Stereotype Threat in Applied Settings Re-Examined

Stricker & Ward (2004 ) examined stereotype threat with a national sample of students taking an Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus exam, and a smaller sample taking Computerized Placement Tests (CPT). They inquired about gender either before (traditional) or after the test (which can reduce stereotype threat). They reported no significant effects of question timing. We reanalyze their findings, and argue that their conservative criterion for evidence led them to overlook significant stereotype threat effects with real practical implications. Women benefited substantially on the Calculus test, and on the CPT–Reading when demographics were asked after testing rather than before. This simple, small, and inexpensive change could increase U.S. women receiving AP Calculus AB credit by more than 4,700 every year.     

Inclusion and Exclusion in Natural Language

We present a formal system for reasoning about inclusion and exclusion in natural language, following work by MacCartney and Manning. In particular, we show that an extension of the Monotonicity Calculus, augmented by six new type markings, is sufficient to derive novel inferences beyond monotonicity reasoning, and moreover gives rise to an interesting logic of its own. We prove soundness of the resulting calculus and discuss further logical and linguistic issues, including a new connection to the classes of weak, strong, and superstrong negative polarity items.     

The Paraphrase Argument Against Collective Actions

This paper is about the status of collective actions. According to one view, collective actions metaphysically reduce to individual actions because sentences about collective actions are merely a shorthand for sentences about individual actions. I reconstruct an argument for this view and show via counterexamples that it is not sound. The argument relies on a paraphrase procedure to unpack alleged shorthand sentences about collective actions into sentences about individual actions. I argue that the best paraphrase procedure that has been put forward so far fails to produce adequate results.     

Stereotype Threat,Inquiring About Test Takers' Ethnicity and Gender,and Standardized Test Performance1

Steele and Aronson (1995) found that the performance of Black research participants on ability test items portrayed as a problem‐solving task, in laboratory experiments, was affected adversely when they were asked about their ethnicity. This outcome was attributed to stereotype threat: Performance was disrupted by participants' concerns about fulfilling the negative stereotype concerning Black people's intellectual ability. The present field experiments extended that research to other ethnic groups and to males and females taking operational tests. The experiments evaluated the effects of inquiring about ethnicity and gender on the performance of students taking 2 standardized tests—the Advanced Placement Calculus AB Examination, and the Computerized Placement Tests—in actual test administrations. This inquiry did not have any effects on the test performance of Black, female, or other subgroups of students that were both statistically and practically significant.     

Walter Pitts and “A Logical Calculus”

Many years after the publication of “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity,” Warren McCulloch gave Walter Pitts credit for contributing his knowledge of modular mathematics to their joint project.

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On the Complexity of Nonassociative Lambek Calculus with Unit

Nonassociative Lambek Calculus (NL) is a syntactic calculus of types introduced by Lambek [8]. The polynomial time decidability of NL was established by de Groote and Lamarche [4]. Buszkowski [3] showed that systems of NL with finitely many assumptions are decidable in polynomial time and generate context-free languages; actually the P-TIME complexity is established for the consequence relation of NL. Adapting the method of Buszkowski [3] we prove an analogous result for Nonassociative Lambek Calculus with unit (NL1). Moreover, we show that any Lambek grammar based on NL1 (with assumptions) can be transformed into an equivalent context-free grammar in polynomial time.     

The Undecidability of Propositional Adaptive Logic

We investigate and classify the notion of final derivability of two basic inconsistency-adaptive logics. Specifically, the maximal complexity of the set of final consequences of decidable sets of premises formulated in the language of propositional logic is described. Our results show that taking the consequences of a decidable propositional theory is a complicated operation. The set of final consequences according to either the Reliability Calculus or the Minimal Abnormality Calculus of a decidable propositional premise set is in general undecidable, and can be -complete. These classifications are exact. For first order theories even finite sets of premises can generate such consequence sets in either calculus.     

That SCI has the interpolation property

Proofs of two interpolation theorems for Sentential Calculus with Identity as well as some general comments on sentential interpolation are given.     

Consequence Operations Based on Hypergraph Satisfiability

Four consequence operators based on hypergraph satisfiability are defined. Their properties are explored and interconnections are displayed. Finally their relation to the case of the Classical Propositional Calculus is shown.     

Stroke patients' well-being as a function of caregiving spouses' helpful and unhelpful actions

This study examined the perceptions that 55 older married stroke patients had about themselves and about the motivations of their caregiving spouses when they judged their spouses' actions to be helpful and when they judged them to be unhelpful. It also examined how these perceptions were related to patients' well-being (depression, positive affect, marital satisfaction). Patients had more negative perceptions of themselves and of their spouses when they judged the actions to be unhelpful than when they judged them to be helpful. The hypothesis that perceptions about unhelpful actions would be more strongly related to patients' well-being than would perceptions about helpful actions was only partially supported. Perceptions about unhelpful actions were related to patients' depression, but perceptions about helpful actions were related to positive affect. Both kinds of perceptions were related to marital satisfaction. Findings begin to explicate the complex relationship between perceived helpfulness of actions and well-being.     

