Brasoveanu (Linguist Philos 34:93–168, 2011) argues that “different” exhibits what he calls association with distributivity: a distributive operator such as “each” creates a two-part context that propagates through the compositional semantics in a way that can be accessed by a subordinate “different”. We show that Brasoveanu’s analysis systematically undergenerates, failing to provide interpretations of sentences such as “Every1 boy claimed every girl read a different1 poem”, in which “different” can associate with a non-local distributive operator. We (...) provide a generalized version of association with distributivity, implemented using de Groote’s (in: Proceedings of semantics and linguistic theory XVI, 2006) continuation-based dynamic semantics. We compare our analysis with the one in Brasoveanu (2011), drawing conclusions about computational tractability, scope of indefinites, and whether it is possible or even desirable to arrive at a unified analysis of internal and external readings of “different”. (shrink)

This article describes a left-corner parser implemented within a cognitively and neurologically motivated distributed model of memory. This parser's approach to syntactic ambiguity points toward a tidy account both of surprisal effects and of locality effects, such as the parsing breakdowns caused by center embedding. The model provides an algorithmic-level account of these breakdowns: The structure of the parser's memory and the nature of incremental parsing produce a smooth degradation of processing accuracy for longer center embeddings, and a steeper degradation (...) when they are nested, in line with recall observations by Miller and Isard and speed-accuracy trade-off observations by McElree et al.. Modeling results show that this effect is distinct from the effects of ambiguity and exceeds the effect of mere sentence length. (shrink)

Although mouse‐tracking has been taken as a real‐time window on different aspects of human decision‐making processes, whether purely semantic information affects response conflict at the level of motor output as measured through mouse movements is still unknown. Here, across two experiments, we investigated the effects of semantic knowledge by predicting participants’ performance in a standard keyboard task and in a mouse‐tracking task through distributional semantics, a usage‐based modeling approach to meaning. In Experiment 1, participants were shown word pairs and were (...) required to perform a two‐alternative forced choice task selecting either the more abstract or the more concrete word, using standard keyboard presses. In Experiment 2, participants performed the same task, yet this time response selection was achieved by moving the computer mouse. Results showed that the involvement of semantic components in the task at hand is observable using both standard reaction times (Experiment 1) as well as using indexes extracted from mouse trajectories (Experiment 2). In particular, mouse trajectories reflected the response conflict and its temporal evolution, with a larger deviation for increasing word semantic relatedness. These findings support the validity of mouse‐tracking as a method to detect deep and implicit decision‐making features. Additionally, by demonstrating that a usage‐based model of meaning can account for the different degrees of cognitive conflict associated with task achievement, these findings testify the impact of the human semantic memory on decision‐making processes. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo investigate post-traumatic stress disorder, perceived professional benefits and post-traumatic growth status among Chinese nurses in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and to compare the differences between nurses working inside and outside Hubei.MethodsFrom February 18 to February 25, 2020, the authors constructed the questionnaire using the Questionnaire Star platform, and convenience sampling was used to distribute the questionnaire via WeChat. Nurses who worked at the hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic were the research subjects.ResultsA total of 3,419 questionnaires were received, (...) of which 2,860 nurses were working outside Hubei Province and 559 nurses were working inside Hubei Province. Both groups were exposed to COVID-19. The results indicated that gender, job title, department, average monthly income, the number of night shifts per month, hospital classification, specialization, and previous experience with assisting during disasters were statistically significant. The t-test results showed that the difference in perceived professional benefits scores between the two groups was not statistically significant, and the differences in PTG scores and PTSD scores between the two groups were statistically significant. The chi-square test indicated that the difference in PTSD prevalence between nurses working outside and inside Hubei Province was statistically significant and that the PTSD prevalence of nurses working outside Hubei Province was higher than that of nurses working inside Hubei Province. One-way ANOVA and independent sample t-test results showed that age, job title, job assignment, length of service, average monthly income, number of night shifts per month, number of children, and the Nurses’ Perceived Professional Benefits Scale and post-traumatic growth inventory scores influenced the prevalence of PTSD. Logistic regression showed that the occurrence of PTSD was associated with average monthly income, length of service, number of children, and the PTGI and NPPBS scores.ConclusionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses working outside Hubei Province reported greater PTSD than those working inside Hubei Province. The occurrence of PTSD was related to average monthly income, length of service, number of children, and the PTGI and NPPBS scores. (shrink)

Childhood adversity is associated with altered or dysregulated stress reactivity; these altered patterns of physiological functioning persist into adulthood. Evidence from both preclinical animal models and human neuroimaging studies indicates that early life experience differentially influences stressor-evoked activity within central visceral neural circuits proximally involved in the control of stress responses, including the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and amygdala. However, the relationship between childhood adversity and (...) the resting-state connectivity of this central visceral network remains unclear. To this end, we examined relationships between childhood threat and childhood socioeconomic deprivation, the resting-state connectivity between our regions of interest (ROIs), and affective symptom severity and diagnoses. We recruited a transdiagnostic sample of young adult males and females (n= 100; mean age = 27.28,SD= 3.99; 59 females) with a full distribution of maltreatment history and symptom severity across multiple affective disorders. Resting-state data were acquired using a 7.2-min functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) sequence; noted ROIs were applied as masks to determine ROI-to-ROI connectivity. Threat was determined by measures of childhood traumatic events and abuse. Socioeconomic deprivation (SED) was determined by a measure of childhood socioeconomic status (parental education level). Covarying for age, race and sex, greater childhood threat was significantly associated with lower BNST-PVN, amygdala-sgACC and PVN-sgACC connectivity. No significant relationships were found between SED and resting-state connectivity. BNST-PVN connectivity was associated with the number of lifetime affective diagnoses. Exposure to threat during early development may entrain altered patterns of resting-state connectivity between these stress-related ROIs in ways that contribute to dysregulated neural and physiological responses to stress and subsequent affective psychopathology. (shrink)

We present a version for κ-distributive ideals over a regular infinite cardinal κ of some of the combinatorial results of Mathias on happy families. We also study an associated notion of forcing, which is a generalization of Mathias forcing and of Prikry forcing.

