Explanatory Constructs Research Articles

A foundation for modular reasoning about safety and progress properties of state-based concurrent programs

This paper introduces open systems with non-trivial environment actions and proposes a cooperation condition for composing them. The analysis of the condition, expressed in terms of predicate transformers, leads to a stepwise and explanatory construction of parallel composition rules. The completeness of a proof system for the compositional verification of UNITY programs is then established.

Future directions for implicit learning: Toward a clarification of issues associated with knowledge representation and consciousness

Areas of agreement and disagreement regarding knowledge representation and consciousness within implicit learning research are reviewed. It is argued that further progress in the field requires more precise definitions of abstract and episodic knowledge, and of conscious and unconscious forms of cognition. In particular, we argue that implicit learning research should be informed by more general theories of memory and performance, and that concepts such as consciousness are unlikely to act as explanatory constructs within this approach.

Episodic knowledge and implicit learning

Despite nearly 20 years of controversy, researchers are still divided over the contributions of abstract and episodic knowledge to performance on implicit learning tasks, and whether these types of knowledge exert their effects unintentionally or unconsciously. The present paper reviews the evidence taken to support the episodic account of implicit learning. Although substantial evidence suggests that episodic knowledge influences performance on implicit learning tasks, at present there are no techniques for testing whether these influences occur outside of awareness. It is argued that future research should investigate whether the retrieval of episodic knowledge in implicit learning tasks is insensitive to intentional control, rather than focus on the issue of awareness. Preliminary evidence suggesting that episodic knowledge can exert a nonintentional influence on task performance is reviewed, followed by a discussion of the status of consciousness as an explanatory construct in psychology.

Modeling the mathematics achievement of Asian-American elementary students

An examination is conducted of potential factors underlying the mathematics achievement of 60 fourth, 57 fifth, and 41 sixth grade Asian-American students attending public school in California. Specifically, structural equation modeling is used to evaluate hypothesized relationships among several constructs (Efficiency of Elementary Cognitive Processes, Working Memory Capacity, Reasoning Ability, Arithmetic Production, and Arithmetic Verification Speed), with particular interest directed toward these constructs' ability to predict the Mathematics Achievement construct. The final structural model has an excellent fit to the observed variances and covariances and accounts for over three-fourths of the variability in the Mathematics Achievement construct (with Reasoning Ability being the largest explanatory construct included in the model). The predictive importance of all constructs within this generally high-achieving sample is discussed in the context of Ackerman's (1988, 1989) theory of skill acquisition.

The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions by Stephen Turner

652 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The Social Theory ofPractices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presupposi­ tions. By Stephen Turner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp. x+145; notes, index. $39.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). Stephen Turner has written a dense and well argued book. It is a critical philosopher’s deconstruction of a whole tradition—perhaps the most central one—within the social sciences and humanities: the tradition that falls back on superindividual entities like “prac­ tice” and “culture” to explain habits and actions. Turner’s con­ tention is that “we cannot do anything to get behind the notion of practice, either in a causal or a justificatory way, because practices are not objects, but are rather explanatory constructions that solve specific problems of comparison and unmet expectations” (p. 123). For historians, it seems to be a troublesome book. If we were to accept its main argument, then we could no longer use cherished concepts like “custom,” “tradition,” “ Weltanschauung,” “para­ digm,” or “ideology” as explanatory tools. At best, we would be al­ lowed to apply them descriptively or metaphorically. According to Stephen Turner’s methodological individualism, the reason for these limitations is that it is impossible to prove the existence of any causal links between such structures and individual action. Ac­ cording to his nominalism, nothing meaningful can be said about collective phenomena. For example, it would be wrong to say that a person’s habits are governed by tradition; we could only say that “tradition” may help us heuristically to bring order into a dia­ chronic analysis of several people’s actions. On closer scrutiny, however, it might prove to be a constructively sobering book. Turner is certainly right in criticizing many scholars for playing around with structural concepts in an unreflective man­ ner. There are many historians, historians of technology among them, who succumb to the temptation to explain observed action by applying the above-mentioned concepts in a straightforward man­ ner. Think, for instance, about concepts like “technological style,” “engineering practice,” “technological paradigm,” “national tradi­ tion,” “technological culture,” or “tacit knowledge,” which are much too often given an imprecise status in our analyses. But even though Turner’s critique of sloppy scholarly practice should be taken seriously, it does seem to me that the history com­ munity need not accept the full implications of his main argument: “there are no collective objects to be accounted for . . . but only individual habits” (p. 116). If we were to follow Turner quite liter­ ally, then there would be very little space left for anything beyond mere description and causal explanation. Humanistic “skills” and “practices” (if we, after all, do believe that such creatures exist—at least individually), like interpretation and understanding, would have to go. “Traditions” like hermeneutics and Verstehen would be TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 653 banned, as would intentional analysis. History as an academic field would have to be completely recast in a positivist direction. I believe that few of us would want such a development, but in order to avoid it, we should be careful with our use of explanatory concepts. Here, Turner is of great help—although he is better at criticizing others than at constructing his own positive alternative. Finally, I have to pose a question to the publisher: why bother printing a book on acid-free paper if the pages in the paper edition start falling apart immediately after the reader has opened it? Mikael Hard Dr. Hard is professor of the history of technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. He recently published “Technology as Prac­ tice,” Social Studies of Science 24 (1994): 549-85. Work and Technology in HigherEducation: The Social Construction ofAca­ demic Computing. Edited by Mark A. Shields. Hillsdale, N.J.: Law­ rence Erlbaum Associates, 1995. Pp. viii+198; notes, index. $49.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). Work and Technology in Higher Education explores an enduring theme in the history of technology: the gap between the stated pur­ pose of a technology and the ways in which it is actually used. This gap is particularly visible in the history of educational computing, where the extravagant utopian claims that accompanied many com­ puterization projects contrast...

