In the last decade, reading research has seen a paradigmatic shift. A new wave of computational models of orthographic processing that offer various forms of noisy position or context-sensitive coding have revolutionized the field of visual word recognition. The influx of such models stems mainly from consistent findings, coming mostly from European languages, regarding an apparent insensitivity of skilled readers to letter order. Underlying the current revolution is the theoretical assumption that the insensitivity of readers to letter order reflects (...) the special way in which the human brain encodes the position of letters in printed words. The present article discusses the theoretical shortcomings and misconceptions of this approach to visual word recognition. A systematic review of data obtained from a variety of languages demonstrates that letter-order insensitivity is neither a general property of the cognitive system nor a property of the brain in encoding letters. Rather, it is a variant and idiosyncratic characteristic of some languages, mostly European, reflecting a strategy of optimizing encoding resources, given the specific structure of words. Since the main goal of reading research is to develop theories that describe the fundamental and invariant phenomena of reading across orthographies, an alternative approach to model visual word recognition is offered. The dimensions of a possible universal model of reading, which outlines the common cognitive operations involved in orthographic processing in all writing systems, are discussed. (shrink)

I argue, contra Frost, that when prime lexicality and target density are considered, it is not clear that there are fundamental differences between form priming effects in Semitic and European languages. Furthermore, identifying and naming printed words in these languages raises common theoretical problems. Solving these problems and developing a universal model of reading necessitates the orthographic input code.

(I) MATHEMATICAL LECTURES. LECTURE I. Of the Name and general Division of the Mathematical Sciences. BEING about to treat upon the Mathematical Sciences, ...

Since the mid-1800s, clergy, doctors, other clinicians, and military personnel who specifically facilitate their work have been designated “non-combatants”, protected from being targeted in return for providing care on the basis of clinical need alone. While permitted to use weapons to protect themselves and their patients, they may not attempt to gain military advantage over an adversary. The rationale for these regulations is based on sound arguments aimed both at reducing human suffering, but also the ultimate advantage of the nation-state (...) fielding non-combatant staff. However, this is sometimes not immediately apparent to combatant colleagues. Clinicians in the armed force are also military officers, owing a “dual loyalty” that can create conflict if their non-combatant status is not well understood. Historical examples of doctors breaching their responsibilities include prioritisation of combat capability over the rights of individual soldiers (as occurred when scarce medical resources were allocated to soldiers more likely to return to battle in preference to those most likely to die without them), use of physicians to facilitate prisoner interrogation, medical research or treatment to enhance physical performance at the expense of health, application of Medical Rules of Eligibility according to factors other than clinical need, provision of treatment contingent upon support for military objectives, and use of medical knowledge to enhance weapons. However, not being a combatant party to a conflict does not imply that the non-combatant clinician cannot act in the national interest. Indeed, by adhering to the same universal ethics as their civilian colleagues, military clinicians provide optimal care to their own troops, facilitate freedom of action in host nations, and build positive international relationships during the conflict and in the post-conflict state. (shrink)

Iain McGilchrist, The master and his emissary: the divided brain and the making of the Western world (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010) Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 119-124 DOI 10.1007/s11097-011-9235-x Authors Rupert Read, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK Journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Online ISSN 1572-8676 Print ISSN 1568-7759 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 1.

ABSTRACT: In its strongest unqualified form, the principle of wholistic reference is that in any given discourse, each proposition refers to the whole universe of that discourse, regardless of how limited the referents of its non-logical or content terms. According to this principle every proposition of number theory, even an equation such as "5 + 7 = 12", refers not only to the individual numbers that it happens to mention but to the whole universe of numbers. This principle, its history, (...) and its relevance to some of Oswaldo Chateaubriand's work are discussed in my 2004 paper "The Principle of Wholistic Reference" in Essays on Chateaubriand's "Logical Forms". In Chateaubriand's réplica (reply), which is printed with my paper, he raised several important additional issues including the three I focus on in this tréplica (reply to his reply): truth-values, universes of discourse, and formal ontology. This paper is self-contained: it is not necessary to have read the above-mentioned works. The principle of wholistic reference (PWR) was first put forth by George Boole in 1847 when he espoused a monistic fixed-universe viewpoint similar to the one Frege and Russell espoused throughout their careers. Later, Boole elaborated PWR in 1854 from the pluralistic multiple-universes perspective. (shrink)

Reading development is integral to a universal model of reading. Developmental research can tell us which factors drive reading acquisition and which are the product of reading. Like adult research, developmental research needs to be contextualised within the language and writing system and it needs to include key cross-linguistic evaluations. This will create a universal model of reading development.

