Generic language use reveals domain differences in young children's expectations about animal and artifact categories

The goal of the present study was to explore domain differences in young children's expectations about the structure of animal and artifact categories. We examined 5-year-olds’ and adults’ use of category-referring generic noun phrases (e.g., “Birds fly”) about novel animals and artifacts. The same stimuli served as both animals and artifacts; thus, stimuli were perceptually identical across domains, and domain was indicated exclusively by language. Results revealed systematic domain differences: children and adults produced more generic utterances when items were described as animals than artifacts. Because the stimuli were novel and lacking perceptual cues to domain, these findings must be attributed to higher-order expectations about animal and artifact categories. Overall, results indicate that by age 5, children are able to make knowledge-based domain distinctions between animals and artifacts that may be rooted in beliefs about the coherence and homogeneity of categories within these domains.     

The end of Jesus' mission and the honor of God in the Qur'an: the search for common ground between Muslims and Christians

Jesus is important for both Muslims and Christians, and this has led some in both groups to search for common ground concerning him. Nevertheless, two important points of disagreement concern the Christian claims that Jesus is the Son of God, and that Jesus was put to death on the cross. The present article focuses on the last point, noting four key qur'anic passages (Q 3.55; 4.157–8; 5.117; and 19.33). Muslim commentators have mostly denied the historical aspect of Jesus' crucifixion, advocating some version of a substitutionist theory whereby the Jews crucified someone other than Jesus, while Jesus himself was taken alive by God into heaven. Muslim–Christian dialogue on this issue remains problematic. The present article encourages mutual exploration of a theological dimension of the end of Jesus' mission, that of the honor of God. Both Muslims and Christians affirm that God maintained his honor by thwarting the Jews' attempt to get rid of Jesus. The usual Muslim belief is that God rescued him alive to heaven before the crucifixion, while the Christian understanding is that God vindicated Jesus through the resurrection and ascension. Similar views of God's honor through his intervention regarding Jesus can contribute to positive Muslim–Christian dialogue.1 An abbreviated form of this paper was delivered at the International Symposium on Qur'an and Contemporary Issues at the University of Nairobi, 5 June 2011.      

Thoughts on how to regulate behaviours: an overview of the current debate

ABSTRACT

The article intends to present the debate on behaviour modification in the regulation studies literature, at a time of renewed interest among regulators for new ideas and strategies. As the financial crisis has led to the most public critique yet of the rational choice view of individuals that has informed regulation in the last few decades, other ideas that value realism more than simplicity and parsimony deserve some attention. Some of these – proposed by behavioural economics – have already raised considerable interest from regulators, especially in the UK and the USA, and have begun to impact various types of regulation. This article puts these various elements in perspective and as such provides tools to appraise and engage with past and future attempts to regulate social groups in health care and elsewhere.     

ROY SCHAFER: A NARRATIVE

The author provides a brief overview of the papers given at the Schafer Symposium in October 2012 by the following six presenters: Henry Schwartz, Richard Fritsch, Rosemary Balsam, Lucy LaFarge, Michael Feldman, and Jay Greenberg. He also highlights some important ongoing themes in Schafer's writing, including theory—about which Schafer takes a unique position—history, and ideas from other disciplines. Schafer prefers continuing explorations over arriving at conclusions, the author notes, and believes that students should remain faithful to their mentors' thinking—until it is time for them to move beyond it.     

Examining Conspiracist Beliefs About the Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

Previous studies have suggested that conspiracist ideation forms part of a monological belief system in which one conspiracist idea acts as evidence for new conspiracist ideas. Here, we examined this possibility in relation to an event lacking reliable or conclusive evidence, namely the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. A total of 914 members of the British general public completed scales measuring their beliefs about the disappearance of Earhart and Noonan, belief in conspiracy theories, the Big Five personality factors, support for democratic principles, political cynicism, self-esteem, and self-assessed intelligence. Results showed that belief in conspiracy theories was associated with the endorsement of less plausible explanations for the disappearance of Earhart and Noonan. In addition, belief in less plausible explanations was also significantly associated with lower self-assessed intelligence, greater political cynicism, lower self-esteem, and higher Agreeableness scores. These results are discussed in relation to monological belief systems.     

The Religious Function of Jaina Philosophy:AnekāntavādaReconsidered

This paper considers the socio-religious rationale for the Jaina theory of the non-one-sided nature of reality (anekāntavāda). In doing so it rejects the received view thatanekāntavāda's exclusive function is to promote non-violence at the intellectual level. Instead it advances a model which emphasizes the way in whichanekāntavādasustains a real connection between karmic matter and the soul (jīva) and so maintains the rationale for identity defining ascetic practice. The social and religious dangers of one-sided (ekānta) views for the Jaina tradition are demonstrated by a consideration of the Digambara teacher Kundakunda's idiosyncratic use of the two truths model of reality.     

Theistic Multiverse and Slippery Slopes: A Response to Klaas Kraay

Abstract

Most recently, Klaas Kraay has argued that God could have created a subset of all logically possible universes, the member universes of which are chosen by God due to their axiological status. In the present paper, we first argue that Kraay fails in developing an axiological basis for his theistic multiverse. In particular, we demonstrate that science provides no evidence for a multiverse constituted only by universes above a certain axiological threshold. In the second part of this paper, we argue that the idea of the theistic multiverse might be made fruitful in the context of Open Theism.     

Family as a source of support under stress: Benefits of greater breadth of family inclusion

Family has profound meaning and represents the most important ingroup for most people, yet, we know very little about how lay perceptions of family affect well-being. In the current work, we examined how lay theories about breadth of family inclusion (i.e., including a broader variety of entities in one’s definition of family) were related to family experiences and to well-being. In Study 1, we found that lay theories about family as including a wider variety of entities (i.e., greater breadth of inclusion) predicted more positive family evaluations, more positive qualities, and greater family importance. In Study 2, we found that greater breadth of family inclusion was associated with greater resilience in the face of stress. Finally, in Study 3 we used an experimental manipulation of breadth of family inclusion, establishing that broader views of family produced greater social needs fulfillment. Implications for the role of ingroup memberships and identities in promoting well-being are discussed.     

An investigation of the role of some person and situation variables in multiple cue probability learning

Making decisions using judgements of multiple non-deterministic indicators is an important task, both in everyday and professional life. Learning of such decision making has often been studied as the mapping of stimuli (cues) to an environmental variable (criterion); however, little attention has been paid to the effects of situation-by-person interactions on this learning. Accordingly, we manipulated cue and feedback presentation mode (graphic or numeric) and task difficulty, and measured individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC). We predicted that graphic presentation, fewer cues, and elevated WMC would facilitate learning, and that person and task characteristics would interact such that presentation mode compatible with the decision maker's cognitive capability (enhanced visual or verbal WMC) would assist learning, particularly for more difficult tasks. We found our predicted main effects, but no significant interactions, except that those with greater WMC benefited to a larger extent with graphic than with numeric presentation, regardless of which type of working memory was enhanced or number of cues. Our findings suggest that the conclusions of past research based predominantly on tasks using numeric presentation need to be reevaluated and cast light on how working memory helps us learn multiple cue–criterion relationships, with implications for dual-process theories of cognition.