Considerable work during the past two decades has focused on modeling the structure of semantic memory, although the performance of these models in complex and unconstrained semantic tasks remains relatively understudied. We introduce a two‐player cooperative word game, Connector (based on the boardgame Codenames), and investigate whether similarity metrics derived from two large databases of human free association norms, the University of South Florida norms and the Small World of Words norms, and two distributional semantic models based on large (...) language corpora (word2vec and GloVe) predict performance in this game. Participant dyads were presented with 20‐item word boards with word pairs of varying relatedness. The speaker received a word pair from the board (e.g., exam‐algebra) and generated a one‐word semantic clue (e.g., math), which was used by the guesser to identify the word pair on the board across three attempts. Response times to generate the clue, as well as accuracy and latencies for the guessed word pair, were strongly predicted by the cosine similarity between word pairs and clues in random walk‐based associative models, and to a lesser degree by the distributional models, suggesting that conceptual representations activated during free association were better able to capture search and retrieval processes in the game. Further, the speaker adjusted subsequent clues based on the first attempt by the guesser, who in turn benefited from the adjustment in clues, suggesting a cooperative influence in the game that was effectively captured by both associative and distributional models. These results indicate that both associative and distributional models can capture relatively unconstrained search processes in a cooperative game setting, and Connector is particularly suited to examine communication and semantic search processes. (shrink)

When considering m-sequents, it is always possible to obtain an m-sequent calculus VL for every m-valued logic (defined from an arbitrary finite algebra L of cardinality m) following for instance the works of the Vienna Group for Multiple-valued Logics. The Gentzen relations associated with the calculi VL are always finitely equivalential but might not be algebraizable. In this paper we associate an algebraizable 2-Gentzen relation with every sequent calculus VL in a uniform way, provided the original algebra L (...) has a reduct that is a distributive lattice or a pseudocomplemented distributive lattice. We also show that the sentential logic naturally associated with the provable sequents of this algebraizable Gentzen relation is the logic that preserves degrees of truth with respect to the original algebra (in contrast with the more common logic that merely preserves truth). Finally, for some particular logics we obtain 2-sequent calculi that axiomatize the algebraizable Gentzen relations obtained so far. (shrink)

A defining characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease is difficulty in retrieving semantic memories, or memories encoding facts and knowledge. While it has been suggested that this impairment is caused by a degradation of the semantic store, the precise ways in which the semantic store is degraded are not well understood. Using a longitudinal corpus of semantic fluency data, we derive semantic network representations of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and of healthy controls. We contrast our network-based approach with analyzing fluency (...) data with the standard method of counting the total number of items and perseverations in fluency data. We find that the networks of Alzheimer’s patients are more connected and that those connections are more randomly distributed than the connections in networks of healthy individuals. These results suggest that the semantic memory impairment of Alzheimer’s patients can be modeled through the inclusion of spurious associations between unrelated concepts in the semantic store. We also find that information from our network analysis of fluency data improves prediction of patient diagnosis compared to traditional measures of the semantic fluency task. (shrink)

The process of dehumanization, or thinking of others as less than human, is a phenomenon with significant societal implications. According to Haslam's model, two concepts of humanness derive from comparing humans with either animals or machines: individuals may be dehumanized by likening them to either animals or machines, or humanized by emphasizing differences from animals or machines. Recent work in cognitive neuroscience emphasizes understanding cognitive processes in terms of interactions between distributed cortical networks. It has been found that (...) reasoning about internal mental states is associated with activation of the default mode network and deactivation of the task positive network ; whereas reasoning about mechanical processes produces the opposite pattern. We conducted two neuroimaging studies. The first examined the neural bases of dehumanization and its relation to these two brain networks, using images and voice-over social narratives which either implicitly contrasted or implicitly likened humans to either animals or machines. The second study addressed a discrepancy between findings from the first study and prior work on the neural correlates of dehumanization: using a design similar to prior work we examined neural responses to pictures of humans, animals and machines, presented without any social context. In both studies, human and humanizing conditions were associated with relatively high activity in the DMN and relatively low activity in the TPN. However, the non-human and dehumanizing conditions deviated in different ways: they demonstrated more marked changes either in the DMN or in the TPN. Notably, differences between the animal dehumanizing and humanizing conditions were most evident in regions associated with mechanistic reasoning, not in the mentalizing network. Conjunction analysis of contrasts from both paradigms revealed that only one region was consistently more active when participants saw human, a medial parietal region regarded as the central hub of the DMN. These findings provide a neural basis for Haslam's distinction between two types of dehumanization, and suggest that the DMN and TPN play opposing roles in creating a sense of moral concern. (shrink)

