James and Carnap on philosophical systems and the role of temperaments

The relationship between American pragmatism and logical empiricism is complicated at best. The received view is that by around the late 1930s or early 1940s pragmatism had been replaced, supplanted, or eclipsed by the younger and more logic-oriented form of empiricism developed in interwar Vienna. Recently, however, this picture has been challenged, and this paper offers further reasons for thinking that the received view is inadequate. Through a critical examination of William James's Pragmatism and “The Sentiment of Rationality” and Rudolf Carnap's “Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language” and other works, the paper builds a case for the existence of a rather striking correspondence between the work of one of pragmatism's most vaunted figures and the thought of logical empiricism's most famous advocate. Not only were both philosophers interested in what might be called metaphilosophy or the psychology of philosophy, both held very similar deflationary views.     

Pause measures during reading and recall in serial list learning

An investigation is reported into pausing and grouping during the serial learning of letter strings, when presented randomly by length and when presented in ascending order. Mean pause times for the reading and recall of longer lists were significantly greater than for lists of shorter span due to extended pausing at specific list positions. In general, reading rhythms were duplicated during recall. Subjects were highly consistent in maintaining their level of pause duration across lists and responded to additions in list length by increasing their number of groups, not by increasing group size. Triadic sequences were the most popular form of spontaneous organization. Pausing measures are discussed as indices of organizational strategies.     

Rehearsal grouping and hierarchical organization of serial position cues in short-term memory

Lists of 8, 9, or 10 digits were presented at the rate of 1 digit/sec. to subjects instructed to rehearse silently the digits in non-overlapping groups of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 digits, after hearing each digit. Subjects were instructed not to rehearse any digits outside the group currently being presented. Rehearsing in 3's was optimal, irrespective of list length. Both recall of items and recall of the correct positions of items improved from 1's to 2's to 3's. Recall of items declined very little from 3's to 4's to 5's, but recall of position declined sharply. Errors in positioning digits tended, above chance, to be in the same group or the same position in a different group. The results suggest that both item-to-item associations and serial positin-to-item associations are formed in short-term memory, that only two or three serial position cues are used, but that these serial position cues can be hierarchically organized into a beginning, middle, and end group and a beginning, middle, and end position within a group.     

The pastor and his privacy

Pastoral Psychology -     

Experimental design symbolization and model derivation

A method of design symbolization (DS) is given for a class of designs in which all factors are related by complete crossing or by nesting. Characterization of acceptable DS's, and logical relational properties are given. It is shown how the design model can be obtained from the DS.The preparation of this article was supported by NIH Grant GM-11128, and by grants to the Institute of Human Learning by NSF and NIH.     

Factor analysis by minimizing residuals (minres)

This paper is addressed to the classical problem of estimating factor loadings under the condition that the sum of squares of off-diagonal residuals be minimized. Communalities consistent with this criterion are produced as a by-product. The experimental work included several alternative algorithms before a highly efficient method was developed. The final procedure is illustrated with a numerical example. Some relationships of minres to principal-factor analysis and maximum-likelihood factor estimates are discussed, and several unresolved problems are pointed out.The authors wish to thank the Factor Analysis Work Group (supported, in part, by ONR) for valuable criticisms and suggestions made in the course of a discussion of the present work in April, 1965.     

Short-term recognition memory for single letters and phonemic similarity of retroactive interference

Copying 12 letters produces more retroactive interference in recognition memory for a single letter when the interference letters possess a vowel sound in common with the letter to be remembered than when they do not. Compared to interference lists that do not include the presented letter, inclusion in the interference list of the letter to be remembered improves recognition memory when the other interference letters have no vowel sound in common with the letter to be remembered, but not otherwise. False recognition rates are greater when the test letter contains a vowel sound in common with the presented letter than when the vowel sounds of these two letters are different. The findings are in complete accord with analogous findings for short-term recall and indicate that short-term recognition memory uses the same phonemic-associative memory system as short-term recall.