When do children overestimate their knowledge of unfamiliar targets?

We report four investigations in which 5 to 7 year olds judged whether or not they knew familiar- and unfamiliar-named targets. Under some conditions judgments were made in relation to performance on a relevant task, e.g., children judged whether they knew the picture they had picked from a set was the target. Under other conditions, children judged their state of knowledge not in relation to performance, e.g., they answered "Do you know who (target) is?" Under both types of condition, children nearly always made correct "know" judgments when targets were familiar. Correct "don't know" judgments about unfamiliar targets were relatively common when judgments were not made in relation to performance on a task (average scores 80-90% correct), but were less frequent when knowledge was judged in relation to performance on a task (average scores 40-70% correct). Knowledge judged in relation to performance was overestimated even when children did not choose the picture they thought might be the target before making their judgment, when the pictures were face-down, and when children predicted performance on a task not yet present. It seems that although children can make relatively accurate judgments of their own knowledge states, they tend to overestimate their competence when assessing their knowledge in relation to performance on a task. We discuss why this might be.     

When did atoms begin to do any explanatory work in chemistry?

During the 19th century atomism was a controversial issue in chemistry. It is an oversimplification to dismiss the critics' arguments as all falling under the general positivist view that what can't be seen can't be. The more interesting lines of argument either questioned whether any coherent notion of an atom had ever been formulated or questioned whether atoms were ever really given any explanatory role. At what point, and for what reasons, did atomistic hypotheses begin to explain anything in chemistry? It is argued that 19th‐century atomic accounts of constant proportions and isomerism had little to offer, whereas a non‐atomic explanation of chemical combination was developed. Not until the turn of the century did atomism begin to do serious explanatory work in chemistry.     

Is case-based reasoning a source of knowledge generalisation?

This study examines the link between case-based reasoning and knowledge generalisation. Experiment 1 showed that case-based reasoning is not in itself a source of generalisation. In this experiment, subjects were able to adapt knowledge acquired during analysis of an example in order to successfully solve a very similar problem. But immediately afterwards, they failed on a problem symmetrical to the one they had just solved. Experiments 2A and 2B showed, in this same situation, that it is possible to lead subjects to generalise simply by stating that the practice problems were similar to the examples. These findings suggest that knowledge generalisation accompanying case-based reasoning is the result of a process that must be actively implemented by the subject, and not an automatic outcome of the source-to-target transfer.     

When is schematic knowledge used in source monitoring?

Source monitoring involves judgments regarding the origin of information (M. K. Johnson, S. Hashtroudi, & D. S. Lindsay, 1993). When participants cannot remember the source in a source-monitoring task, they may guess according to their prior schematic knowledge (U. J. Bayen, G. V. Nakamura, S. E. Dupuis, & C.-L. Yang, 2000). The present study aimed at specifying conditions under which schematic knowledge is used in source monitoring. The authors examined the time course of schema-based guesses with a response-signal technique (A. V. Reed, 1973), and multinomial models that separate memory and guessing bias. Use of schematic knowledge was observed only when asymptotic old-new recognition was low. The time course of schematic-knowledge retrieval followed an exponential growth function. Implications for theories of source monitoring are discussed.     

When do children learn from unreliable speakers?

Children do not necessarily disbelieve a speaker with a history of inaccuracy; they take into account reasons for errors. Three- to five-year-olds (N = 97) aimed to identify a hidden target in collaboration with a puppet. The puppet’s history of inaccuracy arose either from false beliefs or occurred despite his being fully informed. On a subsequent test trial, children’s realistic expectation about the target was contradicted by the puppet who was fully informed. Children were more likely to revise their belief in line with the puppet’s assertion when his previous errors were due to false beliefs. Children who explained this puppet’s prior inaccuracy in terms of false belief were more likely to believe the puppet than those who did not. As children’s understanding of the mind advances, they increasingly balance the risk of learning falsehoods from unreliable speakers against that of rejecting truths from speakers who made excusable errors.     

When do infants expect hands to be connected to a person?

A violation-of-expectation paradigm was used to test whether infants infer a person based on the presence of hands alone. Infants were familiarized to a pair of hands that extended out from a curtain to play with a rattle, after which the curtain was opened to reveal either a real person or a mannequin. Infants’ looking at these outcomes was compared with baseline looking at the person and the mannequin. Experiment 1 showed that 9-month-olds looked significantly longer at the mannequin than at the person after familiarization to hands. Experiment 2 ruled out a low-level feature matching interpretation by showing the same looking pattern in 9-month-olds even when the hands were covered with silver gloves. In Experiment 3, 6-month-olds showed no differential looking at the mannequin and person after familiarization to hands. Taken together, these experiments suggest that infants acquire the expectation that hands are connected to a person between 6 and 9 months of age. This finding has implications for how infants’ attribute goals to manual actions.     

