Learning impairment following insoluble problems: Learned helplessness or altered hypothesis pool?

According to the learned helplessness hypothesis, the learning impairment typically displayed by subjects previously given insoluble problems results from the veridical learning of response-outcome independence. This learning is represented as a belief in helplessness which interferes with the subsequent acquisition of adaptive responses. However, this interpretation is suspect since subjects in a psychology experiment tend not to learn that random relationships are random. Instead, an alternative interpretation of these findings attributes the learning impairment following insoluble problems to a hypothesis pool alteration in the direction of (inappropriately) complex hypotheses. This alternative interpretation tended to be supported ported in Experiment 1, which varied the difficulty of the test task and found the impairment (relative to a no-treatment control) following insolubility to be inversely proportional to the test difficulty. In contrast, Experiment 2 employed a procedure which facilitated the attribution of response-outcome independence and found the impairment following insolubility to be directly proportional to the test difficulty. It was concluded that the results of Experiment 2 represented learned helplessness.     

CHRISTOPHER SOUTHGATE'S COMPOUND THEODICY: PARALLEL SEARCHINGS

Christopher Southgate proposes that a theological response to the suffering that is built into an evolutionary world requires a compound evolutionary theodicy, made up of four interrelated theological positions. This article proposes a fourfold response to the suffering of nonhuman creation that parallels Southgate's compound theodicy. In its similarities and differences, it is offered in the spirit of a tribute to Christopher Southgate.     

GOD,HUMANITY AND THE COSMOS: CHALLENGING A CHALLENGING TEXTBOOK

Christopher Southgate has been the editor of the textbook God, Humanity and the Cosmos. I consider this textbook fair on science and wise in intertwining issues in theology and science with ecology, climate change, and technology. It might also be challenging for students, as it introduces them to a variety of perspectives and a rich palette of literature. I wonder whether such a book, with its strong theological, “cognitive,” orientation will remain relevant in European contexts, given shifts in society away from Christianity and changes in understanding what it is to be religious.     

THEODICY: A RESPONSE TO CHRISTOPHER SOUTHGATE

This article is a critical and appreciative interaction with Christopher Southgate's theodicy and theology of glory. I critique in particular his rejection of all dualist moves in theodicy. I question why Southgate can ascribe evil to some human actions, many of which are automatic and unconscious, but not to any other level or form of consciousness. I argue that he may rely too heavily on rational scientific categories, which are not sufficient in themselves to carry the weight of key theological concepts. His use of poetry is powerful and suggestive, but in the end, he may not give it enough epistemic weight.     

The effect of instructions to organize for good and poor learners

Two studies are reported which investigate the possibility that instructing individuals to organize their recall will differentially facilitate the performance of “fast” and “slow” learners (defined in terms of performance on a pretest). Experiment I utilized alphabetic organization in the free-recall learning of a list of unrelated words; Experiment II used a categorized word list under similar conditions. In each study, half of the individuals in each ability group received instructions, prior to the first of six learning trials, that contained information about the respective nature of organization present in the list and encouragement to use this type of organization in learning the list. In Experiment I, instructions to use alphabetic organization facilitated the performance of both ability groups to about the same extent. In Experiment II, instructions to use categorical organization in learning resulted in a substantial facilitation of performance for “slow” learners and a slight decrement in performance for “fast” learners. The results from the two studies are discussed in terms of sources of individual differences in learning.     

Task-hemispheric integrity in dual task performance

A condition of task hemispheric integrity is predicted to result in a dual task situation when the central processing and response components of each task are associated exclusively with a given cerebral hemisphere. The prediction that this condition will generate more efficient time-sharing is tested in a series of four experiments. In experiment 1 the prediction is confirmed when a spatial (tracking) and verbal (letter memory search) task are time-shared, and the hand assignment to task responses is manipulated. In experiment 2 a spatial variant of the memory search is used instead of the verbal letter search, and hand assignment effects are not obtained, since when two spatial tasks are time-shared an integrity assignment is impossible. Experiment 3 validates the hemispheric lateralization of the two single task variants of the memory search task, while experiment 4 establishes the separate “spatial’ and “verbal” resource demands of the two variants by observing their differential interference with concurrent spatial and verbal tasks.     

The halo effect revisited: Forewarned is not forearmed

The purpose of the present research was to determine if forewarning subjects about the halo effect eliminated the effect or made people aware of its impact. The research was a replication and extension of R. E. Nisbett and T. D. Wilson's (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1977, 35, 250–256) experiment on the halo effect. Subjects viewed an interview of a college instructor who was either warm or cold and then rated his physical appearance, mannerisms, and French accent. Some subjects were told to introspect about their cognitive processes while viewing the interview and were told that the purpose of the study was to see how aware they were of the determinants of their ratings. Other subjects were also told specifically what the halo effect was and given a motivation either to show it or not to show it. In addition, a measurement technique different from that used by Nisbett and Wilson was utilized to allow a more precise measurement of awareness, and a new cover story was used to make the task more involving and important to subjects. Despite these attempts to eliminate the halo effect (or, at a minimum, to make people aware of it), the results indicated that subjects in all conditions were very susceptible to it. That is, subjects who viewed the warm version of the interview rated the instructor's appearance, mannerisms, and accent significantly higher than did those who viewed the cold version, even when informed and forewarned about this effect. The forewarning and introspection instructions also had no impact on subject's awareness of the halo effect. Subjects in all conditions indicated that their liking for the instructor had had only a minimal effect on their ratings.     

Factors affecting developmental changes in the speed of processing

Although many studies have found developmental changes in the speed of various processes, they have potentially confounded the subject's age with his knowledge of the task domain and use of strategies. In this study, the strategies used by the subject and his domain knowledge were independently assessed by a number of tasks. Subsequently, processing rate measures were obtained for a task (the “same/different” judgment task of simultaneously presented stimuli) in which domain knowledge was manipulated independently of age while controlling for strategy usage. It was found that the usual adult superiority in speed of processing could be markedly reduced if children possessed equivalent amounts of domain knowledge and this effect was domain specific. Further, it was found that differences in knowledge affected processing rates in both knowledgeable adults and children and to about the same extent. It was concluded that some part of the typical adult superiority in processing rate was due to knowledge differences.     

Diachronic Dutch Books and Sleeping Beauty

Hitchcock advances a diachronic Dutch Book argument (DDB) for a 1/3 answer to the Sleeping Beauty problem. Bradley and Leitgeb argue that Hitchcock’s DDB argument fails. We demonstrate the following: (a) Bradley and Leitgeb’s criticism of Hitchcock is unconvincing; (b) nonetheless, there are serious reasons to worry about the success of Hitchcock’s argument; (c) however, it is possible to construct a new DDB for 1/3 about which such worries cannot be raised.     

Creativity and the artwork: the perspectives of a painter and a philosopher

Creativity in Robert Henri's view is a gratuitous act, shot through with mystery; what is left after such an act is the artwork itself as concrete evidence that such a heightened state of consciousness has been achieved. This paper will examine Henri's understanding of the nature of creativity from his perspective as a twentieth century New York painter, in conjunction with Eliot Deutsch's theoretical insights as a philosopher deeply interested in the nature of the experience of an artwork. In his Essays on the nature of art, Deutsch presents the view that the experience of an artwork involves the assimilation of the work's aesthetic force, the recognition of its meaning, the discernment of its formal dimensions, and ‘calls for a special appropriation that yields an integrated wholeness’. This paper presents commonalities between Henri's and Deutsch individual perspectives and discusses some value‐centred educational implications that could be drawn from these commonalities.