Roczniki Filozoficzne

Professor Stefan Kunowski — educationist — a man of great personal culture and modesty, has left a vast output of many years’s didactic work at the CUL as well as an output of his research work.I. The output of his didactic work is expressed in the following figures: su- pervising more than 300 theses for Master’s degree and more than 30 doctor’s thesses; over twice as much reviews of Master’s theses, doctor’s theses and theses qualifying for assistant professor. He usually worked overtime conducting classes at the CUL, and he performed various duties, most often of the character of welfare work.II. The output of his research work consists of published and unpublished works; he has published 161 works and left 48 unpublished ones. Apart from these he was written 26 literary works which were then published and a lot more not published yet.We can provisionally separate the following fields in which Stefan Kunowski was interested as a research worker:1. General pedagogics1. 1. Theoretical principles of education1. 2. Contemporary trends and systems of education1. 3. Process of social maladjustment in young people 1. 4. Technical education and mass culture1. 5. Family education2. Christian pedagogics2. 1. Doctrinal principles2. 2. Religious education2. 3. Moral education2. 4. Catholic pedagogics2. 5. Pastoral-catechetic pedagogics2. 6. Pedagogics of seminary3. University pedagogics and didactics3. 1. Sketches of university research workers3. 2. University students3. 3. Management of university and problems of Catholic universities3. 4. University didactics4. General didactics4. 1. Basic problems of didactics4. 2. School knowledge4. 3. School reform5. Educational psychology5. 1. Trends and principles5. 2. Explaining the facts of life to children5. 3. Marriage and family 5. 4. Problems of youth5. 5. Psychopedagogical diagnostics6. Cognitive results of Stefan Kunowski’s research output and their possible applications6. 1. Theory of stratified education6. 2. Comparative analysis of contemporary systems of education6. 3. Formulation of principles of Christian education6. 4. Explanation of the connection between education and pastorate6. 5. Including sexual development into the whole of personality development6. 6. Explaining the process leading to social maladjustmentFinally, it is worth stressing, that Professor Stefan Kunowski has not only left a vast research and didactic output, but also was an example of a modest, mature, creative, religious man.

The article presents an attempt at developing a scale for measuring ecclesial attitudes. The object of the examined attitudes in the social-institutional reality of the Catholic Church. The scale was designed to measure one of the features off ecclesial attitudes-intensity.In course of constructing the scale, first a list of sentences expressing positive or negative attitudes to the Church was worked out. The job was done by 40 competent judges. Sentences placed in extreme intervals (1-3 and 9 - 11) on an 11-points continuum (Thurston type) by 2/3 of the judges were accepted as differentiating. Out of 280 sentences in the scale 31: 18 positive and 13 negative were left. Next, the sentences were arranged in such an order that the intensity of the ecclesial attitude could be measured on a 7-points continuum. Likert’s type was used here. 7 possible answers (7. I decidedly agree, 6. I agree, [...] 1. I decidedly do not agree) were affixed to each sentence.The reliability of the scale was examined by means of stability factor. Tests were carried out twice in the interval of 14 days with the devised scale (SK). Stability coefficient calculated from the primary data by means of Spearman’s method is 0,967 (for N = 50) and is statistically significant on the trust level 0,001.The accuracy of the scale (SK) was verified by means of two external criteria: „scale” of money offerings to the Church and their motivation; and „scale” of self-valuation of involvement in the affairs of the Church. 175 persons aging from 19 to 25 (112 women and 63 men) were tested with the two scales. The correlation coefficient for the scale of frequency of motivated offerings to the Church and SK is 0,73 (Spearman’s). The correlation coefficient between the data from SK and from „self-valuation of involvement” is 0,69 (Yule’s).The population of subjects consisted of university graduates, undergraduates, and people with secondary education.

Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman which is supposed to last the whole life, and which, by creating a community of life with many aspects aims at achieving common targets. Like every design, this one can be successful to different degrees. A marriage is successful if the spouses feel the community spirit in realisation of their tasks, and this finds expression in their satisfaction. There are a great lot of factors influencing satisfaction, one of them being the religious attitude.The research aimed at establishing if there is a connection between success of a marriage and religious attitude understood as relatively stable positive or negative attitude towards the supernatural. 160 married couples were tested with Władysław Pręzyna’s Scale of Religiousness. They were divided into two groups of 80 couples each, in one of them satisfied, and in the other unsatisfied ones, the division being done by means of the author’s Success of Marriage Scale. The couples were socially uniform.The results point to a connection between the positive religious attitude and a similarity of this attitude on the one hand and the success of marriage on the other. They also show the importance of agreement of the spouses’ convictions about some standards (admissibility of abortion) and accepting the rule of indissolubility of marriage. This latter connection can to a degree account for the results achieved, as it proves a high level of aspirations connected with the marriage, which favours mobization of efforts and makes achievements possible.

Some authors, as for example Grzelak <1978), postulate replacing the general theory of utility by a detailed knowledge about people’s preferences. It seems that the problems of the psychic mechanisms of utility can be reduced to psychological, and especially developmental analysis of preference rules: their genesis and oriented changes as well as the ways of assimilation and functioning. The developmental analysis facilitates grouping preference acts into: 1. ontogenetic-cultural and filogenetic, 2. sensorimotor and mental, 3. of little and large degreee of free choice, 4. with little and large participation of consciousness, 5. whose assimilation takes place by means of univocal transmission (e.g. rules of logic) or equivocal transmission (e.g. rules of valuation). It must be also admitted that some rules are concerned with a situation of the simplest preference, and others with a situation of choice or decision. Discovering the interference rules of all the preference rules in given persons, and hence establishing their resultant rules, seems to be something interesting and important. It is so because in actual choices or decisions, various preference rules function simultaneously, but only some or one of them, or even a resultant one decides. Hence research into the regulative power of individual rules and on factors conditioning (e.g. limiting) this power, is very interesting.Empirical developmental research into the preference of novelties, colours, shapes, dimensions, etc., make it possible to establish many preference rules, their mutual interaction and conditionings — which are presented in this article. Transitiveness of choices in little children which was found, points to lasting motivations of their choices and to privileging some objects, features and characteristics by them. Disturbing this transitiveness by the rule of novelty preference gives in children a pattern of non-transitiveness: x > y, x < z, z <1 y, which was described by Bradbury <1975). Along with the rise of the intelectual level, the regulating power of logic rules increases, which results in decreasing number of non-transitive choices. According to Lehalle <1975) and others, the breaking point is the age of 7-8 (beginning of logical operations aquisition).Discussion of preference rules in children points to many difficulties in this field, unsolved problems, and too little empirical research. To basic tasks in this field the following belong: examining the mechanisms of assimilating preference rules, among others-various forms of learning, and especially social learning (imitating, identification, etc.) and cognitive learning (assimilating or discovering meanings, etc.); finding what happens, when there is a conflict of preference rules, establishing .unambiguous preference indicators (especially in little children), examining the role of needs in assimilation of preference rules (influence of needs on preference and vice versa) and others. Further research into preference rules must also take into consideration adults as well as their perception of social perspective, depth of time horizon, principles of culture, etc.

In the article application of model SEU for analysing the processes of taking decisions in children aged 8 to 15 was presented. The author concentrated in his analysis on a subjective evaluation of probability of events and utility of results, and tried to show how these two elements influence decision taking.The experiment was arranged in the form of a game of roulette with two participants. The subjects defined the frequency of the events and chose one of two alternatives differing in probability and value of results. The tests were carried out in a situation with elementary and compound events (ratio of probabilities).The data confirms the phenomenon of cognitive radicalism and conservatism.. When taking decisions, the subjects subjectively maximize the expected utility of choice. Their decisions are the more different from the optimal ones, the younger the subjects are, and the more complicated the situation of taking decision is. Children up from 8 take decisions nearing the optimal ones in situations with elementary events, and only up from 15 — in situations with compound events.It was found that subjective probability evaluated verbally differs from subjective probability on which acting is based; the latter is nearer to objective probability. In acting a man is more rational.The problem of inconsistency of people taking decisions in relation to normative models was discussed. The author differentiates model inconsistency and psychological inconsistency.

