What is Locke's Theory of Representation?

On a currently popular reading of Locke, an idea represents its cause, or what God intended to be its cause. Against Martha Bolton and my former self (among others), I argue that Locke cannot hold such a view, since it sins against his epistemology and theory of abstraction. I argue that Locke is committed to a resemblance theory of representation, with the result that ideas of secondary qualities are not representations.     

Intrusive and avoidant ideation among females pursuing infertility treatment

Abstract

It was shown that infertility and its treatment constitute a stressful experience for women, reflected particularly in disturbing intrusive ideation about the stress source. Infertility patients reported levels of intrusive ideation significantly higher than routine gynecologic patients and not significantly different from levels of psychiatric outpatients being treated for stress reactions to traumatic events. Intrusive ideation also predicted the degree of self-reported infertility-specific distress and dysfunction, further clarifying the key role of such ideation in the experience. Finally, as hypothesized, the frustration level of the treatment experience (as indexed by the number of infertility treatment methods attempted) predicted avoidant ideation. Implications for managing the psychological distress and disruption associated with the infertility treatment experience were discussed.     

Task Importance Effects on Prospective Memory Strategy Use

Mnemonic strategies generally improve prospective memory (PM) performance. However, little is known about why people use such strategies. In the Motivational‐Cognitive Prospective Memory model, task importance is thought to influence performance via multiple mechanisms, including increased strategy use. Our main purpose was to test this mechanism: higher PM task importance was hypothesized to cause greater strategy use. We also tested whether importance would specifically increase the use of more effective (external) strategies. Participants reported their strategy use for two hypothetical PM tasks. As predicted, they listed more strategies for more important tasks. This result demonstrates one mechanism for motivational effects in early phases of the task. We found weaker support for the prediction that participants would selectively increase their use of better strategies for more important tasks. This finding supports a relatively pessimistic view of meta‐memory in PM, at least when it comes to modulating one's use of dependable strategies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Detriangulation of Absent Fathers in Single-Parent Black Families: Techniques of Imagery

The projection of the mother's unresolved feelings about an absent father onto one or more of her children-often the eldest son expected to assume the role of parental child-is an obstacle frequently encountered in therapy with single-parent Black families. Acknowledgment and resolution of these feelings by the mother is an important step toward reestablishing generational boundaries and improving communication between mother and children. It is suggested that the empty chair procedure and the use of family photographs are two interventions that can be used within the context of structural and/or transgenerational family therapies to help the mother separate her feelings about the absent father from her feelings about her children. Models for the use of both approaches and the potential benefits of each is presented. The successful outcome of either technique may depend, however, on variables in the family's history and the stage of therapy during which the techniques are introduced.     

Short- and Long-Term Effects of Inpatient Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Adolescents With Anxious-Depressed School Absenteeism: A Within-Subject Comparison of Changes

The effects of inpatient treatment, including manual-guided cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT), were examined for 36 adolescents (12–18 years) with chronic school absenteeism and mental health problems. Using a within-subject control group design, no changes were noted during the untreated waiting period, whereas there was a strong, statistically significant reduction in school absence rates and mental health problems from the start to the end of inpatient treatment. At discharge, 88.9% of adolescents attended school regularly or were employed (86.1 and 63.9% at 2- and 9-months follow-up, respectively). Self- and parent-reported mental health problems were significantly reduced during treatment and remained stable during follow-up.     

Facing threat: infants' and adults' visual scanning of faces with neutral, happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotional expressions

Human faces are among the most important visual stimuli that we encounter at all ages. This importance partly stems from the face as a conveyer of information on the emotional state of other individuals. Previous research has demonstrated specific scanning patterns in response to threat-related compared to non-threat-related emotional expressions. This study investigated how visual scanning patterns toward faces which display different emotional expressions develop during infancy. The visual scanning patterns of 4-month-old and 7-month-old infants and adults when looking at threat-related (i.e., angry and fearful) versus non-threat-related (i.e., happy, sad, and neutral) emotional faces were examined. We found that infants as well as adults displayed an avoidant looking pattern in response to threat-related emotional expressions with reduced dwell times and relatively less fixations to the inner features of the face. In addition, adults showed a pattern of eye contact avoidance when looking at threat-related emotional expressions that was not yet present in infants. Thus, whereas a general avoidant reaction to threat-related facial expressions appears to be present from very early in life, the avoidance of eye contact might be a learned response toward others' anger and fear that emerges later during development.     

Risky Decision Making in Substance Dependent Adolescents with a Disruptive Behavior Disorder

Of all psychiatric disorders, the disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) are the most likely to predispose to substance dependence (SD). One possible underlying mechanism for this increased vulnerability is risky decision making. The aim of this study was to examine decision making in DBD adolescents with and without SD. Twenty-five DBD adolescents (19 males) with SD (DBD+SD), 28 DBD adolescents (23 males) without SD (DBD-SD) and 99 healthy controls (72 males) were included in the study. DBD adolescents with co-morbid attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were excluded. Risky decision making was investigated by assessing the number of disadvantageous choices in the Iowa gambling task. DBD+SD made significantly more risky choices than healthy controls and DBD-SD. Healthy controls and DBD-SD did not differ on risky decision making. These results suggest that risky decision making is a vulnerability factor for the development of SD in a subgroup of adolescents with DBD without ADHD.     

Objective Content

We conceive of many general terms we use as having satisfaction conditions that are objective in that the thought that something meets them neither entails nor is entailed by the thought that we are currently in a position in which we are ready, or warranted, to apply those terms to it. How do we manage to use a given term in such a way that it is thereby endowed, and conceived to be endowed, with satisfaction conditions that are objective in this sense? In the first half of the paper, I present a number of interrelated problems for some extant metasemantical accounts of how use determines objective satisfaction conditions. In the second half, I then propose a novel account that avoids all of these problems.