Children acquiring languages with noun classes have ample statistical information available that characterizes the distribution of nouns into these classes, but their use of this information to classify novel nouns differs from the predictions made by an optimal Bayesian classifier. We use rational analysis to investigate the hypothesis that children are classifying nouns optimally with respect to a distribution that does not match the surface distribution of statistical features in their input. We propose three ways in which children's apparent statistical (...) insensitivity might arise, and find that all three provide ways to account for the difference between children's behavior and the optimal classifier. A fourth model combines two of these proposals and finds that children's insensitivity is best modeled as a bias to ignore certain features during classification, rather than an inability to encode those features during learning. These results provide insight into children's developing knowledge of noun classes and highlight the complex ways in which statistical information from the input interacts with children's learning processes. (shrink)

We incorporate social reasoning about groups of informants into a model of word learning, and show that the model accounts for infant looking behavior in tasks of both word learning and recognition. Simulation 1 models an experiment where 16-month-old infants saw familiar objects labeled either correctly or incorrectly, by either adults or audio talkers. Simulation 2 reinterprets puzzling data from the Switch task, an audiovisual habituation procedure wherein infants are tested on familiarized associations between novel objects and labels. Eight-month-olds outperform (...) 14-month-olds on the Switch task when required to distinguish labels that are minimal pairs, but 14-month-olds' performance is improved by habituation stimuli featuring multiple talkers. Our modeling results support the hypothesis that beliefs about knowledgeability and group membership guide infant looking behavior in both tasks. These results show that social and linguistic development interact in non-trivial ways, and that social categorization findings in developmental psychology could have substantial implications for understanding linguistic development in realistic settings where talkers vary according to observable features correlated with social groupings, including linguistic, ethnic, and gendered groups. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2022.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2022.

In the first year of life, infants' speech perception becomes attuned to the sounds of their native language. This process of early phonetic learning has traditionally been framed as phonetic category acquisition. However, recent studies have hypothesized that the attunement may instead reflect a perceptual space learning process that does not involve categories. In this article, we explore the idea of perceptual space learning by implementing five different perceptual space learning models and testing them on three phonetic contrasts that have (...) been tested in the infant speech perception literature. We reproduce and extend previous results showing that a perceptual space learning model that uses only distributional information about the acoustics of short time slices of speech can account for at least some crosslinguistic differences in infant perception. Moreover, we find that a second perceptual space learning model, which benefits from word‐level guidance. performs equally well in capturing crosslinguistic differences in infant speech perception. These results provide support for the general idea of perceptual space learning as a theory of early phonetic learning but suggest that more fine‐grained data are needed to distinguish between different formal accounts. Finally, we provide testable empirical predictions of the two most promising models and show that these are not identical, making it possible to independently evaluate each model in experiments with infants in future research. (shrink)

As children gradually master grammatical rules, they often go through a period of producing form‐meaning associations that were not observed in the input. For example, 2‐ to 3‐year‐old English‐learning children use the bare form of verbs in settings that require obligatory past tense meaning while already starting to produce the grammatical –ed inflection. While many studies have focused on overgeneralization errors, fewer studies have attempted to explain the root of this earlier stage of rule acquisition. In this work, we use (...) computational modeling to replicate children's production behavior prior to the generalization of past tense production in English. We illustrate how seemingly erroneous productions emerge in a model, without being licensed in the grammar and despite the model aiming at conforming to grammatical forms. Our results show that bare form productions stem from a tension between two factors: (1) trying to produce a less frequent meaning (the past tense) and (2) being unable to restrict the production of frequent forms (the bare form) as learning progresses. Like children, our model goes through a stage of bare form production and then converges on adult‐like production of the regular past tense, showing that these different stages can be accounted for through a single learning mechanism. (shrink)

