No Train Paradox

In “The Train Paradox”(Philosophia (2006) 34: 437–438) Gwiazda proposes the use of the relativity of simultaneity to formulate a new paradox. My purpose here is to show that there is no Train Paradox in Gwiazda’s sense.     

Recognition memory for foreign language lexical stress

This study investigated whether English speakers retained the lexical stress patterns of newly learned Spanish words. Participants studied spoken Spanish words (e.g., DUcha [shower], ciuDAD [city]; stressed syllables in capital letters) and subsequently performed a recognition task, in which studied words were presented with the same lexical stress pattern (DUcha) or the opposite lexical stress pattern (CIUdad). Participants were able to discriminate same- from opposite-stress words, indicating that lexical stress was encoded and used in the recognition process. Word-form similarity to English also influenced outcomes, with Spanish cognate words and words with trochaic stress (MANgo) being recognized more often and more quickly than Spanish cognate words with iambic stress (soLAR) and noncognates. The results suggest that while segmental and suprasegmental features of the native language influence foreign word recognition, foreign lexical stress patterns are encoded and not discarded in memory.     

Davidson,correspondence truth and the frege-Gödel—church argument

This paper argues for a conditional claim concerning a famous argument—developed by Church in elucidation of some remarks by Frege to the effect that the bedeutung of a sentence is the sentence’s truth-value—the Frege–Gödel–Church argument, or FGC for short. The point we make is this :if, and just to the extent that, Arthur Smullyan’s argument against Quine's use of FGC is sound, then essentially the same rejoinder disposes also of Davidson's use of FGC against ‘correspondence’ theories of truth. We thus dispute a contention by Professor Davidson that it is coherent to accept that Smullyan’s rejoinder takes away the force of Quine’s version of FGC, while still consistently using FGC to establish that if true sentences (or utterances) correspond to anything, they all correspond to the same thing. We show that the differences between the cases discussed by Smullyan and Davidson’s version of FGC on which Davidson relies for his contention are irrelevant to the point under dispute     

Staging transformation: Spiritist liturgies as theatres of conversion in Afro-Cuban religious practice

Of the religious formations to have crystallised during the transatlantic slave trade, Espiritismo continues to be among the most popular. While most previous studies of its Cuban and Puerto Rican-style ceremonies have approached them as either a type of health care or field of cultural resistance, this article analyses Spiritist services as theatres of conversion for those not already interpellated by Kardecist discourse and persuaded of mediums' authority. Drawing on research among African-American practitioners of Lucumí, often called Santería, it argues that Spiritist ceremonies have instructed participants in the reality of superhuman entities; the normative conditions of access to them; and the benefits of proper intercourse with the divine in both Yorùbá- and Kongo-inspired initiatory traditions. In contrast to scholarship that treats ritual as drama, this article distinguishes Spiritist liturgies from plays in crucial respects and asserts that they more closely resemble modern operating theatres and theatres of war. It aims thereby to furnish scholars from a range of disciplines with an ethnographically informed perspective on the potential of ritual to configure sensori-motor dispositions and affective states and thus to transform religious subjectivity.     

Fitting model-based psychometric functions to simultaneity and temporal-order judgment data: MATLAB and R routines

Research on temporal-order perception uses temporal-order judgment (TOJ) tasks or synchrony judgment (SJ) tasks in their binary SJ2 or ternary SJ3 variants. In all cases, two stimuli are presented with some temporal delay, and observers judge the order of presentation. Arbitrary psychometric functions are typically fitted to obtain performance measures such as sensitivity or the point of subjective simultaneity, but the parameters of these functions are uninterpretable. We describe routines in MATLAB and R that fit model-based functions whose parameters are interpretable in terms of the processes underlying temporal-order and simultaneity judgments and responses. These functions arise from an independent-channels model assuming arrival latencies with exponential distributions and a trichotomous decision space. Different routines fit data separately for SJ2, SJ3, and TOJ tasks, jointly for any two tasks, or also jointly for the three tasks (for common cases in which two or even the three tasks were used with the same stimuli and participants). Additional routines provide bootstrap p-values and confidence intervals for estimated parameters. A further routine is included that obtains performance measures from the fitted functions. An R package for Windows and source code of the MATLAB and R routines are available as Supplementary Files.     

