In the Begining Science said…

From DNA to Dean: Reflections and Explorations of a Priest-scientist , Arthur Peacocke
God and the Web of Creation , Ruth Page     

What is Testimony?

C.A.J. Coady, in his book Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), offers conditions on an assertion that p to count as testimony. He claims that the assertion that p must be by a competent speaker directed to an audience in need of evidence and it must be evidence that p . I offer examples to show that Coady's conditions are too strong. Testimony need not be evidence; the speaker need not be competent; and, the statement need not be relevant or directed to someone in need of evidence. I give alternative conditions. Coady was led into the stronger conditions by investigating testimony as it occurs in legal contexts, where special steps are taken to ensure that testimony provides the jury or the judge with evidence by a competent speaker that is relevant to the disputed question of the guilt or innocence of the defendant.     

Temporal Grouping Effects in Immediate Recall: A Working Memory Analysis

The presence of temporal pauses during list presentation can markedly improve immediate memory for a sequence of verbal items. A series of experiments analysed this effect using Baddeley's (1986) model of working memory. Experiment 1 showed that the effect of temporal grouping on memory for visual sequences was removed by either articulatory suppression or reciting random digits. Experiment 2 indicated that effects of temporal grouping were insensitive to the word length of the items. Experiment 3 showed that articulatory suppression did not remove the temporal grouping effect for auditory lists. Experiment 4 showed that the temporal grouping effect was insensitive to the phonemic similarity of the items. The effects of concurrent articulation suggest that grouping influences the phonological loop component of working memory. However, the working memory model is insufficiently well specified to account for the insensitivity of grouping effects to word length and phonemic similarity. The main findings could be simulated by a connectionist model of the phonological loop, which invokes a context timing signal (Burgess & Hitch, 1992, in press), This assumed that pauses during list presentation affect the timing signal in a similar way to the pause before list presentation and made some novel predictions.     

A self-adjustment procedure for measuring the visual acuity of rhesus monkeys

A visual acuity testing procedure is described which uses a self-adjustment procedure combined with shock avoidance and punishment. The S adjusts the size of the gap opening in Landolt rings by pressing levers. Correct trials decrease the size of the gap opening and are followed by a tone; incorrect trials increase the size of the gap opening and are followed by shock. The number of correct and incorrect trials needed to change the gap-opening size can be varied.     

A central limit theorem for families of stochastic processes indexed by a small average step size parameter,and some applications to learning models

Let > 0 be a measure of the average step size of a stochastic process {p _n ⁽⁾ } _n=1 ⁽⁾. Conditions are given under whichp _n ⁽⁾ is approximately normally distributed whenn is large and is small. This result is applied to a number of learning models where is a learning rate parameter andp _n ⁽⁾ is the probability that the subject makes a certain response on thenth experimental trial. Both linear and stimulus sampling models are considered.     

Sex roles and fertility in college women

A study was conducted to examine the relationship of sex-role acceptance to actual and desired fertility. Two samples of women (105 undergraduates and 40 members of a women's organization) were administered the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and a questionnaire which assessed the women's behavioral acceptance of traditional female sex roles. The behavioral measures were sex-typed college major for the undergraduates and employment status for the women's organization sample. In addition, vocational interests were measured and related to fertility for the women's organization sample. Multiple regression analyses indicated that behavioral measures of sex-role acceptance accounted for more variance in predicting desired and actual fertility than did the Bem Sex-Role Inventory.     

Social change and intergroup preferences in New Zealand

Twelve hundred Maori and Pakeha (White, European) children in New Zealand ranging from five to twelve years of age, have been tested for intergroup preferences in a series of studies. These investigations spanned the years 1961–1970, and were conducted in four different regions, Previous analysis of these results had concentrated on the ontogeny of ethnic awareness and attitude development, and has not succeeded in relating distinct regional differences to population characteristics such as density or contact rate. The present study re-examines available data, following Tajfe's recent theoretical developments relating social identity to the process of social change, Two judges independently rated the four New Zealand regions in question in terms of perceived status relationships between Maori and Pakeha, ranging from relatively static to relatively fluid. Both resorted to two major variables in the judging: rural versus urban, and year of study. Inter-judge agreement for ratings was total across the four regions. The resulting dimension was conceived as one which could reflect a restructuring of intergroup choices as a consequence of social change. It was found that Maori children have shown a clear shift away from out-group preference as a function of urbanism and of time. While the rural context may have offered a form of security via a more ‘classical’ Maori identity, the collapse of this system in an urban context reveals Maori/Pakeha social inequity for what it is, particularly in the eyes of older children. This trend has been accelerated in the seventies by a knowledge of minority group assertions elsewhere, particularly in the United States. There is some evidence of a shift in Pakeha behaviour too. Blatant in-group preference has diminished as a facet of social change, though Pakehas could retrench if a militant pattern appeared in Maori behaviour.     

Presentation mode and organizational strategies in young children

Davies and Brown (1978) have reported that significant facilitation to recall and mnemonic organization may be obtained in children as young as four years through the provision of blocked presentation and constrained recall. This result contrasts with a number of previous studies which have failed to find such effects in young children. Two experiments are reported which examine the hypothesis that the positive findings were due to the use of objects rather than the planometric stimuli traditionally employed in such tasks. Experiment 1 replicated the Davies and Brown study in all respects save that line drawings were substituted for objects. The effects of constraint at recall were maintained but the influence of blocked presentation was eliminated. Experiment 2 was also a replication, but this time using photographs of the objects as stimuli. The effects of constrained recall were maintained, though on this occasion blocking also influenced performance but only on the second trial. The results are discussed in terms of the influence of context on the range and effectiveness of retrieval processes exhibited by young children in memory tasks.