Emotional Impact of Children's Exposure to Community Violence: A Preliminary Study

To use multiple methods and measures to investigate preliminarily the emotional impact of children's exposure to community violence. Thirty-seven schoolchildren between the ages of 7 and 12 years were categorized into groups with "high" or "low" frequency of exposure. Differing levels of exposure to community violence did not appear to have an impact on DSM-III-R diagnoses. Exposure to high levels of community violence was not related to internalizing behavior and disorders, but rather was associated with externalizing behavior. There appears to be an adverse relationship between high levels of exposure to community violence and emotional and conduct problems. Vicarious learning serves as an explanatory construct for these findings.

Social Context and Interaction in Ongoing Computer-Supported Management Groups

Electronic communication has been proposed as a key technology enabling new organization forms and structures, work designs, and task processes. This view assumes that organization structure and form can be defined in terms of communication linkages among organizational units. Communication is a social process, however. Therefore, to better understand the potential for these technologies to enable fundamental organizational change, we must understand how existing structures and social contexts influence patterns of organizational communication. This research examined the use of electronic messaging by ongoing management groups performing a cooperative task. By means of an in-depth multimethod field study of the editorial group of two daily newspapers, it examined the influence of the groups’ social context on the patterns of face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. The results show that different groups using the same functional structure and performing the same task with identical communication technologies, but operating within different social contexts, appropriated the communication technology differently and in a way that was consistent with and reinforcing to their existing social structure. This finding suggests that researchers must, at the very least, explicitly take into account social context when studying the effects of introducing technologies which may alter group interaction. Additionally, researchers should look to social context as an important explanatory construct to be explicitly varied and investigated with regard to effects and outcomes of these technologies. The findings also suggest that managers must diagnose and explicitly manage the social context of the workplace prior to implementing technologies, if their intent is to restructure the patterns of interaction and information exchange in support of new organizational forms.

Delinquency and impulsivity and IQ: A reply to Block (1995).

Although J. Block's critique (1995) of the D. Lynam, T. Moffitt, and M. Stouthamer-Loeber report (1993) contains several interesting points, many of his criticisms are not valid and resulted from miscommunications, misunderstandings, and simple preferences. Specifically, the authors believe the criticisms to be the results of mistaking a single hypothesis for an organizing principle, a misunderstanding of the reported path analyses, and a simple preference for impulsivity over IQ as an explanatory construct. An attempt is made to address the misinterpretation through clarification of the predicted relations between IQ, executive dysfunction, impulsivity, and delinquency. The original path analyses are reviewed and are shown to refute not only the original self-control hypothesis (Lynam et al., 1993), as reported, but also Block's more recent version. Finally, evidence marshalled by Block to support his emphasis on impulsive personality over low IQ is argued to have inadequacies from empirical and social policy perspectives

Security, emotionality, and parental depression: A commentary.

New studes suggest that changes in family environments due to parental depression increase children's risk for spychopathology. However, some aspects of family and child functioning may not be adversely affected. Future derections include (a) more precise definition of the response processes that are at risk in children and (b) differentiation of response processes linked with different dysfunctional family processes (e.g., parenting, marital conflict). Lottle elaboration of conceptual models has occurred in response to recent findings. Emotional security provides an explanatory construct for how certain family environments assocated with parntal depression increase children's risk for psychopathology. New derections are outlined for the study of relations between family environments associated with parental depression and children's emotional security

Conditioned reinforcement: Neglected or outmoded explanatory construct?

