Anti-Normativism Evaluated

Abstract

I argue that recent attempts to show that meaning and content are not normative fail. The two most important arguments anti-normativists have presented are what I call the ‘argument from constitution’ and the ‘argument from guidance’. Both of these arguments suffer from the same basic problem: they overlook the possibility of focusing on assessability by norms, rather than compliance with norms or guidance by norms. Moreover, I argue that the anti-normativists arguments fail even if we ignore this basic problem. Thus, we have not been given good reasons to think that normativism is false.     

Deterioration of the phonological processing skills in adults with an acquired severe hearing loss

Phonological processing was examined in a group of individuals with an acquired severe hearing loss and compared to a group of matched normal hearing individuals. The hearing-impaired group was significantly slower and less accurate when performing a visual rhyme-judgement task, and produced fewer rhyming word pairs on a rhyme-generation task than the normal hearing group. In contrast, the hearing-impaired group performed on a par with the normal hearing group on verbal working memory tasks. It is concluded that specific aspects of the phonological system deteriorate in this population as a function of auditory deprivation. In particular, the phonological representations are impaired and this impairment also affects the ability to rapidly perform phonological operations (i.e., analyse and compare). In contrast, phonological processing involved in verbal working memory is preserved in this population.     

Pointing out new news, old news, and absent referents at 12 months of age

There is currently controversy over the nature of 1-year-olds' social-cognitive understanding and motives. In this study we investigated whether 12-month-old infants point for others with an understanding of their knowledge states and with a prosocial motive for sharing experiences with them. Declarative pointing was elicited in four conditions created by crossing two factors: an adult partner (1) was already attending to the target event or not, and (2) emoted positively or neutrally. Pointing was also coded after the event had ceased. The findings suggest that 12-month-olds point to inform others of events they do not know about, that they point to share an attitude about mutually attended events others already know about, and that they can point (already prelinguistically) to absent referents. These findings provide strong support for a mentalistic and prosocial interpretation of infants' prelinguistic communication.     

Assessing the Organizational Climate for Translational Research with a New Survey Tool

Science and Engineering Ethics - Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public...     

Perceptual Priming by Invisible Motion

When observers see motion that is not really there, they can nonetheless show evidence of motion priming. And when observers do not see motion that is really there, they also show evidence for motion priming. Evidently, the process responsible for establishing motion correspondence is sensitive to contextual information, and this sensitivity is modulated at preconscious levels of visual analysis.     

Structural equation modeling of paired-comparison and ranking data

L. L. Thurstone's (1927) model provides a powerful framework for modeling individual differences in choice behavior. An overview of Thurstonian models for comparative data is provided, including the classical Case V and Case III models as well as more general choice models with unrestricted and factor-analytic covariance structures. A flow chart summarizes the model selection process. The authors show how to embed these models within a more familiar structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. The different special cases of Thurstone's model can be estimated with a popular SEM statistical package, including factor analysis models for paired comparisons and rankings. Only minor modifications are needed to accommodate both types of data. As a result, complex models for comparative judgments can be both estimated and tested efficiently.     

Applied tension, exposure in vivo, and tension-only in the treatment of blood phobia.

Thirty patients with phobia for blood, wounds and injuries were treated individually with applied tension (AT), exposure in vivo (E), or tension-only (T) for 5 sessions. They were assessed on self-report, behavioral and physiological measures before and after treatment, and at a 1 yr follow-up. All groups improved significantly, and the improvements were maintained at follow-up. Applying stringent criteria, 90% of the AT-, 80% of the T-, and 40% of the E-patients were clinically improved at the end of treatment. The corresponding figures at follow-up were 100, 90 and 50%, respectively. AT differed significantly, and T marginally from E at both assessments. Applied tension, or tension-only should, from a clinical point of view, be considered the treatment of choice for blood phobia.     

In defence of the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT)—a reply.

A paper by I. Zuber and B. Ekehammar in this Journal (38, 1997) is reviewed. The paper advocates that the non-veridical contents in the series of reports in the DMT should preferably be referred, not to psychoanalytic defence mechanisms, but to factors of stimulus order. The methods and the arguments of this investigation are critically examined.     

Motion structure in five-dot patterns as a determinant of perceptual grouping

The effect of basic motion structures on perceptual grouping was studied with five-dot motion patterns. Four basic motion structures were identified in terms of proximal common and relative motion vectors. In a forced-choice situation, the observers had to decide to which of two pairs of dots a fifth critical dot seemed to belong. Thus, one of two possible three-dot units was chosen by the observers. The two possible three-dot units defined different motion structures, and the chosen motion structure was considered to have stronger grouping power than the alternative structure had. It was found that parallel common motions (perceived translation in the plane) had the strongest grouping power; these were followed by circular common motions (perceived rotation in the plane), concurrent relative motions (perceived translation in depth), and, finally, parallel relative motions (perceived rotation in depth). The results also suggested effects of proximity and orientation of axis of rotation. It is further argued that the relative grouping power of the motion structures could not solely be interpreted in terms of changes of directions and distances between the dots. Instead it is suggested that vector analysis is a fundamental perceptual activity and that basic motion structures determine grouping power.