On the eliminatibility of ideal linguistic entities

With reference to Polish logico-philosophical tradition two formal theories of language syntax have been sketched and then compared with each other. The first theory is based on the assumption that the basic linguistic stratum is constituted by object-tokens (concrete objects perceived through the senses) and that the types of such objects (ideal objects) are derivative constructs. The other is founded on an opposite philosophical orientation. The two theories are equivalent. The main conclusion is that in syntactic researches it is redundant to postulate the existence of abstract linguistic entities. Earlier, in a slightly different form, the idea was presented in [27] and signalled in [26] and [25].To the memory of Jerzy Supecki     

Dynamical Social Psychology: Complexity and Coherence in Human Experience

Human experience reflects the interplay of multiple influences operating on various time scales to promote constantly evolving patterns of thought, emotion, and action. Although the complexity and dynamism of personal and social phenomena have long been recognized, they are difficult to investigate using traditional research methods. This article provides an overview of dynamical social psychology, an approach adapted from dynamical systems theory that is designed to capture the complementary tendencies of stability and dynamism at different levels of social reality, from private thoughts to intergroup relations. Utilizing time-series analyses and computer simulations, this perspective documents the emergence of global properties from the interaction of basic elements in mental and social systems and investigates the time-dependent relation between external influences and a system’s internally generated dynamics. The dynamical approach enables social psychology to advance as a precise science while preserving the basic insights that launched the field over a century ago.     

Meaning and Interpretation. II

The paper enriches the conceptual apparatus of the theory of meaning and denotation that was presented in Part I (Section 3). This part concentrates on the notion of interpretation, which is defined as an equivalence class of the relation possessing the same manner of interpreting types. In this part, some relations between meaning and interpretation, as well as one between denotation an interpretational denotation are established. In the theory of meaning and interpretation, the notion of language communication has been formally introduced and some conditions of correctness of communication have been formulated. Presented by Wojciech Buszkowski     

Can appraisals of common political life events impact subjective well‐being?

This study examined the psychological impact of global subjective appraisals of influence exerted on people's lives by common political events. A list of 24 political events was administered to a random sample of 400 adults in Poland. Political self‐efficacy, interest in politics, perceived political social support, and political collective efficacy were also assessed as potential moderators of the link between political stress appraisals and subjective well‐being (satisfaction with life, sense on anomie, positive affect). Perceptions of the negative influence of political stressors on one's life and the life of the country were associated with concomitant variations in subjective well‐being. Among psychosocial resources, political self‐efficacy consistently moderated the influence of appraisals of political stressors on satisfaction with life and positive affect.     

Sexual imprinting on facial traits of opposite-sex parents in humans

Positive sexual imprinting is a process by which individuals use the phenotype of their opposite-sex parent as a template for acquiring mates. Recent studies in humans have concluded that an imprinting-like mechanism influences human mate choice in facial traits. However, some of the previous studies have had methodological problems or flaws which might have invalidated or led to an overgeneralization of the original interpretation of their results. In this study, 70 heterosexual adults were used to test if their partners resembled facially their opposite-sex parent as the sexual imprinting hypothesis predicts. Judges assessed the subjective facial similarity between each participant's partner and their parent. We found that there was no perceived facial similarity between women's partners and their fathers. However, men tended to pair more often with women that were perceived as resembling the men's own mothers. In contrast to previous studies, the quality of the relationship between participants and their parents did not predict the level of facial resemblance between the participant's spouse and their parent.     

Logical and Philosophical Ideas in Certain Formal Approaches to Language

This paper reminds, puts in order, sketches and also initiates some researches from the field of logic and philosophy of language. It lays emphasis on the logical-linguistic and ontological developmental lines originated with Polish researchers. The author discusses two opposite orientations of the former line in the process of formalization of language, called here nominalistic and Platonistic. The paper mentions the author's result (1989; 1991) concerning theoretical equivalence of two axiomatic approaches to language syntax which take into consideration these two different philosophical orientations, respectively. It also introduces certain formal-logical foundations of language semantics, discusses and develops the problem of the syntactic and semantic categorial agreement, i.e. the agreement of the syntactic category of each language expression with the ontological category assigned to the reference of this expression. The author, in particular, gives a solution to this problem for quantifiers. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Meaning and Interpretation. I

The paper is an attempt at a logical explication of some crucial notions of current general semantics and pragmatics. A general, axiomatic, formal-logical theory of meaning and interpretation is outlined in this paper.In the theory, accordingto the token-type distinction of Peirce, language is formalised on two levels: first as a language of token-objects (understood as material, empirical, enduring through time-and space objects) and then – as a language of type-objects (understood as abstract objects, as classes of tokens). The basic concepts of the theory, i.e. the notions: meaning, denotation and interpretation of well-formed expressions (wfes) of the language are formalised on the type-level, by utilising some semantic-pragmatic primitive notions introduced on the token-level. The paper is divided into two parts.In Part Ia theoryof meaningand denotation is proposed, and in Part II - its expansion to the theory of meaning and interpretation is presented.The meaninga wfe is defined as an equivalence class of the relation possessing the same manner of using types (cf. Ajdukiewicz [1934], Wittgenstein [1953]). The concept of denotation is defined by means of the relation of referring which holds between wfe-types and objects of reality described by the given language. Presented by Wojciech Buszkowski     

Rater training revisited: An updated meta‐analytic review of frame‐of‐reference training

The present study updates Woehr and Huffcutt's (1994) rater training meta‐analysis and demonstrates that frame‐of‐reference (FOR) training is an effective method of improving rating accuracy. The current meta‐analysis includes over four times as many studies as included in the Woehr and Huffcutt meta‐analysis and also provides a snapshot of current rater training studies. The present meta‐analysis also extends the previous meta‐analysis by showing that not all operationalizations of accuracy are equally improved by FOR training; Borman's differential accuracy appears to be the most improved by FOR training, along with behavioural accuracy, which provides a snapshot into the cognitive processes of the raters. We also investigate the extent to which FOR training protocols differ, the implications of protocol differences, and if the criteria of interest to FOR researchers have changed over time.