Children's reports of the sources of self-knowledge

Nursery schoolers and first- and third-graders participated in an interview which assessed recall, comprehension, and perceived importance of three sources of self-knowledge: social feedback, self-observation, and social comparison. For recall measures, these sources were embedded in stories about a child making a self-discovery. Recall of all three sources improved with grade level, and feedback was the best remembered self-validational process. Comprehension was defined as the ability to identify the sources as depicted in line drawings, and it, too, increased with grade level. All three sources were well understood by older children, but preschoolers had difficulty with the concept of social comparison. Ratings of importance, also assessed using line drawings, were independent of grade level. When selecting their own “very best” source of self-knowledge, children cited self-observation most frequently. A supplementary sample of preschoolers nominated the best source of self-knowledge for other children rather than for themselves; under these instructions, feedback from others emerged as the preferred source.     

A comparison of three methods for scoring figure drawings

Figure drawings obtained from 758 white male medical students were scored using three different methods. Method I involved 16 different physical size measurements; Method II involved six separate sophistication of body concept ratings; and Method III involved 42 separate aspects of the drawings weighted in direct proportion to their relative frequency of occurrence in the sample studied (conventionality scoring). Separate factor analyses of the scores derived from each method revealed that Methods I and II each reflect only a single underlying factor, and that these factors are uncorrelated in the population studied. Method III yielded eight meaningful factors, each of which may be construed as an independent area of conventionality/deviancy. An overall conventionality/deviancy score was also derived. It is believed that these three methods of scoring capture most of the variance inherent in existing figure drawing scoring systems, but that use of all three is necessary for a comprehensive analysis.     

Sexism and beautyism in women's evaluations of peer performance

The purpose of this study was to investigate independent and interactive effects of physical attractiveness (PA), sex, and task sex-typing on performance evaluations. Subjects were 216 college women who read poorquality essays written on masculine, feminine, or neutral topics. Essays supposedly were written by a male or a female student who was either attractive, unattractive, or physically unidentified. Results indicated that PA enhanced evaluations of both male and female essayists, except for the predicted effect that female attractiveness is less beneficial for masculine than feminine task performances. Women did not evaluate the sexes differently, and sexism was largely restricted to the interactive effects of PA. PA stereotypes also affected causal attributions of performers' outcomes in a manner consistent with attribution theory. These data are considered in the context of the existing literature and the directions for further research on sexism and beautyism.     

Empirically based assessment of competence to stand trial: Instrument development and preliminary findings

An instrument was designed to assist mental health professionals in objectively assessing competence to stand trial. Items were empirically derived based on input from multidisciplinary teams of mental health professionals experienced in working with forensic patients in a state hospital. Procedures were adapted from Goldfried and D'Zurella's five-stage behavioral-analytic model for the assessment of social competence. The resulting 15-item audiotaped scale assessed both legal and social competence based on reported responding in jail, in interactions with lawyers, and in the courtroom. Interrater reliability on scoring of responses ranged from .68–.96. High correlations between social and legal competence (.56–.82) demonstrated the likelihood of overlap of these constructs and the importance of directly addressing both. A pilot intervention program was designed from the instrument and implemented with three forensic patients. Failure to demonstrate change in these subjects is briefly discussed, and recommendations for future efforts in this area are made.     

Jung’s Psychoid Monism

Jung’s final psychoid theory of archetypes was an additional attempt to find a solution to the philosophical problem of how to relate mind and matter. In the following essay Jung’s solution is summarized by a set of 17 theses, and Jung’s philosophy will be called psychoid monism. According to psychoid monism, what ultimately and primarily is, is the psycho-physically neutral domain of instinctual experience. The origin of this view can be traced back to Post-Kantian German Idealism (Schopenhauer, Schelling, Hölderlin), and a systematization of the view requires a dialectic approach and, in particular, contradiction-tolerant dialectic logic.     

The Intergenerational Transmission of Party Preferences in Multiparty Contexts: Examining Parental Socialization Processes in the Netherlands

Research shows that parents have a strong influence on the party preferences of their children. Yet little is known about how such preferences are transmitted in multiparty systems with weak party identification and high electoral volatility. We propose a model of intergenerational transmission that includes both direct effects of parents' party preferences on those of their children, as well as indirect effects through left–right and issue positions. We test this model with original survey data of Dutch adolescents (14–20 years old) and their parents (N = 751 adolescent-parent pairs). We find two paths through which parents exert influence on the party preferences of their adolescent children. On the first path, parental party preferences function as a direct predictor of adolescent party preferences. On the second path, adolescent left–right and issue positions function as a mediator between parental left–right and issue positions and adolescent party preferences, with the effect of left–right positions being stronger than that of issue positions. The frequency with which adolescents discuss political topics with their parents moderates these effects.     

Scepticism About Scepticism or the Very Idea of a Global ‘Vat-Language’

This paper aims to motivate a scepticism about scepticism in contemporary epistemology. I present the sceptic with a dilemma: On one parsing of the BIV (brain-in-a-vat) scenario, the second premise in a closure-based sceptical argument will turn out false, because the scenario is refutable; on another parsing, the scenario collapses into incoherence, because the sceptic cannot even save the appearances. I discuss three different ways of cashing out the BIV scenario: ‘Recent Envatment’ (RE), ‘Lifelong Envatment’ (LE) and ‘Nothing But Envatment’ (NBE). I show that RE scenarios are a kind of ‘local’ sceptical scenario that does not pose a significant threat to the possibility of perceptual knowledge as such. I then go on to consider the more radical (or global) LE and NBE scenarios, which do undermine the possibility of perceptual knowledge of an ‘external’ world by positing that it is conceivable that one has always been envatted and, hence, trapped in a ‘global’ illusion. I start by assuming that we could be in such a scenario (LE or NBE) and then spell out what we would need to presuppose for such scenarios to be capable of being actual. Drawing on some central insights from Wittgenstein’s anti-private language considerations, I show that the truth of a global scepticism would presuppose the possibility of a private ‘vat-language’, a notion that cannot be rendered coherent. But, if so, then neither can the sceptical scenarios that presuppose such a conception.

     

Llamas use social information from conspecifics and humans to solve a spatial detour task

Animal Cognition - Learning by observing others (i.e. social learning) is an important mechanism to reduce the costs of individual learning. Social learning can occur between conspecifics but also...