Due to domestication, dogs differ from wolves in the way they respond to their environment, including to humans. Selection for tameness and the associated changes to the autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation have been proposed as the primary mechanisms of domestication. To test this idea, we compared two low-arousal states in equally raised and kept wolves and dogs: resting, a state close to being asleep, and inactive wakefulness, which together take up an important part in the time budgets of wolves (...) and dogs. We measured arousal via cardiac output in three conditions: alone, with a familiar human partner, or with pack members (i.e., conspecifics). Specifically, we compared heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) of six wolves and seven dogs. As patterns of resting can vary adaptively, even between closely related species, we predicted that dogs would be generally more aroused than wolves, because living with humans may come with less predictable contexts than living with conspecifics; hence, dogs would need to be responsive at all times. Furthermore, we predicted that due to the effects of domestication, emotional social support by familiar people would reduce arousal more in dogs than in equally human-socialized wolves, leading to more relaxed dogs than wolves when away from the pack. Overall, we found a clear effect of the interactions between species (i.e., wolf versus dog), arousal state (i.e., resting or awake inactive) and test conditions, on both HR and HRV. Wolves and dogs were more aroused when alone (i.e., higher HR and lower HRV) than when in the presence of conspecifics or a familiar human partner. Dogs were more relaxed than wolves when at rest and close to a familiar human but this difference disappeared when awake. In conclusion, instead of the expected distinct overall differences between wolves and dogs in ANS regulation, we rather found subtle context-specific responses, suggesting that such details are important in understanding the domestication process. (shrink)

Dream lucidity, or being aware that one is dreaming while dreaming, is not an all-or-none phenomenon. Often, subjects report being some variant of “a little lucid” as opposed to completely or not at all. As recent neuroimaging work begins to elucidate the neural underpinnings of lucid experience, understanding subtle phenomenological variation within lucid dreams is essential. Here, we focus on the variability of lucid experience by asking participants to report their awareness of the dream on a 5-point Likert scale. Participants (...) implemented a combination of mnemonic training lucid dream induction methods at home for one week and provided detailed reports about their dream experiences each morning. Consistent with previous research, cognitive induction methods led to about half of participants reporting at least one lucid dream and about half of all dreams including some level of lucidity. However, we also show that induction success rate varies significantly depending on the minimum criteria for lucidity. Participants also reported how much they adhered to specific components of each induction method, and the amount of mnemonic rehearsal during a brief early awake period was predictive of lucidity level. Furthermore, lucidity levels were positively correlated with dream control, dream bizarreness, and next-morning positive affect. Lastly, we asked participants open-ended questions about why they chose particular levels of lucidity. We focus a qualitative discussion on responses to those “semi-lucid” dreams to explore why participants rate their dreams as having intermediate levels of awareness. Together, the present study explores the frequency of semi-lucid dreams, what they are, why they might arise, their correlates, and how they impact methodological concerns in lucid dreaming research. (shrink)

We present a computational evaluation of three hypotheses about sources of deficit in sentence comprehension in aphasia: slowed processing, intermittent deficiency, and resource reduction. The ACT-R based Lewis and Vasishth model is used to implement these three proposals. Slowed processing is implemented as slowed execution time of parse steps; intermittent deficiency as increased random noise in activation of elements in memory; and resource reduction as reduced spreading activation. As data, we considered subject vs. object relative sentences, presented in a self-paced (...) listening modality to 56 individuals with aphasia and 46 matched controls. The participants heard the sentences and carried out a picture verification task to decide on an interpretation of the sentence. These response accuracies are used to identify the best parameters that correspond to the three hypotheses mentioned above. We show that controls have more tightly clustered parameter values than IWA; specifically, compared to controls, among IWA there are more individuals with slow parsing times, high noise, and low spreading activation. We find that individual IWA show differential amounts of deficit along the three dimensions of slowed processing, intermittent deficiency, and resource reduction, overall, there is evidence for all three sources of deficit playing a role, and IWA have a more variable range of parameter values than controls. An important implication is that it may be meaningless to talk about sources of deficit with respect to an abstract verage IWA; the focus should be on the individual's differential degrees of deficit along different dimensions, and on understanding the causes of variability in deficit between participants. (shrink)