The current investigation was designed to examine the association of parenting during late childhood and early adolescence, a time of rapid physical development, with biological propensity for inflammation. Based on life course theory, it was hypothesized that parenting during this period of rapid growth and development would be associated with biological outcomes and self-reported health assessed in young adulthood. It was expected that association of parenting with health would be mediated either by effects on methylation (...) of a key inflammatory factor, Tumor necrosis factor (TNF), or else by association with a pro-inflammatory shift in the distribution of mononuclear blood cells. Supporting expectations, in a sample of 398 African American youth residing in rural Georgia, followed from age 11 to age 19, parenting at ages 11–13 was associated with youth reports of better health at age 19. We found that parenting was associated with changes in TNF methylation as well as with changes in cell-type composition. However, whereas methylation of TNF was a significant mediator of the association of parenting with young adult health, variation in mononuclear white blood cell types was not a significant mediator of the association of parenting with young adult health. The current research suggests the potential value of examining the health-related effects of parenting in late childhood and early adolescence. Further examination of protection against pro-inflammatory tendencies conferred by parenting appears warranted. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic provided the opportunity to determine whether age-related differences in utilitarian moral decision-making during sacrificial moral dilemmas extend to non-sacrificial dilemmas in real-world settings. As affect and emotional memory are associated with moral and prosocial behaviors, we also sought to understand how these were associated with moral behaviors during the 2020 spring phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Older age, higher negative affect, and greater reports of reflecting on negative aspects of the pandemic (...) were associated with higher reported purchase of hard-to-find goods, while older age and higher negative affect alone were associated with higher reported purchase of hard-to-find medical supplies. Older age was associated with what appeared at first to be non-utilitarian moral behaviors with regard to the purchasing of these supplies; However, they also reported distributing these goods to family members rather than engaging in hoarding behaviors. These findings suggest that advancing age may be associated with engagement in utilitarian moral decision-making in real-world settings more than the sacrificial moral decision-making literature would suggest. (shrink)

Injuries in professional soccer are a significant concern for teams, and they are caused amongst others by high training load. This cohort study describes the relationship between workload parameters and the occurrence of non-contact injuries, during weeks with high and low workload in professional soccer players throughout the season. Twenty-one professional soccer players aged 28.3 ± 3.9 yrs. who competed in the Iranian Persian Gulf Pro League participated in this 48-week study. The external load was monitored using global positioning (...) system and the type of injury was documented daily by the team's medical staff. Odds ratio and relative risk were calculated for non-contact injuries for high- and low-load weeks according to acute, chronic, acute to chronic workload ratio, and AW variation values. By using Poisson distribution, the interval between previous and new injuries were estimated. Overall, 12 non-contact injuries occurred during high load and 9 during low load weeks. Based on the variables ACWR and Δ-AW, there was a significantly increased risk of sustaining non-contact injuries during high-load weeks for ACWR, and Δ-AW. Finally, the expected time between injuries was significantly shorter in high load weeks for ACWR [1.25 vs. 3.33, rate ratio time ] and Δ-AW respectively, compared to low load weeks. The risk of sustaining injuries was significantly larger during high workload weeks for ACWR, and Δ-AW compared with low workload weeks. The observed high OR in high load weeks indicate that there is a significant relationship between workload and occurrence of non-contact injuries. The predicted time to new injuries is shorter in high load weeks compared to low load weeks. Therefore, the frequency of injuries is higher during high load weeks for ACWR and Δ-AW. ACWR and Δ-AW appear to be good indicators for estimating the injury risk, and the time interval between injuries. (shrink)

Forms of collective leadership, such as Distributed Leadership, have become increasingly important. The need for measurement of the variables involved in the delegation processes, represents a new challenge for organizations that want to ensure high-level working. The present research aimed to validate the Italian version of the Distributed Leadership Agency (DLA) and verify its applicability in different contexts. The study involved all the employees of an Italian public Hospital, which were selected to complete a survey on organizational perceptions. The sample (...) comprised 704 employees (doctors, nurses, clerks, staff workers, healthcare assistants, consultants, management). Multiple Confirmatory Factor Analyses (Maximum Likelihood) have been computed to explore the factorial structure of the DLA, along with associations with other work outcomes. Results clarified that the Italian DLA respects the tri-factorial structure of the construct, suggested by Yukl (2002), with good fit indexes and reliability; moreover, in line with the literature, DLA was strongly related to satisfaction, commitment, and trust. Results contribute to underline the robustness of the construct of distributed leadership agency in different cultural sectors, and provide a useful tool to be adopted in the Italian context. (shrink)

This paper investigates relationships between procedural-memory, declarative-memory, and working-memory skills and adult native English speakers’ novel sound-category learning. Participants completed a sound-categorization task that required integrating two dimensions: one native (vowel quality), one non-native (pitch). Similar information-integration category structures in the visual and auditory domains have been shown to be best learned implicitly (e.g., Maddox, Ing, & Lauritzen, 2006). Thus, we predicted that individuals with greater procedural-memory capacity would better learn sound categories, because procedural memory appears to support implicit (...) learning of new information and integration of dimensions. Seventy undergraduates were tested across two experiments. Procedural memory was assessed using a linguistic adaptation of the serial-reaction-time task (Misyak, Christiansen, & Tomblin, 2010a, 2010b). Declarative memory was assessed using the logical-memory subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale-4th edition (WMS-IV; Wechsler, 2009). Working memory was assessed using an auditory version of the reading-span task (Kane et al., 2004). Experiment 1 revealed contributions of only declarative memory to dimensional integration, which might indicate not enough time or motivation to shift over to a procedural/integrative strategy. Experiment 2 gave twice the speech-sound training, distributed over two days, and also attempted to train at the category boundary. As predicted, effects of declarative memory were removed and effects of procedural memory emerged, but, unexpectedly, new effects of working memory surfaced. The results may be compatible with a multiple-systems account in which declarative and working memory facilitate transfer of control to the procedural system. (shrink)

