Spontaneous focusing on numerosity as a domain-specific predictor of arithmetical skills

The aim of this 2 year longitudinal study was to explore whether children’s individual differences in spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) in kindergarten predict arithmetical and reading skills 2 years later in school. Moreover, we investigated whether the positive relationship between SFON and mathematical skills is explained by children’s individual differences in spontaneous focusing on a non-numerical aspect. The participants were 139 Finnish-speaking children. The results show that SFON tendency in kindergarten is a significant domain-specific predictor of arithmetical skills, but not reading skills, assessed at the end of Grade 2. In addition, the relationship between SFON and number sequence skills in kindergarten is not explained by children’s individual differences in their focusing on a non-numerical aspect that is, spatial locations.     

Spontaneous Focusing on Quantitative Relations in the Development of Children's Fraction Knowledge

While preschool-aged children display some skills with quantitative relations, later learning of related fraction concepts is difficult for many students. We present two studies that investigate young children's tendency of Spontaneous Focusing On quantitative Relations (SFOR), which may help explain individual differences in the development of fraction knowledge. In the first study, a cross-sectional sample of 84 kindergarteners to third graders completed tasks measuring their spontaneous recognition and use of quantitative relations and then completed the tasks again with explicit guidance to focus on quantitative relations. Findings suggest that SFOR is a measure of the spontaneous focusing of attention on quantitative relations and the use of these relations in reasoning. In the second (longitudinal) study, 25 first graders completed measures of SFOR tendency and a measure of fraction knowledge three years later. SFOR tendency was found to predict fraction knowledge, suggesting that it plays a role in the development of fraction knowledge.     

Sequence effects in hedonic judgments of taste stimuli

Sequential dependencies in taste research may be different from those obtained in other modalities, due to the long interstimulus intervals and the intermediate rinses. In two experiments, subjects judged the pleasantness of 50 aqueous solutions on 150-mm line scales. During data analyses pseudo-sequence effects arose, because data were aggregated over individuals and because the first trials of the experimental sessions deviated from the rest. After correcting for the pseudo-sequence effects, robust regression analyses revealed small but significant sequential dependencies. The current response deviation was positively related to previous response deviations and negatively related to previous subjective, internal representations.     

Need-adapted treatment of schizophrenic processes: The essential role of family-centered therapy meetings

Need-adapted treatment is a psychotherapeutically oriented approach to psychoses that has been planned and is implemented individually in each case, combining different activities so that they meet the needs of each patient as well as the people making up her or his personal interactional network (usually the family). A systemic initial intervention, carried out as a conjoint session of the patient, the family members, and a team of 3–4 staff members is an essential part of this approach. The name therapy meeting was given to these sessions because of their notable therapeutic significance. Therapy meetings are often continued during the later phases of treatment to follow up the course of treatment and to reassess the therapeutic plans.     

Incredible Worlds, Credible Results

Robert Sugden argues that robustness analysis cannot play an epistemic role in grounding model-world relationships because the procedure is only a matter of comparing models with each other. We posit that this argument is based on a view of models as being surrogate systems in too literal a sense. In contrast, the epistemic importance of robustness analysis is easy to explicate if modelling is viewed as extended cognition, as inference from assumptions to conclusions. Robustness analysis is about assessing the reliability of our extended inferences, and when our confidence in these inferences changes, so does our confidence in the results. Furthermore, we argue that Sugden’s inductive account relies tacitly on robustness considerations.

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