Group Peer Disagreement

A popular view in mainstream social epistemology maintains that, in the face of a revealed peer disagreement over p, neither party should remain just as confident vis‐a‐vis p as she initially was. This ‘conciliatory’ insight has been defended with regard to individual epistemic peers. However, to the extent that (non‐summativist) groups are candidates for group knowledge and beliefs, we should expect groups (no less than individuals) to be in the market for disagreements. The aim here will be to carve out and explore an extension of the conciliatory insight from individual peer disagreement to group peer disagreement; in doing so, I'll raise and address three key problems that face any plausible defence of such a constraint.     

Test of visuospatial construction: Validity evidence in extremely low birth weight and late preterm children at early school age

The Test of Visuospatial Construction (TVSC), a measure of visuoconstruction that does not rely on upper extremity motor response or written production, was administered to extremely low birth weight (ELBW), late preterm (LPT), and term participants at preschool (n = 355) and kindergarten (n = 265) ages. TVSC showed statistically significant weak-to-moderate positive correlations (age 3: r = .118–.303; age 6: r = .138–.348) with Developmental VMI, Differential Ability Scales-II Copying, Matrices, and Pattern Construction subtests, Baron-Hopkins Board Test, and the Purdue Pegboard. One-way ANOVA indicated ELBW performed worse than Term (p = .044) on visuospatial construction at age 3 with a small-to-medium effect size (d = ?0.43). No other statistically significant differences were found at age 3 on the TVSC (ELBW/LPT: p = .608, d = ?0.17; LPT/Term: p = .116, d = ?0.31). At age 6, ELBW participants performed worse than LPT participants (p = .027) and Term participants (p = .012); LPT participants did not differ from Term participants. Small effect sizes at age 3 (ELBW < LPT, d = ?0.17; ELBW < Term, d = ?0.43) were notably larger at age 6 (ELBW < LPT, d = ?0.42; ELBW < Term, d = ?0.53). Important practical differences showing LPT participants performed below Term participants (d = ?0.31) at age 3 were no longer evident at age 6 (d = ?0.097). These findings provide preliminary evidence of TVSC validity supporting its use to detect neuropsychological impairment and to recommend appropriate interventions in young preterm children.     

The bilingual brain turns a blind eye to negative statements in the second language

Neurobilingualism research has failed to reveal significant language differences in the processing of affective content. However, the evidence to date derives mostly from studies in which affective stimuli are presented out of context, which is unnatural and fails to capture the complexity of everyday sentence-based communication. Here we investigated semantic integration of affectively salient stimuli in sentential context in the first- and second-language (L2) of late fluent Polish–English bilinguals living in the UK. The 19 participants indicated whether Polish and English sentences ending with a semantically and affectively congruent or incongruent adjective of controlled affective valence made sense while undergoing behavioral and electrophysiological recordings. We focused on the N400, a wave of event-related potentials known to index semantic integration. We expected N400 amplitude to index increased processing demands in L2 English comprehension and potential language–valence interactions to reveal differences in affective processing between languages. Contrary to our initial expectation, we found increased N400 for sentences in L1 Polish, possibly driven by greater affective salience of sentences in the native language. Critically, language interacted with affective valence, such that N400 amplitudes were reduced for English sentences ending in a negative fashion as compared to all other conditions. We interpreted this as a sign that bilinguals suppress L2 content embedded in naturalistic L2 sentences when it has negative valence, thus extending the findings of previous research on single words in clinical and linguistic research.