Regular musical activity as a complex multimodal lifestyle activity is proposed to be protective against age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. This cross-sectional study investigated the association and interplay between musical instrument playing during life, multi-domain cognitive abilities and brain morphology in older adults from the DZNE-Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Study study. Participants reporting having played a musical instrument across three life periods were compared to controls without a history of musical instrument playing, well-matched for reserve proxies of (...) education, intelligence, socioeconomic status and physical activity. Participants with musical activity outperformed controls in global cognition, working memory, executive functions, language, and visuospatial abilities, with no effects seen for learning and memory. The musically active group had greater gray matter volume in the somatosensory area, but did not differ from controls in higher-order frontal, temporal, or hippocampal volumes. However, the association between gray matter volume in distributed frontal-to-temporal regions and cognitive abilities was enhanced in participants with musical activity compared to controls. We show that playing a musical instrument during life relates to better late-life cognitive abilities and greater brain capacities in OA. Musical activity may serve as a multimodal enrichment strategy that could help preserve cognitive and brain health in late life. Longitudinal and interventional studies are needed to support this notion. (shrink)

For much of its modern history, the notion of talent has been associated with the idea of ‘careers open to talent’. Its emancipatory promise of upward social mobility has radically transformed the distribution of advantaged social positions and has had a lasting influence on the very idea of social status itself. Nevertheless, unlike concepts traditionally associated with distributive justice, e.g. fairness, (in)equality, desert, equality of opportunity as well as justice itself, the notion of talent has received only limited (...) examination. This article discusses some of the most pressing problems and challenges arising out of a reductionist understanding of talents’ anatomy and a distorted characterization of their overall distributive value. In particular, it aims to address those issues revolving around talents’ anatomy existing conceptions of distributive justice leave either neglected or outrightly ignored. The introductory part outlines the basic egalitarian conception of equal opportunities and then proceed with the examination of fairness embedded in it. The central part of the paper identifies the key elements of talents’ anatomy. We then discuss some of the implications egalitarianism either leaves out of the discussion or neglects. In particular, we challenge the idea of moral arbitrariness as the key mechanism to discard talents as a form of unfair advantage in the process of competition for advantaged social positions. In the final part, we outline two fundamental problems that call into question the cogency of egalitarian conceptions of talent(s) as a form of unfair disadvantage. (shrink)

Metacognition is associated with planning, monitoring, evaluating and repairing performance Designers of elearning systems can improve the quality of their environments by explicitly structuring the visual and interactive display of learning contexts to facilitate metacognition. Typically page layout, navigational appearance, visual and interactivity design are not viewed as major factors in metacognition. This is because metacognition tends to be interpreted as a process in the head, rather than an interactive one. It is argued here, that cognition and metacognition are (...) part of a continuum and that both are highly interactive. The tenets of this view are explained by reviewing some of the core assumptions of the situated and distribute approach to cognition and then further elaborated by exploring the notions of active vision, visual complexity, affordance landscape and cue structure. The way visual cues are structured and the way interaction is designed can make an important difference in the ease and effectiveness of cognition and metacognition. Documents that make effective use of markers such as headings, callouts, italics can improve students' ability to comprehend documents and 'plan' the way they review and process content. Interaction can be designed to improve 'the proximal zone of planning' - the look ahead and apprehension of what is nearby in activity space that facilitates decisions. This final concept is elaborated in a discussion of how e-newspapers combine effective visual and interactive design to enhance user control over their reading experience. (shrink)

The European Clinical Trials Directive (EU 2001; 2001/20/EC) was introduced to improve the efficiency of commercial and academic clinical trials. Concerns have been raised by interested organizations and institutions regarding the potential for negative impact of the Directive on non-commercial European clinical research. Interested researchers within the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) were surveyed to determine whether researcher experiences confirmed this view. Following a pilot study, an internet-based questionnaire was distributed to individuals in key research positions in (...) the European haemopoietic SCT community. Seventy-one usable questionnaires were returned from participants in different EU member states. The results indicate that the perceived impact of the European Clinical Trials Directive has been negative, at least in the research areas of interest to the EBMT. (shrink)

Determining the nature of binding in grapheme-color synaesthesia has consequences for understanding the neural basis of synaesthesia and visual awareness in general. We evaluated type- and token-based letter-color binding using a synaesthetic version of the object-reviewing paradigm. Although mean response times failed to reveal any significant differences between synaesthetes and control participants, RT analyses with ex-Gaussian distributions revealed that the response facilitation in the synaesthesia group reflected type representations exclusively, while response facilitation in the control group, who learned letter-color (...) associations, was dominated by token representations. Thus, letter-color associations in associator synaesthetes are type-based, and do not involve binding to object tokens, consistent with their subjective reports. Contrary to recent studies that failed to find differences between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes with behavioral measures, response time distribution analyses indicate that color sensations in synaesthetes are not simply the extreme form of normal letter-color associations, and cannot be attributed to demand characteristics. (shrink)

