No description available.

No description available.

A central task of contemporary analytic philosophy is to develop an understanding of how our minds are connected to the external (or mind-independent) world. Arising from this task is the need to explain how thoughts represent things in the world. Giving such an explanation is the central endeavor of this dissertation—the aim being to contribute to our understanding of what it is for a subject to be thinking of a particular object. The structure of the dissertation is set, in part, by responding to the commonly held view that a satisfactory explanation of what it is to think of a particular object can be drawn out of, or extended from, an explanation of what it is to be referring to that particular object. Typically, in investigating these matters, it is accepted that there is an explanatory priority of language over thought. This is the Priority Thesis. Some take the Priority Thesis to reflect an appropriate methodological strategy. In this form, it implies the methodological point that the best way to describe thoughts is by describing them as they are expressed in language. Most, however, seem to take the Priority Thesis to be symptomatic of a substantive, metaphysical truth. This, to put it one way, is that the content of a thought is paralleled by the content of the associated linguistic expression. I call this the Assumption of Parallelism. This characterizes what we call Linguistic Turn philosophy (i.e., analytic philosophy). The body of the dissertation arises out of questioning the extent of the application ofthe Priority Thesis in developing theories of reference and thought. I call the move of the partial overturning ofthe Priority Thesis the Linguistic U-Turn. The overall conclusion is that we cannot explain what it is to think of a particular object by extending explanations of what it is to be referring to that particular object. In particular, I reject what I call the Causal Theory of Thought—the view that the representational properties of a thought are explained by the referential properties of the appropriate singular term. My aim, then, is to show that a popular conviction concerning the representational properties of thoughts about things in the world is not warranted.

Fred Dretske (1981) claimed that the essence of the kind of cognitive activity that gives rise to Intentional mental states is a process by which the analogue information coming from a source-object is transformed into digital form. It is this analogue-to-digital conversion of data that enables us to form concepts of things. But this achievement comes with a cost, since the conversion must involve a loss of information. The price we pay for the lost information is a proportional diminishment in our ability to discriminate the source-object from others that may be similar to it. I argue that this fact underlies an important distinction between what a mental state may be about and to what the state may be directed, Aboutness and directedness are two of four Intentional dimensions on which this project concentrates. The other two are aspectual shape and misrepresentation. The distinction between aboutness and directedness is a part of a proposed approach to Intentionality based on the script theory of Roger Schank and Robert Abelson (1977). Scripts are schemata—organized knowledge structures that guide our understanding of the world around us. Schank and Abelson's basic ideas are extended to yield four different script-types: episodic (related to situations and events), instrumental (related to procedural knowledge), personal (representing an agent's goals and plans), and definitional (involved in object-recognition). The relationship between scripts and the Intentionality of thought is the main focus of this dissertation. An important secondary concern is the viability of externalism and internalism. It is argued that neither of these attitudes is independently adequate to provide a full account of Intentional content. Rather, the proper approach is to confine externalistic influences to aboutness and then characterize directedness in a manner that captures the world-according-to-the-agent. This strategy is implemented in the following way: aboutness is construed causally-evolutionarily; directedness is constructed with the help of the notion of an equivalence class; aspectual shape is shown to be a function of the kind of information a script provides; and an account of misrepresentation is given by comparing the different extensions generated from aboutness and directedness respectively.