The construct of conditioned reinforcement has been challenged over the past two decades, both as an adequate explanation of behavior in various situations (e.g., behavioral chains) in which it was previously regarded as crucial and in terms of the validity of the concept of conditioned value on which it is based. Recent research is reviewed that answers these criticisms and vindicates the importance of the construct. Also discussed are unanswered empirical issues regarding the concept and its implications for behavioral phenomena of major importance for general-process learning theory, such as autoshaping and imprinting.

Effects of Arousal on Everyday Memory

The notion of an unidimensional continuum of arousal is difficult to sustain, as is the universality of predictions from the Yerkes-Dodson law. A brief his- torical account of how these difficulties have arisen is provided, as well as sketches of some theoretical alternatives that have appeared in the past 10 years. It is argued that this more recent theorizing can supply explanatory constructs to bring order to the data on the relation of increases in arousal to memory performance. The argument is illustrated by an analysis of a number of studies involving everyday memory performance, studies involving encod- ing of eyewitness memories or retrieval of complex motor sequences.

Metacognitive Instruction in Introductory Computer Programming: A Better Explanatory Construct for Performance than Traditional Factors

This article examines the effect of metacognitive instruction on students' achievement in introductory programming courses over traditional predictors of performance. Metacognitive instruction was conceptualized as a package, aimed at inducing students to develop a metacognitive strategy relevant for computer programming via interactive teaching. The metacognitive strategy consisted of a five-step planning strategy to guide students' program planning process. The interactive teaching approach involved explicit modeling, coaching and collaborative learning. An experimental field study conducted with twenty-eight experimental and twenty-eight matched control students revealed that metacognitive instruction is a better explanatory construct for students' computing performance than traditional person variables such as background knowledge, program major, gender or age. The impact of metacognitive instruction on the learning processes and outcomes of students with different personal characteristics was systematically examined.

A Culturally Sensitive Analysis of Black Learning Style

Based on analysis and research, an affect-symbolic imagery synthesis construct has been proposed as a broad explanatory construct for understanding knowledge acquisition in African Americans. This construct defines an affective (interpersonal/social) factor, a stimulus-response diversity/change factor, and a diunital/intuitive analysis and synthesisfactor as constituting a culturally unique orientation to learning and problem solving in African Americans. The affective factor defines an affinity in African Americans for "psychological closeness" to the phenomena one seeks to understand. This factor prioritizes personal-social (nonrational) attributes in knowledge acquisition. The stimulus diversity/change factor suggests an orientation toward dynamic, flexible, and varied experiential modes as opposed to repetitive, static, and regimented experiential modes. This factor projects the importance of stimulus variety and change in knowledge acquisition. The diunital/intuitive analysis and synthesis factor also is a holistic Black cultural construct of knowledge acquisition. It depicts problem solving as an integrative hemispheric endeavor rather than a linear, analyticalprocess. This construct depicts learning and problem solving as a holistic process, encompassing both affective and conceptual-expressive factors in complementary organization.

Pascual‐Leone's Theory of Constructive Operators as an Explanatory Construct in Cognitive Development and Science Achievement

In order for a cognitive construct to be accepted as explanatory, it must specify target behaviours, posit antecendent variables, and procedures, whereby the antecedent variables can be measured independently of behavioural changes. It is hypothesised that Pascual‐Leone's Theory of Constructive Operators can serve as explanatory construct in cognitive development and science achievement, by postulating the following antecedent variables: Mental Capacity, Field Factor, and the Mobility‐Fixity Dimension. Empirical evidence in support of the three variables is presented. It is concluded that the antecedent variables based on the Theory of Constructive Operators not only serve as explanatory constructs in cognitive development, but also provide epistemological tools that can be manipulated and have important implications for educational practice.

Fat phobic and non-fat phobic anorexia nervosa: a comparative study of 70 Chinese patients in Hong Kong

A mixed retrospective-prospective study of 70 Chinese anorexic patients in Hong Kong shows that although they were similar to Western anorexics in most other ways, 41 (58.6%) of them did not exhibit any fear of fatness throughout their course of illness. Instead, these non-fat phobic patients used epigastric bloating (31.4%), no appetite/hunger (15.7%) or simply eating less (12.9%) as legitimating rationales for food refusal and emaciation. Compared to fat phobic anorexics, they were significantly slimmer pre-morbidly (P < 0.0001) and were less likely to exhibit bulimia (P = 0.001). The possible explanations for the absence of fat phobia and the interpretive dilemma this provokes are discussed from historical, pathoplastic and cultural anthropological perspectives. It is argued that anorexia nervosa may display phenomenological plurality in a Westernizing society, and its identity may be conceptualized without invoking the explanatory construct of fat phobia exclusively. As non-fat phobic anorexia nervosa displays no culturally peculiar features, it is not strictly speaking a Western culture-bound syndrome, but may evolve into its contemporary fat phobic vogue under the permeative impact of Westernization. Its careful evaluation may help clarify the aetiology and historical transformation of eating disorder, foster the development of a cross-culturally valid taxonomy of morbid states of self-starvation, and exemplify some of the crucial issues that need to be tackled in the cross-cultural study of mental disorders.

