The social validation and training of conversational skills

Three reliably measured components of conversation-questioning, providing positive feedback, and proportion of time spent talking-were identified and validated as to their social importance. The social validity of the three conversational behaviors was established with five female university students and five female junior-high students. Each was videotaped in conversations with previously unknown adults. The conversational ability of each girl was evaluated by a group of 13 adult judges who viewed each tape and rated each conversant "poor" to "excellent" on a seven-point rating scale. The average ratings of the girls correlated at r = 0.85 with the specified behavioral measures. These procedures were replicated with additional subjects and judges and yielded a correlation of r = 0.84. The high correlations between ratings and the objective measures suggested that the specified conversational behaviors were socially important aspects of conversational ability. Employing a multiple-baseline design across the behaviors of asking questions and providing positive feedback, an attempt was made to train four girls who used these behaviors minimally to engage in the behaviors in conversations with adults. Adult judges were again employed to rate randomly selected samples of the girls' skills in pre- and posttraining conversations. The average ratings of the girls before training were lower than both the university girls and the junior high-school girls. After training, the girls' conversational abilities were rated substantially higher than those of their junior high-school peers. These rating data validated the benefits of the training and the social importance of the behavioral components of questions and feedback in conversation. The authors suggest that it may be necessary for traditional behavior analysis measurement systems to be supplemented by social-validation procedures in order to establish the relationship between "objectively" measured behaviors and complex classes of behavior of interest to society.     

Social validation of a conversational skills-training program

This study sought to demonstrate the social validity of a conversational skills-training program administered to two male clinical cases. Multiple-baseline, single-subject experimental designs were used to evaluate the effects of training on nonverbal and verbal behavior as assessed in unstructured dyadic interactions with experimentally naive peers. The interpersonal attractiveness of subjects also was rated by conversational partners following assessment interactions. Behavioral measures and attraction ratings were converted toT scores relative to means and standard deviations derived from normal subjects. Subject 1 demonstrated posttreatment behavioral skills which were between one and two standard deviations above the norm. Behavioral improvement was associated with comparable improvement in rated interpersonal attractiveness. Following treatment, Subject 2 demonstrated average behavioral competence, but interpersonal attractiveness was not notably enhanced by skills training. These findings are discussed relative to experimental and therapeutic criteria for evaluating treatment outcome.Portions of this research were completed while the authors were affiliated with the University of Georgia. Special thanks are extended to Michael Breakwell for his assistance in completing behavior ratings.     

Courage,cowardice, and Maher’s misstep

Could a Nazi soldier or terrorist be courageous? The Courage Problem asks us to answer this sort of question, and then to explain why people are reluctant to give this answer. The present paper sheds new light on the Courage Problem by examining a controversy sparked by Bill Maher, who claimed that the 9/11 terrorists’ acts were ‘not cowardly.’ It is shown that Maher’s controversy is fundamentally related to the Courage Problem. Then, a unified solution to both problems is provided. This solution entails that gutsy people who lack good ends are not courageous.     

Reasoning with Slippery Predicates

It is a commonplace that the extensions of most, perhaps all, vague predicates vary with such features as comparison class and paradigm and contrasting cases. My view proposes another, more pervasive contextual parameter. Vague predicates exhibit what I call open texture: in some circumstances, competent speakers can go either way in the borderline region. The shifting extension and anti-extensions of vague predicates are tracked by what David Lewis calls the “conversational score”, and are regulated by what Kit Fine calls penumbral connections, including a principle of tolerance. As I see it, vague predicates are response-dependent, or, better, judgement-dependent, at least in their borderline regions. This raises questions concerning how one reasons with such predicates. In this paper, I present a model theory for vague predicates, so construed. It is based on an overall supervaluationist-style framework, and it invokes analogues of Kripke structures for intuitionistic logic. I argue that the system captures, or at least nicely models, how one ought to reason with the shifting extensions (and anti-extensions) of vague predicates, as borderline cases are called and retracted in the course of a conversation. The model theory is illustrated with a forced march sorites series, and also with a thought experiment in which vague predicates interact with so-called future contingents. I show how to define various connectives and quantifiers in the language of the system, and how to express various penumbral connections and the principle of tolerance. The project fits into one of the topics of this special issue. In the course of reasoning, even with the external context held fixed, it is uncertain what the future extension of the vague predicates will be. Yet we still manage to reason with them. The system is based on that developed, more fully, in my Vagueness in Context, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, but some criticisms and replies to critics are incorporated.     

