Arbitrariness and systematicity are two of language’s most fascinating properties. Although both are characterizations of the mappings between signals and meanings, their emergence and evolution in communication systems has generally been explored independently. We present an experiment in which both arbitrariness and systematicity are probed. Participants invent signs from scratch to refer to a set of items that share salient semantic features. Through interaction, the systematic re-use of arbitrary signal elements emerges.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act represents a milestone in U.S. health care policy. The ACA moves the American health care system away, in important respects, from market-driven health care, including imposing new regulations on health insurers. Yet the ACA also relies, in other respects, on market forces to achieve its aims, including its embrace of health plan competition and high-deductible insurance. This article explores how the ACA balances liberal aspirations and market principles, and the implications for health reform implementation and (...) the future of U.S. health care. (shrink)

The American health care system long has been distinctive in its embrace of market forces. For-profit private insurers play a major role in providing coverage, though they operate alongside public insurance programs that cover over one-third of the population. Historically, federal and state governments’ regulation of insurance markets was limited, leaving insurers to set premiums and coverage rules largely as they saw fit.Government’s role in controlling health care spending has been even more circumscribed. Purchasing power is fragmented, with each insurer (...) negotiating its own rates with physicians and hospitals. A formidable medical-industrial complex of for-profit providers, from hospitals to home-health care agencies, dialysis facilities, pharmaceutical companies and much more, has arisen to sell services. (shrink)

We discuss external and internal graphical and linguistic representational systems. We argue that a cognitive theory of peoples' reasoning performance must account for (a) the logical equivalence of inferences expressed in graphical and linguistic form; and (b) the implementational differences that affect facility of inference. Our theory proposes that graphical representations limit abstraction and thereby aid processibility. We discuss the ideas of specificity and abstraction, and their cognitive relevance. Empirical support comes from tasks (i) involving and (ii) not involving the (...) manipulation of external graphics. For (i), we take Euler's Circles, provide a novel computational reconstruction, show how it captures abstractions, and contrast it with earlier construals, and with Mental Models' representations. We demonstrate equivalence of the graphical Euler system, and the non-graphical Mental Models system. For (ii), we discuss text comprehension, and the mental performance of syllogisms. By positing an internal system with the same specificity as Euler's Circles we cover the Mental Models data, and generate new empirical predictions. Finally, we consider how the architecture of working memory explains why such specific representations are relatively easy to store. (shrink)

Clark & Thornton speculate that intervening in the real world might be a way of transforming type-2 problems into type-1, but they state that they are not aware of any definite cases. It is argued that the active construction of external representations often performs exactly this function, and that recoding via the real world is therefore common, if not ubiquitous.