Are seductive details seductive only when you think they are relevant? An experimental test of the moderating role of perceived relevance

We investigated whether seductive details (i.e., interesting but irrelevant adjuncts) are harmful to learning only when students (mistakenly) think that they are relevant. We therefore conducted a study in which participants (N = 86) learned either without seductive details (control condition) or with seductive details—in the latter case with or without being informed about the seductive details' irrelevance. In line with our hypotheses, only participants who were not informed about the irrelevance of seductive details revealed worse learning outcomes than those in the control condition, thereby revealing a seductive details effect. Extraneous cognitive load, but not perceived time pressure, mediated the negative effects of being uninformed about the irrelevance of seductive details on learning outcomes. Taken together, our results suggest that the perceived relevance of seductive details is a boundary condition of the seductive details effect.     

作为社会和文化情境的同伴圈子对儿童社会能力发展的影响

基于同伴圈子的相似性假设探讨同伴圈子的形成、圈子社会情境对儿童社会能力发展的促进作用, 以及圈子文化背景对圈子社会化过程的调节作用。选取某城乡结合部一小学3至5年级898名儿童作为被试进行一年的跟踪调查, 其中在第一年当地城市儿童占36.5%, 当地农村儿童占48.8%, 流动儿童占10.4%。学生在第一和第二年都完成《班级戏剧》和《社会认知地图》问卷。研究结果表明：(1)在个体层面上, 圈子成员的社交性、亲社会性、自主性以及同伴接纳显著高于孤立者。城市儿童的自主性显著高于农村和流动儿童, 后两者之间则无显著差异。亲社会性在性别和文化背景方面存在显著的交互作用。(2)儿童会依据社会能力的相似性来组成同伴圈子, 且不同圈子之间存在显著差异。儿童也愿意与不同文化背景的同伴交往, 形成不同类型社会文化背景的同伴圈子。(3)儿童的社交性和自主性随着同伴圈子相应能力的提高而呈正向发展趋势。(4)同伴圈子对个体社交性和自主性发展的影响因圈子所注重的社会文化准则的差异而有所不同。农村－城市圈子比农村－流动圈子对儿童社交性发展的影响明显更大些; 农村圈子的儿童自主性水平更趋于随圈子自主性的提高而正向发展。     

Towards Culturally Relevant Preventive Interventions: The Consideration of Racial Socialization in Parent Training with African American Families

We present a rationale for the inclusion of culture-based parenting practices (i.e., racial socialization) in the design and implementation of empirically based parenting programs with African American families. We begin with a discussion of the limitations of the current parent training literature related to cultural considerations. Second, we examine the cultural and racial contexts of parenting for African Americans, review the literature on racial socialization, and discuss empirical support for considering its inclusion in parent training programs. Third, we examine the extent to which racial socialization operates in low-income African American families by presenting the findings from a qualitative pilot. We conclude by discussing how findings from the qualitative pilot might inform intervention efforts.     

Relevance

Relevance is a triadic relation between an item, an outcome or goal, and a situation. Causal relevance consists in an item's ability to help produce an outcome in a situation. Epistemic relevance, a distinct concept, consists in the ability of a piece of information (or a speech act communicating or requesting a piece of information) to help achieve an epistemic goal in a situation. It has this ability when it can be ineliminably combined with other at least potentially accurate information to achieve the goal. The relevance of a conversational contribution, premiss relevance and conclusion relevance are species of epistemic relevance thus defined. The conception of premiss relevance which results provides a basis for determining when the various arguments ad called fallacies of relevance are indeed irrelevant. In particular, an ad verecundiam appeal is irrelevant if the authority cited lacks expertise in a cognitive domain to which the conclusion belongs, the authority does not exercise its expertise in coming to endorse the conclusion, or the conclusion does not belong to a cognitive domain; otherwise the ad verecundiam is relevant.     

