What is the Accordion Effect?

In "Action and Responsibility,' Joel Feinberg pointed to an important idea to which he gave the label "the accordion effect.' Feinberg's discussion of this idea is of interest on its own, but it is also of interest because of its interaction with his critique, in his "Causing Voluntary Actions,' of a much discussed view of H. L. A. Hart and A. M. Honoré that Feinberg labels the "voluntary intervention principle.' In this essay I reflect on what the accordion effect is supposed by Feinberg to be, on differences between Feinberg's understanding of this idea and that of Donald Davidson, and on the interaction between Feinberg's discussion of the accordion effect and his critique of the voluntary intervention principle.     

Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) understand single invisible displacement?

Previous research suggests that chimpanzees understand single invisible displacement. However, this Piagetian task may be solvable through the use of simple search strategies rather than through mentally representing the past trajectory of an object. Four control conditions were thus administered to two chimpanzees in order to separate associative search strategies from performance based on mental representation. Strategies involving experimenter cue-use, search at the last or first box visited by the displacement device, and search at boxes adjacent to the displacement device were systematically controlled for. Chimpanzees showed no indications of utilizing these simple strategies, suggesting that their capacity to mentally represent single invisible displacements is comparable to that of 18-24-month-old children.     

Kant's One World: Interpreting 'Transcendental Idealism'

The relationship between divine and created causality was widely discussed in medieval and early modern philosophy. Contemporary scholars of these discussions typically stake out three possible positions: occasionalism, concurrentism, and mere-conservationism. It is regularly claimed that virtually no medieval thinker adopted the final view which denies that God is an immediate active cause of creaturely actions. The main aim of this paper is to further understanding of the medieval causality debate, and particularly the mere-conservationist position, by analysing Peter John Olivi's neglected defence of it. The paper also includes discussion of Thomas Aquinas's arguments for concurrentism and an analysis of whether Olivi's objections refute his position.     

There must be a First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite,Essentially Ordered,Causal Series

Several of Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God rely on the claim that causal series cannot proceed in infinitum. I argue that Aquinas has good reason to hold this claim given his conception of causation. Because he holds that effects are ontologically dependent on their causes, he holds that the relevant causal series are wholly derivative: the later members of such series serve as causes only insofar as they have been caused by and are effects of the earlier members. Because the intermediate causes in such series possess causal powers only by deriving them from all the preceding causes, they need a first and non-derivative cause to serve as the source of their causal powers.     

Effects of instruction on learners’ ability to generate an effective pathway in the method of loci

One of the most effective mnemonic techniques is the well-known method of loci. Learning and retention, especially of sequentially ordered information, is facilitated by this technique which involves mentally combining salient loci on a well-known path with the material to be learned. There are several variants of this technique that differ in the kind of path that is suggested to the user and it is implicitly assumed that these variants are comparable in effectiveness. The experiments reported in this study were designed to test this assumption. The data of two experiments show that participants who are instructed to generate and apply loci on a route to their work recall significantly more items in a memory test than participants who are instructed to generate and apply loci on a route in their house. These results have practical implications for the instruction and application of the method of loci.     

Fortalezas Familiares Program: Building Sociocultural and Family Strengths in Latina Women with Depression and Their Families

The purpose of this article is to describe Fortalezas Familiares (FF; Family Strengths), a community‐based prevention program designed to address relational family processes and promote well‐being among Latino families when a mother has depression. Although depression in Latina women is becoming increasingly recognized, risk and protective mechanisms associated with children's outcomes when a mother has depression are not well understood for Latino families. We begin by reviewing the literature on risk and protective psychosocial mechanisms by which maternal depression may affect Latino youth, using family systems theory and a developmental psychopathology framework with an emphasis on sociocultural factors shaping family processes. Next, we describe the theoretical basis and development of the FF program, a community‐based 12‐week intervention for Latina immigrant women with depression, other caregivers, and their children. Throughout this article, we use a case study to illustrate a Latina mother's vulnerability to depression and the family's response to the FF program. Recommendations for future research and practice include consideration of sociocultural processes in shaping both outcomes of Latino families and their response to interventions.     

Books Received

This paper is an attempt to answer the question, ‘could there be causation in a timeless world?’ My conclusion: tentatively, yes. The paper and argument have three parts. Part one introduces salient issues and spells out the importance of this (initially somewhat baroque seeming) line of investigation. Section two of the paper reviews recent arguments due to Baron and Miller, who argue in favour of the possibility of causation in a timeless world, and looks to reject their arguments developed there. Section three is a response to a response. In their, Baron and Miller also argue that an argument in favour of the possibility of causation at timeless worlds, that I put forward, is an argument that fails. In section three, my response to Baron and Miller is that their argument against me succeeds, but that there is a nearby argument that we can appeal to in order to demonstrate the possibility of causation at timeless worlds.     

How do we convert a number into a finger trajectory?

How do we understand two-digit numbers such as 42? Models of multi-digit number comprehension differ widely. Some postulate that the decades and units digits are processed separately and possibly serially. Others hypothesize a holistic process which maps the entire 2-digit string onto a magnitude, represented as a position on a number line. In educated adults, the number line is thought to be linear, but the “number sense” hypothesis proposes that a logarithmic scale underlies our intuitions of number size, and that this compressive representation may still be dormant in the adult brain. We investigated these issues by asking adults to point to the location of two-digit numbers on a number line while their finger location was continuously monitored. Finger trajectories revealed a linear scale, yet with a transient logarithmic effect suggesting the activation of a compressive and holistic quantity representation. Units and decades digits were processed in parallel, without any difference in left-to-right vs. right-to-left readers. The late part of the trajectory was influenced by spatial reference points placed at the left end, middle, and right end of the line. Altogether, finger trajectory analysis provides a precise cognitive decomposition of the sequence of stages used in converting a number to a quantity and then a position.     

Advancing the trait EI content domain: Further evidence for the distinctiveness of interpersonal facets

This investigation sought to assess the congruence of the trait emotional intelligence (EI) sampling domain, reflected in the short form of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue; Petrides & Furnham, 2006), with the theoretical content of trait EI—namely, the range of personality traits implicated in emotions. First, associations of the TEIQue factors with Emotion-Oriented Coping (EOC) and Social Coping (SC) were compared. Three of the four TEIQue factors were stronger predictors of EOC than SC; only the Emotionality factor was a stronger predictor of SC. Also, Emotionality did not add to the prediction of EOC in a simultaneous regression with the other factors. Secondly, by means of Structural Equation Modelling, the 30-item composite and a theoretically altered 16-item composite were compared as mediators between the Big Five and the emotion-laden dimension of mental health. Even though all interpersonal items (i.e., those pertaining to Sociability and Emotionality) were omitted for the altered composite, it outperformed the original composite in predicting a latent mental health composite of Stress, Anxiety, and EOC. The results highlight the distinct nature of Emotionality and Sociability facets and have implications for the refinement of the trait EI content domain.