Validation of Dating Violence Questionnarie-R (DVQ-R)

Background/Objective

Despite the growing interest in the study of dating violence, relatively few psychometrically sound instruments are available to researchers. To provide an instrument to researchers and professionals to assess victimization in dating relationships, with adequate psychometric properties. Method: Participants were 6,138 adolescents drawn from the general population, 25% of which were university students. Participants responded to the original Dating Violence Questionnaire (DVQ). Results: Confirmatory analyses results provided evidence of a clear factorial structure that was invariant through sex groups. The DVQ-R measures with 20 items five dimensions of abuse in affective interpersonal relationships of adolescents and youth: Detachment, Humiliation, Coercion, Physical and Sexual violence. Internal consistency indexes were adequate for both each one of the five dimensions as well as for the general scale. Conclusions: The DVQ-R is an useful assessment to be applied in adolescents and youth. Implications for research and intervention are discussed in light of the results obtained.     

Between Homohysteria and Inclusivity: Tolerance Towards Sexual Diversity in Sport

The small number of openly gay or lesbian people in top-flight sport raises the question about whether sporting or social context makes it easy or difficult for these sportspeople to come out. There are studies conducted in the UK and USA using the theory of homohysteria but the scarcity of studies in Spain on this subject, added to the lack of a tool with which to measure tolerance towards sexual diversity in sport, has led us to write this paper in which we analyze the suitability of a new tool for classifying the metacognitive profiles of two samples from different cultures, relative to the concept of homohysteria. This correlational study involved 879 men and women aged 16–78 (M = 28.45 years; SD = 13.08) living in either Spain or the United Kingdom, who were actively participating in or following sport of some kind. Results show that the new instrument has adequate construct validity and high reliability (Alpha = .95), facilitating the measurement of two dimensions of tolerance towards non-heteronormative sexualities in sport: non-rejection and acceptance. Results point to three metacognitive profiles in terms of fit of the level of tolerance in these two dimensions: low, high, and partial. Findings show high levels of both dimensions of tolerance in the UK, and higher percentages of partial tolerance in Spain, underlining the importance of cultural contexts and policies which may affect people’s levels of tolerance. We conclude that a pseudo-inclusive climate exists in Spanish society today.     

Culture and Community Psychology: Toward a Renewed and Reimagined Vision

Interest is growing in community psychology to look more closely at culture. Culture has resided in community psychology in its emphasis on context, ecology, and diversity, however we believe that the field will benefit from a more explicit focus on culture. We suggest a cultural approach that values the community's points of view and an understanding of shared and divergent meanings, goals, and norms within a theory of empowerment. Furthermore, we posit the importance of pluralistic, multi-method programs of research and action encompassing both idiographic and nomothetic approaches, and critical reflexivity of our roles and agendas. Culture can be further incorporated into all the branches and fibers of community psychology.     

Psychometric analysis of the AF5 multidimensional scale of self-concept in a sample of adolescents and adults in Catalonia

The aim of this study is to carry out a psychometric study of the AF5 scale in a sample of 4.825 Catalan subjects from 11 to 63 years-old. They are students from secondary compulsory education (ESO), from high school, middle-level vocational training (CFGM) and from the university. Using a principal component analysis (PCA) the theoretical validity of the components is established and the reliability of the instrument is also analyzed. Differential analyses are performed by gender and normative group using a 2 x 6 factorial design. The normative group variable includes the different levels classified into 6 sub-groups: university, post-compulsory secondary education (high school and CFGM), 4th of ESO, 3rd of ESO, 2nd of ESO and 1st of ESO. The results indicate that the reliability of the Catalan version of the scale is similar to the original scale. The factorial structure also fits with the original model established beforehand. Significant differences by normative group in the four components of self-concept explored (social, family, academic/occupational and physical) are observed. By gender, significant differences appear in the component of physical self-concept, academic and social but not in the family component.