Is I Guaranteed to Refer?

Abstract: One claim about I , regularly made and almost universally endorsed, is that uses of the term are logically guaranteed to refer successfully (if they refer at all). The claim is only rarely formulated perspicuously or argued for. Such obscurity helps disguise the fact that those who profess to advance the claim actually turn out to support not a logical guarantee at all but merely high security through fortunate coincidence. This is not surprising. For we have no good reason to accept the claim – granted, any use of I is apt to refer successfully; but that can be explained by pragmatic features of its use. And we have some reason to reject the claim – it is notoriously difficult to see how genuine reference and guaranteed success do not exclude each other when considered as properties of the logic of any term.     

Training Observers to Detect Deception Effects of Self-Monitoring and Rehearsal

It was predicted that trained observers would detect deception more accurately than untrained observers. More specifically, it was predicted that the highest deception detection accuracy would be found among trained observers judging the veracity of low self-monitors and unrehearsed liars, whereas the lowest detection accuracy would be found among untrained observers judging the veracity of high self-monitors and rehearsed deceivers. It also was hypothesized that the discrepancy between observers‘actual ability to detect deception and their certainty in the accuracy of their judgments would be smaller for trained observers than for untrained observers. Observers trained to detect deception used six behavioral cues based on research by deTurck and Miller (1985): (a) message duration, (b) response latency, (c) adaptors, (d) pauses, (e) nonfluencies, and (f) hand gestures. Results confirmed both hypotheses.     

The effects of contextual information and gender on the prediction of hypnotic susceptibility

Council, Kirsch, and Hafner (1986) obtained empirical support for the hypothesis that significant correlations between questionnaire measures of absorption and hypnotic susceptibility are an artifact of subjects' beliefs about their own hypnotizability. We tested this hypothesis in a two-session experiment. During Session 1, subjects completed questionnaire measures of absorption, mystical experience, daydreaming frequency, and paranormal beliefs. During Session 2, subjects were tested for hypnotic susceptibility. Subjects were also exposed to one of three information manipulations: They were told about hypnotic testing either before or after filling out the questionnaires or were not told about hypnotic testing. The information manipulation moderated the prediction of susceptibility by the questionnaire measures for women, but not for men. For women, scores on the absorption questionnaire predicted susceptibility only when subjects were informed about hypnotic testing. In the told-after condition, this effect generalized to all of the remaining questionnaire measures. For men, none of the questionnaires was a reliable predictor of susceptibility.     

Evaluation of a mutual help network for the elderly residents of planned housing

We set up a mutual help network among the elderly residents of a government-subsidized apartment building and evaluated its impact on their social ties, social support satisfaction, and depression. A quasi-experimental design was used, with the residents of a similar building located in the same neighborhood serving as the control group. A total of 230 individual services were exchanged, and 28 group activities were organized during the study period. There was almost no difference between experimental and control groups with respect to the change over the study period in the number of social ties with other residents of the building. Support satisfaction decreased in both groups, but the decrease was larger in the experimental group. The control group had a slight decrease in the frequency of their depressive symptoms, whereas the experimental group had a moderate increase. More research is needed on the ability of social support interventions to produce beneficial effects on mental health among individuals who are not experiencing a particular life stress.     

The association between teacher attitudes, behavioral intentions, and smoking and the prevalence of smoking among seventh-grade students.

Seventh-grade students and teachers from twenty-three middle and junior high schools were surveyed to determine the association between teacher attitudes, behavioral intentions, and smoking behavior and the prevalence of student smoking. Teacher attitudes toward smoking policies were found to be strongly related to the current smoking behavior of the teacher but not consistently related to student smoking. In addition, teacher likelihood of intervening showed a modest association with teacher smoking status, with current smokers generally indicating being the least likely to intervene for student possession or use of cigarettes. Teacher intentions to intervene were strongly associated with the prevalence of smoking among boys but not girls.     

Covariation detection in treated and untreated spider phobics.

Twenty treated and 18 untreated spider phobics were exposed to a series of 72 slides. Three different categories of slides were used: phobia-relevant slides (spiders), alternative fear-relevant slides (weapons), and neutral slides (flowers). Slides were randomly paired with either a shock, a tone, or nothing at all. Despite the absence of a systematic correlation between slides and outcomes, untreated phobics strongly overestimated the covariation between spider slides and shock. Treated phobics did not show a covariation bias, suggesting that such bias can be modulated by behavioral treatment. In addition, untreated subjects were more confident about their contingency estimates than were treated subjects. The present results fit with earlier studies.