Lambek Calculus with Conjugates

Studia Logica - We study an expansion of the Distributive Non-associative Lambek Calculus with conjugates of the Lambek product operator and residuals of those conjugates. The resulting logic is...     

Effects of Directed Thinking on Intentions to Engage in Beneficial Activities: Idea Generation or Mental Simulation?

How might people best persuade themselves to engage in beneficial activities, such as dieting, exercise, and studying? One strategy is to think about actions. Another strategy is to think about reasons. In previous research, students who were directed to think about actions increased their study intentions more than did students who were directed to think about reasons. The present experiment tested whether thinking about actions was effective because of idea generation (coming up with the thoughts) or because of mental simulation (imagining the scenarios). In immediate and delayed measures, directed thinking about actions (but not reasons) proved generally more effective when students focused on mental simulation than when they focused on idea generation. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.     

Teleological reasoning in infancy: the nai;ve theory of rational action

Converging evidence demonstrates that one-year-olds interpret and draw inferences about other's goal-directed actions. We contrast alternative theories about how this early competence relates to our ability to attribute mental states to others. We propose that one-year-olds apply a non-mentalistic interpretational system, the 'teleological stance' to represent actions by relating relevant aspects of reality (action, goal-state and situational constraints) through the principle of rational action, which assumes that actions function to realize goal-states by the most efficient means available. We argue that this early inferential principle is identical to the rationality principle of the mentalistic stance - a representational system that develops later to guide inferences about mental states.     

The Pentus Theorem for Lambek Calculus with Simple Nonlogical Axioms

The Lambek calculus introduced in Lambek [6] is a strengthening of the type reduction calculus of Ajdukiewicz [1]. We study Associative Lambek Calculus L in Gentzen style axiomatization enriched with a finite set Γ of nonlogical axioms, denoted by L(Γ).It is known that finite axiomatic extensions of Associative Lambek Calculus generate all recursively enumerable languages (see Buszkowski [2]). Then we confine nonlogical axioms to sequents of the form p → q, where p and q are atomic types. For calculus L(Γ) we prove interpolation lemma (modifying the Roorda proof for L [10]) and the binary reduction lemma (using the Pentus method [9] with modification from [3]). In consequence we obtain the weak equivalence of the Context-Free Grammars and grammars based on L(Γ).     

Visual working memory for observed actions

Human society depends on the ability to remember the actions of other individuals, which is information that must be stored in a temporary buffer to guide behavior after actions have been observed. To date, however, the storage capacity, contents, and architecture of working memory for observed actions are unknown. In this article, the author shows that it is possible to retain information about only 2-3 actions in visual working memory at once. However, it is also possible to retain 9 properties distributed across 3 actions almost as well as 3 properties distributed across 3 actions, showing that working memory stores integrated action representations rather than individual properties. Finally, the author shows that working memory for observed actions is independent from working memory for object and spatial information. These results provide evidence for a previously undocumented system in working memory for storing information about actions. Further, this system operates by the same storage principles as visual working memory for object information. Thus, working memory consists of a series of distinct yet computationally similar mechanisms for retaining different types of visual information.     

Representation and Reasoning about Evolutions of the World in the Context of Reasoning about Actions

The first step in reasoning about actions and change involves reasoning about how the world would evolve if a certain action is executed in a certain state. Most research on this assumes the evolution to be only a single step and focus on formulating the transition function that defines changes between states due to actions. In this paper we consider cases where the evolution is more than just a single change between one state and another. This is manifested when the execution of an action may trigger execution of other actions, or when multiple agents act on the environment following certain strategies.     

Probing folk-psychology: Do Libet-style experiments reflect folk intuitions about free action?

There is an ongoing debate in philosophy and psychology about when one should consider an action to be free. Several aspects are frequently suggested as relevant: (a) a prior intention, (b) a conscious action-related thought, (c) prior deliberation, (d) a meaningful choice, (e) different consequences of the action, and (f) the duration between intention and action. Here we investigated which criteria laypeople adopt and thus probed their intuitions about free actions in three surveys based on daily life scenarios. First, our results indicate that laypeople consider a conscious intention important for an action to be free. Second, laypeople consider spontaneous actions without consequences to be freer than actions with prior deliberation. Third, laypeople consider proximal rather than distal intentions relevant when it comes to judging actions as free. Taken together, these results suggest that simple laboratory experiments on action choices reflect laypeople’s intuitions of free actions to a considerable degree.     

Graphing calculators and students' conceptions of the derivative

This study compared the effect of using graphing calculators on college students' conceptual understanding of the derivative with the traditional teaching approach in Calculus I course. Students (49 men and 52 women) in four classes at a large public university participated. On a posttest, women who were taught calculus using the graphing calculator had significantly higher scores than those taught by the traditional method.