Recollection is a continuous process: Evidence from plurality memory receiver operating characteristics

Is recollection a continuous/graded process or a threshold/all-or-none process? Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis can answer this question as the continuous model and the threshold model predict curved and linear recollection ROCs, respectively. As memory for plurality, an item's previous singular or plural form, is assumed to rely on recollection, the nature of recollection can be investigated by evaluating plurality memory ROCs. The present study consisted of four experiments. During encoding, words (singular or plural) or objects (single/singular or duplicate/plural) were presented. During retrieval, old items with the same plurality or different plurality were presented. For each item, participants made a confidence rating ranging from “very sure old”, which was correct for same plurality items, to “very sure new”, which was correct for different plurality items. Each plurality memory ROC was the proportion of same versus different plurality items classified as “old” (i.e., hits versus false alarms). Chi-squared analysis revealed that all of the plurality memory ROCs were adequately fit by the continuous unequal variance model, whereas none of the ROCs were adequately fit by the two-high threshold model. These plurality memory ROC results indicate recollection is a continuous process, which complements previous source memory and associative memory ROC findings.     

Is two a plural marker in early child language?

Is two ever a plural marker in child language? By some accounts, children bootstrap the distinction between the words one and two by observing their use with singular-plural marking (one ball/two balls). Others argue that the numeral two marks plurality before children begin using numerals to denote precise quantities. We tested the relation between numerals and singular-plural marking in English-speaking 2- and 3-year-olds by asking them to label sets of objects. When children were not prompted to use numerals they hardly ever did so, although they did frequently use plural marking. Thus, it does not appear that children spontaneously use numerals like two as plural markers. Also, children who used numerals when labeling sets were significantly more likely to use a plural marker than children who did not use numerals, suggesting that most children view plural marking as obligatory when numerals are used, rather than viewing the 2 forms as alternative markers of plurality. Finally, two was no more likely than other numerals to be used with unmarked nouns (i.e., as an alternative to the plural), suggesting that it does not have a special status as a plural marker. We conclude that two is not a plural marker in early child language.     

Meaning matters in children's plural productions

The English plural is about the number of individuals in a set of like kinds. Two-year-old children use the plural but do not do so in all obligatory contexts. The present report asks whether the limitations on their production of the plural are related to aspects of meaning. In two Experiments plural productions were elicited from 2-year-old children for sets of size two and four and for instances of basic-level categories that were either similar or identical. Children were much more likely to produce the plural of these well-known nouns when there were four rather than two and when the instances were identical rather than merely similar. The results provide new evidence on children's acquisition of the English plural, showing that children's early productions are not just limited by knowledge of the noun and its plural form but also is limited by properties of the labeled sets in ways that are relevant to the underlying meaning of the plural.     

Over-Determined Harms and Harmless Pluralities

A popular strategy for meeting over-determination and pre-emption challenges to the comparative counterfactual conception of harm is Derek Parfit’s suggestion, more recently defended by Neil Feit, that a plurality of events harms A if and only if that plurality is the smallest plurality of events such that, if none of them had occurred, A would have been better off. This analysis of ‘harm’ rests on a simple but natural mistake about the relevant counterfactual comparison. Pluralities fulfilling these conditions make no difference to the worse for anyone in the over-determination cases that prompted the need for revising the comparative conception of harm to begin with. We may choose to call them harmful anyway, but then we must abandon the idea that making a difference to the worse for someone is essential to harming. I argue that we should hold on to the difference-making criterion and give up the plural harm principle. I offer an explanation of why Parfit’s and Feit’s plural harm approach seems attractive. Finally, I argue that the consequences of giving up the plural harm principle and holding on to the simple comparative counterfactual analysis of harm are less radical than we may think, in relation to questions about wrongness and responsibility.     

