Recipient mood states and helping behavior

Three studies investigated the effects of perceived recipient mood on helping behavior. Based upon Schwartz' (in Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 10, N.Y.: Academic Press, 1977) discussion of need-based helping, it was predicted that donors would perceive greater psychological need and would help more when the recipient's mood was negative than when it was neutral. These predictions were confirmed for females but not for males. The results also confirmed the hypothesis, derived from Schwartz (1977), that a negative recipient mood would elicit greater helping than a neutral recipient mood when this mood is perceived as changeable but not when it is perceived as unchangeable.     

Preexposure to the CS alone,US alone,or CS and US uncorrelated: Latent inhibition,blocking by context or learned irrelevance?

Three experiments on conditioned suppression in rats examined the extent to which preexposure to the CS, the US, or uncorrelated presentations of both interfere with future conditioning. Experiment 1 suggested that the interference caused by preexposure to the US alone may result from blocking by contextual cues: signaling the US during preexposure attenuated the interference. Experiment 2 demonstrated that signaling the US by another stimulus did not attenuate the interference caused by exposure to uncorrelated presentations of CS and US. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiments 1 and 2 and directly compared the magnitude of these deficits. The results of these experiments imply that the effects of exposure to uncorrelated presentations of CS and US are not reducible to the sum of the effects of exposure to CS or US alone.     

Effect of sentence structure on stuttering

The elicited speech of 20 adult male stutterers was analyzed to determine the effect of the number, type, and location of relative clause structures on the frequency of stuttering. The selected structures were identified on the basis of transformational grammar. The findings indicate that the frequency of stuttering increases significantly with an increase in the number of relative clauses included in a matrix sentence structure. The results also indicate that the more severe the stuttering is, the more the stutterer is likely to be affected by this variable. Trends toward more frequent stuttering in the postverbal relative clause and the adjectival form of the relative clause were observed.     

Piagetian tasks measure intelligence and intelligence tests assess cognitive development: A reanalysis

A reanalysis of the intercorrelations of Wechsler subtests, achievements tests, and Piagetian tasks originally published by Stephens et al. (1972) has corrected errors in the original design and has used models which allow both differences and similarities to appear. Unit weighted composites of the two sets of tests were formed after first partialling chronological age out of the complete table of intercorrelations. The correlation between the composites is .876 which corrects, using split-half estimates of reliabilities, to .918. Next the matrix of partial correlations was factored and the factors rotated to a hierarchical structure. Piagetian tasks contribute almost equally to the definition of the general factor in intelligence along with the Wechsler subtests and the achievement tests. The general factor, furthermore, makes the single largest contribution to the variance of most of the measures of both sets. The smaller group factors consist of an Academic Achievement factor and three Piagetian factors. Of the latter the largest and most clearly identified is the factor called Operational Thought in the earlier analysis, but is here described simply as Conservation. It is concluded that the evidence for communality in function far outweighs the differences between intelligence tests and Piagetian tasks.     

CAN NATURE TRULY BE OUR FRIEND?

Abstract. The question of whether nature can embody love or be considered in this sense as "friend" is a thorny problem for Christian theology. The doctrines of finitude and sin argue against nature as a realm of love, whereas the doctrine of creation out of nothing, which links God and the creation so forcefully, would seem to argue for such a view of nature. This paper explores the thesis that Western culture has not offered a concept of nature rich enough to allow for an understanding of it as a domain of gracious-ness. From pre-Socratic times through the Enlightenment and the rise of modern science, nature was conceived of as a realm of defect or lacking in creative possibilities. Christian theology has consistently spoken of nature in terms that defy the limitations of the authorized views proposed by the ambient Western cultures. The present times, under the influence of the sciences, have furnished for the first time an authorized concept of nature that is large enough and dynamic enough to entertain the dimension of grace. Consequently, ours is a time of great promise for developing a more adequate theology of nature.     

APOLOGIA PRO SCRIPTURA SUA, OR MAYBE WE GOT IT RIGHT AFTER ALL

Abstract. A summary of the progress of biogenetic structuralism as an approach to the social and behavioral sciences is presented, from the publication of Biogenetic Structuralism in 1974 to the present. The difficulty that many scholars have found integrating neuroan-thropology and comparative ethology into an understanding of cultural, and particularly of religious, phenomena over the past almost two decades is considered. More specifically, the articles of James Ashbrook and Mary Lynn Dell published in the same June 1993 issue of Zygon as this article are analyzed and responded to. These authors critique Eugene d'Aquili's work of integrating neuropsychology and religious experience primarily by analyzing Brain, Symbol & Experience , which d'Aquili co-authored with Charles Laughlin, Jr., and John McManus, H. Rodney Holmes's article in the same issue of Zygon analyzes the whole corpus of d'Aquili's religion and science work as it appeared over the years in the pages of Zygon and in other articles and books as well as in Brain, Symbol & Experience. This critique is likewise carefully considered and responded to. Finally a proposed trajectory of d'Aquili's (and Andrew Newberg's) future work in their ongoing project integrating neuropsychology and religious experience is elaborated. This involves, not only expansion of their general theoretical approach, but also empirical testing of hypotheses relating brain function to religious experience using PET scanning and some newer MRI visualization techniques.     

