Response to Charles Bailey

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Further evidence that the SNARC effect is processed along a dual-route architecture: Evidence from the lateralized readiness potential

In a binary response setting, it has been frequently observed that small numbers are reacted to faster with the left hand and large numbers with the right hand (i. e., the SNARC-effect) which reflects the spatial left-right orientation of the mental number line (Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). In line with the work of Keus and Schwarz (in press), we investigated the locus of the conflict in the SNARC effect in a parity judgment task with the Arabic numerals 1, 2, 8, or 9. Differences between compatible (left-hand response to 1 or 2 and right-hand response to 8 and 9) and incompatible SNARC conditions (left-hand response to 8 or 9 and right-hand response to 1 or 2) were observed in the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) but not in the peak latency of the P300. In accordance with Keus and colleagues (Keus, Jenks, & Schwarz, 2005), we argue that the locus of the conflict is situated at intermediate response-related stages. However, instead of adopting a single-route processing architecture, a dual route account is proposed as the underlying processing architecture explaining the SNARC effect.     

Computational and behavioral markers of model-based decision making in childhood

Human decision-making is underpinned by distinct systems that differ in flexibility and associated cognitive cost. A widely accepted dichotomy distinguishes between a cheap but rigid model-free system and a flexible but costly model-based system. Typically, humans use a hybrid of both types of decision-making depending on environmental demands. However, children's use of a model-based system during decision-making has not yet been shown. While prior developmental work has identified simple building blocks of model-based reasoning in young children (1–4 years old), there has been little evidence of this complex cognitive system influencing behavior before adolescence. Here, by using a modified task to make engagement in cognitively costly strategies more rewarding, we show that children aged 5–11-years (N = 85), including the youngest children, displayed multiple indicators of model-based decision making, and that the degree of its use increased throughout childhood. Unlike adults (N = 24), however, children did not display adaptive arbitration between model-free and model-based decision-making. Our results demonstrate that throughout childhood, children can engage in highly sophisticated and costly decision-making strategies. However, the flexible arbitration between decision-making strategies might be a critically late-developing component in human development.     

Development of the Quality of Life in Youth Services Scale (QOLYSS): Content-Related Validity Evidence Based on Adolescents’ and Expert Reviewers’ Perspectives

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Despite increased interest in the quality of life of younger populations, the quality of life of youngsters in vulnerable situations such as those in youth...     

Moral Error Theory, Entailment and Presupposition

According to moral error theory, moral discourse is error-ridden. Establishing error theory requires establishing two claims. These are that moral discourse carries a non-negotiable commitment to there being a moral reality and that there is no such reality. This paper concerns the first and so-called non-negotiable commitment claim. It starts by identifying the two existing argumentative strategies for settling that claim. The standard strategy is to argue for a relation of conceptual entailment between the moral statements that comprise moral discourse and the statement that there is a moral reality. The non-standard strategy is to argue for a presupposition relation instead. Error theorists have so far failed to consider a third strategy, which uses a general entailment relation that doesn’t require intricate relations between concepts. The paper argues that both entailment claims struggle to meet a new explanatory challenge and that since the presupposition option doesn’t we have prima facie reason to prefer it over the entailment options. The paper then argues that suitably amending the entailment claims enables them to meet this challenge. With all three options back on the table the paper closes by arguing that error theorists should consider developing the currently unrecognised, non-conceptual entailment claim.     

Textbooks and introductions to Western Esotericism

This article reviews the presently available supply of textbooks and introductions to the new academic field of study known as ‘Western esotericism’. By analogy with computer software, the author refers to the early ‘religionist’ phase of research in this domain as ‘Western esotericism 1.0’. He argues that Antoine Faivre's small French textbook L’ésotérisme (1992) marked the beginning of a more satisfactory upgrade that might be referred to as ‘Western esotericism 2.0’ and remains dominant in teaching and research today. A critical review of textbooks and introductions representative of this second phase of academic professionalisation reveals a number of structural problems and weaknesses (‘bugs and design faults’) that need to be corrected in order for the field to complete its adolescence and reach academic maturity. To accommodate the needs and new perspectives of the upcoming generation of scholars in this field, it is therefore time for an upgrade to ‘Western esotericism 3.0’.     