The subject of “We intend”

This paper examines and compares the ways in which intentions of the singular kind (“I intend”) and the plural kind (“we intend”) are subjective. Are intentions of the plural kind ours in the same way intentions of the singular kind are mine? Starting with the singular case, it is argued that “I intend” is subjective in virtue of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is special in that it is self-identifying, self-validating, self-committing, and self-authorizing. Moving to the plural form, it is argued that in spite of apparent differences, attitudes of the form “we intend” are subjective in the same way. The self-knowledge at work here is plural rather than singular. This supports a plural subject account of collective intentionality. It is argued that the worries sometimes raised in the literature against the metaphysical “spookiness” of plural subjects are due to a fundamental misconception of the way in which attitudes of either kind –singular and plural – are subjective.     

“They” as a gender-unspecified singular pronoun: Eye tracking reveals a processing cost

The plural pronouns they and them are used to refer to individuals with unknown gender and when a random allocation of gender is undesirable. Despite this apparently felicitous usage, “singular they/them” should raise processing problems under the theory that pronouns seek gender- and number-matched antecedents. Using eye-tracking, we investigated whether there was any processing cost associated with using singular they/them. There was a clear cost of number incompatibility for they/them. Thus, although singular they/them is in current usage, it does not appear that they/them is immediately tolerant of a plural antecedent, though such may be rapidly accommodated. The data are consistent with the search account of pronoun resolution and preserve the semantics of they/them as denoting plurality.     

Sets and Plural Comprehension

The state of affairs of some things falling under a predicate is supposedly a single entity that collects these things as its constituents. But whether we think of a state of affairs as a fact, a proposition or a possibility, problems will arise if we adopt a plural logic. For plural logic says that any plurality include themselves, so whenever there are some things, the state of affairs of their plural self-inclusion should be a single thing that collects them all. This leads to paradoxes analogous to those that afflict naïve set theory. Here I suggest that they are the very same paradoxes, because sets can be reduced to states of affairs. However, to obtain a consistent theoretical reduction we must restrict the usual axiom scheme of Comprehension for plural logic to ‘stratified’ formulas, to avoid viciously circular definitions. I prove that with this modification to the background plural logic, the theory of states of affairs is consistent; moreover, it yields the axioms of the familiar set theory NFU.     

Regulation of memory accuracy with multiple answers: the plurality option

We report two experiments that investigated the regulation of memory accuracy with a new regulatory mechanism: the plurality option. This mechanism is closely related to the grain-size option but involves control over the number of alternatives contained in an answer rather than the quantitative boundaries of a single answer. Participants were presented with a slideshow depicting a robbery (Experiment 1) or a murder (Experiment 2), and their memory was tested with five-alternative multiple-choice questions. For each question, participants were asked to generate two answers: a single answer consisting of one alternative and a plural answer consisting of the single answer and two other alternatives. Each answer was rated for confidence (Experiment 1) or for the likelihood of being correct (Experiment 2), and one of the answers was selected for reporting. Results showed that participants used the plurality option to regulate accuracy, selecting single answers when their accuracy and confidence were high, but opting for plural answers when they were low. Although accuracy was higher for selected plural than for selected single answers, the opposite pattern was evident for confidence or likelihood ratings. This dissociation between confidence and accuracy for selected answers was the result of marked overconfidence in single answers coupled with underconfidence in plural answers. We hypothesize that these results can be attributed to overly dichotomous metacognitive beliefs about personal knowledge states that cause subjective confidence to be extreme.     

Dominance of configural properties in visual form perception

Perceptual relations between configural and component properties were examined in three experiments. The pattern of performance in discrimination and classification tasks with a set of four lines that varied in curvature (Experiment 1) was compared with the pattern of performance in these tasks with sets of configuration defined on spatial relations among these lines. The configurations in the latter sets varied in their component properties (“curvature”) as well as in their configural properties (“closure” in Experiment 2 and “parallelism” in Experiment 3). The results indicated that discrimination and classification performance with the configurations was dominated by their configural properties, regardless of the discriminability of their component properties. The implications of these results for the role of configural properties in form perception are discussed.     

