Applied Logic without Psychologism

Logic is a celebrated representation language because of its formal generality. But there are two senses in which a logic may be considered general, one that concerns a technical ability to discriminate between different types of individuals, and another that concerns constitutive norms for reasoning as such. This essay embraces the former, permutation-invariance conception of logic and rejects the latter, Fregean conception of logic. The question of how to apply logic under this pure invariantist view is addressed, and a methodology is given. The pure invariantist view is contrasted with logical pluralism, and a methodology for applied logic is demonstrated in remarks on a variety of issues concerning non-monotonic logic and non-monotonic inference, including Charles Morgan’s impossibility results for non-monotonic logic, David Makinson’s normative constraints for non-monotonic inference, and Igor Douven and Timothy Williamson’s proposed formal constraints on rational acceptance.     

学习态度与学习成绩的相关研究——以学习考勤记录与课堂提问成绩作为学生平时成绩的初步探讨

本研究以大学生的学习考勤记录与课常提问成绩作为其平时成绩的方法,对学习态度与学习成绩的相关进行了初步探讨.研究表明,由学习考勤记录与课堂提问成绩组成的平时成绩与学习总成绩呈现极其显著的相关,证明学习态度对学习成绩具有重要的影响,能在一定程度上对后者进行预测;同时,说明以学习考勤记录与课堂提问成绩作为平时成绩的方法,对于评估学生的学习态度和学习结果具有一定的可行性和有效性.     

家庭环境类型与青少年亲子冲突解决的关系

以北京829名普通中学生为被试.探讨了家庭环境类型与亲子冲突解决的关系.结果表明: (1)高亲密度、高情感表达、低矛盾性的家庭在亲子冲突解决的关系目标上的得分显著高于其它类型家庭;低亲密度、低表达性、高矛盾性的家庭在权力、公平、自认和自主目标上的得分显著高于其它类型家庭. (2)高亲密度、高表达性、低矛盾性的家庭更多使用积极的冲突解决策略;低亲密度、低表达性、高矛盾性的家庭更多使用消极的冲突解决策略.说明不同家庭环境类型下的青少年亲子冲突解决有不同的特点.     

Theory to social action: A university‐based strategy targeting prejudice against Aboriginal Australians

The level of racism in Australia against Aboriginal Australians is well documented. This has an extremely detrimental effect on the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal Australians. One part of the solution may be anti‐prejudice strategies, but to date few strategies that include a pre‐test and a post‐test assessment have been conducted in Australia. The present study describes the interventional qualities of a cultural psychology unit at an Australian university. Results indicated that after a 6‐week period, students reported a significant reduction in prejudice, acceptance of false beliefs about Aboriginal Australians, and the perception that Aboriginal Australians unfairly receive preferential or special treatment. The article concludes that cultural psychology units have the potential to be an effective way of developing acceptance of cross‐cultural differences.     

Developing stimulus control of young children's requests to teachers: classwide applications of multiple schedules

Children may recruit their teachers' attention at undesirably high rates or at inconvenient times. Tiger and Hanley (2004) described a multiple-schedule procedure to reduce ill-timed requests, which involved providing children with two distinct continuous signals that were correlated with periods in which teacher attention was either available or unavailable. The current study extended the application of multiple schedules by evaluating the effectiveness of the procedure when implemented by private-school teachers in 3 elementary classrooms. Following the introduction of the multiple schedules, student approaches toward their teacher were maintained during desirable periods but were minimized during undesirable periods.     

Knowledge activation after information encoding: Implications of trait priming on person judgment

It is widely assumed that traits primed after the encoding of person information do not lead to assimilation effects on the judgment of that person. The authors challenge this view by providing evidence that post-encoding trait primes can result in assimilative person judgments under certain conditions. In Experiments 1 and 2, we identify the conditions under which these assimilation effects occur. Experiment 1 shows the importance of participants’ goals during person information encoding: assimilation is observed when person information is encoded as part of a memorization goal (as opposed to an impression formation goal). The findings of Experiment 2 further reveal that the encoded person information should imply trait concepts rather than being merely vague with respect to the primed trait category. Finally, the results of Experiment 3 suggest that the obtained assimilation effect is driven by differential accessibility for prime-congruent person information.     

Living up to high standards and psychological distress

We argue and demonstrate that setting high standards, an essential aspect of perfectionism, is not associated with maladaptive responses in and of itself. Rather, our findings suggest that people's responses to their perceptions that they consistently fail to meet their own standards are maladaptive. More importantly, in the present survey study (n = 293), we extend previous research by showing that low personal standards and the perception that others are imposing high standards on the self operate in concert to strengthen the link between perceived discrepancy and psychological distress. Furthermore, in support of our moderation‐mediation model, regression analyses provided evidence for the mediating role of generalised self‐efficacy beliefs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development and validation of the Achievement Goal Scale for Youth Sports

ObjectiveThe objective was to develop and validate an achievement goal scale for young athletes that was aligned with the 2 (mastery/ego)×2 (approach/avoidance) achievement goal framework.MethodA total of 1675 male and female athletes ranging in age from 9 to 14 years participated in the AGSYS scale development and validation phases. Items having a readability level of grade 4 (age 9) or below were written and evaluated in a series of studies to assess the reliability, factorial validity, and construct validity of the Mastery and Ego scales.DesignBoth correlational and experimental methods were used to assess reliability and validity.ResultsExploratory and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated factorial validity in samples of 9–10-, 11–12-, and 13–14-year-old athletes, and the subscales correlated in a predicted fashion with one another, with other sport and academic goal orientation measures and with several other theoretically relevant variables, including coach-initiated motivational climate, competitive trait anxiety, sport enjoyment, motivation, and self-esteem. Scores also changed significantly in response to a motivational climate coach intervention.ConclusionThe Achievement Goal Scale for Youth Sports (AGSYS) appears to be a reliable and valid measure of achievement goal approach orientations in children between the ages of 9 and 14 years. We were not successful in developing corresponding avoidance goal orientation scales that were not highly correlated, raising the possibility that children do not cognitively differentiate between mastery-avoidance and ego-avoidance orientations.     

MV-Algebras and Quantum Computation

We introduce a generalization of MV algebras motivated by the investigations into the structure of quantum logical gates. After laying down the foundations of the structure theory for such quasi-MV algebras, we show that every quasi-MV algebra is embeddable into the direct product of an MV algebra and a “flat” quasi-MV algebra, and prove a completeness result w.r.t. a standard quasi-MV algebra over the complex numbers. Presented by Heinrich Wansing     

Infants' Differential Processing of Female and Male Faces

ABSTRACT— Infants show an interesting asymmetry in face processing: They are more fluent in processing female faces than they are at processing male faces. We hypothesize that such processing asymmetry results from greater experience with female faces than with male faces early in development. Asymmetrical face processing may have long-lasting implications for development of face recognition, development of knowledge structures regarding females and males, and social-information processing. We encourage researchers to use both female and male faces in their face-perception research and to conduct separate analyses for female and male faces.