This study supported Schon's notions of reflective practice as being applicable to teachers involved in teaching physical activities in the context of unforgiving learning environments and specifically to teachers in the sport diving community. According to Schon, one's ability to recognize patterns and act effectively and efficiently in situations of uniqueness and uncertainty depends upon one's capacity to frame problems. In doing so, one draws upon a repertoire of past experience arid ways of capturing that experience which enables the development of the ability to reframe problems in light of information gathered from the direct experience. Reframing occurs through the processes of reflection-in-action and reflection-onaction and is a response to an internal dialogue related to the action setting, in which something has not happened as expected, thus producing a curious or intrigued response. A number of issues specific to teacher reflection in unforgiving learning environments emanated from the analysis of one sport diving teacher engaged in teaching an entry-level sport diving course which involved three different teaching environments (the classroom setting, the confined water [pool] and open water [ocean] environments). Three research questions guided the analysis. In answer to the first research question: What factors do sport diving practitioners reflect upon in each of the three environments? six reflective themes were identified in this case study with five being common across the three teaching environments and the remainder being specific to the classroom environment. The common themes were: a trusting relationship, the necessity of teacher control, to see the 'unforgivingness' of the environment, learning from one's practice, challenges to one's practice and understanding one's practice. In answer to the second research question: What influences the reflective process? the analysis revealed thirteen underlying or influencing factors or dispositions across the three teaching environments with eight of them being common to either two, or all three, of the environments. In answer to the third research question: What is the nature of sport diving practitioners' reflective practice? five categories have been used to address the analysis: 1) across environment related, 2) classroom and confined water (pool) related, 3) confined water (pool) and open water (ocean) related 4) classroom and open water (ocean) related and 5) specific to one environment. The reflection process documented in this study suggested that Schon's notion of reflective practice is very applicable to the professional development of sport diving as his conception of reflection applies to the three areas of teaching which exist in unforgiving learning environments: the problem solving disposition of teacher reflection, the learning from one's practice, and the probing of internal dialogue.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate a biographical approach to understanding how we, as teachers and co-researchers, think and act; and how we have come to think and act the way we do in our classrooms. The term autobiographic praxis was central to the study as a specific conceptualization of a teacher's knowledge. Until this study, autobiographic praxis existed as a biographical conceptualization of a teacher's personal, practical and professional knowledge based. This study used the work of Butt and Raymond who, with two teachers, Lloyd and Glenda, working as co-researchers, explored and reported these two teacher's stories highlighting elements of their knowledge held. Based upon that work, this study, through ethnographic field work, returned to the respective teachers classrooms and utilized elements of their stories to guide both observation and interviews about their classroom practices. This exploration of teacher knowledge held and teacher knowledge expressed was an attempt to show the potential of a methodology which integrates autobiography, classroom observation and biographic and ethnographic interviews. The results with respect to the two teachers, Lloyd and Glenda, indicated that:(1) the substance and process of knowledge they held can be accessed through collaborative autobiographic inquiry, and (2) that the knowledge expressed as elements of classroom action can be observed in a stronger interpretive light if guided by understandings of their stories, such that (3) methodologically through biographic and ethnographic interviews elements of knowledge held, as revealed through autobiography, can be brought into a dialogue with the actions of knowledge expressed, as observed through ethnographic participant observation, and thus (4) the resultant findings were that in the thoughts and actions of the two teachers significant indicators were present to illustrate a strong harmonic relationship between who they were as persons, and who they were as teachers, due specifically to a synchronicity between their knowledge held and knowledge expressed. The process, of doing the sudy, illustrated the potential of biographic conceptualization of teacher knowledge accessed through a method of inquiry which featured story, observation and interview. The findings of this study were considered desirable in that teachers and researchers, working together, should attempt to engage in action research concerned with achieving a dialogue between teacher thought and action. / x, 194 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.

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This experiment was designed to give further understanding of the underlying factors which influence group idea generation. The first objective of this study was to compare the impact of using computer technology and traditional technologies for creating ideas. The effectiveness of three idea generating techniques, original brainstorming, nominal group technique, and electronic brainstorming were considered. It was, however, hypothesized that electronic brainstorming would outperform the nominal group technique and original brainstorming regardless of the length of time provided.The second objective of this study was to probe how subjects in different idea generating conditions discerned their performance during and after sessions. It was expected that subjects in the original brainstorming groups would perceive that they produce more ideas and they would be more satisfied with results and the process.An ANOVA with a 3x2 factorial design was planned for the study. The independent variables for the study were types of group and types of session. Yet, on account of small sampling size an inferential analysis was precluded. A descriptive analysis was followed.The analysis of five dependent variables, quality, originality, practicality, numbers of nonoverlapping ideas, and perceptions showed that there were no significant differences among three idea generation techniques regarding the length of time provided. However, a quantity variable showed that numbers of nonoverlapping ideas were increased as the length of time were prolonged in six idea generating conditions. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