NPs with intensional relative clauses such as 'the book John needs to write' pose a significant challenge for semantic theory. Such NPs act like referential terms, yet they do not stand for a particular actual object. This paper will develop a semantic analysis of such NPs on the basis of the notion of a variable object. The analysis avoids a range of difficulties that a more standard analysis based on the notion of an individual concept would face. Most (...) importantly, unlike the latter, the proposed analysis can be carried over NPs such as 'the number of people that fit into the bus', which describe tropes (particularized properties). (shrink)

Bodies of Information initiates the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series by encompassing interdisciplinary Bioethical discussions on a wide range of descriptions of bodies in relation to their contexts from varying perspectives: including literary analysis, sociology, criminology, anthropology, osteology and cultural studies, to read a variety of types of artefacts, from the Romano-British period to Hip Hop. Van Renslaer Potter coined the phrase Global Bioethics to define human relationships with their contexts. This and subsequent volumes return to (...) Potter's founding vision from historical perspectives, and asks, how did we get here from then? (shrink)

This experiment investigated the use of positive and negative hypothesis and target tests by groups in an adaptation of the 2-4-6 Wason task. The experimental variables were range of rule (small vs large), amount of evidence (low vs high), and trial block (1 vs 2). The results were in accordance with Klayman and Ha's (1987) analysis of base rate probabilities of falsification and with additional theoretical considerations. Base rate probabilities were more descriptive of participants' behaviour in target than in (...) hypothesis tests, under low than under high amount of evidence, and at the beginning of the process than at its end. The percentage of positive tests was higher under small than large range of rule. More falsifications than verifications resulted from hypothesis tests than would be expected by a random process. When evidence is richly available, the relative importance of falsification seems to decrease. An analysis of the group compositions before and after group discussion by the PCD model (Crott, Werner, & Hoffmann, 1996) revealed that the normative weight was approximately twice as large as the informational. Groups produced fewer false answers than their members individually. (shrink)

This study ascertained reports of assent (affirmative agreement) and permission (agreement by an adult fully capable of being informed) in 114 children's research articles in 1990 in Child Development (CD), Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (JCCP), Journal of Pediatric Psychology, and Journal of Clinical Child Psychology. Of the research projects, 43% failed to specify permission, and 68.5% failed to specify assent. JCCP reported assent significantly more than CD. Assent was reported significantly more in research with older children than with (...) younger children. This lack of sensitivity to assent and permission suggests that many authors, reviewers, and editors consider reporting assent and permission unessential. We recommend specifying assent and permission in all manuscripts, highlighting children's research issues in graduate training, and using specific safeguards when conducting research with children. (shrink)

Their nursing experience and/or training may lead students preparing for the nursing profession to have less moral distress and more favorable attitudes towards a hastened death compared with those preparing for other fields of study. To ascertain if this was true, 66 undergraduates (54 women, 9 men, 3 not stated) in southeastern USA completed measures of moral distress and attitudes towards hastening death. Unexpectedly, the results from nursing and non-nursing majors were not significantly different. All the present students reported moderate (...) moral distress and strong resistance to any efforts to hasten death but these factors were not significantly correlated. However, in the small sample of nurses in training, the results suggest that hastened death situations may not be a prime reason for moral distress. (shrink)

In recent years, inverse spectra were investigated with imaging optics and a quantitative description with radiometric units was suggested. It could be shown that inverse spectra complement each other additively to a constant intensity level. Since optical intensity in radiometric units is a power area density, it can be expected that energy densities of inverse spectra also fulfill an inversion equation and complement each other. In this contribution we report findings on a measurement of the power area density of inverse (...) spectra for the near ultraviolet, visible and the infrared spectral range. They show the existence of corresponding spectral regions ultra-yellow and infra-cyan in the inverted spectrum and thereby present additional experimental evidence for equivalence of inverse spectra beyond the visible range. (shrink)

We share Roberts and Buckloh's (this issue) concern about issues of assent and permission in research with children and agree that our research cannot conclude legitimately that (a) researchers failed to obtain permission/assent, (b) children were put at risk, or (c) failure to report permission/assent procedures was, in any way, unethical. We never made these conclusions. Rather, we argue that publishing assent and permission would enhance compliance with ethical standards, sensitize researchers and readers to its importance, and shift publishing priorities (...) in an appropriate direction. (shrink)