We define when a ternary term m of an algebraic language \ is called a distributive nearlattice term -term) of a sentential logic \. Distributive nearlattices are ternary algebras generalising Tarski algebras and distributive lattices. We characterise the selfextensional logics with a \-term through the interpretation of the DN-term in the algebras of the algebraic counterpart of the logics. We prove that the canonical class of algebras associated with a selfextensional logic with a \-term is a variety, (...) and we obtain that the logic is in fact fully selfextensional. (shrink)

‘Only’ associates with focus and licenses NPIs. This paper looks at the distributional pattern of NPIs under ‘only’ and presents evidence for the movement theory of focus association and against an in situ approach. NPIs are licensed in the ‘scope’ (or the second argument) of ‘only’, but not in the complement (or its first argument), which I will call the ‘syntactic restrictor’. While earlier approaches argued that ‘only’ licenses NPIs in the unfocused part of the sentence it occurs (...) in except in its focus, evidence from DP-‘only’ shows that NPIs are also not licensed in the unfocused part of the syntactic restrictor. The distribution of NPIs provides a test for the size of the syntactic restrictor, and this test is applied to the case of VP-‘only’. The evidence shows that (i) the restrictor can be smaller than the entire VP and is not necessarily identical to the surface complement of ‘only’; (ii) in the case of association with a head the restrictor comprises an XP containing the head; and (iii) in cases of association into an island, the restrictor comprises the entire island. Generalizations (i)–(iii) can be captured straightforwardly by a movement approach but are incompatible with an in situ analysis. Contextual domain- restriction of the kind used in in situ approaches accounts for the appropriate semantics in cases where the semantic focus is properly contained in the syntactic restrictor of ‘only’. (shrink)

Farm to School (FTS) programs are increasingly popular as methods to teach students about food, nutrition, and agriculture by connecting students with the sources of the food that they eat. They may also provide opportunity for farmers seeking to diversify market channels. Food service buyers in FTS programs often choose to procure food for school meals directly from farmers. The distribution practices required for such direct procurement often bring significant transaction costs for both school food service professionals and farmers. (...) Analysis of data from a survey of Vermont farmers who sell directly to school food services explores farmers’ motivations and distribution practices in these partnerships. A two-step cluster analysis procedure characterizes farmers’ motivations along a continuum between market-based and socially embedded values. Further bivariate analysis shows that farmers who are motivated most by market-based values are significantly associated with distribution practices that facilitate sales to school food services. Implications for technical assistance to facilitate these sales are discussed. (shrink)

It is generally recognised that the potential positive and negative impacts of geoengineering will be distributed unevenly both geographically and temporally. The question of distributive justice in geoengineering thus is one of the major ethical issues associated with geoengineering. Currently, the question of distributive justice in geoengineering is framed in terms of who gets what (potential) benefits and harms from geoengineering, i.e. it is about the distribution of the outcomes of geoengineering. In this paper, I argue that the discussions (...) on distributive justice in geoengineering should not be outcome-based. Instead, it should be risk-based. I identify two problems for framing the question of distributive justice in geoengineering in terms of the distribution of its outcomes, i.e. the ‘if and then’ syndrome and the limited applicability of distributive principles in geoengineering policy, and suggest risk is a more proper object of distribution in the case of geoengineering. Following Hayenhjelm, I argue that the object of distribution in the case of fair distribution of risk should be (i) sources of risks and (ii) precautionary measures. I shall then demonstrate how it can be applied to the question of distributive justice in geoengineering. Finally, I end this paper by exploring the possible responses to the question of distributive justice in geoengineering by three major accounts of distributive justice, i.e. egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism. (shrink)

Whatever is distributed must first be produced, and since the recipients are also the producers there will be constraints on distribution determined by productive necessity. Standard theories of distributive justice systematically ignore these constraints. In light of these considerations I define what it is that must be produced and how it must be distributed in order to assure continued production. Desert, equality, entitlement, and the other values normally associated with distributive justice must take a back seat to the need (...) to assure that there is anything to distribute at all. (shrink)

Although there exist advantages to group-living in comparison to a solitary lifestyle, costs and gains of group-living may be unequally distributed among group members. Predation risk, vigilance levels and food intake may be unevenly distributed across group spatial geometry and certain within-group spatial positions may be more or less advantageous depending on the spatial distribution of these factors. In species characterized with dominance hierarchy, high-ranking individuals are commonly observed in advantageous spatial position. However, in complex social systems, individuals can (...) develop affiliative relationships that may balance the effect of dominance relationships in individual's spatial distribution. The objective of the present study is to investigate how the group spatial distribution of a semi-free ranging colony of Mandrills relates to its social organization. Using spatial observations in an area surrounding the feeding zone, we tested the three following hypothesis: (1) does dominance hierarchy explain being observed in proximity or far from a food patch? (2) Do affiliative associations also explain being observed in proximity or far from a food patch? (3) Do the differences in rank in the group hierarchy explain being co-observed in proximity of a food patch? Our results showed that high-ranking individuals were more observed in proximity of the feeding zone while low-ranking individuals were more observed at the boundaries of the observation area. Furthermore, we observed that affiliative relationships were also associated with individual spatial distributions and explain more of the total variance of the spatial distribution in comparison with dominance hierarchy. Finally, we found that individuals observed at a same moment in proximity of the feeding zone were more likely to be distant in the hierarchy while controlling for maternal kinship, age and sex similarity. This study brings some elements about how affiliative networks and dominance hierarchy are related to spatial positions in primates. (shrink)

