The Future of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

I examine the value and limitations of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In the interests of developing a social epistemology of science, I argue that we should draw on Kuhn’s later work, published in The Road since Structure. There, Kuhn draws attention to the important role that specialty formation plays in resolving crises in science, a topic he did not discuss in Structure. I argue that we need to develop a better understanding of specialty research communities. Kuhn’s later work provides a research agenda for those who want to study scientific specialization. I briefly discuss some recent studies that promise to provide valuable insight into the social structure of science.     

Reliability of Ratings of Children’s Expressive Reading

This study examined ratings of fourth graders’ oral reading expression. Randomly assigned participants (n = 36) practiced repeated readings using narrative or informational passages for 7 weeks. After this period raters used the Multidimensional Fluency Scale (MFS) on two separate occasions to rate students’ expressive reading of four equivalent passages. Results of this generalizability study showed that a minimum of two and preferably three equivalent passages, two raters, and one rating occasion are recommended to obtain reliable ratings. This research substantiates the reliability of the MFS and demonstrates the importance of raters collaborating and finding texts at students’ independent reading levels.     

Lashing Out after Stewing over Public Insults: The Effects of Public Provocation,Provocation Intensity,and Rumination on Triggered Displaced Aggression

Four studies present the first evidence showing that public (vs. private) provocation augments triggered displaced aggression by increasing the perceived intensity of the provocation. This effect is shown to be independent of face‐saving motivation. Following a public or private provocation, Study 1 participants were induced to ruminate or were distracted for 20 min. They then had an opportunity to aggress against another person who either acted in a neutral or mildly annoying fashion (viz. triggering event). As expected, the magnitude of the greater displaced aggression of those who ruminated before the triggering event compared with those distracted was greater under public than private provocation. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and confirmed that public provocations are experienced as more intense. Studies 3 and 4 both manipulated provocation intensity directly to show that it mediated the moderating effect of public/private provocation found in Study 1. The greater intensity of a public provocation increases reactivity to a subsequent trigger, which in turn, augments triggered displaced aggression. Aggr. Behav. 39:13‐29, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Infants’ ability to extract three-dimensional shape from coherent motion

Our capacity to perceive three-dimensional (3D) object structure from two-dimensional (2D) retinal input is fundamental to object perception. The present research examined infants’ ability to extract 3D form from structure-from-motion (SFM) displays using a familiarization/visual-paired-comparison paradigm. In SFM displays dots are projected onto the surfaces of a shape that rotates around a 3D axis and it is the coherent structure of the dots’ motion that gives rise to the percept of shape. Infants mean age 4.5 and 9 months were familiarized to a SFM display (e.g., cylinder); in test they were presented the familiar SFM display paired with a novel SFM display (e.g., cube). Infants in both age groups displayed a significant preference for the novel SFM test display. These results are consistent with those obtained previously using habituation paradigms and provide converging evidence for infants’ early emerging capacity to use coherent motion – in the absence of figural information – as a cue to depth structure. In addition, these results demonstrate that infants’ ability to extract 3D shape from coherent motion can be successfully assessed with a neuroimaging-friendly protocol, which was one of the goals of this study.     

Proportionality,Contrast and Explanation

If counterfactual dependence is sufficient for causation and if omissions can be causes, then all events have many more causes than common sense tends to recognize. This problem is standardly addressed by appeal to pragmatics. However, Carolina Sartorio [2010] has recently raised what I shall argue is a more interesting problem concerning omissions for counterfactual theories of causation—more interesting because it demands a more subtle pragmatic solution. I discuss the relationship between the idea that causes are proportional to their effects, the idea that causation is contrastive, and the question of the dimensions along which causal explanations should be evaluated with respect to one another.     

Object individuation and event mapping: developmental changes in infants’ use of featural information

The present research examined the development of 4.5‐ to 7.5‐month‐old infants’ ability to map different‐features occlusion events using a simplified event‐mapping task. In this task, infants saw a different‐features (i.e. egg‐column) event followed by a display containing either one object or two objects. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed infants’ ability to judge whether the egg‐column event was consistent with a subsequent one‐column display. Experiments 3 and 4 examined infants’ ability to judge whether the objects seen in the egg‐column event and those seen in a subsequent display were consistent in their featural composition. At 7.5 and 5.5 months, but not at 4.5 months, the infants successfully mapped the egg‐column event onto the one‐column display. However, the 7.5‐ and 5.5‐month‐olds differed in whether they mapped the featural properties of those objects. Whereas the 7.5‐month‐olds responded as if they expected to see two specific objects, an egg and a column, in the final display the 5.5‐month‐olds responded as if they simply expected to see ‘two objects’. Additional results revealed, however, that when spatiotemporal information specified the presence of two objects, 5.5‐month‐olds succeeded at tagging the objects as being featurally distinct, although they still failed to attach more specific information about what those differences were. Reasons for why the younger infants had difficulty integrating featural information into their object representations were discussed.