EXPRESSIVISM AND MORAL CERTITUDE

Michael Smith has recently argued that non-cognitivists are unable to accommodate crucial structural features of moral belief, and in particular that non-cognitivists have trouble accounting for subjects' certitude with respect to their moral beliefs. James Lenman and Michael Ridge have independently constructed 'ecumenical' versions of non-cognitivism, intended to block this objection. We argue that these responses do not work. If ecumenical non-cognitivism, a hybrid view which incorporates both non-cognitivist and cognitivist elements, fails to meet Smith's challenge, it is unlikely that 'purer' and more familiar versions of non-cognitivism will succeed.     

The nature of skilled adult reading varies with type of instruction in childhood

Does the type of reading instruction experienced during the initial years at school have any continuing effect on the ways in which adults read words? The question has arisen in current discussions about computational models of mature word-reading processes. We tested predicted continuing effects by comparing matched samples of skilled adult readers of English who had received explicit phonics instruction in childhood and those who had not. In responding to nonwords that can receive alternative legitimate pronunciations, those adults having childhood phonics instruction used more regular grapheme-phoneme correspondences that were context free and used fewer vocabulary-based contextually dependent correspondences than did adults who had no phonics instruction. These differences in regularization of naming responses also extended to some low-frequency words. This apparent cognitive footprint of childhood phonics instruction is a phenomenon requiring consideration when researchers attempt to model adult word reading and when they select participants to test the models.     

Programming simulations of cognitive processes: An example of building macrostructures

Information is provided on the process of creating psychological simulations using LISP. A simulation is described, and the difference between progamming and simulation and “normal” programming is also provided, along with programming and debugging tips.     

‘No fair, copycat!’: what children’s response to plagiarism tells us about their understanding of ideas

Adults believe that plagiarizing ideas is wrong, which requires an understanding that others can have ideas and that it is wrong to copy them. In order to test when this understanding emerges, we investigated when children begin to think plagiarism is wrong. In Study 1, children aged 7, 9 and 11 years old, as well as adults, disliked someone who plagiarized compared to someone who drew an original drawing or someone who drew an identical picture by chance. Study 2 investigated the same question with younger children, focusing on children aged 3–6 years old. Children aged 5–6 years old evaluated plagiarizers negatively relative to unique drawers, but 3–4-year-olds did not. Study 3 replicated the findings from Study 2 and found that children justify their negative evaluations of plagiarizers by mentioning concerns over copying. These experiments provide evidence that, by age 5 years old, children understand that others have ideas and dislike the copying of these ideas.     

A family-focused randomized controlled trial to prevent adolescent alcohol and tobacco use: The moderating roles of positive parenting and adolescent gender

Four years of longitudinal data from 2,153 families with a 5th- or 6th-grade preadolescent participating in a family-focused pediatric primary-care-based prevention program were used to examine whether prevention effects were moderated by positive parenting and/or adolescent gender. Alcohol and tobacco use, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems were examined. Although findings revealed no main effect of the prevention program, positive parenting and adolescent gender were moderators of internalizing problems and adolescent gender was a moderator of externalizing problems. Clinical implications and future directions for research are discussed.     

Self-esteem differences in the effects of hypocrisy induction on behavioral intentions in the health domain

Two studies investigated whether individuals with varying levels of self-esteem respond differently in the hypocrisy paradigm. In the first study, all participants were regular smokers. Those in the hypocrisy condition delivered a speech in front of a camera on the dangers of smoking. The principal dependent measure was the intention to stop smoking. In the second study, participants in the hypocrisy condition wrote a public (personally identifiable) passage about the importance of a healthy lifestyle. The principal dependent measure was the intention to improve one's health behaviors. In both studies, self-esteem scores were positively related to intentions to change behavior in the hypocrisy condition but not in a control condition. The implications of these findings for conceptions of self-esteem and for dissonance theory are discussed.     

COMPOSITION AND COINCIDENCE

Many philosophers say that the same atoms may compose at once a statue and a lump of matter that could outlive the statue. I reject this because no difference between the statue and the lump could explain why they have different persistence conditions. But if we say that the lump is the statue, it is difficult to see how there could be any human beings. I argue that this and analogous problems about material objects admit only of solutions that at least appear to be radically at odds with our ordinary thinking.