To attain native-like competence, second language (L2) learners must establish mappings between familiar speech sounds and new phoneme categories. For example, Spanish learners of English must learn that [d] and [ð], which are allophones of the same phoneme in Spanish, can distinguish meaning in English (i.e. /deɪ/ ‘day’ and /ðeɪ/ ‘they’). Because adult listeners are less sensitive to allophonic than phonemic contrasts in their native language (L1), novel target language contrasts between L1 allophones may pose special difficulty for L2 learners. (...) We investigate whether advanced Spanish late-learners of English overcome native language mappings to establish new phonological relations between familiar phones. We report behavioral and magnetoencepholographic (MEG) evidence from two experiments that measured the sensitivity and pre-attentive processing of three listener groups (L1 English, L1 Spanish, and advanced Spanish late-learners of English) to differences between three nonword stimulus pairs ([idi]-[iði], [idi]-[iɾi], and [iði]-[iɾi]) which differ in phones that play a different functional role in Spanish and English. Spanish and English listeners demonstrated greater sensitivity (larger d’ scores) for nonword pairs distinguished by phonemic than by allophonic contrasts, mirroring previous findings. Spanish late-learners demonstrated sensitivity (large d’ scores and MMN responses) to all three contrasts, suggesting that these L2 learners may have established a novel [d]-[ð] contrast despite the phonological relatedness of these sounds in the L1. Our results suggest that phonological relatedness influences perceived similarity, as evidenced by the results of the native speaker groups, but may not cause persistent difficulty for advanced L2 learners. Instead, L2 learners are able to use cues that are present in their input to establish new mappings between familiar phones. (shrink)

Benchmarks against which healthcare ethics consultation (HCEC) services can assess their performance are needed. As first-generation benchmarks continue to be developed, it is the obligation of the field to continually evaluate how these measures reflect the performance of any single HCEC service. This will be possible only with widespread reporting of standardized data points. In their article in this issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics, Glover and colleagues provide a valuable preliminary approach for assessing appropriate consult volumes for a (...) HCEC service. The limitations of their study read as a call to action for the field of clinical ethics to expand and standardize data reporting so that more robust metrics can be developed. In response to this call by Glover and colleagues, the Cleveland Clinic HCEC service provides consult data from 2015 through 2019 for one of its medical centers, and offers an additional volumebased metric, consult-to-ICU-to-bed ratio (CiBR), that may add nuance to any normative assessment of HCEC service consult volume. Given that volume-based metrics are the native language of the clinical environment, efforts to improve such metrics in the field through transparency and standardization are warranted. However, the expositive power of volume-based metrics is limited; additional domains related to quality and outcomes are needed. (shrink)

Much of the progress in the fields constituting cognitive science has been based upon the use of explicit information processing models, almost exclusively patterned after conventional serial computers. An extension of these ideas to massively parallel, connectionist models appears to offer a number of advantages. After a preliminary discussion, this paper introduces a general connectionist model and considers how it might be used in cognitive science. Among the issues addressed are: stability and noise‐sensitivity, distributed decision‐making, time and sequence problems, and (...) the representation of complex concepts. (shrink)

This study seeks to examine the mechanism by which a corporation’s use of philanthropy might affect its reputation for CSP. We propose and test a model relating corporate philanthropy and foundations to awareness of and evaluations of firm social responsibility. We find that the relationships are more perplexing than others have proposed. Our contention that corporate philanthropy is a complex variable is upheld and we propose avenues for future research.

U.S. corporations have long tried to enact a favorable business environment via political activities such as lobbying and campaign contributions. This particular strategy is receiving increased attention due to the recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which establishes that corporations have the same rights with regard to political activities as individuals. In this work, we examine the nature of corporate political activity and the need for accountability; define transparency in the context of corporate political activity; and (...) examine the antecedents for corporate political disclosure. We then test our model on the S&P 100 using an index of corporate political disclosure that we developed. We find that opportunities to participate in political activities, dependence on government contracts and prior disclosure on other topics such as the environment lead to more disclosure. The intensity of the regulatory environment appears to have no influence. (shrink)

We focus on the recent non-causal theory of reasons explanationsof free action proffered by a proponent of the agency theory, Timothy O'Connor. We argue that the conditions O'Connor offersare neither necessary nor sufficient for a person to act for a reason. Finally, we note that the role O'Connor assigns toreasons in the etiology of actions results in further conceptual difficulties for agent-causalism.

