Aristotle's Logical Works and His Conception of Logic

I provide a survey of the contents of the works belonging to Aristotle's Organon in order to define their nature, in the light of his declared intentions and of other indications (mainly internal ones) about his purposes. No unifying conception of logic can be found in them, such as the traditional one, suggested by the very title Organon, of logic as a methodology of demonstration. Logic for him can also be formal logic (represented in the main by the De Interpretatione), axiomatized syllogistic (represented in the main by the Prior Analytics) and a methodology of dialectical and rhetorical discussion. The consequent lack of unity presented by those works does not exclude that both the set of works called Analytics and the set of works concerning dialectic (Topics and Sophistici Elenchi) form a unity, and that a certain priority is attributed to the analytics with respect to dialectic.     

Separation/divorce sexual assault: The current state of social scientific knowledge

Many contend that the logical solution to woman abuse in marriage/cohabitation is for women to exit through legal separation, divorce, or other means. However, a growing body of empirical work shows that separation or divorce does not necessarily solve the problem of woman abuse. For example, in addition to experiencing lethal or nonlethal forms of physical violence and psychological abuse, many women who try to leave, or who have left their male partners, are sexually assaulted. The main objective of this paper is to critically review the extant empirical and theoretical work on separation/divorce sexual assault. Suggestions for future research and theorizing are also provided.     

Linking impulsivity and inhibitory control using manual and oculomotor response inhibition tasks

Separate cognitive processes govern the inhibitory control of manual and oculomotor movements. Despite this fundamental distinction, little is known about how these inhibitory control processes relate to more complex domains of behavioral functioning. This study sought to determine how these inhibitory control mechanisms relate to broadly defined domains of impulsive behavior. Thirty adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 28 comparison adults performed behavioral measures of inhibitory control and completed impulsivity inventories. Results suggest that oculomotor inhibitory control, but not manual inhibitory control, is related to specific domains of self-reported impulsivity. This finding was limited to the ADHD group; no significant relations between inhibitory control and impulsivity were found in comparison adults. These results highlight the heterogeneity of inhibitory control processes and their differential relations to different facets of impulsivity.     

The relationship between n-back performance and matrix reasoning — implications for training and transfer

We have previously demonstrated that training on a dual n-back task results in improvements in fluid intelligence (Gf) as measured by matrix reasoning tasks. Here, we explored the underlying mechanisms of this transfer effect in two studies, and we evaluated the transfer potential of a single n-back task. In the first study, we demonstrated that dual and single n-back task performances are approximately equally correlated with performance on two different tasks measuring Gf, whereas the correlation with a task assessing working memory capacity was smaller. Based on these results, the second study was aimed on testing the hypothesis that training on a single n-back task yields the same improvement in Gf as training on a dual n-back task, but that there should be less transfer to working memory capacity. We trained two groups of students for four weeks with either a single or a dual n-back intervention. We investigated transfer effects on working memory capacity and Gf comparing the two training groups' performance to controls who received no training of any kind. Our results showed that both training groups improved more on Gf than controls, thereby replicating and extending our prior results.     

Happiness, Economics and Public Policy: A Critique

If politicians and their advisers want to promote the well-being or happiness of citizens they have three ways to find out what they should do. (1) They can analyse the behaviour and the decisions of citizens to find out what they want, in other words: they can try to identify their “revealed preferences”. This is common practice in economics. (2) They can analyse the “stated preferences” of people as they express them explicitly in inquiries, referenda, polls and elections. (3) They can analyse the conditions that make people happy by comparing the conditions of people at different levels of happiness. Economists, like Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod, have an outspoken preference for the first option and they are sceptical about the third. Their argument is unbalanced because they are too critical about the authenticity and complexity of self-reported happiness and not critical enough about the authenticity and complexity of revealed preferences. Economists should appreciate the comparative advantages and additional value of each option and try to find optimal combinations with synergistic effects. Economists should appreciate happiness research as an option to assess the nature and magnitude of “externalities” within their own discipline.     

Semantic interference in a delayed naming task: evidence for the response exclusion hypothesis

In 2 experiments participants named pictures of common objects with superimposed distractor words. In one naming condition, the pictures and words were presented simultaneously on every trial, and participants produced the target response immediately. In the other naming condition, the presentation of the picture preceded the presentation of the distractor by 1,000 ms, and participants delayed production of their naming response until distractor word presentation. Within each naming condition, the distractor words were either semantic category coordinates of the target pictures or unrelated. Orthogonal to this manipulation of semantic relatedness, the frequency of the pictures' names was manipulated. The authors observed semantic interference effects in both the immediate and delayed naming conditions but a frequency effect only in the immediate naming condition. These data indicate that semantic interference can be observed when target picture naming latencies do not reflect the bottleneck at the level of lexical selection. In the context of other findings from the picture-word interference paradigm, the authors interpret these data as supporting the view that the semantic interference effect arises at a postlexical level of processing.     

Executive Functions in Preschool Children with Aggressive Behavior: Impairments in Inhibitory Control

The question whether executive function (EF) deficits in children are associated with conduct problems remains controversial. Although the origins of aggressive behavior are to be found in early childhood, findings from EF studies in preschool children with aggressive behavior are inconsistent. The current study aimed to investigate whether preschool children with aggressive behavior show impairments in EF. From a population-based sample, 82 preschool children who were showing aggressive behavior as indicated by scores at or above the 93rd percentile on the Aggressive Behavior Scale of the CBCL 1 1/2-5 were selected. These children with aggressive behavior were matched on IQ to a group of typically developing control children (N = 99). Six neuropsychological tasks were administered to assess set shifting, inhibition, working memory and verbal fluency. A factor analysis was conducted which yielded one clear factor: inhibition. Aggressive preschool children showed poorer performance on this inhibition factor than control children and boys performed worse on this factor than girls. This association between aggressive behavior and inhibition deficits was maintained after controlling for attention problems. In addition, gender differences in all EFs measured were found with boys exhibiting more impairment in EF than girls. These findings demonstrate that preschool children with aggressive behavior show impairments in inhibition, irrespective of attention problems.