Background: Monitoring the daily change in resting heart rate variability can provide information regarding training adaptation and recovery status of the autonomic nervous system during training camps. However, it remains unclear whether postural stabilization is essential for valid and reliable ultra-short-term recordings in short-term overseas training camps.Design: Observational and longitudinal study.Purpose: This study aimed to investigate ultra-short-term heart rate variability recordings under stabilization or post-stabilization periods in four overseas training camps.Participant: Twenty-seven U-20 male national team futsal players voluntarily participated in (...) this study.Method: Resting HRV was evaluated for 10 min during the early morning of each training camp. The natural logarithm of the root mean square of successive normal-to-normal interval differences was used for comparisons. Time segments of HRV were divided into two periods with three measures within each: the first 30-s, the first 60-s, and the 5-min standard during stabilization; the first 30-s, the first 60-s, and the 5-min standard after stabilization.Result: The results demonstrated trivial to small ES, very large to nearly perfect ICC, and narrow range of SEM when all time segments of HRVUST were compared to the 1st_5 min and 2nd_5 min HRV. Furthermore, the magnitude of the correlation coefficients ranged from very high to nearly perfect for all the time segments. The HRVUST posted excellent agreement in all time segments with/without postural stabilization. Trivial to small levels of effect size in all time segments of LnRMSSDmean and LnRMSSDcv across overseas training camps was identified.Conclusion: The first 30 or 60-s LnRMSSD recordings can be used to evaluate daily cardiac-autonomic function during overseas training camps in futsal players. The process for stabilization seems to be unnecessary for measuring the morning resting LnRMSSD in overseas training camps among young adult futsal players. (shrink)

What does it mean to ‘give’ the value of a variable in an algebraic context, and how does giving the value of a variable differ from merely describing it? I argue that to answer this question, we need to examine the role that giving the value of a variable plays in problem-solving practice. I argue that four different features are required for a statement to count as giving the value of a variable in the context of (...) solving an elementary algebra problem: the variable must be in the scope opened by the problem statement; the values given must be in the range of the variable, which is determined by the problem; the statement giving the values must represent a complete solution; and it must be in a canonical form. This account helps us better understand elementary algebra itself, as well as the use of algebraic tools to analyze phenomena in natural language. (shrink)

Environmental variability has been proposed as an important mechanism in behavioral psychology, in ecology and evolution, and in cultural anthropology. Here we demonstrate its importance in simulational studies as well. In earlier work we have shown the emergence of communication in a spatialized environment of wandering food sources and predators, using a variety of mechanisms for strategy change: imitation (Grim, Kokalis, Tafti & Kilb 2000), localized genetic algorithm (Grim, Kokalis, Tafti & Kilb 2001), and partial training of neural nets on (...) the behavior of successful neighbors (Grim, St. Denis & Kokalis 2002). Here we focus on environmental variability, comparing results for all of these mechanisms in a range of different environments: (a) environments with constant resources, (b) environments with random resources around the same mean, and (c) sine-wave variable environments with cycles of ‘boom and bust’. Communication, it turns out, is strongly favored by environmental variability on the pattern of ‘boom and bust.'. (shrink)

We examined the attitudes of 600 students in large introductory algebra and psychology classes toward an actual or hypothetical cheating incident and the subsequent retake procedure. Overall, 57% of students in one class and 49Y0 in the other reported that they either cheated or would have cheated if given the opportunity. More men (59%) than women (53%) reported cheating or potential cheating. Students who had actually experienced a retake procedure to handle cheating were more satisfied with such a procedure than (...) others were about a hypothetical situation. Despite having a retake, cheaters were significantly more likely than noncheaters to predict that they would cheat again. Results suggest that instructors who require a retake following extensive cheating should devote class time to a discussion of the issue and all possible alternatives. (shrink)

Residual fluctuations produced in typical experimental methodologies are examined as correlated noises. The effective range of the correlations was assessed by determining whether the decay over look‐back time is better described as a power law or exponential. Both of these decay laws contain free parameters and it is argued that it is not possible to distinguish their models on the basis of simple measures of goodness‐of‐fit. Global analyses that evaluate models on the basis of how well they generalize are (...) conducted. The models are examined in terms of three constructs that all bear on generalization: cross‐validity, flexibility, and representativeness. Quantitative assessment of a large ensemble of data suggests that the correlations decay over time as a power law. The conclusion is that human residual fluctuation is a correlated fractal. (shrink)

