Semi De Morgan Logic Properly Displayed

Studia Logica - In the present paper, we endow semi De Morgan logic and a family of its axiomatic extensions with proper multi-type display calculi which are sound, complete, conservative, and...     

Sympathy as knowledge of the other in need: An investigation into the roles of need for closure and the moral foundations on sympathy toward immigrants

Although sympathy is a powerful other-focused motivation, not all individuals will experience sympathy when it is appropriate. Immigrants, as a disadvantaged out-group, are especially in need of sympathy and, given the tensions of the immigration debate, are at-risk for low sympathy. Indeed, past research has found that sympathy is less likely to be experienced toward disliked out-groups. In the current research, we investigated the role of need for closure (NFC), or the general desire for epistemic certainty, on the experience of sympathy toward immigrants in Italy, a nation where the immigration debate is becoming increasingly fractious. Consistent with past research on the roles of NFC and the binding moral foundations (i.e., a concern for the well-being of groups) on prejudice toward out-groups, we propose that individuals with a high NFC, and who endorsed the binding moral foundations (i.e., a concern for the well-being of groups), would be particularly likely to have decreased sympathy toward immigrants in Italy. In line with past research and our hypotheses, in three studies we found that the binding foundations mediated the NFC effect on decreased sympathy toward immigrants in Italy. Conceptually, these individuals can strongly adopt traditional cultural norms as a way to acquire stable knowledge; this can make sympathy toward immigrants less likely, as they both stand outside “traditional” morality, as well can threaten the stability of natives’ knowledge.     

Treating boys with low school achievement and behavior problems: comparison of two kinds of intervention

Children with low school achievement frequently have behavior problems and interpersonal difficulties that pose a risk for psychosocial maladjustment. 39 boys were assessed and randomly assigned to one of two group treatment conditions: (a) interpersonal cognitive problem-solving for whom training was provided through oral and written language activities that met children's social and academic needs and (b) a language workshop, during which only academic difficulties were treated. Parents of children in both groups received group attention. Posttreatment assessments indicated that boys in both conditions showed significant improvements on school achievement and behavior problems, as they were measured by behavior scales reported by mothers and by an academic achievement test. Children in the problem-solving group improved significantly more than the other group on most measures. These results suggest that work with interpersonal cognitive problem-solving skills combined with reading and writing activities is a useful means to produce improvements in child behavior and school achievement.     

Belief attribution in deaf and hearing infants

Based on anticipatory looking and reactions to violations of expected events, infants have been credited with 'theory of mind' (ToM) knowledge that a person's search behaviour for an object will be guided by true or false beliefs about the object's location. However, little is known about the preconditions for looking patterns consistent with belief attribution in infants. In this study, we compared the performance of 17- to 26-month-olds on anticipatory looking in ToM tasks. The infants were either hearing or were deaf from hearing families and thus delayed in communicative experience gained from access to language and conversational input. Hearing infants significantly outperformed their deaf counterparts in anticipating the search actions of a cartoon character that held a false belief about a target-object location. By contrast, the performance of the two groups in a true belief condition did not differ significantly. These findings suggest for the first time that access to language and conversational input contributes to early ToM reasoning.     

On the Nature of Coincidental Events

Axiomathes - It is a common opinion that chance events cannot be understood in causal terms. Conversely, according to a causal view of chance, intersections between independent causal chains...     

The body of the analyst and the analytic setting: Reflections on the embodied setting and the symbiotic transference

In this paper the author questions whether the body of the analyst may be helpfully conceptualized as an embodied feature of the setting and suggests that this may be especially helpful for understanding patients who develop a symbiotic transference and for whom any variance in the analyst's body is felt to be profoundly destabilizing. In such cases the patient needs to relate to the body of the analyst concretely and exclusively as a setting ‘constant’ and its meaning for the patient may thus remain inaccessible to analysis for a long time. When the separateness of the body of the analyst reaches the patient's awareness because of changes in the analyst's appearance or bodily state, it then mobilizes primitive anxieties in the patient. It is only when the body of the analyst can become a dynamic variable between them (i.e. part of the process) that it can be used by the patient to further the exploration of their own mind.