Metacognition is associated with planning, monitoring, evaluating and repairing performance Designers of elearning systems can improve the quality of their environments by explicitly structuring the visual and interactive display of learning contexts to facilitate metacognition. Typically page layout, navigational appearance, visual and interactivity design are not viewed as major factors in metacognition. This is because metacognition tends to be interpreted as a process in the head, rather than an interactive one. It is argued here, that cognition and metacognition are (...) part of a continuum and that both are highly interactive. The tenets of this view are explained by reviewing some of the core assumptions of the situated and distribute approach to cognition and then further elaborated by exploring the notions of active vision, visual complexity, affordance landscape and cue structure. The way visual cues are structured and the way interaction is designed can make an important difference in the ease and effectiveness of cognition and metacognition. Documents that make effective use of markers such as headings, callouts, italics can improve students’ ability to comprehend documents and ‘plan’ the way they review and process content. Interaction can be designed to improve ‘the proximal zone of planning’ – the look ahead and apprehension of what is nearby in activity space that facilitates decisions. This final concept is elaborated in a discussion of how e-newspapers combine effective visual and interactive design to enhance user control over their reading experience. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance is a major and increasing problem globally. Economics has engaged with this issue increasingly over the last 20 years. Much of this concerns assessments of the cost of various forms of resistance, but it also includes economic analyses of interventions and policies designed to contain resistance. Analysis has, however, thus far largely neglected possible distributional issues associated with such interventions and analysis. The article explores three normative bases for the conduct of economic analysis: welfarism; extra-welfarism focused (...) on health gain; and extra-welfarism focused on capability assessment. It then considers issues intrinsic to antimicrobial resistance in terms of the distributional implications and how these might be handled within economic analyses from each of the normative perspectives, before considering the actual focus of empirical studies on these distributional issues. The article concludes that the different normative starting points for economic analysis will affect how distributional issues are incorporated into analysis, but suggests that all analyses could benefit from greater discussion of these issues. (shrink)

This article explores how leadership is done in a ‘leaderless’ team. Drawing on a corpus of more than 120 hours of audio-recorded meetings of different interdisciplinary research groups and using a discourse analytic framework and tools, we examine how leadership is enacted in a team that does not have an assigned leader or chair. Our specific focus is the discursive processes through which team members conjointly solve disagreements and negotiate consensus – which are two activities associated with leadership. More (...) specifically, we analyse how meaning is collaboratively constructed and how team members arrive at a solution in those instances where there is some kind of disagreement, or even conflict, among team members. This discourse analytic study thus contributes to leadership research in two ways: i) by exploring some of the discursive processes through which leadership is actually performed in a ‘leaderless team’; and ii) by looking at a largely under-researched leadership constellation, namely distributed leadership. We thereby illustrate some of the benefits that discourse analytical approaches offer to an understanding of the specific processes that are involved in the complexities of leadership performance. (shrink)

Ethotic arguments, such as arguments from expert opinion and ad hominem arguments, play an important role in communication practice. In this paper, we argue that there is another type of reasoning from ethos, in which people argue about actions in the world. These subspecies of ethotic arguments are very common in public debates: societies are involved in heated disputes about what should be done with monuments of historical figures such as Stalin or Colston: Should we demolish the building they (...) funded? Should we revere their statues? Should the street named after them be renamed?; and the general public vividly argue about what should be done with the legacy of producers, directors and actors in debates of the #MeToo movement: Should their new movies be distributed? Should their scenes be deleted from motion pictures? Should their stars from the Hollywood Walk of Fame be removed? Many arguments in these debates boil down to the character of the public figures: He was a slave trader!—But he is a part of our history; He harassed a young girl!—But he is an important actor. The reasoning step here is legitimised by the association between a person and an extra-linguistic object: the association between a historical figure and their statue or between an actor and their movie. The nature of this association is explained in the paper using Peirce’s theory of signs. We propose to extend an existing approach to patterns of reasoning from ethos that will help us to shed new light on ethotic argumentation and open an avenue for a systematic account of these unexplored argument forms. (shrink)