The harmful consequences of fossil fuels use has resulted in the promotion of clean and renewable energies. During the past decades, green technologies have experienced a strong development, paying especial attention to wind energy, that covers a significant share of the electric energy demand. In this context, the main efforts are focused on the optimization of wind generator facilities, not only in the mechanic design but also in the energy management. Then, the present work deals with the prediction of the (...) energy generated in a small wind turbine placed in a bioclimatic house located on the north west region of Spain. This includes an analysis of the characteristics of the atmospheric variables registered during the turbine operation for a period of one year and an exploratory examination of a range of regression techniques in order to assess the suitability of using the registered information to predict the installation’s power generation levels on the short term. The study detailed in this work proves that this objective is an attainable one with a good degree of accuracy. (shrink)

The high traffic density of railway line causes ballasted track to be extremely busy, and thus it is particularly important to improve the efficiency during railway maintenance. The changing law of dynamic characteristics of ballast bed during operation for the dynamic track stabilizer is conducive to optimize simulation analysis of the vehicle-track system, so as to provide an optimized choice of operating parameters for promoting the pertinence and efficiency of dynamic track stabilizer. This paper presents the acceleration response of vehicle-track-subgrade (...) system during operation of a WD-320 dynamic track stabilizer and proposes the range of effective operating parameters. Then, the influence of operating parameters on the dynamic characteristics of the ballast bed is discussed for searching the optimal operating parameters under the single factor influence. Finally, the change laws including the support stiffness, damping, lateral resistance, and subsidence for the ballast bed are studied, and a parameterized model for dynamic characteristics of the ballast bed which can optimize the selection for operating parameters is constructed, rendering an effective reference variable for improving the simulation accuracy of the vehicle-track coupling system. (shrink)

The unreduced many-body interaction problem solution, absent in usual science framework, reveals a new quality of emerging multiple, equally real but mutually incompatible system configurations, or “realisations”, giving rise to the universal concept of dynamic complexity and chaoticity. Their imitation by a single, “average” realisation or trajectory in usual theory (corresponding to postulated “exact” or perturbative problem solutions) is a rough simplification of reality underlying all stagnating and emerging problems of conventional (unitary) science, often in the form of missing, or (...) “dark”, entities and “hidden variables”. We show how the application of unreduced interaction problem solution and the ensuing concept of dynamic complexity provides the desired causally complete and intrinsically unified solutions to respective unitary science problems in the entire range of complexity levels, from elementary particles and cosmology to emergent consciousness and modern development crisis, implying real, essential and urgently needed progress. (shrink)

The p value is the probability under the null hypothesis of obtaining an experimental result that is at least as extreme as the one that we have actually obtained. That probability plays a crucial role in frequentist statistical inferences. But if we take the word ‘extreme’ to mean ‘improbable’, then we can show that this type of inference can be very problematic. In this paper, I argue that it is a mistake to make such an interpretation. Under minimal assumptions about (...) the alternative hypothesis, I explain why ‘extreme’ means ‘outside the most precise predicted range of experimental outcomes for a given upper bound probability of error’. Doing so, I rebut recent formulations of recurrent criticisms against the frequentist approach in statistics and underscore the importance of random variables. (shrink)

Knowledge of eukaryotic life cycles and associated genome dynamics stems largely from research on animals, plants, and a small number of “model” (i.e., easily cultivable) lineages. This skewed sampling results in an underappreciation of the variability among the many microeukaryotic lineages, which represent the bulk of eukaryotic biodiversity. The range of complex nuclear transformations that exists within lineages of microbial eukaryotes challenges the textbook understanding of genome and nuclear cycles. Here, we look in‐depth at Foraminifera, an ancient (∼600 million‐year‐old) (...) lineage widely studied as proxies in paleoceanography and environmental biomonitoring. We demonstrate that Foraminifera challenge the “rules” of life cycles developed largely from studies of plants and animals. To this end, we synthesize data on foraminiferal life cycles, focusing on extensive endoreplication within individuals (i.e., single cells), the unusual nuclear process calledZerfall, and the separation of germline and somatic function into distinct nuclei (i.e., heterokaryosis). These processes highlight complexities within lineages and expand our understanding of the dynamics of eukaryotic genomes. (shrink)

