The effects of an interactive cognitive task (ICT) in suppressing fatigue symptoms in driving

BackgroundProlonged drive on inter-urban, monotonous roads has the potential of causing a decrease in the general level of arousal leading to a state of underload and fatigue. This study examines the effectiveness of an interactive cognitive task (ICT) in delaying fatigue symptoms induced by underload conditions. The ICT is an auditory-motor task which is based on the basic principles of a knowledge game known as “Trivia”.MethodTen participants took part in two experimental sessions of 140 min drive in a fixed-base simulator. In a within-subject counterbalanced design one session consisted of driving without ICT and the other included ICT operation. In the ICT session the game was activated after 60 min of driving.ResultsWhen activated, the ICT increased physiological indicators of arousal, increased subjective feelings of alertness, and improved driving performance. The physiological and driving performance measures revealed that the ICT activation had an immediate but localized influence on arousal. Post-drive questionnaires showed that in the ICT condition, the participants’ level of motivation increased and their feelings of sleepiness decreased.ConclusionsEngaging in cognitive tasks can counteract the effects of underload and increases driving safety as long as they are active. However, additional research is necessary to determine the effects of long term use.     

Bootstrapping in a language of thought: a formal model of numerical concept learning

In acquiring number words, children exhibit a qualitative leap in which they transition from understanding a few number words, to possessing a rich system of interrelated numerical concepts. We present a computational framework for understanding this inductive leap as the consequence of statistical inference over a sufficiently powerful representational system. We provide an implemented model that is powerful enough to learn number word meanings and other related conceptual systems from naturalistic data. The model shows that bootstrapping can be made computationally and philosophically well-founded as a theory of number learning. Our approach demonstrates how learners may combine core cognitive operations to build sophisticated representations during the course of development, and how this process explains observed developmental patterns in number word learning.     

Perspective taking in children's narratives about jealousy

This study explored relationships between perspective‐taking, emotion understanding, and children's narrative abilities. Younger (23 5‐/6‐year‐olds) and older (24 7‐/8‐year‐olds) children generated fictional narratives, using a wordless picture book, about a frog experiencing jealousy. Children's emotion understanding was assessed through a standardized test of emotion comprehension and their ability to convey the jealousy theme of the story. Perspective‐taking ability was assessed with respect to children's use of narrative evaluation (i.e., narrative coherence, mental state language, supplementary evaluative speech, use of subjective language, and placement of emotion expression). Older children scored higher than younger children on emotion comprehension and on understanding the story's complex emotional theme, including the ability to identify a rival. They were more advanced in perspective‐taking abilities, and selectively used emotion expressions to highlight story episodes. Subjective perspective taking and narrative coherence were predictive of children's elaboration of the jealousy theme. Use of supplementary evaluative speech, in turn, was predictive of both subjective perspective taking and narrative coherence.     

Hasidic Thought and the Holocaust (1933–1947): Optimism and Activism

Polish hasidic thought during the Holocaust exhibited optimism about the outcome. This was tied in part to the power of the inner point of faith (nekudah penimit) to impact upon the dialectical movement from darkness to light, on both the historical (sin-punishment) and metahistorical (exile-redemption) levels. Exponents of this view included the Admorim (rebbes, hasidic leaders) of Alexander, Bobov, and Gur, and Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (Warsaw). Immediately after the war, other Admorim from these streams continued with their optimism and faith-activism, even though they viewed the Holocaust through the lens of its non-redemptive aftermath. There was also a pessimistic and passive strain, shared by representatives of the Kotsk, Sokhachev, and Sokolov dynasties, in apparent response to the failure of inner faith to affect the catastrophic historical reality.     

Bayes and blickets: effects of knowledge on causal induction in children and adults

People are adept at inferring novel causal relations, even from only a few observations. Prior knowledge about the probability of encountering causal relations of various types and the nature of the mechanisms relating causes and effects plays a crucial role in these inferences. We test a formal account of how this knowledge can be used and acquired, based on analyzing causal induction as Bayesian inference. Five studies explored the predictions of this account with adults and 4-year-olds, using tasks in which participants learned about the causal properties of a set of objects. The studies varied the two factors that our Bayesian approach predicted should be relevant to causal induction: the prior probability with which causal relations exist, and the assumption of a deterministic or a probabilistic relation between cause and effect. Adults' judgments (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) were in close correspondence with the quantitative predictions of the model, and children's judgments (Experiments 3 and 5) agreed qualitatively with this account.