Frost has given us good reason to question the universality of existing computational models of reading. Yet, he has not provided arguments showing that all languages share fundamental and invariant reading universals. His goal of outlining the blueprint principles for a universal model of reading is premature. Further, it is questionable whether natural evolution can provide the optimal solutions that Frost invokes.

Liz JacksonEducation University of Hong KongGiven how important textbooks continue to be in education, how textbooks are read for learning and research remains poorly understood. As Michael Apple n...

The goal of forming a science of intentional behavior requires a more richly detailed account of symbolic systems than is assumed by the authors. Cultural systems are not simply the equivalent in the ideational domain of culture of the purported Baldwin Effect in the genetic domain. © 2014 Cambridge University Press.

The evolution from pre-human primates to modern Homo sapiens is a complex one involving many domains, ranging from the material to the social to the cognitive, both at the individual and the community levels. This article focuses on a critical qualitative transition that took place during this evolution involving both the social and the cognitive domains. For the social domain, the transition is from the face-to-face forms of social interaction and organization that characterize the non-human primates that reached, with Pan, (...) a hiatus due to the centripetal effects that highly individualized behavior has on a social system. The transition is to the relation-based forms of social organization that evolved in the hominins ancestral to Homo sapiens and are universal in human societies today. For the cognitive domain, this transition involves going from behavior responding mainly to phenomenal level sensory inputs to behavior formed in accordance with the concept of a relation, initially abstracted from behavior patterns, then extending the concept of a relation beyond abstraction from behavior patterns to the concept of a relation generated recursively through constructing the relation of a relation. This extension made possible the construction of systems of relations; initially genealogical systems of relations constructed culturally using the logic of recursion, and subsequently, the symbolic, computational systems of kin term relations referred to by anthropologists as kinship terminologies. The latter are “constructed realities” in the sense this term is used by cultural anthropologists. It follows that the evolution of relation-based systems of social interaction is not adequately accounted for through population model evolutionary accounts such as the Dual Inheritance Theory of human evolution since “constructed realities” constitute collectively and publicly shared cultural knowledge rather than the individually and privately possessed knowledge that is assumed in the population model framework for human evolution. (shrink)

The Aristotelian commentaries by Petrus de Rivo, still unedited, represent a valuable instrument for our understanding of the major trends in the teaching of Aristotle at the fifteenth-century Faculty of Arts at Louvain. We published a preliminary survey of the manuscript material in last year’s issue of this journal, together with an account of the status quaestionis concerning Peter’s biography, works and the historical context of his thought. In the present article, we consider more closely a selection of his commentaries (...) on logic and natural philosophy. First, we offer an overview of Peter’s division of the sciences as expressed in his tractatus prohemiales, particularly those introducing his commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Physics. Next, we considers Peter’s explanation of De interpretatione chapter 9, and his exposition of specific parts of Aristotle’s Physics and De anima. (shrink)

This paper outlines the experience of four universities that collaborated on a pre-arrival shared reading project, the Big Read, in 2018/2019. They did so primarily to promote student engagement and retention and also to ease the transition into higher education, particularly for first-generation students, to promote staff connectedness, and to provide a USP for their institution. The paper covers all the associated processes, from isolating the respective aims of the collaborators to the choosing and sharing of a single agreed (...) title. In analysing the outcomes, recommendations are made for future cross-institutional projects of this kind. (shrink)

The principles for universal reading models proposed by Frost correspond to developmental theories, in which neurocognitive constraints and cultural experiences shape development. We question his contention that Hebrew word identification is fundamentally about roots, excluding verbal and nominal word-pattern morphemes; and we propose that readers use all information available in stimuli, adjusting for volume and usefulness.