B. F. Skinner and G. H. Mead: on biological science and social science.

Skinner's contributions to psychology provide a unique bridge between psychology conceptualized as a biological science and psychology conceptualized as a social science. Skinner focused on behavior as a naturally occurring biological phenomenon of interest in its own right, functionally related to surrounding events and, in particular (like phylogenesis), subject to selection by its consequences. This essentially biological orientation was further enhanced by Skinner's emphasis on the empirical foundations provided by laboratory-based experimental analyses of behavior, often with nonhuman subjects. Skinner's theoretical writings, however, also have affinity with the traditions of constructionist social science. The verbal behavior of humans is said to be subject, like other behavior, to functional analyses in terms of its environment, in this case its social context. Verbal behavior in turn makes it possible for us to relate to private events, a process that ultimately allows for the development of consciousness, which is thus said to be a social product. Such ideas make contact with aspects of G. H. Mead's social behaviorism and, perhaps of more contemporary impact in psychology, L. Vygotsky's general genetic law of cultural development. Failure to articulate both the biological and the social science aspects of Skinner's theoretical approach to psychology does a disservice to his unique contribution to a discipline that remains fragmented between two intellectual traditions.     

Zu Einem Methodologischen Interpretationskonstruktionismus

Interpretari necesse est (Interpretation is necessary). This slogan is summarizing the methodological and epistemological essay concentrating on what can be called a transcendental interpretationism and a methodological interpretationism. This approach is combining a pragmatic interpretive approach with a constitutional quasi Kantian but more pluralistic and flexible epistemology. It takes up the assets of Nietzsches radical interpretationism without ending up in an interpretationist idealism. Though a basic fundamental insight is a statement of the interpretation-impragnatedness of any knowledge and experience whatsoever, there is nevertheless a possibility to combine a kind of critical realism with this interpretationist approach. Though we are always obliged to use interpretation-dependent epistemological schemata and concepts as well as theories (we have no non-interpretive concepts, theories and ways of gaining and constructing knowledge), we have still, for practical reasons, to presuppose an external independent world which can however only be described in interpretation-dependent terms. Even this epistemological model is certainly an interpretive one. If we distinguish between different levels of more or less variable interpretations (we cannot, by our very biological constitution, change primary interpretations built in to our biological constitution and make-up of sense-organs etc.), we can analyse and define truth as a relation between different levels and types of interpretations. The ideal of truth makes some sense of a concept of correspondence, though in the last analysis it is a combination of coherence-theoretical and pragmatic-constructivist ideas. — The model of an epistemological interpretationism has the advantage (by contradistinction, e.g., with critical rationalism) to be consistently applied to itself: The interpretive epistemology is certainly but an interpretational model itself. — The sketched interpretationism has certain similarities with Nelson Goodman's constructive interpretive pluralism and Hilary Putnam's internal realism, although there are slight, but decisive differences to be carefully observed. The differences have to do with the mentioned practical realism and the presupposition of one world in which we live. The similarities are greater with respect to internal realism. A decisive difference is only that you cannot, according to methodological and transcendental interpretationism, compel somebody towards the uniqueness of language use. There are always degrees of freedom and variation to change the usage of signs. There is no socially intended uniqueness and compulsory usage of signs and their meanings. Even within the language community the rules are always only conventionally realized and actualized. There is no real correspondence between signs and signs (or interpretive constructs, for that matter). Any correspondence whatsoever can only refer to interpretational constructs itself. Any classification, verification, selection and identification of facts, even any thinking of data and facts as such is in the last analysis dependent on interpretations. Even the conception of an epistemological subject is but an interpretational construct on a higher level.     

Philosophy and the real reasons for action: G. H. von Wright's understanding explanations

According to the received view, philosophy of action took a justified turn towards causalism because anti-causalists failed the causalist challenge about efficacious reasons. This paper contests that view by examining the ways in which Georg Henrik von Wright responded to causalism in his later philosophy. First, von Wright attacked the subjectivism of causalism by arguing for an objectivist view that construes reasons not as subjective mental states but as external facts of the agent's situation. Second, von Wright fundamentally disagreed with the view of philosophical inquiry that underpinned causalism. For von Wright, the task of philosophy was conceptual: to explicate what one is looking for when one is looking for the real reasons for action. In contrast, for causalists the task was ontological: to determine what kind of item in the world the real reason for action is. Examining von Wright's account contributes to contemporary assessments of the metaphilosophical dimension of the reasons/causes debate.