William King’s Influence on Locke’s Second Edition Change of Mind about Human Action and Freedom

ABSTRACT

Locke’s influential discussion of agency in the chapter ‘Of Power’ in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding underwent important changes between the first and second edition. He reconsidered many of his central claims about the mind’s deliberation about actions. Locke’s position in the two editions is not only different but, as he himself points out, sometimes incompatible. This has suggested to some commentators that his change of mind was at least partly due to an external influence. Locke himself gestures towards this conclusion in the new ‘Epistle’ in the second edition Essay. One view is that William Molyneux was a notable influence, while another position is that Ralph Cudworth’s work on free will, either directly or indirectly through the influence of his daughter Damaris Masham, was an important influence. The position I develop in this paper is that the strongest candidate for an important external influence on Locke’s second edition revision is Molyneux’s close associate and friend, Irish philosopher and Archbishop of Dublin, William King. I argue that King’s criticism is a plausible influence on Locke’s reconceptualization of will and desire. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, King’s criticism appears to have been instrumental in Locke’s new emphasis on the agent’s capacity to determine what to value.     

The effects of social motives on behavior in social dilemmas in two cultures

Subjects in Santa Barbara, California, and Groningen, The Netherlands, participated in a seven-person social dilemma game, presented in terms of a conservation of resources problem. Prior to their decision making in the social dilemma game, subject's social motive (altruistic, cooperative, individualistic, competitive) was assessed by means of two different classification procedures. On the basis of previous research findings American subjects were expected to display relatively more competitive social motives, and Dutch subjects relatively more cooperative ones. However, no indications of crosscultural differences were found neither with regard to the distribution of social motives nor with regard to the amount of resources taken for self in the social dilemma game. In both locations, competitive subjects took most resources for self, individualistic subjects took next most, cooperative subjects took less than individualists, and altruistic subjects took the least. In addition to predictive validity, indices of the convergent validity of two social motive assessment procedures were described.     

A cross-sequential analysis of developmental differences in speed of visual information processing

Development of processing speed was examined in three backward masking studies. The first verified the central nature of backward masking for children aged 8 and 11 years and for adults. The second suggested that task requirements were equivalent for children similar to those in Study 1, and that age differences in performance were not attributable to nonprocessing variables. The main cross-sequential study estimated speed of processing in 80 children (approximately 6 years to 13 years) and young adults using an inspection time task. Target exposure duration was varied to establish the time required to achieve a high level of discriminative accuracy. Estimates of processing speed increased until about 11-13 years of age; beyond this, the trend was less obvious, and it is possible that inspection time asymptotes at around the onset of adolescence. Performance improvement after 1 year could not be explained as resulting from practice since improvement among controls over a period of 2 weeks was significantly less. Correlations between estimates of inspection time made up to 2 years apart found the measure to be reliable.     

Three-state models of memory development: A review of advances in statistical methodology

A certain family of three-state Markov processes has been widely used in experiments on children's memory. Although the statistical machinery for these models is well developed in most respects, two shortcomings have been noted in recent literature reviews. First, the parameters of the models are not identifiable. Second, goodness-of-fit tests are laborious to execute and their sampling distributions are unknown. New procedures for dealing with these difficulties are reported.     

The effect of cuing after backward conditioning trials

Rats were given backward pairings of a tone (CS) and shock (US) and were then tested for response to the CS in a lick suppression test. Animals given a cuing or reminder treatment prior to the test exhibited enhanced suppression in the presence of the tone relative to a variety of control conditions. The cue-induced suppression enhancement did not appear to result from sensitization or short-term motivational changes nor did it seem to depend on second-order conditioning of the test context. The effect appeared more robust as the number of backward conditioning trials preceding the cue increased. The results were discussed in terms of current explanations of backward conditioning effects.     

Stuttering and the valsalva mechanism: A hypothesis in need of investigation

This note presents the hypothesis than the excessively forceful closure of the mouth of larynx associated with certain types of stuttering may involve a neurological confusion between speech and the human body's Valsalva mechanism, which is designed to increase pulmonary pressure by forceful closure of the upper airway to assist in many types of physical effort. It is suggested that such behavior may result from excessive neuromotor tuning of the Valsalva mechanism prior to speech, especially in situations where the stutterer anticipates the need to “try hard” to speak properly. Such tuning may both interfere with phonation and render the Valsalva mechanism overexcitable to triggering stimuli, such as the increase in subglottal pressure that accompanies the start of articulation.     

Cognitive dissonance as a mechanism in vocational decision processes

This study examined changes in cognitive-dissonance-related variables during the professional training period. Differences in levels and change in satisfaction with career choice, importance of career, certainty of career decision, self-occupational perceptions, general attitude toward career, time since career decision, and past experience were observed when students who left a collegiate professional training program before program completion were compared with those who remained in the program. Data supports the validity of D. Hershenson and R. Roth's (1966, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 13, 368–370) and V. Harren's (1979, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14, 119–133) theoretical models of vocational decision and the Assessment of Career Decision Making scale.     

Message therapy: Language approach to stuttering therapy with children

Message therapy is a clinical procedure designed to be used as a carry-over technique with school-age stutterers or as a sole technique with the preschooler. The focus of therapy is on a unit of communication rather than on the moment or place of stuttering. One of the basic assumptions of the procedure is that the child is beginning to monitor how he/she is speaking rather than what is being communicated (i.e., the “message”)—each task requiring a different cognitive process. The emphasis of the therapy is to redirect the child's attention to “what he/she is saying.” The clinical procedures are discussed as they relate to the specific population.     

Peer education: The untapped potential

The purpose of this paper is to provide a rationale for making broader educational use of peer learning principles as explicated in developmental theory and research. The paper argues that peer learning brings with it unique motivational and cognitive benefits for participating peers. Research has shown that peer learning can bolster children's self-esteem, awaken their interest in challenging tasks, enhance scholarly achievement, and foster prosocial behavior. In particular, it is an effective means of enabling children to grasp basic concepts that underlie school curricula.Two different forms of peer learning, “peer tutoring” and “peer collaboration,” are distinguished. Each has its potential use: peer tutoring for transmitting information and drilling special skills; peer collaboration for facilitating intellectual discovery and the acquisition of basic knowledge.Some general guidelines for the integration of peer tutoring and peer collaboration in the classroom are offered. It is recognized that specific curriculum plans implementing these guidelines must be formulated with a view to the overall cultural context of the school system. Such plans must be molded in context to suit the needs of each particular site. It is concluded, however, that the general principles of peer education set forth in this position paper would enhance all varieties of schooling. As explicated in this article, peer education complements rather than supplants adult teaching, freeing up teachers' time and attention and enabling them to focus more directly and effectively on individual children's learning needs.     

On the measurement of storage and retrieval contributions to memory development

We report two free recall experiments and a cued recall experiment in which a new two-stage model was used to obtain numerical measurements of age changes in various aspects of storage and retrieval. The subjects in all three experiments were 7-year-olds (second graders) and 11-year-olds (sixth graders). The major findings in the free recall experiment were that getting a trace into storage posed less of a problem for elementary schoolers than learning how to get it out on test trials, that retrieval development is more rapid during the elementary school years than storage development, and that the superiority of older children's storage and retrieval abilities tends to become more pronounced as learning progresses. A similar pattern of results was obtained under different conditions in the cued recall experiment.