Why do schools of thought fail? Neo-Freudianism as a case study in the sociology of knowledge

A full account of the social production of knowledge requires an understanding of how schools of thought fail, as well as succeed. This paper offers a sociology of knowledge analysis of the collapse of neo-Freudianism as a separate school of psychoanalysis and influential intellectual current. While the existing literature stresses personal conflicts between Karen Horney, Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan as a major cause of the failure of cultural psychoanalysis, my analysis highlights the sect-like nature of Freudian institutes, the professionalizing dynamics of American psychoanalysis, the contribution of the celebrity-dominated book market and culture, and the highly controversial nature of Erich Fromm's writings and intellectual activity. Neo-Freudianism is conceptualized as a hybrid system that is a combination of a literary phenomena, intellectual movement, faction of a sect, theoretical innovation and therapy. This analysis of hybrid intellectual systems raises larger sociology of knowledge questions about schools of thought and intellectual movements. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

When do infants understand that they can obtain a desired part of a composite object by grasping another part?

When do infants start to understand that they can grasp an object by its handle when the interesting part is out of reach? Whereas it is known from preferential looking tasks that already at three months of age infants show surprise when all parts of an object do not move together, little is known about when infants are able to use such knowledge in an active grasp situation. To answer this question we presented six, eight, and 10 month-old infants in a cross-sectional and a longitudinal study with a white cardboard handle within reach and a bright ball at the end of the handle and out of reach. A trick condition, where the handle and the ball seem attached but were not, was added to get an indication of the infant's expectation by observing a possible surprise reaction.Results show that 6-month-olds’ most frequent first behaviors consisted in pointing toward the ball without grasping the handle, or grasping the handle without looking at the ball until it moved. In addition, they often did not look surprised in the trick condition. Eight- and 10-month-olds most often grasped the handle while looking at the ball, and showed clear surprise in the trick condition. This was interpreted as showing that around eight or 10 months, infants take a significant step in understanding the cohesiveness of composite objects during grasping.     

Direct and indirect directives: What do young children understand?

This study deals with the comprehension of direct and nonconventional indirect directives by children 3 to 6 years old. It refers to both the philosophies of language and the psychological theories that favor the social and cognitive factors of language acquisition. Twenty-four 3- and 4-year-old children and twenty-four 5- and 6-year-old children performed a story completion task presented in the form of comic strips. The variables studied were children's age. linguistic nature of the utterance (direct or nonconventional indirect directives), and strength of the production context (strong or weak context). The results were (a) in contrast to most other studies, direct directives were better understood than indirect directives: (b) the comprehension of both indirect and direct directives depended on the production context of utterance; (c) 5- and 6-year-old children performed better than 3- and 4-year-old children. The detailed results are discussed in terms of types of comprchension of directives linked to comprehension of the speaker's intention.     

Just do it? When to do what you judge you ought to do

While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting role in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that’s notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won’t lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay.     

Choice-supportive source monitoring: do our decisions seem better to us as we age?

Participants were given several 2-option choices and then asked to review how they felt about their decisions, to review the details of their decisions, or to do an unrelated task. When later asked to attribute features to the previous options, in each condition older adults (64-83 years) attributed significantly more positive and fewer negative features to their chosen options than to foregone options. Younger adults' (18-22 years) attributions were as choice-supportive as those of older adults in the affective review condition but were less so in the other conditions. The age difference was present even when older and younger adults were equated for source identification and recognition accuracy. This study suggests that as people age, their tendency to distort memory in favor of the options they chose increases. In addition, it suggests that affectively reviewing choices increases younger adults' tendency toward choice-supportive memory.     

How quickly do children forget events? A systematic study of children's event reports as a function of delay

Sixty‐six children aged between 5 and 7 years participated in the event, ‘Visiting the Pirate’, and were interviewed about it at one of five delays, namely, no delay (immediate interview), or at a 1‐week, 1‐day, 1‐month or 6‐month delay. For open‐ended recall, a significant decrease in the amount of information reported was detected only at the 6‐month delay, although forgetting functions indicated forgetting was most rapid at the shorter delays. Accuracy of open‐ended recall was maintained over all delays. In contrast, in response to specific, leading and misleading questions, accuracy had decreased significantly by the 6‐month delay. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings regarding the effects of delays on children's event reports are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Calculus as method or calculus as rules? Boole and Frege on the aims of a logical calculus

Synthese - By way of a close reading of Boole and Frege’s solutions to the same logical problem, we highlight an underappreciated aspect of Boole’s work—and of its difference with...     