This study, theoretically based on integrated threat and image theory, explored (1) the mental constructs produced by the Slovak majority in relation to cooperation with the Roma minority and (2) differences in thinking about different Roma demographic groups. In Slovakia, prejudice towards Roma people is a long-standing phenomenon. In this study there were 228 participants, mostly young adults, who produced 22 categories of associations, explored using content and network analyses. The frequency of category associations in the first and second (...) research group was mostly the same, but the distribution differed for the demographic groups considered by the third research group, which was asked to produce associations separately for each Roma demographic group. The largest difference measured was between integrated and segregated Roma people – the associations were mostly positive for the first and negative for the second. These results provide the first empirical exploration of cooperation intentions with Roma people in the Slovak context and suggestions are made for future discourse on Roma. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar y revisar las normas que filosóficamente asociamos al proceso de testimonio, inquiriendo hasta qué puntoson0 consistentes con los conocimientos empíricos de las ciencias cognitivas.Tradicionalmente, el problema del testimonio surgía cuando, desde una epistemología de corte individualista, se suponía, siguiendo el dictum ya marcado en la Modernidad tanto por racionalistas como por empiristas, de que el conocimiento debía ser testado personalmente. Sin embargo, disciplinas y enfoques recientes, como la Cognición Socialmente Distribuida y la Epistemología (...) Social ofrecen otra vía al considerar al grupo la unidad cognitiva realmente significativa e intentar solucionar el problema del testimonio desde esa perspectiva. Nuestro objetivo es analizar los motivos por los que la CSD es un buen modelo para explicar algunas de las paradojas y problemas epistemológicos cuando tenemos en cuenta el papel del testimonio en el desarrollo de la ciencia. The goal of this paper is to review and analyze norms philosophically associated with the process of testimony and to investigate to what extent they are consistent with empirical knowledge supplied by cognitive science. Traditionally, the problem of testimony used to arise when it was supposed, from the viewpoint of an individualistic epistemology, that followed the dictum stated by rationalists and empiricists in Modernity, that knowledge had to be tested personally. However, recent disciplines and approaches, like Socially Distributed Cognition and Social Epistemology, provide alternative ways of thinking. This is the case when we consider the group as the truly significant cognitive unit and from such perspective we try to solve the problem of testimony. Therefore, our aim is to examine the reasons why SDC offers a good model for explaining some of the paradoxes and epistemological problems that arise when we consider the issue of testimony in the development of science. (shrink)

This article describes a novel pattern of interpretations associated with universal determiners like ‘each’ and ‘every’. It is demonstrated that these canonically distributive quantifiers can give rise to surprising collective readings when they quantify into sub-clausal constituents, especially other Determiner Phrases. For instance, ‘two cards from each player’ can be understood to pick out a single assorted deck of cards, one whose contents co-vary with the players. Yet this deck as a whole may be said to participate in (...) a range of collective activities (being shuffled together, being traded en masse, not fitting into a standard pack, etc.). Such examples are shown to differ from more familiar _cumulative_ readings of the same quantifiers. A compositional analysis is offered that generalizes Krifka’s ( 2001 ) method of quantification into speech acts in order to accommodate quantification into a larger class of non-truth-denoting semantic objects, including in these cases, entities. (shrink)

Introduction: All countries face the issue of choice in healthcare. Allocation of healthcare resources is clearly associated with the concept of distributive justice and to the existence of a right to healthcare. Nevertheless, there is still the question of whether this right should include all types of healthcare services or if it should be limited to selected types. It follows that choices must be made, priorities must be set and that efficiency of healthcare services should be maximum.

This paper defends an egalitarian conception of global justice against two kinds of criticism. Many who defend egalitarian principles of justice do so on the basis that all humans are part of a common 'association' of some kind. In this paper I defend the humanity-centred approach which holds that persons should be included within the scope of distributive justice simply because they are fellow human beings. The paper has four substantive sections - the first addresses Andrea Sangiovanni's reciprocity-based argument (...) for the claim that egalitarian principles apply only within the state. The second responds to Michael Blake's coercion-based argument for the thesis that egalitarian principles apply only within the state. A third section draws attention to a general problem with associational accounts of distributive justice. Finally, I seek to show how a humanity-centred cosmopolitanism can accommodate the insights associated with an associational approach. (shrink)

In spite of the numerous occasions on which Adam Smith expresses his reservations regarding the morality of commercial societies, there seems to be an agreement that he believed such systems to be fundamentally just. To some, this is so because they attribute to Smith a concept of justice which is narrowly confined to the ‘right to have [one's] body free from injury, and [one's] liberty free from infringement’ . In a world where people have an interest in the fortune of (...) others regardless of how selfish their motives for action might be, injuring someone else's body or restricting someone else's liberty is unlikely to be the behavioural norm. To others, natural liberty in the sphere of economic activity is just not only because individuals behind the system naturally comply with justice in its commutative sense, but also because the system itself generates justice in the distributive sense. Such arguments are based on either the working of the invisible hand — which produces the ‘same distribution of the necessities of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants …’ — or on the approval of the ‘impartial spectator’ of the distribution which is associated with the natural price. (shrink)

Empirical research has increasingly turned its attention to distributed cognition. Acts of remembering are embedded in a social, interactional context; cognitive labor is divided between a rememberer and external sources. The present article examines the benefits and costs associated with distributed, collaborative, conversational remembering. Further, we examine the consequences of joint acts of remembering on subsequent individual acts of remembering. Here, we focus on influences on memory through social contagion and socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting. Extending beyond a single social (...) interaction, we consider work that tracks the propagation of socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting throughout larger networks made up of several agents. Although much work has focused on how distributing cognition can augment memory, this is not the primary lesson we draw from the conversational remembering literature. Rather, mnemonic convergence between communicators is a boon to sociality. It allows the formation and maintenance of mnemonic communities, rather than expanding capacity or accuracy of memory per se. (shrink)

There are certain kinds of risk for which governments, rather than individual actors, are increasingly held responsible. This article discusses how regulatory institutions can ensure an equitable distribution of risk between various groups such as rich and poor, and present and future generations. It focuses on cases of risk associated with technological and biotechnological innovation. After discussing various possibilities and difficulties of distribution, this article proposes a non-welfarist understanding of risk as a burden of cooperation.