So what? Profiles for relevance criticism in persuation dialogues

This paper discusses several types of relevance criticism within dialogue. Relevance criticism is a way one could or should criticize one's partner's contribution in a conversation as being deficient in respect of conversational coherence. The first section tries to narrow down the scope of the subject to manageable proportions. Attention is given to the distinction between criticism of alleged fallacies within dialogue and such criticism as pertains to argumentative texts. Within dialogue one may distigguish tenability criticism, connection criticism, and narrow-type relevance criticism. Only the last of these three types of criticism constitutes a charge of fallacy and carries with it a burden of proof. In the second it is observed that a full study of narrow-type relevance criticism would require the construction of complicated, many-layered, dialogue systems. Such a study can, however, be profitably preceded by setting up profiles of dialogue that help us discuss the ins and outs of certain types of move. This is illustrated with an example.     

Audiences,relevance, and cognitive environments

This paper discusses the fundamental sense in which the components of an argument should be relevant to the intended audience. In particular, the evidence advanced should be relevant to the facts and assumptions that are manifest in the cognitive environment of the audience. A version of Sperber and Wilson's concept of the cognitive environment is applied to argumentative concerns, and from this certain features of audience-relevance are explored: that the relevance of a premise can vary with the audience; that irrelevant premises can be made relevant; that evidence can be relevant by degrees; and that this notion of relevance will assist the argumentation analyst in the identification and assessment of hidden premises.     

Relevant identity

We begin to fill a lacuna in the relevance logic enterprise by providing a foundational analysis of identity in relevance logic. We consider rival interpretations of identity in this context, settling on the relevant indiscernibility interpretation, an interpretation related to Dunn's relevant predication project. We propose a general test for the stability of an axiomatisation of identity, relative to this interpretation, and we put various axiomatisations to this test. We fill our discussion out with both formal and philosophical remarks on identity in relevance logic.     

Linked arguments and the validity requirement

In this paper I demonstrate that most textbook accounts of the linked/convergent distinction fail to conform to the widespread intuition that all valid arguments ought to be classified as linked arguments. I also show that standard textbook accounts of linkage and convergence cannot provide a satisfactory treatment of fallacies of irrelevance and, due to their general insensitivity to the epistemic context in which arguments are offered, must be supplemented by subjective accounts of linkage and convergence which appeal exclusively to authorial beliefs and intentions.Drafts of this paper were read at the Ontario Philosophical Society meeting held at Trent University in October 1990 and the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association held in Chicago in April 1991. I thank Trudy Govier, Hans Hansen and an anonymous referee for helpful and encouraging comments on various drafts.     

Conversation,relevance, and argumentation

This paper deals with the explanation the maxim of relevance provides for the way utterances in argumentative discourse follow each other in an orderly and coherent fashion. Several senses are distinguished in which utterances can be considered relevant. It is argued that an utterance can be considered relevant as an interactional act, as an illocutionary act, as a propositional act, and as an elocutionary act. These four kinds of relevance manifest the rational organization of discourse, which is aimed at bringing about mutual alignment between the participants, enabling them jointly to work out certain interactional outcomes that are acceptable to both of them.     

Towards an account of argumentation in science

In this article it is argued that a complex model that includes Toulmin's functional account of argument, the pragma-dialectical stage analysis of argumentation offered by the Amsterdam School, and criteria developed in critical thinking theory, can be used to account for the normativity and field-dependence of argumentation in science. A pragma-dialectical interpretation of the four main elements of Toulmin's model, and a revised account of the double role of warrants, illuminates the domain specificity of scientific argumentation and the restrictions to which the confrontation and opening stages of scientific critical discussions are subjected. In regard to the argumentation stage, examples are given to show that a general account of argumentation, as advocated by informal logicians, is not applicable to arguments in science. Furthermore, although patterns of inference differ in various scientific practices, deductive validity is argued to be a crucial notion in the assessment of scientific arguments. Finally, some remarks are made concerning the burden of proof and the concluding stage of scientific argumentation.