In this article we (a) interlink the philosophical ideas of Ernst Schumacher and Karl Popper within the framework of planning and management, (b) describe project management cases implemented using the principles of project cycle management (PCM) and (c) study whether the success or failure can be attributed to following these concepts. We consider two basic concepts for perceiving the world surrounding us: the concept of organisation and that of self-organisation. The former emphasises the predictability of the future, where the results (...) of each activity are predetermined and can always be achieved through thorough analytical planning. The latter sees the world as a generic whole where numerous interactions take place simultaneously, leaving the future unknown. As it has been shown, for example, by Schumacher, Hayek and Popper, the real world is uncertain and orders of great complexity appear spontaneously in a self-organised manner. Mankind has thus to cope with the self-organising world and to plan and manage therein. PCM is one of the most widespread contemporary management techniques used for that purpose in both the private and public sectors. However, PCM lacks a proper theoretical basis as well as philosophical framework. We have proposed elsewhere that the concept of piecemeal social engineering elaborated by Popper in his The Poverty of Historicism could serve as a theoretical basis, which can combine the organisational nature of planning and the self-organising and fuzzy world. Thus the task is mentally to split the planning and implementation issue: to take the whole into pieces and rearrange them in a desired manner in the planning phase (concept of organisation; convergent problem solving). The actual implementation of the plan ought to be conducted following a stepwise approach, re-planning all through the process (concept of self-organisation; divergent problem solving). “The future cannot be forecast, but it can be explored.” Not all human actions are unpredictable, but we cannot be sure what the results would be or judge the value of an action based on its inclusion in some plan. (shrink)

The ability to generate options for action is crucial for everyday life decision‐making. In this article, we propose and test a model of the cognitive underpinnings of option generation in everyday life situations. We carried out a laboratory study using measures of a wide range of cognitive functions and asked participants (N = 157) to generate options for actions for different everyday life decision‐making scenarios. The results of a latent variable analysis show that the cognitive underpinnings of option (...) generation are consistent across different everyday life situations and, hence, option generation can be conceptualized as a general construct. Moreover, the results of a confirmatory factor analysis reveal that, when controlling for the shared variance among the cognitive processes assessed, verbal fluency, working memory capacity, ideation fluency, and processing speed predicted option generation. These findings suggest that option generation in everyday life situations can be distinguished from other cognitive constructs, such as divergent thinking (in terms of ideas’ originality) and long‐term memory. (shrink)

Looks into evaluation of information provision probability from different sources, based on use of linguistic variables. Formation of functions appurtenant for its unclear variables provides for adoption of decisions by the decision maker, in conditions of nonprobabilistic equivocation. The development of market relations in Ukraine increases the independence and responsibility of enterprises in justifying and making management decisions that ensure their effective, competitive activities. As a result of the analysis, it is determined that the condition of economic facilities can be (...) described and determined by the decision-maker, in the presence of the necessary information. The confidence of the decision-maker in the information received is different and the decisions made have a correspondingly different level of information risk. It is important to substantiate the procedure for assessing the numerical extent of information risk in decision-making based on the information obtained in conditions of uncertainty. The use of a linguistic variable in the processing of expert data presented in the form of a matrix of binary relations of values of the membership function, which allowed to move to further processing of knowledge to support decision-making in the management of industrial, commercial, financial and other activities. As a mathematical model for estimating the numerical measure of information risk when making decisions based on the information obtained in conditions of non-stochastic uncertainty, a model has been developed to model natural language uncertainties, which differs from existing ones by formalizing knowledge taking into account uncertainty of input information. Making such a clear decision in a fuzzy environment has appropriate values of effectiveness and risk. The paper proposes all the functions and accessories of indicators of both quantitative nature and qualitative nature to bring their values in the field of definition to one scale. Then the indicator of the effectiveness of decision-making will be a measure of the clarity of the cross-section of fuzzy subsets, which correspond to the introduced indicators of information risk. The condition of economic facilities can be described and determined by the decision-maker, if the necessary information is available. Decision-making on thenumerical measure of information risk must be determined by a set of basic indicators, which can be both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Predictive values of indicators should be determined in conditions of nonstochastic uncertainty. In this case, the indicators of a quantitative nature can be determined by fuzzy triangular numbers, which implement a high level of confidence in the subjective judgments of experts. Indicators of qualitative nature should be presented in linguistic variables. The values of the indicators of qualitative nature that are predicted must be considered for all fuzzy variable terms-sets of linguistic variables introduced into consideration. For any fuzzy variable, the introduction to the consideration of a clear set of values as carriers of the α-level of its membership function allows to reduce to a single interpretation of the predicted values of indicators of quantitative and qualitative nature in terms of non-stochastic uncertainty. (shrink)