In this study, two primary hypotheses drawn from Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory (Epstein, 1994, 1998, 2003) and the treatment preference literature (Arnkoff, Glass, & Shapiro, 2002) were tested in the broader contexts of similarity/matching research and eclecticism in psychotherapy. Specifically, it was hypothesized that client-therapist similarity/dissimilarity in terms of (a) their Rational and Experiential Thinking styles (Pacini & Epstein, 1999), and (b) their preferences for a Cognitive ("Thinking") versus an Experiential ("Feeling") theoretical orientation (Hutchins, 1984), would affect the process and outcome of early therapy. Forty-seven client-therapist dyads participated in the study. In the seven hierarchical linear regressions conducted, no statistically significant effects were found on any of the dependent variables (working alliance, empathic understanding, session depth, session smoothness, satisfaction with treatment, perceived change, and objective change). Study limitations included its modest statistical power to detect small and moderate effect sizes.Three exploratory questions were also investigated in a sample of 89 clients and 79 therapists and were found to be statistically significant. Specifically, client rational and experiential thinking styles made substantial contributions in the expected direction in predicting client preference for a cognitive versus an experiential treatment. Similarly, therapist experiential thinking style was predictive of therapist treatment preference. These findings suggest that client and therapist personality (thinking styles) are more significant predictors of treatment preference than variables such as gender and clinical experience (as a therapist or a client). Last, rational thinking style was predictive of client intrapersonal adjustment, and experiential thinking style was predictive of client social adjustment. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Successful learning about physical systems is thought to depend on the development of a mental representation of the system's dynamic behavior, which constitutes a mental model, rather than only its static structure (e.g., Schnotz, 2005). Because dynamic mental models must be generated by learners from static diagrams, learning might be promoted by encouraging learners to visualize motion in static diagrams. However, mental models represent dynamic spatial information that might be difficult to construct for learners with lower spatial ability; they might benefit from instructional designs that support spatial reasoning, such as phase diagrams and depictive arrows. In Experiment 1, participants learned about air pumps, carburetors, and toilet tanks from single phase diagrams, multiphase diagrams, or multiphase diagrams followed by a prediction activity in which they predicted system behavior in novel situations. This prediction activity was expected to implicitly prompt mental visualization of motion. Learning in the latter condition (i.e., with the prediction activity) was significantly better than learning in the single phase condition. In the prediction condition, the enhancing effect of spatial ability on learning outcome was partially mediated by performance in the prediction activity. The mediation suggested that high spatial ability helped participants to accurately visualize the systems as they made predictions, which contributed to better performance on the learning assessment. Experiment 1 assessed visualizations during the prediction activity, whereas Experiment 2 assessed visualizations during the lessons. In two conditions in Experiment 2, participants were explicitly prompted to visualize motion in the system while viewing the lessons. Because learners with lower spatial ability were expected to have difficulty visualizing motion, arrows depicting motion were added in one condition. A baseline condition excluded the arrows and the prompt to visualize motion. In all three conditions, participants viewed multiphase diagrams followed by the prediction activity. Learning outcomes among the three conditions did not differ significantly: Depictive arrows and prompts to visualize motion were not significantly effective. Also, spatial ability did not interact with instructional condition. However, both spatial ability and subjective ratings of attempts to visualize motion were predictive of learning outcome. Overall, results from the two experiments indicated that participants with higher spatial ability were better able than participants with lower spatial ability to generate dynamic mental models from static instructions, particularly when they were implicitly prompted to reason about the system as they made predictions. Learners with lower spatial ability might need other forms of assistance for mental model generation, such as animated instructions.