Learning of letter names and sounds and their contribution to word recognition

This study investigated knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, their learning, and their contributions to word recognition. Of 123 preschoolers examined on letter knowledge, 65 underwent training on both letter names and letter sounds in a counterbalanced order. Prior to training, children were more advanced in associating letters with their names than with their sounds and could provide the sound of a letter only if they could name it. However, children learned more easily to associate letters with sounds than with names. Training just on names improved performance on sounds, but the sounds produced were extended (CV) rather than phonemic. Learning sounds facilitated later learning of the same letters' names, but not vice versa. Training either on names or on sounds improved word recognition and explanation of printed words. Results are discussed with reference to cognitive and societal factors affecting letter knowledge acquisition, features of the Hebrew alphabet and orthography, and educational implications.     

Dynamic categorization and slot-filler representation in 4- and 6-year-old children

This experiment was aimed at studying both the role of narrow/contextualized categories in the acquisition/organization of conceptual knowledge and the dynamics of categorization decisions. A forced-choice categorization task contrasting thematic and taxonomic responding was used in 4- and 6-year-old children. Before response alternatives were presented, a conceptual organization was pre-activated by means of a matching between the target stimulus and a thematically related, taxonomically related or slot-filler related object. Although taxonomic sorting was prominent overall, it varied as a function of age and of the nature of the pre-activated relation. Responses in accordance with the thematic or taxonomic activations occurred similarly in 4- and 6-year-old children. Age-related effects were however at work in the case of a slot-filler activation: 4-year-old children considered the contextual/contiguity relations between the stimuli but did not weight the equivalence relations (i.e., same occurrence of responses based on the kind of object in the slot-filler and in the thematic activation conditions). More diversified processes appeared to be at work in 6-year-old children. Slot-filler categories were this time considered throughout both their contextual/contiguity structure and their equivalence relations. Results were discussed in terms of availability of conceptual organizations, flexibility abilities, dynamic categorization and preferences. The focus was on implication of slot-filler representations in the construction of conceptual knowledge and in the development of categorization. An important point was to determine whether the age-related changes observed in the slot-filler activation condition could be consistent with Nelson's ( 1983 ) idea that slot-fillers would help passing from a schema-based to a conventional superordinate organization.     

Comparative analysis of integrative self-knowledge, mindfulness, and private self-consciousness in predicting responses to stress in Iran

Previous research has established that awareness of self-experience is a stress resistance resource. The present study conducted an analysis of measures that record different aspects of self-awareness (private self-consciousness, mindfulness, and integrative self-knowledge) to explain this stress-resistance effect in a sample of Iranian university students (N = 186). These students responded to Mindfulness Attention Awareness, Private Self-Consciousness, Integrative Self-Knowledge, and Perceived Stress Scales just before the stress of a 20-day final examination period, and they then responded to Symptom Checklist and Vitality measures at four-day intervals during the final examinations. Prior to final examinations, the three self-awareness variables correlated positively with each other and negatively with perceived stress. Regression analyses of the data obtained during final examinations identified mindfulness to be a better operationalization of this stress-resistance resource than private self-consciousness. Specifically, mindfulness but not private self-consciousness was a positive predictor of vitality and a negative predictor of symptoms. Hierarchical regression analyses also demonstrated that mindfulness and integrative self-knowledge both explained resistance to physical symptoms, while integrative self-knowledge functioned as a protective factor toward one's vitality. These data confirm the positive impact that self-awareness has during stress and highlight the importance of considering both mindfulness and integrative self-knowledge in understanding stress-resistance processes.     

VIRTUE, EMOTION, AND ATTENTION

Abstract: The perceptual model of emotions maintains that emotions involve, or are at least analogous to, perceptions of value. On this account, emotions purport to tell us about the evaluative realm, in much the same way that sensory perceptions inform us about the sensible world. An important development of this position, prominent in recent work by Peter Goldie amongst others, concerns the essential role that virtuous habits of attention play in enabling us to gain perceptual and evaluative knowledge. I think that there are good reasons to be sceptical about this picture of virtue. In this essay I set out these reasons, and explain the consequences this scepticism has for our understanding of the relation between virtue, emotion, and attention. In particular, I argue that our primary capacity for recognizing value is in fact a non-emotional capacity.     