We examine several cases of object movement from various languages, and demonstrate that the syntactic behavior of objects can be derived from certain conditions on LF representations. Conditions on LF relevant to the distribution of arguments are identified as relative scope fixing and type mismatch repair. These two conditions interact with the multiple semantic types that may be assigned to NPs (cf. Partee 1987) to induce movement of certain objects out of the VP, universally by LF and parametrically in (...) the overt syntax. Diesing's (1992b) Mapping Hypothesis combined with the multiple NP types predicts that quantificational NPs in object position will have to undergo movement by LF. This movement is forced by the principles of semantic composition as a mechanism of type mismatch resolution. The existential closure operation over VP is claimed to be genuinely unselective: any NP that introduces a free variable and does not receive an existential interpretation must move out of the scope of existential closure (and thus out of the VP) by LF. Pronouns are variables, limited in semantic type assignment, that by virtue of their definiteness cannot be bound by existential closure and must move out of its scope. In Egyptian Arabic, object pronouns escape from the VP via attachment to a verb that raises to adjoin to an Aspect inflectional head above the VP. The movement of object pronouns and definite/specific NPs in Scandinavian is also associated with verb movement. (shrink)

Most phobias are focussed on a small number of fear-inducing stimuli (e.g., snakes, spiders). A review of the evidence supporting biological and cognitive explanations of this uneven distribution of phobias suggests that the readiness with which such stimuli become associated with aversive outcomes arises from biases in the processing of information about threatening stimuli rather than from phylogenetically based associative predispositions or “biological preparedness.” This cognitive bias, consisting of a heightened expectation of aversive outcomes following fear-relevant stimuli, generates (...) and maintains robust learned associations between them. Some of the features of such stimuli which determine this expectancy bias are estimates of how dangerous they are, the semiotic similarity between them and their aversive outcomes, and the degree of prior fear they elicit. Ontogenetic and cultural factors influence these features of fear-relevant stimuli and are hence important in determining expectancy bias. The available evidence does not exclude the possibility that both expectancy biases and specific evolved predispositions coexist, but the former can explain a number of important findings that the latter cannot. (shrink)

Bilattices, introduced by Ginsberg as a uniform framework for inference in artificial intelligence, are algebraic structures that proved useful in many fields. In recent years, Arieli and Avron developed a logical system based on a class of bilattice-based matrices, called logical bilattices, and provided a Gentzen-style calculus for it. This logic is essentially an expansion of the well-known Belnap–Dunn four-valued logic to the standard language of bilattices. Our aim is to study Arieli and Avron’s logic from the perspective of abstract (...) algebraic logic . We introduce a Hilbert-style axiomatization in order to investigate the properties of the algebraic models of this logic, proving that every formula can be reduced to an equivalent normal form and that our axiomatization is complete w.r.t. Arieli and Avron’s semantics. In this way, we are able to classify this logic according to the criteria of AAL. We show, for instance, that it is non-protoalgebraic and non-self-extensional. We also characterize its Tarski congruence and the class of algebraic reducts of its reduced generalized models, which in the general theory of AAL is usually taken to be the algebraic counterpart of a sentential logic. This class turns out to be the variety generated by the smallest non-trivial bilattice, which is strictly contained in the class of algebraic reducts of logical bilattices. On the other hand, we prove that the class of algebraic reducts of reduced models of our logic is strictly included in the class of algebraic reducts of its reduced generalized models. Another interesting result obtained is that, as happens with some implicationless fragments of well-known logics, we can associate with our logic a Gentzen calculus which is algebraizable in the sense of Rebagliato and Verdú . We also prove some purely algebraic results concerning bilattices, for instance that the variety of distributive bilattices is generated by the smallest non-trivial bilattice. This result is based on an improvement of a theorem by Avron stating that every bounded interlaced bilattice is isomorphic to a certain product of two bounded lattices. We generalize it to the case of unbounded interlaced bilattices. (shrink)

Computational models have shown that purely statistical knowledge about words’ linguistic contexts is sufficient to learn many properties of words, including syntactic and semantic category. For example, models can infer that “postman” and “mailman” are semantically similar because they have quantitatively similar patterns of association with other words. In contrast to these computational results, artificial language learning experiments suggest that distributional statistics alone do not facilitate learning of linguistic categories. However, experiments in this paradigm expose participants to entirely (...) novel words, whereas real language learners encounter input that contains some known words that are semantically organized. In three experiments, we show that the presence of familiar semantic reference points facilitates distributional learning and this effect crucially depends both on the presence of known words and the adherence of these known words to some semantic organization. (shrink)

The question whether corporations should be used as a means for administering distributive justice is crucial. There are two fundamental issues associated with this. Firstly, would the introduction of rules have any distributional effect? Secondly, what would be the efficiency cost? In this paper, we explore both questions with reference to a job-security corporate rule. We show that the job-security rule will always produce distributional consequences which are consistent with its objectives. However, whether or not it is (...) a socially desirable policy depends on whether the economy is at an efficient allocation and what motivated the policy. It can be shown that under some conditions, even if the initial allocation is efficient, yet not the socially desirable one, a corporate rule—like the job security one—may produce socially desirable gains. The same can be said in the case where the initial allocation is inefficient even in the presence of competitive markets (dueto incompleteness problems). However, these social gains would come at the expense of competitiveness. In an internationally open environment this may offset the initial social gains from this policy. Whether or not this happens would then depend on whether agents have a social dimension to their preferences or not. If they do, their response to the initiative may offset the initial loss of competitiveness. Alternatively, society may face the dilemma whether to remain open to uphold local conceptions of distributive justice. (shrink)