Reputation is a key component in social interactions of group-living animals and appears to play a role in the establishment of cooperation. Animals can form a reputation of an individual by directly interacting with them or by observing them interact with a third party, i.e., eavesdropping. Elephants are an interesting taxon in which to investigate eavesdropping as they are highly cooperative, large-brained, long-lived terrestrial mammals with a complex social organisation. The aim of this study was to investigate whether captive Asian (...) elephants could form reputations of humans through indirect and/or direct experience in two different paradigms: a cooperative string-pulling task and a scenario requiring begging. Fourteen captive Asian elephants in Thailand participated in an experimental procedure that consisted of three parts: baseline, observation, and testing. In the observation phase, the subject saw a conspecific interact with two people—one cooperative/generous and one non-cooperative/selfish. The observer could then choose which person to approach in the test phase. The elephants were tested in a second session 2–5 days later. We found no support for the hypothesis that elephants can form reputations of humans through indirect or direct experience, but these results may be due to challenges with experimental design rather than a lack of capacity. We discuss how the results may be due to a potential lack of ecological validity in this study and the difficulty of assessing motivation and attentiveness in elephants. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of designing future experiments that account for the elephants' use of multimodal sensory information in their decision-making. (shrink)

Human agents draw a variety of inferences effortlessly, spontaneously, and with remarkable efficiency – as though these inferences were a reflexive response of their cognitive apparatus. Furthermore, these inferences are drawn with reference to a large body of background knowledge. This remarkable human ability seems paradoxical given the complexity of reasoning reported by researchers in artificial intelligence. It also poses a challenge for cognitive science and computational neuroscience: How can a system of simple and slow neuronlike elements represent a large (...) body of systemic knowledge and perform a range of inferences with such speed? We describe a computational model that takes a step toward addressing the cognitive science challenge and resolving the artificial intelligence paradox. We show how a connectionist network can encode millions of facts and rules involving n-ary predicates and variables and perform a class of inferences in a few hundred milliseconds. Efficient reasoning requires the rapid representation and propagation of dynamic bindings. Our model (which we refer to as SHRUTI) achieves this by representing (1) dynamic bindings as the synchronous firing of appropriate nodes, (2) rules as interconnection patterns that direct the propagation of rhythmic activity, and (3) long-term facts as temporal pattern-matching subnetworks. The model is consistent with recent neurophysiological evidence that synchronous activity occurs in the brain and may play a representational role in neural information processing. The model also makes specific psychologically significant predictions about the nature of reflexive reasoning. It identifies constraints on the form of rules that may participate in such reasoning and relates the capacity of the working memory underlying reflexive reasoning to biological parameters such as the lowest frequency at which nodes can sustain synchronous oscillations and the coarseness of synchronization. (shrink)

La communication sur le projet d'informatisation dans le secteur de l'éducation, le National Education Information System montre comment la société civile en Corée du Sud a réussi à faire valoir ses revendications, bien qu'elle soit souvent exclue du processus institutionnel de décision politique. Les trois principaux acteurs , à la recherche d'un compromis, ont débattu sur la protection des données personnelles et sur l'efficacité administrative en utilisant de multiples moyens de communication.Communication on the computerization project in the education sector, the (...) National Education Information System shows how civil society in South Korea was able to enforce its claims, although it is often excluded from the process institutional policymaking. The three main actors , the search for a compromise, discussed the protection of personal data and on administrative efficiency by using multiple means of communication. (shrink)

The "two-envelopes" problem has stimulated much discussion on probabilistic reasoning, but relatively little experimentation. The problem specifies two identical envelopes, one of which contains twice as much money as the other. You are given one of the envelopes and the option of keeping it or trading for the other envelope. Variables of interest include the possible amounts of money involved, what is known about the process by which the amounts of money were assigned to the envelopes, and whether you are (...) allowed to know how much money is in the envelope in hand before deciding whether to keep or trade. In an earlier study, Butler and Nickerson found that when participants were allowed to know how much was in the envelope in hand, they generally elected to trade if that amount was small relative to the range of possibilities and to keep otherwise. The present experiments showed that this propensity was independent of the amount of money in the envelopes. Participants made decisions with a strong bias for avoiding the risk of losing by trading, particularly when the amount in hand was known and large relative to the range of possible amounts, regardless of the absolute value of the gamble. The results illustrate the dependence of thinking on the context in which it occurs, and demonstrate a tendency to treat quantities that are large or small relative to a particular context in which they are encountered as though they were large or small in a more general sense. (shrink)