Interlingual lexical competition in a spoken sentence context: Evidence from the visual world paradigm

We used the visual world paradigm to examine interlingual lexical competition when Dutch–English bilinguals listened to low-constraining sentences in their nonnative (L2; Experiment 1) and native (L1; Experiment 2) languages. Additionally, we investigated the influence of the degree of cross-lingual phonological similarity. When listening in L2, participants fixated more on competitor pictures of which the onset of the name was phonologically related to the onset of the name of the target in the nontarget language (e.g., fles, “bottle”, given target flower) than on phonologically unrelated distractor pictures. Even when they listened in L1, this effect was also observed when the onsets of the names of the target picture (in L1) and the competitor picture (in L2) were phonologically very similar. These findings provide evidence for interlingual competition during the comprehension of spoken sentences, both in L2 and in L1.     

Conditional reasoning with a spatial content requires visuo-spatial working memory

In previous research, Toms, Morris, and Ward (1993) have shown that conditional reasoning is impaired by a concurrent task calling on executive functions but not by concurrent tasks that load on the slave systems of the working memory system as conceptualised by Baddeley and Hitch (1974). The present article replicates and extends this previous work by studying problems based on spatial as well as nonspatial relations. In the study 42 participants solved 16 types of spatial or nonspatial problems, both in a single-task condition and under concurrent matrix tapping, a task loading the visuo-spatial sketch pad. The findings were consistent with those of Toms et al. (1993) for problems with a nonspatial content. However, when the content was spatial, and only then, a dual-task impairment was observed: processing time of the first premise was lengthened, especially for problems with negations in the antecedent term, the consequent term, or both; moreover, the number of correctly solved problems with negations in both terms was smaller. The implications of these findings for the mental models theory and the mental logic theory are discussed.     

Semantic access in second-language visual word processing: Evidence from the semantic Simon paradigm

The present study investigated whether visually presented second-language words activate their meaning during low-level word processing, just as native-language words do. Using the semantic Simon paradigm (De Houwer, 1998) with a letter-case judgment task, Dutch-English bilingual participants were instructed to classify targets’ letter case using verbal labels (e.g., by saying “animal” to uppercase targets or “occupation” to lowercase targets). Results showed that both native-language and second-language targets yielded faster responses if the verbal response corresponded to the targets’ semantic category (e.g., the response “animal” to the target LEEUW or LION) than when it did not (e.g., LAWYER), even though the meaning of target words was irrelevant for the task. These results show that second-language word forms may quickly and automatically activate their meaning through strong form-to-meaning mappings, which is consistent with theories of bilingual lexicosemantic organization, such as that of Duyck and Brysbaert (2004).     

Exemplar by feature applicability matrices and other Dutch normative data for semantic concepts

Features are at the core of many empirical and modeling endeavors in the study of semantic concepts. This article is concerned with the delineation of features that are important in natural language concepts and the use of these features in the study of semantic concept representation. The results of a feature generation task in which the exemplars and labels of 15 semantic categories served as cues are described. The importance of the generated features was assessed by tallying the frequency with which they were generated and by obtaining judgments of their relevance. The generated attributes also featured in extensive exemplar by feature applicability matrices covering the 15 different categories, as well as two large semantic domains (that of animals and artifacts). For all exemplars of the 15 semantic categories, typicality ratings, goodness ratings, goodness rank order, generation frequency, exemplar associative strength, category associative strength, estimated age of acquisition, word frequency, familiarity ratings, imageability ratings, and pairwise similarity ratings are described as well. By making these data easily available to other researchers in the field, we hope to provide ample opportunities for continued investigations into the nature of semantic concept representation. These data may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society’s Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, www.psychonomic.org/archive.