Did Georg Cantor Influence Edmund Husserl?

Few have entertained the idea that Georg Cantor, the creator of set theory, might have influenced Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement. Yet an exchange of ideas took place between them when Cantor was at the height of his creative powers and Husserl in the throes of an intellectual struggle during which his ideas were particularly malleable and changed considerably and definitively. Here their writings are examined to show how Husserl's and Cantor's ideas overlapped and crisscrossed in the areas of philosophy and mathematics, arithmetization, abstraction, consciousness and pure logic, psychologism, metaphysical idealism, new numbers, and sets and manifolds.     

Diagnosis and Assessment of Depression and Suicidality Using the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC-2.3)

The Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC-2.3) was studied in a sample of 265 adolescent inpatients to determine type and concurrent validity of depressive symptoms and depressive disorder diagnoses for different DISC-2.3 informants (parent, adolescent, both). The Children's Depression Rating Scale — Revised, Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS), Suicide Ideation Questionnaire — Junior, Spectrum of Suicide Behavior Scale, and clinical consensus diagnoses were used to assess concurrent validity. Results indicated that (1) parents, compared to adolescents, reported a higher prevalence of all depressive symptoms with the exception of weight change; (2) DISC-2.3 depressive and suicidality symptoms were related positively to independent validating criteria for all informant conditions, suggesting good concurrent validity; (3) the DISC-2.3 both informant condition correctly identified the most depressive disorders; and (4) the parent, but not the adolescent, DISC-2.3 Informant condition contributed to the prediction of clinical consensus diagnoses of depression after taking into account RADS scores.     

Psychometric Properties and Clinical Utility of the Scale for Suicide Ideation with Inpatient Children

The purpose of the current study was to examine the psychometric properties and clinical utility of the Scale for Suicide Ideation (SSI) for children. The SSI was administered to 100 children who were hospitalized. Data were not used from 13 subjects due to the presence of a psychotic disorder or IQ less than 70, leaving 87 participants. The SSI was examined regarding its internal consistency, concurrent validity, construct validity, and factor structure when used with children. Based on the findings, the SSI appears to have adequate psychometric properties and can be used by clinicians and researchers examining children in an inpatient setting. Recommendations for clinicians are included to help make the SSI more functional in use for children.     

Globalization or indigenization: New alignments between knowledge and culture

The pace, shape and meaning of development are cultural phenomena—fundamentally driven by the meanings people ascribe to their action, to the symbols they aspire to, and by the wider values contexts within which they are acting. However, people participating within the development process continuously confront a tension between the assertion of the cultural meanings of the local known social world and the assertion of the meanings of an idealized largely unknown social world that stretches beyond immediate experience, and that is particularly represented in commodity symbols and media images. Tension is therefore between indigenization or globalization. The product, greater valence of indigenization or globalization, results from the alternative ways in which tension between the two domains is resolved. In the modern social world access to knowledge, as well as the impact of knowledge embodied within technological artifacts, are key drivers in both the level of participation in development and the level of colonization of indigenized meanings by globalized frameworks of understanding. The current paper therefore focuses on the role of knowledge within the interactions between globalization and indigenization. The paper demonstrates that the general trend of development during the last half of the twentieth century has driven cultural change towards more globalized meanings and dependencies. The dynamics of technological access and change are centrally implicated. However, new opportunities are opening up at both local indigenized levels and within modernizing sectors, and the essence of these opportunities lies in capturing a cultural advantage. At the indigenous society level, a focus on capitalizing on indigenous technical knowledge can have enormous payoffs in terms of economic development outcomes. Meanwhile, a focus on linking local with modernizing sectors through bridging technologies and knowledge across indigenous and global cultures allows indigenous cultures to share in the economic benefits of modernization. And finally, a new wave of change is emerging in the modernized sector itself, opening up quite new opportunities for “small players”—whether they be small firms or small countries. The opportunities are set within change in the global orders of technology and science over the last five to ten years. What matters is the ability of these small players to be highly responsive, to capture knowledge flows through both technical and social capabilities of their people; in other words, global advantage follows from capture of local cultural strength. Stephen Hill is foundation director for the Center for Research Policy, located at the University of Wollongong, and established as a special research center of the Australian Research Council. More recently, he was appointed Regional Director of UNESCO for South East Asia and the Pacific. Professor Hill will assume his new appointment in June, 1995.     

The development of children's action memory: When do actions speak louder than words?

Summary Although acting consistently has been found to improve memory, the reasons for this are unclear. In this investigation, we tested whether acting improves recall by integrating separate elements within an action into an organized whole and whether this process may be strategic. First graders, fourth graders, and college-aged adults listened to, acted out, or watched the performance of action-object phrases and then verbally reported or enacted the phrases. Phrases composed of transitive verbs were expected to be integrated more by action than phrases composed of intransitive verbs, and consequently recalled better, especially by the younger children. Recall increased between first and fourth grades, suggesting that some aspects of action memory may be strategic; however, there was no evidence that acting improves recall by means of integration. The pattern of results suggested that the nature of an action's outcome may contribute to the enactment effect.