“progressive problemshifts” between different research programs in science education: A lakatosian perspective

AbstractGiven the importance of epistemology and philosophy of science, the Lakatos (1970) methodology is particularly suited to evaluate competing research programs in science education. This article has two objectives: (a) to evaluate critically the interpretations of Gilbert and Swift (1985) and Rowell and Dawson (1989), and (b) to postulate a progressive problemshift between Piaget's epistemic subject and Pascual‐Leone's metasubject. Regarding the Gilbert and Swift interpretation, it is concluded that the alternative conceptions movement at its present stage of development cannot explain the previous success of its rival (Piagetian school) nor supersede it by a further display of heuristic power as required by Lakatos. If we accept the Rowell and Dawson thesis it would amount to the postulation of Piagetian and integrated (Piagetian and schema) theories as rival research programs. It appears that the Rowell and Dawson approach would enrich Piagetian theory with descriptive content rather than explanatory constructs, and thus would not lead to a progressive problemshift. It is concluded that Pascual‐Leone's theory extends Piaget's negative heuristic by introducing antecedent variables, and at the same time enriches the positive heuristic by introducing metasubjective task analysis, which leads to a progressive problemshift.

Body Temperature Influence on Time Perception

The chemical clock hypothesis implies a causal link between body temperature and the perception of duration. A strict interpretation of this construct requires a common slope value in an Arrhenius plot that relates time to temperature for every individual tested. Previous studies testing this proposition have confirmed a general relationship for data summed across multiple subjects. However, the same studies raise doubts as to whether this relationship holds for each and every individual tested. Unfortunately, these investigations have been limited by methodological constraints, thus, one could argue that the strong isomorphism intrinsic to the chemical clock hypothesis has yet to be fairly tested. In the present experiment, I sought to distinguish the effects of selective head temperature changes on the estimation of duration. Nonlinear decreases in estimated duration were observed with ascending deep auditory canal temperature. These findings support the contention of a thermally stable region of temporal perception bounded by conditions in which temporal estimates directly depend on body temperature. In contradicting physiological adequacy as an explanatory construct, the present results suggest a direct relationship between time perception and the homeothermic platform. I compare these results with earlier findings concerning the chemical clock concept and examine respective discrepancies as a basis for a fuller understanding of a temporal phenomenon that is frequently referred to as the internal clock.

Holism and eclecticism in the theory of concepts

Howard (1992) defines concepts as the information that a person has about a category, and argues for an eclectic theory of concepts on the basis of this definition. We argue that this definition is unacceptable and hence that eclecticism does not follow. First, the definition is circular as it stands. Secondly, when it is modified to avoid circularity, it implies conceptual holism, according to which concepts are not useful explanatory constructs in psychology. Thirdly, we argue that Howard's argument relies essentially on this unacceptable definition: alternative accounts of concepts, namely categorisational or representational views, do not support it. Having countered the argument for eclecticism, we then argue against it directly on methodological grounds.

Is the Self Essential? Handling Reductionism

The nature of the self has been addressed by persons in various areas of psychology. The explanatory constructs have often reduced the self to other phenomena or structures. The self has been reduced to biology, cognition, social functioning, personal history, and consciousness. However, there are theories which characterize the self as an agent which is not simply reducible to its functions and supporting structures. The difference between reductionistic and nonreductionistic theories is the difference between a self who is created by awareness and behavior and a self who becomes aware and creates behavior. Most theories of personality argue on one side or the other. There are also theories which simply ignore the argument and use the term “self” vaguely. This article argues for a unitive concept of the self as essence, which precedes existence on all levels of functioning. It is argued that our essential nature is akin to that which has been termed spiritual.

Respects for similarity.

This article reviews the status of similarity as an explanatory construct with a focus on similarity judgments. For similarity to be a useful construct, one must be able to specify the ways or respects in which two things are similar. One solution to this problem is to restrict the notion of similarity to hard-wired perceptual processes. It is argued that this view is too narrow and limiting. Instead, it is proposed that an important source of constraints derives from the similarity comparison process itself. Both new experiments and other evidence are described that support the idea that respects are determined by processes internal to comparisons