In the article an attempt was undertaken to analyse the diagnostic value of the verbal scale WISC when applied to testing the intelligence of blind children. To achieve this 70 blind children aged from 9 to 15 were tested with the verbal scale WISC and with Langan’s test.The correlation between the results obtained with the two scales was found to be statistically significant (statistical significance of factors of Spearman’s correlation „rho” on the level of trust 0,01 was found). A high correlation between the results of both scales suggest, that they show similar mental abilities and that they require similar intellectual processes to solve them.On the basis of the degree of correlation between the results of the verbal scale WISC and Langan’s test, most probable results of each of the scales were predicted. To this end, regression equations were introduced, allowing to predict the most probable result of one variable on the basis of a known result of the other.In order to show the precision of the prediction, the efficiency of prediction index was used, which is constituted by proportional reduction of the anticipation error, resulting from the correlation between two variables. The efficiency of prediction of the results in the verbal scale WISC and its six subtests from the results of Langan’s tests and vice versa is from 68% to 15%.A comparison of the achieved values of the alienation coefficients showed, that the degree of dependence between the results of tests in the experimental sample in the verbal scale WISC and its six subtests as well as in Langan’s tests allows interchangeable usage of both scales to testing and psychological diagnosis of the intelectual level of blind children aged from 9 to 15.

Conversation as an object of psychological research is considered in general, social and developmental psychology as well as in psychotherapy. The present article attempts answering the question: does the research on family show occurrance of conversation in it and in what function? Very little research which could be quoted allows pointing to the possibilities which this group constitutes for conversation, to the functions of conversation in family, and features which ensure their fulfilment.Conversation in family has the informative function, it suplies knowledge, ideas, introduces the actual reality to the child. In this way it influences mental development of the child. Conversation as a form of communicating feelings and expectations leads problems of life. Lack of conversation is a cause of dissatisfaction of needs, escapes from home, looking for contacts outside home. Conversation assuming a shape of moralizing, grumbling, row or quarrel is a cause of conflicts.

The subject of the presented article is an analysis of connections between the processes of perception and motivation. On the basis of two philosophical traditions of understanding human psyche, coming down from Locke and Leibniz, the outer and inner motivation of cognitive processes was shown. In the article the strongest stress was put on the analysis of connections between motivation and perception, as they are approached by the humanistic trends in psychology. Such a presentation was done mainly on the basis of the example of two different in quality kinds of motivation formulated by Abraham H. Maslow — motivation of unsatisfied basic needs (deficiency motivation) and motivation resulting from the development of the intrinsic possibilities of human nature (growth motivation). In this approach the processes of perception should be treated as depending on the intrinsic persomality conditions. In people satisfying their needs, perception serves their gratification; it is connected with the useful aspects of facts, situations, persons. Perception done by people actualising their potentials is concerned first of all with individual qualities (suchness) of objects and their idiosyncrasy. This means, that the perceiving person concentrates rather on external facts than on relating them to his or her own self in such aspects as: useful—useless, satisfying—dissatisfying, necessary—unnecessary, etc.

The author of the present article would like tu suggest a conception of higher forms of behaviour and corresponding regulation exceeding the limits of the cybernetic model. According to this conception, the regulators of higher forms of behaviour are internal structures (e. g. values, attitudes, notions) and external ones (e. g. opinion of the environment, ideology, subject of the thesis) shaped in ontogenesis, influencing the behaviour and organizing it in such a way, that it becomes more and more structurized, and at the same time integrated, giving the individual better and better chances of surviving, adjusting to the environment and carrying out the task or achieving the aim. Regulators of higher forms of behaviour constitute a hierarchic system of factors having different ranks and different ranges of influence. The regulative influence of the hierarchically higher regulators can be in certain situations weaker than that of the hierarchically lower regulators. This is result of the fact that their regulative power can be periodically — or even for good — limited or interfered with by other regulators, e. g. too strong drives, emotions, stress factors, etc. Disturbance of regulation is the heavier, the more central regulators they are concerned with.The following tasks belong to the most important in the discussed field:1. to establish the criteria for lower and higher forms of regulation, 2. to present a model taking into account hierarchically ordered cathegories of regulators, 3. to operationalize the potential and actual regulative power of individual regulators, and others.