GRICE'S RAZOR

Abstract: Grice's Razor is a principle of parsimony that states a preference for linguistic explanations in terms of conversational implicature, over explanations in terms of semantic context dependence. Here I propose a Gricean theory of knowledge attributions, and contend on the basis of Grice's Razor that it is superior to contextualism about “knows.”     

Argument as Inquiry in a Postmodern Context

Argumentation is a form of communication, rather than an application of(formal) logic, and is used in communicative activity as a means forinquiry, although it is more typically thought of as bringing inquiry toclosure. Thus interpretation is an intrinsic and crucial aspect ofconversational (interactive) argumentation. In order to further thisunderstanding of argumentative activity, I propose a procedure forinterpretation that draws upon hermeneutic phenomenology. In response tocriticisms by argumentation theorists (and others) who understand thistradition as oriented to psychological, perceptual, or textual objects, Iargue that hermeneutic phenomenology supports methods for analysis ofpublic communicative activity. The resulting conception of thick argumentation responds to contemporary (postmodern) claims that argumentation valorizes univocity, stasis, and certainty at the expense ofthe pluralism, fluctuation, and range of epistemic results thatcharacterize discourse in the public sphere.     

Kant's Universal Law Formula Revisited

Kantians are increasingly deserting the universal law formula in favor of the humanity formula. The former, they argue, is open to various decisive objections; the two are not equivalent; and it is only by appealing to the humanity formula that Kant can reliably generate substantive implications from his theory of an acceptable sort. These assessments of the universal law formula, which clash starkly with Kant's own assessment of it, are based on various widely accepted interpretative assumptions. These assumptions, it is argued in this article, depend on misleading translations of key terms; selective attention to Kant's concrete examples; not taking seriously Kant's theoretical claims about the relations among his various ideas; and a failure to take into account Kant's idiosyncratic definitions of key concepts. The article seeks to right these interpretative wrongs, and finds that the universal law formula is not open to many of the standard objections.     

Eye See What You Are Saying: Testing Conversational Influences on the Information Gleaned from Home‐Loan Disclosure Forms

The federal government mandates the use of home‐loan disclosure forms to facilitate understanding of offered loans, enable comparison shopping, and prevent predatory lending. Predatory lending persists, however, and scant research has examined how salespeople might undermine the effectiveness of these forms. Three eye‐tracking studies (a laboratory simulation and two controlled experiments) investigated how conversational norms affect the information consumers can glean from these forms. Study 1 was a laboratory simulation that recreated in the laboratory; the effects that previous literature suggested is likely happening in the field, namely, that following or violating conversational norms affects the information that consumers can glean from home‐loan disclosure forms and the home‐loan decisions they make. Studies 2 and 3 were controlled experiments that isolated the possible factors responsible for the observed biases in the information gleaned from these forms. The results suggest that attentional biases are largely responsible for the effects of conversation on the information consumers get and that perceived importance plays little to no role. Policy implications and how eye‐tracking technology can be employed to improve decision‐making are considered. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Separating the wheat from the chaff: does discriminating between diagnostic and nondiagnostic information eliminate the dilution effect?

The dilution effect refers to the finding that judgments are often unduly influenced by nondiagnostic information, producing regressive judgment. Because the dilution effect is a problem in various domains, strategies to control the impact of nondiagnostic information were explored by drawing on a perceptual and a conversational account of the dilution effect. Three experiments (n = 259) demonstrate that explicit instructions to discriminate between diagnostic and nondiagnostic information did not reduce the dilution effect. Rather, consistent with a perceptual explanation but not consistent with a conversational explanation, the dilution effect disappeared only when participants engage in perceptual control, that is, when they actively remove nondiagnostic pieces of information before making a judgment. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.