From Site Unseen to Experiential Learning: Religious Studies in the “Discover Chicago” Model

This paper examines David Kolb’s theory of experiential learning and its usefulness in developing religious studies courses in a ‘Discover Chicago’ program, wherein students spend an intensive ‘immersion’ week before the start of the autumn quarter touring, researching, interviewing, discussing, and analyzing a variety of phenomena in the Chicago metropolitan area. Then, during the quarter, they critically revisit issues raised by the immersion week, probing more deeply and letting their initial impressions take on more mature reflective forms by engaging in extensive reading and systematically relating text with experience. Finally, research projects are developed, being outgrowths of the activities of the summer week and the readings and discussions from the first part of the quarter.     

Intentional versus unintentional use of contingencies between perceptual events

In three experiments we studied human ability to use statistical contingencies between visual stimuli (flankers and targets) to improve performance in a letter-digit classification task. We compared the performance of explicitly informed subjects with that of subjects who were told nothing of the contingencies. Simultaneous presentation of flankers and targets (Experiment 1) produced evidence of unintentional contingency use by both informed and uninformed subjects. When stimuli on trialn predicted target stimuli on trialn+1 (Experiment 2) there was no evidence of unintentional processes, but informed subjects showed strong evidence of using intentional prediction strategies. When flanker onset preceded target stimuli presentation (Experiment 3), evidence of contingency use by both informed and uninformed subjects was found, but the data illustrated qualitative differences in response style (e.g., speed-accuracy tradeoffs) between the two groups. Intentional and unintentional uses of contingencies between perceptual events are qualitatively distinct with respect to the time frame in which they can be applied and the performance patterns they produce. Finally, we argue that the unintentional processes studied here are implicit in nature.     

Reaction time, intelligence, and attention

The roles of attention in reaction time and in the relationships among reaction time, intelligence, and achievement were analyzed. The subjects were 105 seventh-grade children. The results were generally consistent with most studies involving the Hick paradigm: both mean reaction time and the standard deviation of reaction time correlated with the intelligence and achievement measures used. Reaction time measures were correlated with attention and perceptual speed as well as with general intelligence, or g. Implications of these results for current theories linking reaction time and intelligence are discussed.     

Reversal and nonreversal shifts in autistic children

Reversal and nonreversal shifts in nineteen 2- to 14-year-old autistic children were studied. Each child was taught both a reversal and nonreversal shift discrimination task. The reversal shift condition entailed teaching the child to respond to one (the S+) of a pair of stimuli during training and subsequently reversing the S+ during testing. The nonreversal shift condition consisted of teaching the child two unrelated discriminations during training and testing. The results indicated that the older autistic children did better on reversal shifts than younger children who did better on nonreversal shifts. These findings are consistent with those for normal children.     

Modes of information integration and Piagetian measures of concrete operational thought

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationships between modes of information integration and performance on a variety of Piagetian concrete operational tasks. The sample consisted of 180 6- to 8-year-olds. Factor analysis of the Piaget tests revealed five interpretable factors: conversation of substance—equality, conservation of substance— inequality, conservation of number, class inclusion, and matrices. Factor analysis of the marker tests for information integration revealed two factors: simultaneous and successive. All the Piaget measures, with the exception of class inclusion, were related to the simultaneous factor. Class inclusion was weakly related to the successive factor.     

EYEMOVEMENT AND PERCEPTUAL ADAPTATION TO CURVATURE

It is proposed that perceptual adaptation is basically an immediate localized consequence of stimulation but can become generalized through a process of conditioning by temporal contiguity. Experimental conditions were designed to assess the aftereffect of adaptation to curvature under various combinations of eye position and eye movement activity for adapting vs. test periods. In general, the results support the hypothesis that perceptual adaptation to a visual stimulus can be associated with the nonvisual factors present at the time the adaptation occurs.     

Effects of medetomidine, an alpha-2 adrenoceptor agonist, and atipamezole, an alpha-2 antagonist, on spatial memory performance in adult and aged rats.

The effects of a novel, highly selective alpha-2 agonist, medetomidine, and its antagonist, atipamezole, were studied on the working memory of rats performing a spatial delayed alternation task. Testing was performed in two stages, at the age of 8.3 months (mean) and again when the rats were 17.6 months (mean). A low dose (3 micrograms/kg) and a high dose (30 micrograms/kg) of medetomidine improved the performance of the old rats in the memory task but had no effect on the young rats. The dose-response curve of medetomidine resembles that of guanfacine, another alpha-2 agonist. At the low dose of medetomidine (3 micrograms/kg) the animals showed no signs of sedation. Since medetomidine even at a low dose has a beneficial effect on the memory performance of old rats, it could be a good candidate for the treatment of age-associated memory dysfunction.     

Achieving incremental semantic interpretation through contextual representation.

While much work has been done investigating the role of context in the incremental processing of syntactic indeterminacies, relatively little is known about online semantic interpretation. The experiments in this article made use of the eye-tracking paradigm with spoken language and visual contexts in order to examine how, and when listeners make use of contextually-defined contrast in interpreting simple prenominal adjectives. Experiment 1 focused on intersective adjectives. Experiment 1A provided further evidence that intersective adjectives are processed incrementally. Experiment 1B compared response times to follow instructions such as 'Pick up the blue comb' under conditions where there were two blue objects (e.g. a blue pen and a blue comb), but only one of these objects had a contrasting member in the display. Responses were faster to objects with a contrasting member, establishing that the listeners initially assume a contrastive interpretation for intersective adjectives. Experiments 2 and 3 focused on vague scalar adjectives examining the time course with which listeners establish contrast for scalar adjectives such as tall using information provided by the head noun (e.g. glass) and information provided by the visual context. Use of head-based information was examined by manipulating the typicality of the target object (e.g. whether it was a good or poor example of a tall glass. Use of context-dependent contrast was examined by either having only a single glass in the display (the no contrast condition) or a contrasting object (e.g. a smaller glass). The pattern of results indicated that listeners interpreted the scalar adjective incrementally taking into account context-specific contrast prior to encountering the head. Moreover, the presence of a contrasting object, sharply reduced, and in some conditions completely eliminated, typicality effects. The results suggest a language processing system in which semantic interpretation, as well as syntactic processing, is conducted incrementally, with early integration of contextual information.     

Logic for dialogue games

The purpose of this paper is to work toward an explicit logic and semantics for a game theoretically inspired theory of action. The purpose of the logic is to explicate the conceptual machinery implicit in the dialogue-game model of rational discourse developed in Carlson (1983).A variety of ideas and techniques of modal and philosophical logic are used to define a model structure that generalizes the game theoretical notion of a game in extensive form (von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944). Relative to this model structure, semantic characterizations are given to the action-theoretic notions oftime, possibility, belief, preference, ability, intention, action, andrationality. The unification of these characterizations under the game-theoretical paradigm leads to insights about the logical interdependences between these concepts.The resulting theory of rational interaction is applied to the explication of rational dialogue. The main benefit of the enterprise for a theory of rational dialogue is that concepts and results of game theory become accessible to the explication of dialogue. In particular, the task of proving the logical coherence of a discourse is reduced to the task of showing the rationality of strategy choices made in an associated dialogue game.