Plural self-awareness

It has been claimed in the literature that collective intentionality and group attitudes presuppose some “sense of ‘us’” among the participants (other labels sometimes used are “sense of community,” “communal awareness,” “shared point of view,” or “we-perspective”). While this seems plausible enough on an intuitive level, little attention has been paid so far to the question of what the nature and role of this mysterious “sense of ‘us’” might be. This paper states (and argues for) the following five claims: (1) it is neither the case that the sense in question has the community (or “us”) in its content or as its object nor does the attitude in question presuppose a preexistent community (or “us”) as its subject. (2) The “sense of ‘us’” is plural pre-reflective self-awareness. (3) Plural pre-reflective self-awareness plays the same role in the constitution of a common mind that singular pre-reflective self-awareness plays in the individual mind. (4) The most important conceptions of plural subjects, collective persons, or group agents in the current literature fail to recognize the nature and role of plural self-awareness, and therefore fall short in important respects. (5) In spite of the striking similarities between the plural and the singular mind, there are important differences to consider. The authority of the singular first person point of view has no equivalent in the plural case.     

Improving the Accuracy of Eyewitnesses in the Presence of Misinformation with the Plurality Option

Misinformation has negative effects in the accuracy of eyewitnesses' reports. We investigated whether those negative effects could be reduced when participants are allowed to decide how many answers to include in their answers, that is, to regulate the plurality option. Participants watched a slideshow and received misinformation through a narrative. In the recognition memory test, participants had to select, out of five alternatives, one (single) and then three alternatives (plural answer) and to indicate which one they preferred to report if they were in a courtroom. Perceived likelihood ratings were also collected. Results showed that the regulation of the plurality option increased accuracy even in the presence of misinformation and highlighted the importance of the perceived likelihood ratings in the decision to select a single or plural answer. In general, the results suggest that better testimonies could be obtained if witnesses are given some control over their answers. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are Metaphors Elliptical Similes?

What is the relation between metaphors and similes? Aristotle's “comparison theory” holds that metaphors are elliptical similes: “Sam is a pig” is simply a short form of “Sam is like a pig.” In contrast, it has been suggested that metaphors cannot be elliptical similes because metaphors are “stronger” than similes. We know metaphors are stronger, it is argued, because of examples involving corrections, such as “Peter is not just like a rock, he is a rock.” The argument from corrections can be challenged on logical and empirical grounds. The ability to correct a simile with a metaphor does not entail that metaphors are stronger than similes when used on their own, which is likely to be the most frequent case. Although four experiments indicate that when corrections are involved, metaphors are indeed stronger than similes in several respects, alas a further four experiments indicate that these differences are largely eliminated when metaphors and similes are used on their own. We note that this pattern of results is consistent with the comparison theory, and we offer an explanation of the effects of corrections.     

Tolerance of free-riding: The effects of defection size,defection pattern,and social orientation in a repeated public goods dilemma

Tolerance of free riding is defined as “the extent to which group members are willing to continue cooperation after observing other members’ defection behavior in a social dilemma.” We hypothesized that defection size (number of other members who defect), defection pattern (how other members’ defection choices are repeated), and social orientation (individual preference for different distributions of resources for self and/or others) would influence members’ level of tolerance in a repeated public goods dilemma. One hundred and ten business students participated in a computerized laboratory experiment in which four conditions were created: the same one (or two) members defect over all trials—a fixed pattern, or a different one (or two) members defect on different trials—a diffused pattern. Results show that the effects of social orientation and defection size were initially significant but diminished over trials. In contrast, the effects of defection pattern became increasingly significant over trials. Specifically, we found that members’ tolerance level was significantly higher in conditions where a diffused rather than a fixed pattern of defection was observed. A “perceived impact” hypothesis was proposed to explain these results.     

