Issues in common law pleading and ancient rhetoric

The concepts of issue and status are more different than is currently assumed. Apart from differences between the classifications of statements they are related to, there are differences between their definitions. The respective functions of pleadings and of inventio account for most of these differences.     

Ineffability: the Very Concept

Philosophia - In this paper, I analyze the concept of ineffability: what does it mean to say that something cannot be said? I begin by distinguishing ineffability from paradox: if something cannot...     

Instrumental Robots

Science and Engineering Ethics - Advances in artificial intelligence research allow us to build fairly sophisticated agents: robots and computer programs capable of acting and deciding on their own...     

Betterness of permissibility

Philosophical Studies - It is often assumed that morally permissible acts are morally better than impermissible acts. We call this claim Betterness of Permissibility. Yet, we show that some...     

Is it enough to be willing to win or do you have to be smart? The relationship between competitive worldviews,cognitive abilities,and applicant faking in personality tests

Recent research has highlighted competitive worldviews as a key predictor of faking—the intentional distortion of answers by candidates in the selection context. According to theoretical assumptions, applicants’ abilities, and especially their cognitive abilities, should influence whether faking motivation, triggered by competitive worldviews, can be turned into successful faking behavior. Therefore, we examined the influence of competitive worldviews on faking in personality tests and investigated a possible moderation of this relationship by cognitive abilities in three independent high school and university student samples (N₁ = 133, N₂ = 137, N₃ = 268). Our data showed neither an influence of the two variables nor of their interaction on faking behavior. We discuss possible reasons for these findings and give suggestions for further research.     

Patterns of errors in short-term forgetting in AD and ageing

This study examined whether the low performance of 40 AD patients in the Brown-Peterson task could be explained by a pattern of errors that differed from 55 elderly controls. Our quantitative results showed that AD patients had a lower performance level in the three retention intervals than controls but a significant interaction between group and interval was not found, indicating that the rate of forgetfulness was similar in the two groups. In our qualitative analysis, errors were categorised as confusions, perseverations, omissions, and order alterations. Contrary to other studies (Dannenbaum, Parkinson, & Inman, 1988; Kopelman, 1985) where an AD forgetfulness tendency of omissions was observed, our data showed an excess of perseveration (even more than five repetitions), indicating problems in the central executive. This could be interpreted in terms of problems in updating the contents of working memory.     

Speech Planning at Turn Transitions in Dialog Is Associated With Increased Processing Load

Speech planning is a sophisticated process. In dialog, it regularly starts in overlap with an incoming turn by a conversation partner. We show that planning spoken responses in overlap with incoming turns is associated with higher processing load than planning in silence. In a dialogic experiment, participants took turns with a confederate describing lists of objects. The confederate’s utterances (to which participants responded) were pre‐recorded and varied in whether they ended in a verb or an object noun and whether this ending was predictable or not. We found that response planning in overlap with sentence‐final verbs evokes larger task‐evoked pupillary responses, while end predictability had no effect. This finding indicates that planning in overlap leads to higher processing load for next speakers in dialog and that next speakers do not proactively modulate the time course of their response planning based on their predictions of turn endings. The turn‐taking system exerts pressure on the language processing system by pushing speakers to plan in overlap despite the ensuing increase in processing load.     

Contemporary Directions in Theories and Psychotherapeutic Strategies in Treatment of Personality Disorders: Relation to Level of Personality Functioning

In this commentary on treatment strategies for personality disorders, we analyze each of the cases and the problem of low motivation in terms of how they fit with the Level of Personality Functioning scale. We then show how patients vary in terms of both level and breadth of pathology. Three of the articles describe patients who are severely impaired and strategies suggested are understood in terms of working with differentiation. The additional three articles present cases where patients have a higher level of personality functioning, and strategies are seen as interventions aimed at integration and improved adaptation. Based on this finding, we argue that the Level of Personality Functioning could be a useful assessment method for improving treatment selection. Finally, we raise questions and offer considerations regarding the understanding of empathy, low motivation and autobiographical memory in the cases presented.