Environmental knowledge and conservation behavior: exploring prevalence and structure in a representative sample

Knowledge is commonly seen as a necessary precondition for a person’s behavior. Consistent with this, most educational interventions rely on knowledge transfer. However, for the most efficient informational strategies for education, it is essential that we identify the types of knowledge that promote behavior effectively and investigate their structure. A questionnaire consisting of three environmental knowledge scales and a conservation behavior measure was sent to 5000 randomly selected Swiss adults. A completed questionnaire was returned by 55% of them (N=2736). A series of structural equation analyses indicates that the three knowledge forms exert different influences on conservation behavior: Action-related knowledge and effectiveness knowledge have a direct effect on performance. In contrast, system knowledge is more remote from behavior, exerting only a mediated influence on it by way of affecting the other two knowledge types.     

知识类别和特点对内隐序列学习的影响

用序列学习中的反应时和错误个数间接测量被试的内隐知识,用再认成绩和预测成绩直接测量被试的外显知识,通过倒转不同的规则探讨了知识类别和特点对内隐序列学习的影响。结果表明：(1)内隐学习和外显学习可能分别依赖于两个独立的学习系统,且互不干扰;(2)当内隐序列学习既包含运动知识又包含概念知识时,知识类别和特点影响被试对序列知识的获得,被试较易获得运动知识;(3)在内隐序列学习中练习的数量也影响被试对序列知识的获得,序列学习是一个动态的过程。     

Something more than the 'Something more than interpretation' is needed: A comment on the paper by the Process of Change Study Group

A critique is offered of the paper on non-interpretive mechanisms in psychoanalytic therapy by the Process of Change Study Group (Stern et al., 1998a). The attention paid to procedural learning and to the need to attend to implicit relational knowledge is welcomed but a number of the group's assumptions are questioned. In particular, it is argued that the differences between mother-infant and therapist-patient relationships are inadequately considered, that the polarisation of non-symbolic and verbal memory is unhelpful and that the separation of the therapy relationship into three strands is problematic. The assumption that pursuing the goal of intersubjective understanding is in itself therapeutic is questioned. It is suggested that the recognition of the importance of implicit relational knowledge calls for a wider reappraisal of important aspects of theory and practice and that direct means of making such knowledge explicit should be considered.     

The fractionation of working memory maps onto different components of intelligence

One hundred thirty-eight sixth form students, aged 16–17, took tests of vocabulary, mental rotation, and abstract reasoning as markers of Gc, Gv, and Gf and also three working memory tests, one verbal, one spatial, and one numerical (mental counters). Consistent with a number of earlier results, we found that verbal working memory correlated with the vocabulary test and spatial working memory with the mental rotation test, but there was only a weak relationship between these two domains. Performance on the reasoning test was associated most strongly with the mental counters working memory test but was also related to performance on both verbal and spatial tests. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-factor solution of these data, with one ability test and one working memory test loading onto each factor. This suggests that although working memory may be partly general, it is also at least in part domain-specific with three of these domains corresponding to Gc, Gv, and Gf.     

Language and executive function in self-reported impulsive aggression

The present study employed a battery of verbal tests that included a broad range of executive demands to demonstrate the differential contributions of language and executive function to the performance decrement observed in individuals who display impulsive aggressive (IA) outbursts. A profile analysis revealed that despite not differing on tasks requiring limited verbal output, the IAs deviated further from nonaggressive controls as the tasks required increasing spontaneous organization. Results suggest that language ability per se is not impaired in IAs; rather inefficient executive functioning is responsible for their significantly poorer performance on complex verbal tasks.     

Who Needs Valid Moral Arguments? (Dedicated to the Memory of R.M. Chisholm, 1916–1999)

Why have so many philosophers agonised over the possibility of valid arguments from factual premises to moral conclusions? I suggest that they have done so, because of worries over a sceptical argument that has as one of its premises, `All moral knowledge must be non-inferential, or, if inferential, based on valid arguments or strong inductive arguments from factual premises'. I argue that this premise is false.     

小学教师课堂教学能力构成的研究

采用实验与心理测验法,探讨知识结构、教学效能感、教学监控力和基本心理能力在小学教师课堂教学能力形成与发展中的作用,并通过验证性因素分析的方法,建构了教师课堂教学能力的验证性因素分析模型。结果表明;知识结构、教学效能感和教学监控力在小学教师课堂教学能力中起着重要作用;基本心理能力主要受年龄发展的影响,对教师课堂教学能力的作用不显著。     

Research for d eterminant factors and features of emotional responses of "kandoh" (the state of being emotionally moved)

Abstract: The feature and determinants of the emotional response kandoh (the state of being emotionally moved) were positively examined (kandoh has rarely been made the object of research in the field of psychology). First, the author reviewed the research done so far and summarized the features of kandoh, and the structural model of the process leading to kandoh was introduced from the results of the above research. Furthermore, experimental examination about the model was performed of different types of stories, and even stories with opposing the emotional frameworks of happiness or sadness, both were shown that they were able to become heart-warming good stories. Moreover, it was shown that the event-related knowledge was important for evocation of kandoh. From the experiment results, consideration was made about new aspects of kandoh.     

The Pursuit of Epistemic Good

Pace Zagzebski, there is no route from the value of knowledge to a non–reliabilist virtue–theoretic epistemology. Her discussion of the value problem is marred by an uncritical and confused employment of the notion of a "state" of knowledge, an uncritical acceptance of a "knowledge–belief" identity thesis, and an incoherent presumption that the widely held thought that knowledge is more valuable than true belief amounts to the view that knowledge is a state of true belief having an intrinsic property which a state of 'mere" true belief lacks. Her arguments against a "machine–product" conception of knowledge are undermined by these flaws, while the alternative "agent–act" model she recommends is unattractive, at odds with the knowledge–belief identity thesis she favours, and no solution to the problem of the value of knowledge she poses. I end with the observation that her version of virtue–theoretic epistemology points in the direction of cognitive decision–theoretic norms, and I briefly discuss the bearing of this fact upon her viewpoint.     

Epistemic Presuppositions and their Consequences

Traditional epistemology has, in the main, presupposed that the primary task is to give a complete account of the concept knowledge and to state under what conditions it is possible to have it. In so doing, most accounts have been hierarchical, and all assume an idealized knower. The assumption of an idealized knower is essential for the traditional goal of generating an unassailable account of knowledge acquisition. Yet we, as individuals, fail to reach the ideal. Perhaps more important, we have epistemic goals not addressed in the traditional approach – among them, the ability to reach understanding in areas we deem important for our lives. Understanding is an epistemic concept. But how we obtain it has not traditionally been a focus. Developing an epistemic account that starts from a set of assumptions that differ from the traditional starting points will allow a different sort of epistemic theory, one on which generating understanding is a central goal and the idealized knower is replaced with an inquirer who is not merely fallible but working from a particular context with particular goals. Insight into how an epistemic account can include the particular concerns of an embedded inquirer can be found by examining the parallels between ethics and epistemology and, in particular, by examining the structure and starting points of virtue accounts. Here I develop several interrelated issues that contrast the goals and evaluative concepts that form the structure of both standard, traditional epistemological and ethical theories and virtue–centered theories. In the end, I sketch a virtue–centered epistemology that accords with who we are and how we gain understanding.