ABSTRACTThis study examined duration judgments for taboo and neutral words in prospective and retrospective timing tasks. In the prospective task, participants attended to time from the beginning and generated shorter duration estimates for taboo than neutral words and for words that they subsequently recalled in a surprise free recall task. These findings suggested that memory encoding took priority over estimating durations, directing attention away from time and causing better recall but shorter perceived durations for taboo than neutral words. However, in (...) the retrospective task, participants only judged durations in a surprise test at the end, and their duration estimates were longer for taboo than neutral words. Present findings therefore suggest that the same emotion-linked memory encoding processes can cause underestimation of durations in prospective tasks but overestimation in retrospective tasks, as if emotion enhances recall of ongoing events but causes overestimation of the durations of those... (shrink)

This paper explores the suggestion that our conscious experience is embodied in, rather than interactive with, our brain activity, and that the distinctive brain correlate of conscious experience lies at the level of global functional organization. To speak of either brains or computers as thinking is categorically inept, but whether stochastic mechanisms using internal experimentation rather than rule‐following to determine behavior could embody conscious agency is argued to be an open question, even in light of the Christian doctrine of man. (...) Mechanistic brain science does nothing to discredit Christian experience in dialogue with God or the Christian hope of eternal life. (shrink)

In the never-ending debate about the scope and limits of science, the hottest argument now centres on the scientific study of man himself. Can there be a science of man at all, in any comprehensive sense? Or is the idea in some way ultimately self-defeating, like that of pulling oneself up by one's own shoelaces? My purpose in this paper is not to venture a direct answer to this ticklish question, but rather to highlight one or two desirable characteristics of (...) a science which I think must inevitably be lacking in any attempt to turn the scientific spotlight upon ourselves. Whether we call the attainable residue by the name of ‘science’ is less important than that we see clearly what not to expect of it. (shrink)

This paper examines how inner theories influence lexical choice. Subjects in one study completed auditorily presented sentence fragments, some of which contained nonhuman antecedents such as dog and cat. Subjects were more likely to use human pronouns rather than it for referring to pets rather than nonpets , and antecedents that were liked rather than disliked , familiar rather than unfamiliar , named rather than unnamed , rational rather than nonrational , and engaging in typically human rather than nonhuman activities (...) . The beliefs and attitudes underlying these pronoun choices intruded not just hypoconsciously , but contraconsciously . A second study examined rapidly generated inferences that influenced what pronoun subjects chose to complete visually presented sentences, such as "When a student practices basketball instead of studying" and "When a student practices ballet instead of studying." The results indicated that inferences from beliefs altered the choice of pronoun from predominately he to predominantly she. Other results indicated that pronouns have semi-autonomous functions of their own, and reflect beliefs and attitudes that vary with subject sex, and are context dependent, pragmatic in nature, and dynamic over time. (shrink)

The case for a "metaphysics without ontology" has been argued persuasively by the late R. G. Collingwood. The crux of his argument is in the nature of presupposing. What are presuppositions in his view of them? They are historical facts "made" by persons or groups of persons on particular occasions or groups of occasions, "in the course of this or that piece of thinking," whenever questions arise and answers are propounded. In other words, the making of a presupposition is involved (...) in the historical occurrence of a problem, and a question about a presupposition, and how it is "made," is a question of the way in which problems arise on particular occasions or groups of occasions. Metaphysics, as a study of presuppositions, is historical inquiry into the conditions under which problems have arisen. (shrink)

In the never-ending debate about the scope and limits of science, the hottest argument now centres on the scientific study of man himself. Can there be a science of man at all, in any comprehensive sense? Or is the idea in some way ultimately self-defeating, like that of pulling oneself up by one's own shoelaces? My purpose in this paper is not to venture a direct answer to this ticklish question, but rather to highlight one or two desirable characteristics of (...) a science which I think must inevitably be lacking in any attempt to turn the scientific spotlight upon ourselves. Whether we call the attainable residue by the name of ‘science’ is less important than that we see clearly what not to expect of it. (shrink)

This chapter examines the stages of processing meta‐theory (SPM) that has guided construction of theories in psychology during the past 350 years, from philosopher René Descartes in seventeenth‐century France to neuropsychologists Carl Wernicke and Paul Broca in nineteenth‐century Europe to psychologists Dominic Massaro and Alan Baddeley in late twentieth‐century America and Britain. The most basic SPM assumptions are that processing and storage of information take place within a finite number of autonomous modules or stages, and that some stages are sequentially (...) ordered with respect to others. Flowcharts typically summarize these assumptions. The traditional stages of processing for verbal information are comprehension, storage, retrieval, and production. SPM flowcharts can add new stages and can alter old labels to represent new types of information processing, but whatever the labels, the stages must be finite in number, distinct, independent, and sequentially ordered between input and output. (shrink)

Claims that representatives of both sides of the psi debate (e.g., J. E. Alcock; K. R. Rao and J. Palmer [see PA, Vol 76:10501 and 10507]) have implicitly adopted the empirical epistemology without spelling out or systematically applying the rational epistemology, an essential step for both psychology and parapsychology. ((c) 1997 APA/PsycINFO, all rights reserved).

Despite several positive features, such as extensive theoretical and empirical scope, aspects of Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer 's theory can be challenged on theoretical grounds and empirical grounds.