Disney represents a mythology that is universal because they are rapidly acquiring every possible alternate reality that one cares to enter, except for the sexual realm and the Christian religion realm. When Disney owns all possible significant alternate universes, then only Disney can colonize one's imagination, and only Disney will give him/her the lens through which to perceive any competing claim on understanding his/her ultimate Reality. Well, visual containment helps the psyche stay in the mode and the mood for the (...) various psychic propaganda programs being run, and allows one to enjoy and prolong the fantasy, as well as empty his/her wallet of all possible contents since the only way to experience more Disney is to hand them exactly all of his/her cash. Thus, in short order, Disney has successfully colonized an awful lot of the global imagination, from young to old, male to female, from history to fantasy, and now from right to left. (shrink)

Stephen Read - Johannes Buridanus: Summulae de Practica Sophismatum - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 157-158 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Stephen Read University of St. Andrews Fabienne Pironet, editor. Johannes Buridanus: Summulae de Practica Sophismatum. Artistarium 10–9. Turnhout: Brepols 2004. Pp. xlix + 193. Paper, €40.00. John Buridan was an unusual figure in fourteenth-century logic and philosophy. Logic was at that time largely the preserve of the (...) young, who would lecture on logic while studying in higher faculties such as theology, before moving on to lecture in their maturity on philosophy and theology. Two notable exceptions are the Englishman Walter Burley and the Frenchman from Picardy, John Buridan. Already active in the Arts Faculty at Paris in the late 1320s, Buridan was still there thirty years later. In the meantime, among other works on metaphysics, ethics, politics, and natural philosophy, he.. (shrink)

Special relativity has been understood by many as vindicating a tenseless conception of time, denying the existence of tensed facts and a fortiori objective temporal passage. The reason for this is straightforward: both passage and the obtaining of tensed facts require a universal knife-edge present moment—yet this structure is not easily reconcilable with the relativity of simultaneity. The above being said, the prospects for tense and passage are sometimes claimed to be improved on moving to cosmological solutions of general relativity. (...) In this paper, we evaluate in detail these arguments, finding that there remain several open questions to be addressed if the introduction of tensed facts into the relativistic context is to be compelling. Moreover, we argue that, even setting aside these issues, objective tense stands and falls in relativity for exactly the same reasons that it does in classical philosophical discussions on the matter. (shrink)

A universal property of visual word identification is position-invariant letter identification, such that the letter is coded in the same way in CAT and ACT. This should provide a fundamental constraint on theories of word identification, and, indeed, it inspired some of the theories that Frost has criticized. I show how the spatial coding scheme of Colin Davis can, in principle, account for contrasting transposed letter priming effects, and at the same time, position-invariant letter identification.

The main aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion about the universality of well-being by juxtaposing the theoretical and empirical arguments of the two extreme theoretical positions regarding the possibility of a universal notion of well-being. The article first explains that the question about the possibility of a universal notion of well-being is ultimately a matter of the nature of well-being. While researchers who opt for the universalist position are convinced that their empirical data show that the (...) differences in the nature of well-being are minor enough that a universal notion is possible, the proponents of the culturalist position believe that their research uncovers more dramatic differences in the nature of well-being. Therefore, they reject a universal notion of well-being. By reading one position against the other on theoretical and empirical levels, the article illuminates and assesses the limitations, problems and possible dangers of both and considers which position regarding the possibility of a universal notion of well-being seems more convincing . The article concludes that currently the culturalist position seems more reasonable, as long as it remains open to a possible discovery of a more universal structure in the nature of well-being promised by the emerging field of neuroscience of happiness. (shrink)

The properties of a specific orthography dictate the way people read it. We bring considerations from dyslexia to suggest that the claim can be extended further. First, the effect of orthographic neighborhood density can be extended beyond letter-position encoding and beyond the orthographic lexicon. Second, Hebrew and Arabic differ with respect to letter forms, and hence, in letter-position encoding.

The search for a universal theory of reading is misguided. Instead, theories should articulate general principles of neural computation that interact with language-specific learning environments to explain the full diversity of observed reading-related phenomena across the world's languages.

