plebius's New Writeups

Evolution of language (idea)

2004-05-12T17:56:50Z

Cross-Modal Abstraction and Selection Pressures in the Evolution of Language

The question of the origin of language has fascinated scientists and philosophers for centuries. Speculation has ranged from "divine intervention" to human invention to Darwinian accounts of the emergence of language (Donald, 1991). In fact, the speculation was so rampant that in the 1860's, several scientific societies banned the publication of papers on the topic (Holden, 2004). Though recent research has focused on evolution as the driving force in the emergence of language, the view that language is not the product of natural selection has been put forth (Chomsky, 1972). The present discussion considers some of the evolutionary mechanisms and selection pressures that might have resulted in the emergence of language.

Cross-Modal Abstraction and Language

Although it has been suggested that language ability arose merely as a…

Men's Rights Movement (idea)

2003-07-13T04:45:29Z

Eliserh indeed presents a grim picture of the claims made by activists in the Men's Rights Movement, unfortunately at least one of eliserh's objections is misleading. Eliserh stated that:

This is, of course, ludicrous. "Actually, fathers do not do all that badly, vis-a-vis mothers, when they contest custody. Here, estimates vary widely, but it appears that in formally contested cases, women get custody only about half the time, or less." See e.g. Comparing Race and Sex Discrimination in Custody Cases, 28 Hofstra L. J. 877, 886 n.49. (noting also double standards applied against women in custody disputes)

This quote, put in context, reads as follows and presents a far different picture of the situation than that provided by eliserh.

Another set of discrimination claims concerns the complaint of fathers that the sex-based double standard works against them, not in their favor. The evidence offered is

…

March 4, 2003 (idea)

2003-03-04T01:34:29Z

I found out yesterday that my sister's ex-boyfriend shot himself on Friday night. Apparently he had manic depression... and his parents felt it was only a matter of time. This is the second time I've known somebody who shot themself. Guns make it way to easy to do something stupid in the heat of the moment. This guy had touched so many people's lives, it's a shame he did what he did... that he didn't see any other way. For some reason he didn't want to ask for help....

If you have a problem, _please_ get help. Call a crisis line... find services in your area (many universities offer free therapy services)... anything but suicide. don't be another victim.

Suicide prevention...

systematic desensitization (idea)

2003-02-25T01:03:56Z

Systematic desensitization is a visualization technique used in behavior therapy to treat phobias and anxiety.

The technique was developed by psychologist J. Wolpe from his experiments on cats. Wolpe used classical conditioning to make cats afraid of their cage. He discovered that he could eliminate this fear by giving the cats food at locations progressively closer to the cage, however if they were too close, the cats would not eat. Wolpe hypothesized that the cats were undergoing a process called reciprocal inhibition (ie. anxiety inhibits feeding and feeding inhibits anxiety).

Thus, systematic desensitization has two components: graduated exposure to anxiety provoking stimuli and reciprocal inhibition (counterconditioning).

In humans, systematic desensitization typically involves three steps. The first step is to teach the client to relax. The second step is to create a rank-ordered hierarchy of…

Psychology of love (idea)

2002-12-18T21:35:28Z

Romeo and Juliet around the World: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Romantic Love and Mate Selection

Introduction

Any observer of American culture can easily see the emphasis we seem to place on romantic love. Nearly all of our movies portray some sort of romantic relationship. Daytime talk shows and soap operas often revolve around this obsession. Women's magazines make promises about how to get the man of your dreams. Even research on love appears to be primarily a western phenomenon (Levine, Sato, Hashimoto, and Verma, 1995). Recent research, however, indicates that romantic love is experienced in all cultures, though its relative value may differ between cultures.

Early Conceptions of Love

Research into the history of romantic love has generally portrayed it as a European invention. Book titles such as Medieval Misogyny & the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Bloch, 1991) give us just such…

Memory retrieval cues (idea)

2002-12-12T21:44:58Z

Since the 1960's, most researchers hold the view that information is not lost from long-term memory (barring organic causes). Instead, they view forgetting primarily as a problem of retrieval. Furthermore, it has been shown that information can be more easily retrieved when the proper retrieval cues are used. Some evidence for this lies in what has been called TOT (the tip of the tongue phenomenon). Of course, this refers to the times when somebody knows something, and knows that they know it, yet can not produce it even though they may know certain information about it (e.g. rhymes with "cat", starts with "m"—it must be "Matt").

Tulving and Pearlstone (1966, in Willingham, 2001) argued that TOT is a common occurrence, and furthermore that it is a fundamental aspect of memory. To prove this, they gave subjects lists of four items each in 12 categories (e.g. crimes, professions, and animals). Each item was preceded by the category name, but subjects were told they only had to remember…