This article explores the importance of register variation for analyses of grammar and discourse. The general theme is illustrated through consideration of variability in the form and use of English complement clauses. First, the patterns of use for four related grammatical constructions are considered: that-clauses and to-clauses, headed by verbs and by nouns. The differing discourse functions of each construction type are explored by considering their lexico-grammatical associations. However, it is shown that the characteristic uses of each type are conditioned (...) by register. That is, each construction type has a different distribution across spoken and written registers, with a different set of associated lexical heads. A second study provides an even more striking illustration of this interaction between grammar, discourse, and register: the contextual factors conditioning the retention vs omission of the complementizer that. In this case, it is shown that each register has an overall norm, and that contextual factors are influential only when they work in opposition to that register norm. These case studies are presented to make the general point that analyses of grammar and discourse are often inadequate and misleading when they disregard register differences. Instead, a register perspective is required to capture the range of variability associated with grammatical patterns of use. (shrink)

At 14 months, children appear to struggle to apply their fairly well-developed speech perception abilities to learning similar sounding words (e.g., bih/dih; Stager & Werker, 1997). However, variability in nonphonetic aspects of the training stimuli seems to aid word learning at this age. Extant theories of early word learning cannot account for this benefit of variability. We offer a simple explanation for this range of effects based on associative learning. Simulations suggest that if infants encode both noncontrastive information (e.g., (...) cues to speaker voice) and meaningful linguistic cues (e.g., place of articulation or voicing), then associative learning mechanisms predict these variability effects in early word learning. Crucially, this means that despite the importance of task variables in predicting performance, this body of work shows that phonological categories are still developing at this age, and that the structure of noninformative cues has critical influences on word learning abilities. (shrink)

Movement, Velocity, and Rhythm from a Psychoanalytic Perspective: Variable Speed(s) explores philosophical and psychoanalytic theories, as well as artworks, that show sensible bodily rituals for reviving our social and subjective lives. With a wide range of contributors from interdisciplinary backgrounds, it informs readers on how to find rituals for syncing ourselves with others and world rhythms. It will be essential reading for Lacanian psychoanalysts in practice and in training, as well as anyone interested in rhythm at the intersection (...) of Lacanian psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract The grammar of spatial and temporal concepts cannot, it is argued, be the same in their application to the (manifest) world as perceived and to the (nether) world of unobservable causes as modelled in physics. A parallel case is the dual meaning of colour words, for hues and for material dispositions. The keys to differentiating the two main ranges of uses of ?s? and ?t? are: differences in criteria of numerical and qualitative identity in the two ?worlds'; differences in (...) the logic of indexicals in each context; the explanatory role of powers. The differences can be illustrated in a close analysis of the concept of velocity. (shrink)

NPs with intensional relative clauses such as 'the impact of the book John needs to write' pose a significant challenge for trope theory (the theory of particularized properties), since they seem to refer to tropes that lack an actual bearer. This paper proposes a novel semantic analysis of such NPs on the basis of the notion of a variable object. The analysis avoids a range of difficulties that an alternative analysis based on the notion of an individual concept (...) would face. (shrink)

This book is a provocative and invigorating real-time exploration of the future of human evolution by two of the world’s leading interdisciplinary ecologists – Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison. Steeped in a rich multitude of the sciences and humanities, the book enshrines an elegant narrative that is highly empathetic, personal, scientifically wide-ranging and original. It focuses on the geo-positioning of the human Self and its corresponding species. The book's overarching viewpoints and poignant through-story examine and powerfully challenge concepts (...) associated historically with assertions of human superiority over all other life forms. Ultimately, The Hypothetical Species: Variables of Human Evolution is a deeply considered treatise on the ecological and psychological state of humanity and her options – both within, and outside the rubrics of evolutionary research – for survival. This important work is beautifully presented with nearly 200 diverse illustrations, and is introduced with a foreword by famed paleobiologist, Dr. Melanie DeVore. (shrink)