Why focus on reading? Reading is one important human activity that is threatened by the knowledge economy in education. In this perspective, good reading tends to be fast reading. The objective for teachers is then to test pupils' reading skills according to how fast they read. In opposition to this, we think that good reading is a slow activity. A good text asks for a reading and a re-reading, again and again, because (...) reading gives rise to thinking. Thus, you can interpret our writing as a political act. We want to participate in education in a way that opposes the force of a knowledge economy. The aim of this article is to argue why prospective teachers have to train their capability [Ricoeur (2005. The Course of Recognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) refers to four basic capabilities. He distinguishes between: the capability to speak, the capability to act, the capability to tell, and a fourth capability called imputation. Reading in this respect is subordinate to these basic capabilities] to read and, based on this, why we insist on this being a matter of necessity in order to develop reading as a reflexive activity, through what we have called ?slow reading? (this expression is meant to oppose the instrumentalization of reading toward a skill characterized as fast extractions of information, for instance, as measured in various tests). This represents one part of the argument that we are going to elaborate. The other part of the argument is related more specifically to the place of reading in the training of teachers, more precisely asking where this ?place? is. This has led us to ask the following question: Where are teachers' understandings challenged in teacher training? As our argument is laid out, we say that the place of reading is where teachers' understandings are challenged. This entails that this ?place,? this somewhere, is not a permanent ?dwelling?; it is rather something which has to be created (repeatedly) in a dynamic relationship between reader (teacher) and text. (shrink)

We suggest that the linguistic characteristics of letters also need to be considered to fully understand how a reader processes printed words. For example, studies in Korean showed that unambiguity in the assignment of letters to their appropriate onset, vowel, or coda slot is one of the main sources of the letter-transposition effect. Indeed, the cognitive system that processes Korean is tuned to the structure of the Korean writing system.

This is a review of Rene van Woudenberg's __The Epistemology of Reading and Interpretation__ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. v + 244. Price $99.99.) -/- .

The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices. By Konrad Hirschler. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. vi + 234. £65, $105.

There are universals of language; but is it also true, as the target article claims, that there are universals of reading? We believe there are no such universals, and invite others to refute our claim by providing a list of some universals of reading. If there are no universals of reading, there cannot be a universal model of reading.

_To develop reading skills of students, teachers have been advised to provide metacognitive reading strategy instruction by researchers. However, previous research has provided limited understanding of how teachers could foster metacognition of reading strategies in a ‘real’ classroom setting. Moreover, previous research pre-supposed an a priori list of teaching practices in the lessons and did not take into account the needs of the students and the context during metacognitive reading strategy instruction. Studies facilitating metacognitive reading (...) strategy instruction in an ESL setting are also rare. This paper reports on an action research that provides a detailed data-led understanding of how metacognition of reading strategies could be promoted in an ecologically valid university level ESL classroom setting. The study participants of this study were eight undergraduate university students. Data for the study was collected through learner diaries, interviews, think aloud protocols, note-taking, researcher journal and end of class feedback in two action research cycles over an academic year. The findings revealed that providing explicit instruction and opportunities for collaborative discussion about strategy use as well as promoting students’ interest in reading helped raise students’ awareness, use and regulation of reading strategies. Implications of the study are discussed. _. (shrink)

This book is primarily a study of what we can learn about Didymus the Blind from a careful analysis of the Tura Papyri. The story of these Papyri, their origin, their being hidden,...

After joining the staff of the Burgholzli Mental Hospital in 1900, Jung developed and applied the word-association tests for studying normal and abnormal psychology. The studies have remained a significant phase in the development of Jung's conceptions and an important contribution to diagnostic psychology and psychiatry. Between 1904 and 1907 he published nine studies on the tests. These studies, together with two lectures on the association method given in 1909 at Clark University and three articles on psychophysical researches from (...) American and English journals in 1907-1908, compose this volume. Jung's association studies showed the definite influence of Bleuler and also of Freud, with whom he worked closely for several years. With this volume, the Collected Works are complete except for the Miscellany, Bibliography and Index volumes. (shrink)

© Cambridge University Press 2016.Richerson et al. propose cultural group selection as the basis for understanding the evolution of cultural systems. Their proposal does not take into account the nature of cultural idea systems as being constituted at an organizational rather than an individual level. The sealing partners of the Netsilik Inuit exemplify the problem with their account.