The Suspended Aesthetic: Slavoj Žižek on Eastern European Film

Slavoj iek's writings on Krzysztof Kies´lowski and Andrej Tarkovskij represent direct challenges to the Central and Eastern European tradition of spiritual art and to dominant aesthetic concepts as such. He refuses to separate the solemn films of Kies´lowski and Tarkovskij from popular culture and stresses their import as ethical statements by their directors. Despite this ethical emphasis, iek makes an important contribution to philosophical aesthetics. He implicitly defines art as a suspension of reality which reveals time in its fragility and potentiality. Defining iek's aesthetics in terms of suspension helps to explain his partiality for Kies´lowski and Tarkovskij and bears comparison to the Russian tradition of philosophical aesthetics, in particular Aleksej Losev and Alexander Bakshy.     

Young children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactics in the developing lexicon

A series of three experiments examined children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactic structure as reflected in the relative frequencies with which speech sounds occur and co-occur in American English. Children, ages 212 and 312 years, participated in a nonword repetition task that examined their sensitivity to the frequency of individual phonetic segments and to the frequency of combinations of segments. After partialling out ease of articulation and lexical variables, both groups of children repeated higher phonotactic frequency nonwords more accurately than they did low phonotactic frequency nonwords, suggesting sensitivity to phoneme frequency. In addition, sensitivity to individual phonetic segments increased with age. Finally, older children, but not younger children, were sensitive to the frequency of larger (diphone) units. These results suggest not only that young children are sensitive to fine-grained acoustic-phonetic information in the developing lexicon but also that sensitivity to all aspects of the sound structure increases over development. Implications for the acoustic nature of both developing and mature lexical representations are discussed.     

Free Łukasiewicz and Hoop Residuation Algebras

Hoop residuation algebras are the {, 1}-subreducts of hoops; they include Hilbert algebras and the {, 1}-reducts of MV-algebras (also known as Wajsberg algebras). The paper investigates the structure and cardinality of finitely generated free algebras in varieties of k-potent hoop residuation algebras. The assumption of k-potency guarantees local finiteness of the varieties considered. It is shown that the free algebra on n generators in any of these varieties can be represented as a union of n subalgebras, each of which is a copy of the {, 1}-reduct of the same finite MV-algebra, i.e., of the same finite product of linearly ordered (simple) algebras. The cardinality of the product can be determined in principle, and an inclusion-exclusion type argument yields the cardinality of the free algebra. The methods are illustrated by applying them to various cases, both known (varieties generated by a finite linearly ordered Hilbert algebra) and new (residuation reducts of MV-algebras and of hoops).     

The "what" and "where" of object representations in infancy

Four-month-olds' memory for surface feature and location information was tested following brief occlusions. When the target objects were images of female faces or monochromatic asterisks infants showed increased looking times following a change in identity or color but not following a change in location or combinations of feature and location information. When the target objects were images of manipulable toys, the infants showed increased looking times following a change in location but not identity or the binding of location and identity information. This evidence is consistent with the idea that young infants are unable to maintain the information processed separately in both the dorsal and ventral visual streams during occlusions. Our results suggest that it is the target's affordance for action that determines whether the dorsal or ventral information is selectively maintained during occlusion.     

On Alternative Geometries,Arithmetics, and Logics; a Tribute to Łukasiewicz

The paper discusses the similarity between geometry, arithmetic, and logic, specifically with respect to the question of whether applied theories of each may be revised. It argues that they can - even when the revised logic is a paraconsistent one, or the revised arithmetic is an inconsistent one. Indeed, in the case of logic, it argues that logic is not only revisable, but, during its history, it has been revised. The paper also discusses Quine's well known argument against the possibility of logical deviancy.     

The Role of Creativity in Marriage and Family Therapy Practice: A National Online Study

The purpose of this study, using an online methodology, was to investigate therapists' perceptions of the role of creativity in couples' and family therapy. Along with completing a quantitative measure assessing creativity in their work, participants responded to four open-ended questions which addressed the meaning of creativity, characteristics of a creative family therapist, some creative interventions they have used with couples and families, and barriers to their own creativity as a family therapist. A total of 142 marriage and family therapists in 36 states in the United States participated. The findings shed light on the unique importance of creativity in couples and family treatment.     

Bocheński and Balance: System and History in Analytic Philosophy

Using the work of Józef Bocheski as apositive example, this paper sets out the casefor a balanced use of historical knowledge indoing analytic philosophy. Between the twoextremes of relativizing historicism, whichdenies absolute truth, and arrogant scientism,which denies any constructive role for thehistory of ideas in philosophy, lies a viamedia in which historical reflection onconcepts and their history is placed at theservice of the system of cognitive philosophy.Knowledge of the history of philosophy, whilenot a sine qua non, can empower analyticphilosophy to push forward to new and moresatisfactory solutions to old and new problems.Examples are adduced from Bocheski's oeuvreand from the author's own experience.     

Cognitive processing in literate and illiterate subjects: a review of some recent behavioral and functional neuroimaging data

The study of illiterate subjects, which for specific socio-cultural reasons did not have the opportunity to acquire basic reading and writing skills, represents one approach to study the interaction between neurobiological and cultural factors in cognitive development and the functional organization of the human brain. In addition the naturally occurring illiteracy may serve as a model for studying the influence of alphabetic orthography on auditory-verbal language. In this paper we have reviewed some recent behavioral and functional neuroimaging data indicating that learning an alphabetic written language modulates the auditory-verbal language system in a non-trivial way and provided support for the hypothesis that the functional architecture of the brain is modulated by literacy. We have also indicated that the effects of literacy and formal schooling is not limited to language related skills but appears to affect also other cognitive domains. In particular, we indicate that formal schooling influences 2D but not 3D visual naming skills. We have also pointed to the importance of using ecologically relevant tasks when comparing literate and illiterate subjects. We also demonstrate the applicability of a network approach in elucidating differences in the functional organization of the brain between groups. The strength of such an approach is the ability to study patterns of interactions between functionally specialized brain regions and the possibility to compare such patterns of brain interactions between groups or functional states. This complements the more commonly used activation approach to functional neuroimaging data, which characterize functionally specialized regions, and provides important data characterizing the functional interactions between these regions.     

Depression and Self-Esteem in Boys with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Associations with Comorbid Aggression and Explanatory Attributional Mechanisms

It was tested whether boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), subgrouped by aggressive status, would show higher rates of depressive symptomatology and lower levels of self-esteem than would comparison boys and, in a subsample, explored attributional mechanisms that may be related to such internalizing features. Study 1 utilized 114 boys with ADHD (all prior recipients of stimulant medication) and 87 comparison boys, aged 7–12 years. Aggressive boys with ADHD reported more symptoms of depression than did nonaggressive boys with ADHD, who, in turn, reported more depression than did comparison boys. Effect sizes were moderate to large and did not vary with a depression rating scale uncontaminated by ADHD-related items. For self-esteem, the most pronounced effect was that aggressive boys with ADHD showed lower levels than did nonaggressive ADHD or comparison boys; effects were again moderate to large. Study 2 participants were a subsample of boys with ADHD from Study 1 (N = 27). We probed causal attributions in ADHD-related domains through responses to hypothetical vignettes, in which the protagonist's medication status (medicated, not medicated) was crossed with type of outcome (good, bad). Medication-related attributions were frequent. In describing the protagonist's success in relation to medication treatment, the sample showed significant associations between (a) medication-related attributions and (b) increased depressive symptomatology as well as decreased self-esteem. We discuss attributional processes that may help to explain the variation in internalizing symptoms among children with ADHD.