church-related occupations and for the total sex groups were compared in respect to similarity of shape of mean score profile and in respect to the level of mean scores. In addition, the ability of the Inventory to differentiate among groups (11 for women; 10 for men) for the sexes separately was considered. The results suggest that while men and women as total groups appear to differ in their interests as measured by the IRAI, the data for men and women in the respective specialties are sufficiently similar in respect to profile shape and mean score level to justify the use of the Inventory and the normative data for men in the counseling of women. The results suggest the Inventory differentiates among subgroups of men more effectively than it does among subgroups of women. But there are data to suggest that this difference may be more apparent than real.