Many different analyses of the concept of de re belief have been proposed in recent years. Most of these analyses may be called ‘reductionist’ since they attempt to “reduce” de re belief to de dicta belief or to analyze de re belief in terms of de dicta belief. Some reductionist analyses are extremely liberal in their attribution of de re beliefs — they imply that people have de re beliefs in a variety of situations in which more restrictive analyses have (...) no such implication. In this paper I will show that the most liberal of the reductionist theories, those Roderick Chisholm calls “latitudinarian theories”, are unacceptable.Latitudinarian analyses have been proposed by many philosophers, including Ernest Sosa, Mark Pastin, and also, perhaps, W. V. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars. (shrink)

This study seeks to examine the mechanisms by which a corporation’s use of philanthropy affects its reputation for corporate social performance (CSP), which the authors conceive of as consisting of two dimensions: CSP awareness and CSP perception. Using signal detection theory (SDT), the authors model signal amplitude (the amount contributed), dispersion (number of areas supported), and consistency (presence of a corporate foundation) on CSP awareness and perception. Overall, this study finds that characteristics of firms’ portfolio of philanthropic activities are a (...) greater predictor of CSP awareness than of CSP perception. Awareness increases with signal amplitude, dispersion, and consistency. CSP perception is driven by awareness and corporate reputation. The authors’ contention that corporate philanthropy is a complex variable is upheld, as we find that CSP signal characteristics influence CSP awareness and perception independently and asymmetrically. The authors conclude by proposing avenues for future research. (shrink)

The FDA's new table of surrogate endpoints used for drug approvals is an important step forward for overseeing the use of biomarkers in clinical trials. Nevertheless, we present several ways in which the table can be improved.

In a recent note, D. Braund has challenged my identification of the Pollio at whose home in Rome Herod's sons Alexander and Aristobulus stayed in 22 b.c. as Gaius Asinius Pollio, the famous consul of 40 b.c., who was a close friend of Julius Caesar and to whom Virgil dedicated his Fourth Eclogue. Braund's argument rests upon five grounds. If this Pollio were a man of the stature of Asinius Pollio, we would expect Josephus to make his identity clear and (...) not to describe him solely as one of Herod's most devoted friends . Josephus' reference to Pollio here is different from the definite references to Asinius Pollio elsewhere in Josephus, where he is referred to as Asinius or Gaius Asinius Pollio . In the latter passage his name is spelled Πωλίωνος, whereas the name of the host of Herod's sons is spelled Πολλίωνος. When Herod sent two other sons to Rome, they stayed ‘with a certain Jew’ , and hence it seems likely that the two other sons likewise stayed with a Jew. Asinius' role in the elevation by the Roman Senate of Herod to the kingship of Judaea was no greater than that of any other magistrate. (shrink)

In a recent note, D. Braund has challenged my identification of the Pollio at whose home in Rome Herod's sons Alexander and Aristobulus stayed in 22 b.c. as Gaius Asinius Pollio, the famous consul of 40 b.c., who was a close friend of Julius Caesar and to whom Virgil dedicated his Fourth Eclogue. Braund's argument rests upon five grounds. If this Pollio were a man of the stature of Asinius Pollio, we would expect Josephus to make his identity clear and (...) not to describe him solely as one of Herod's most devoted friends. Josephus' reference to Pollio here is different from the definite references to Asinius Pollio elsewhere in Josephus, where he is referred to as Asinius or Gaius Asinius Pollio. In the latter passage his name is spelled Πωλίωνος, whereas the name of the host of Herod's sons is spelled Πολλίωνος. When Herod sent two other sons to Rome, they stayed ‘with a certain Jew’, and hence it seems likely that the two other sons likewise stayed with a Jew. Asinius' role in the elevation by the Roman Senate of Herod to the kingship of Judaea was no greater than that of any other magistrate. (shrink)

Relative Identity contains a sustained attack on the classical or absolute theory of identity and a defense of a non-classical or relative theory of identity. According to the absolute theory of identity each thing is identical with itself and with nothing other than itself. The fundamental principle of this theory is Leibniz' Law:From a variety of characteristic principles about identity can be derived, including The Indiscernibility of Identicals, The Identity of Indiscernibles, and the symmetry, reflexivity, and transitivity of identity.