Health Beliefs and Practices in an Isolated Polygamist Community of Southern Utah

Short Creek is a largely closed and isolated community on the border between Utah and Arizona, made up of the sister towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Beginning from childhood, the 6,000 or so members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) are brought up in a lifestyle of plural marriage, meaning a marriage among one man and more than one woman, and are surrounded by their peers in “the covenant.” A lifestyle of plural marriage is likely to affect the health of community members, but its effects have not been studied because of the community’s isolation and distrust of outsiders. This paper addresses several questions that arise in contemplating the health of the Short Creek community: What are the health beliefs in this community, and what are their historical bases? Where do families seek medical care, and for what or at what threshold of illness or injury? What is the attitude of care providers serving this community, and how are the providers viewed by the community? More broadly, this paper examines the ways in which polygamy configures health. In order to meet this objective, this paper aims first to provide a brief account of this community’s history and demographic profile, followed by a discussion of health care in this community and how it is affected by the practice of plural marriage, with the data comprised of qualitative interviews with health care providers to the community. The goals of this project are to gain a rich, historically nuanced understanding of the health of community members, and to identify directions for further academic and policy research. Our findings indicate that health in this community is shaped by limited resources, an attitude of health fatalism, and a profound insularity and corresponding isolation from the outside world.     

Reaction times for a same-different discrimination of vowel-consonant syllables

Reaction times (RTs) were measured for decisions in a same-different discrimination of successive vowel-consonant nonsense syllables. Averaged data showed that “same” RTs were faster than “different” RTs and that the “different” RT decreased as the number of features (Wickelgren, 1966) by which a pair contrasted increased. For individual phonemic comparisons, two of the dependent variables, P(S I d), or probability of responding “same” to a different trial and the mean correct “different” RT, were related in that the RT increased as P(S I d) increased. The size of the difference between “same” and “different” RTs for a given phonemic contrast was directly related to P(S | d). The difficulty of a comparison, as described by P(S I d) and by the difference between correct “same” and “different” RTs, was explained through a markedness classification of phonemes.     

THE LANGUAGE OF RIGHTS AND CONCEPTUAL HISTORY

The historical problem about the origins of the language of rights derives its importance from the conceptual problem: of “two fundamentally different ways of thinking about justice,” which is basic? Is justice unitary or plural? This in turn opens up a problem about the moral status of human nature. A narrative of the origins of “rights” is an account of how and when a plural concept of justice comes to the fore, and will be based on the occurrence of definite speech‐forms—the occurrence of the plural noun in the sense of “legal properties.” The history of this development is currently held to begin with the twelfth‐century canonists. Later significant thresholds may be found in the fourteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth centuries. Wolterstorff's attempt to find the implicit recognition of rights in the Scriptures depends very heavily on what he takes to be implied rather than on what is stated, and at best can establish a pre‐history of rights‐language.     

Pitch as a phonemic cue

Three experiments that were designed to determine how pitch information is represented in auditory memory are reported. A same-different reaction time was used in all three experiments. Previous experiments have interpreted the finding of faster “same” responses to acoustically identical pairs than to pairs that are phonemically identical but acoustically distinct as indicating that there is a memory that preserves auditory information. It has been assumed that this can be used to match “same” pairs only if the formant frequencies of the members of the pair are the same. In the first experiment, the size of this matching advantage for pairs with identical formant frequencies was not altered when the members of the pair were on different pitches. This indicates that pitch is represented separately from the formants at the auditory level. The second and third experiments used a bigger pitch difference when the pairs were on a different pitch, which, for one of the stimulus sets, resulted in a change in vowel quality but not in the identity of the consonant. In the other stimulus set, both phonemes of the syllable remained the same when presented on different pitches. The matching advantage was reduced when the stimuli were on different pitches for both stimulus sets. This indicates that a difference in pitch can prevent matching at the auditory level under some circumstances. An additional finding, a reduced residual matching advantage when the syllable changes, indicates that at least a syllable-length representation is held in auditory memory. The results are discussed with respect to how the representation in auditory memory might be used in the perception of speech produced by different speakers.