Everything is What it is,and Not Another Thing: Knowledge and Freedom in Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought

Although Isaiah Berlin's critique of positive liberty has achieved canonical status, its place within his wider political philosophy remains obscure. However, the re-publication of one of his most important philosophical essays, From Hope and Fear Set Free, as part of a new edition of Four Essays on Liberty, simply entitled Liberty, has opened the door to a re-evaluation of Berlin's political project.

At the heart of Berlin's argument, which gains its fullest expression in From Hope and Fear Set Free, stands his contention that positive liberty, in its incarnation as self-realisation, conflates liberty with knowledge, which leads to the distortion of our phenomenologically inescapable structure of experience. This transgression against the conceptual framework in terms of which we think, Berlin argues, played its desolate part in linking the ‘totalitarian temptation’ latent in liberty as self-realisation with the totalitarian politics of the mid-twentieth century.     

Avoiding Authoritarianism: On the Problem of Justification in Contemporary Critical Social Theory

Abstract

Critical social theories look critically at the ways in which particular social arrangements hinder human flourishing, with a view to bringing about social change for the better. In this they are guided by the idea of a good society in which the identified social impediments to human flourishing would once and for all have been removed. The question of how these guiding ideas of the good life can be justified as valid across socio‐cultural contexts and historical epochs is the most fundamental difficulty facing critical social theories today. This problem of justification, which can be traced back to certain key shifts in the modern Western social imaginary, calls on contemporary theories to negotiate the tensions between the idea of context‐transcendent validity and their own anti‐authoritarian impulses. Habermas makes an important contribution towards resolving the problem, but takes a number of wrong turnings.     

Phonological recoding,rapid automatized naming,and orthographic knowledge

Phonological recoding, orthographic knowledge, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are three major contributors to word identification. However, the interrelations between these components remain somewhat unclear. The current analyses focus on how phonological recoding and alphanumeric versus non-alphanumeric RAN contribute to different components of orthographic knowledge (word specific vs. general). Results indicate that alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric RAN contribute to orthographic knowledge components differently. Alphanumeric RAN relates more to word-specific orthographic knowledge, whereas non-alphanumeric RAN relates more to general orthographic knowledge. Furthermore, phonological recoding is more closely related to word-specific orthographic knowledge than to general orthographic knowledge.     

Encoding Processes and Release from Proactive Interference in Short-Term Memory of Preschool Children

A modified proactive interference paradigm was developed to investigate encoding and memory processes in preschool-age children. The buildup and release from proactive interference in preschool-age children parallels that of adults and of mentally retarded persons, indicating that very young children and older people may use many of the same encoding dimensions.     

Strategies in the Information Search Process: Interaction Among Task Structure,Knowledge, and Source

The authors explored the information search strategies of 145 individuals in the predecisional stage. Decision-making participants selected pieces of information from a list including relevant and irrelevant data. The authors investigated the influence of the individual's knowledge and information source. In Experiment 1, the authors experimentally manipulated the information source reliability. The results revealed that participants tended to use a sequential strategy when the authors presented information as supplied by a reliable source. In Experiment 2, the authors analyzed the interaction between information source and the individuals' knowledge. When participants believed the source to be reliable, even knowledgeable participants adopted a strategy as sequential as that chosen by naive individuals. In Experiment 3, a mediational model corroborated the hypothesis that the search strategy affects the final judgment. The results were consistent with the constructivist framework, which emphasizes the role of individual, task, and context in the decision-making process.     

Profiles of Chronic Illness Knowledge in a Community Sample of American Adults

The author identified profiles of chronic illness knowledge (i.e., heart disease, cancer, diabetes) in a community sample of American adults and examined the effect of sociodemographic influences on relations of illness knowledge to health practices and well-being. Participants were 181 women and 120 men who completed measures of illness knowledge, sociodemographics, personal health practices (e.g., diet, exercise, substance abuse, adaptive healthcare use), well-being (e.g., self-rated physical health, depression, social support), and perceived illness risk. Two-step cluster analyses performed on random subsets of the sample identified three levels of illness knowledge: low, medium, and high. Knowledge groups were differentiated on most measures of health practices, well-being and perceived illness risk. However, effects were substantially attenuated after controlling for differences in age and SES. Findings indicate that age and other sociodemographic factors are related not only to levels of illness knowledge but also to the application of knowledge in relation to health practices and well-being.