When do victim group members feel a moral obligation to help suffering others?

In four experiments, we assessed when the salience of ingroup historical victimization will encourage a sense of moral obligation to reduce the suffering of others. Historically victimized groups (Jews and women; Experiments 1 and 3) who considered the lessons of the past for their ingroup felt heightened moral obligation to help other non‐adversary victimized groups. However, when the suffering outgroup was an adversary, Jews (Experiment 2) and women (Experiment 4) who focused on the lesson of historical victimization for their ingroup reported lower moral obligation to reduce others' suffering. The lesson focus effect on moral obligation was mediated by benefit finding as well as perceived similarity to the outgroup. Means to facilitate moral obligation, as well as limiting factors, among victimized group members are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why do people disagree with a statement they do not understand? Relations between comprehension and evaluation of a simple assertion

This article presents the results of a quasi-experimental study that examined the relation between the metacomprehension (i.e., understand/do not understand) and evaluative (i.e., agree/disagree) response to a simple one-sentence statement to compare the relative timing in which these two responses are generated in the course of sentence processing. In the study, participants were asked to provide metacomprehension and evaluative judgements to simple one-sentence assertions, and their response times were measured. Two of the main findings are: first, the response time for the evaluative judgement is faster than the response time for the metacomprehension judgement and, second, the faster response time of the evaluative judgement relative to the metacomprehension judgement is more pronounced either when they are not sure about whether they understand a statement or when they feel they do not understand a statement. The findings are analysed in relation to a multiple constraint satisfaction model of sentence comprehension to generate a possible processing model of a simple one-sentence assertion underlying the generation of metacomprehension and evaluative responses.     

Is there a Bayesian justification of hypothetico-deductive inference?

Many philosophers have claimed that Bayesianism can provide a simple justification for hypothetico-deductive (H-D) inference, long regarded as a cornerstone of the scientific method. Following up a remark of van Fraassen (1985), we analyze a problem for the putative Bayesian justification of H-D inference in the case where what we learn from observation is logically stronger than what our theory implies. Firstly, we demonstrate that in such cases the simple Bayesian justification does not necessarily apply. Secondly, we identify a set of sufficient conditions for the mismatch in logical strength to be justifiably ignored as a “harmless idealization”. Thirdly, we argue, based upon scientific examples, that the pattern of H-D inference of which there is a ready Bayesian justification is only rarely the pattern that one actually finds at work in science. Whatever the other virtues of Bayesianism, the idea that it yields a simple justification of a pervasive pattern of scientific inference appears to have been oversold.     

How do children climb out of cribs?

48 children between the ages of 16 and 32 mo. were observed climbing out of a crib. Each child was observed four times climbing out of the crib. All the children were able to walk independently and were less than 35 in. tall. Two different climbing patterns were identified and associated with a location of the climbing event within the crib environment. Most children (90%) climb from a crib by first moving to a corner of the crib and then start climbing from the crib. The remaining 10% of the children used a side-climbing pattern in at least one of the four observations. Crib safety standards have eliminated the most common catch-point, the cornerpost extension from cribs. Since at least 10% of the children climbed over the side of the crib rather than at the corner, any potential catch-points should be eliminated from the complete perimeter of the crib.     

Who? What? When? Using a timeline technique to facilitate recall of a complex event

Accurately recalling a complex multi-actor incident presents witnesses with a cognitively demanding retrieval task. Given the important role played by temporal context in the retrieval process, the current research tests an innovative timeline technique to elicit information about multiple perpetrators and their actions. Adopting a standard mock witness paradigm, participants were required to provide an account of a witnessed event. In Experiment 1, the timeline technique facilitated the reporting of more correct details than a free recall, immediately and at a two-week retention interval, at no cost to accuracy. Accounts provided using the timeline technique included more correct information about perpetrator specific actions and fewer sequencing errors. Experiment 2 examined which mnemonic components of the timeline technique might account for these effects. The benefits of exploiting memory organization and reducing cognitive constraints on information flow are likely to underpin the apparent timeline advantage.