Disentangling Listening and Verbal Recall Related But Separate Constructs?

This study examines the relationship between verbal recall and listening, using measures of listening behavior as a criterion. Three possible models of the verbal recall-listening relationship are examined: isomorphic, confounding, and recall ability as antecedent to listening. Seventy-three participants were videotaped while interviewing a confederate, and the videotapes were coded for observable listening behaviors. Participants also completed a conversation-based listening test and a verbal recall test. The results indicated that, although related, listening and the ability to recall verbal stimuli are not isomorphic. The data were also inconsistent with a model specifying verbal recall ability as a confound of listening. A model stipulating verbal recall ability as antecedent to listening provided the best fit to the data. Implications of this model for past and future research are discussed.     

SCHIZOPHRENIA AS DIALOGUE AT THE ENDS OF ITS TETHER: THE RELATIONSHIP OF DISRUPTIONS IN IDENTITY WITH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SYMPTOMS

Changes to definitions and theories of psychopathology result less from scientific advances and more from changes in social and cultural values. Herein, the historical and contemporary diversity in definitions and theories of anorexia nervosa is used to illustrate this point. First, we offer a discussion of diachronic diversity (diversity over time) and synchronic diversity (diversity at a given point in time) in conceptions and theories of psychopathology in general. Second, we elaborate a social constructionist perspective on psychopathology in general. Third, to illustrate this perspective, we provide a diachronic and synchronic analysis of definitions and theories of anorexia nervosa. Fourth, we discuss the implications of this analysis for clinical practice. We conclude that whatever view eventually prevails will depend not on which one is better at rooting out some hidden truth about anorexia nervosa but, rather, on which one is viewed as more compatible with evolving social and cultural standards, views, and norms regarding health and illness in general and self-starvation in particular.     

Missing a romantic partner: A prototype analysis

In this study, a prototype analysis of romantic missing was conducted. College‐age participants in the United States generated features of missing a partner (Study 1) and rated their centrality (Study 2). In a reaction time task, participants made category judgments for central features more quickly than for noncentral features (Study 3). In recognition and recall tasks, central features were more salient in participants’ memory, and participants evaluated individuals experiencing central features in vignettes as missing their partners more (Study 4). A prototype‐based measure of missing administered to individuals in long‐distance relationships (Study 5) correlated with commitment and attachment dimensions but only weakly with loneliness. Finally, level of missing differed based on whether individuals were in a geographically distant (vs. proximal) relationships (Study 6).     

Précis of Knowledge and its Limits1

A creature that is not aware of anything does not lead a genuinely intelligent life. Its activity is unintelligent because unguided by (conscious or unconscious) awareness. Although intelligent life does not consist solely of awareness, it is intelligent only where it is intimately related to awareness. Awareness of anything involves some awareness of how things are in some respect. Even awareness merely of how things appear to be is awareness of how they are in respect of appearance. Awareness of how things are is awareness, concerning some way, that they are that way. But awareness that they are that way is knowledge that they are that way. Thus all intelligent life involves an intimate relation to knowledge. The mental states of a creature are the states that make its life intelligent. Consequently, the state of knowing is a mental state; it is central to mentality.     

Predicting dating relationship fate with insiders’ and outsiders’ perspectives: Who and what is asked matters

Two recent studies (C. R. Agnew, T. J. Loving, & S. M. Drigotas, 2001; T. K. MacDonald & M. Ross, 1999) investigated the relative ability of outsiders’ (network members) and daters’ perceptions of the daters’ romance to predict relationship fate. Careful analysis of these studies suggests that the types of network members asked and what is asked significantly impact the prognostic ability of outsiders’ perceptions. The current research replicates and extends this literature and highlights the challenges posed when collecting outsiders’ perspectives of their friends’ relationships. Daters and 2 friends (1 female, 1 male) were asked to provide their perceptions of the dating relationship on 2 indexes: a direct prediction of the likelihood that the relationship would last 6 months and an overall qualitative assessment of the dater’s commitment. Results highlight the need for researchers to carefully attend to the instruments and samples employed when obtaining multiple perspectives of the same dating relationship.     

On the Content of Experience*

The intentionalist about consciousness holds that the qualitative character of experience, “what it’s like,” is determined by the contents of a select group of special intentional states of the subject. Fred Dretske (1995) , Mike Thau (2002) , Michael Tye (1995) and many others have embraced intentionalism, but these philosophers have not generally appreciated that, since we are intimately familiar with the qualitative character of experience, we thereby have special access to the nature of these contents. In this paper, we take advantage of this fact to show that intentionalism is incompatible with the idea that these contents are singular or general propositions, and thus that intentionalism is incompatible with one dominant trend in thinking about contents in general. In particular, there appear to be insoluble difficulties in explaining how the phenomenology of place and time can be explained by any intentionalist theory appealing to singular or general propositions.