Psychologie et culture: vers une solution du “Babel”?

The current scientific debate on the relationship between psychological development and culture has been given different labels. These labels not only indicate divergent methodological approaches and heterogeneous research interests, but also represent distinct national scientific traditions. The authors suggest making a distinction between three main perspectives, namely “Cross-Cultural Psychology”, “Cultural Psychology” and “Psychologie Interculturelle”; a specific German approach called “Kulturpsychologie” is also briefly touched upon. These perspectives are described as distinct types of conceptual approaches and research strategies on the relationship between psychology and culture.     

CECoS: A case experience combination system for knowledge acquisition for expert systems

This paper presents a new knowledge-acquisition system—the Case Experience Combination System (CECoS). With CECoS, two information or knowledge sources are jointly analyzed. Previously recorded problem solutions (individual cases) are combined with an expert’s high-level understanding of the global structure of a task domain. By combining the detailed case information with an expert’s general insights, CECoS provides the domain knowledge with which skeletal plans can be automatically constructed.     

A comparison of stimulus set size on tact training for children with autism spectrum disorder

Previous studies on skill acquisition have taught targets in stimulus sets composed of different numbers of stimuli. Although the rationale for selection of a stimulus set size is not clear, the number of target stimuli trained within a set is a treatment decision for which there is limited empirical support. The current investigation compared the efficiency of tact training in 4 stimulus set sizes, each of which included 12 stimuli grouped into (a) 4 sets of 3 stimuli, (b) 3 sets of 4 stimuli, (c) 2 sets of 6 stimuli, and (d) 1 set of 12 stimuli. Results of all 4 participants with autism spectrum disorder show tact training with larger (i.e., 6 and 12) stimulus set sizes was more efficient than training with smaller (i.e., 3 and 4) stimulus set sizes.     

Analysis of haptic perception of materials by multidimensional scaling and physical measurements of roughness and compressibility

In this paper, results of a free sorting task of 124 different material samples are analysed using multidimensional scaling. The relevant number of dimensions for haptic perception of materials is estimated to be 4. In addition, the haptic material space is calibrated by means of physical measurements of compressibility and roughness. The relation between objective and perceived compressibility and that between objective and perceived roughness could be described by an exponential function.     

Is Klein an infinitist about doxastic justification?

This paper is a response to Peter Klein's “Human Knowledge and the Infinite Progress of Reasoning” (also in this issue of this journal). After briefly discussing what Klein says about the requirement, for doxastic justification, that a belief be formed in the right way, I'll make the following three points: Klein's solution to the regress problem isn't an infinitist solution, Klein's position on doxastic justification faces a troubling dilemma, and Klein's objection to foundationalism fails.     

Right-sided human prefrontal brain activation during acquisition of conditioned fear

This H2(15)O positron emission tomography (PET) study reports on relative regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) alterations during fear conditioning in humans. In the PET scanner, subjects viewed a TV screen with either visual white noise or snake videotapes displayed alone, then with electric shocks, followed by final presentations of white noise and snakes. Autonomic nervous system responses confirmed fear conditioning only to snakes. To reveal neural activation during acquisition, while equating sensory stimulation, scans during snakes with shocks and white noise alone were contrasted against white noise with shocks and snakes alone. During acquisition, rCBF increased in the right medial frontal gyrus, supporting a role for the prefrontal cortex in fear conditioning to unmasked evolutionary fear-relevant stimuli.     

Development of infants' segmentation of words from native speech: a meta‐analytic approach

Infants start learning words, the building blocks of language, at least by 6 months. To do so, they must be able to extract the phonological form of words from running speech. A rich literature has investigated this process, termed word segmentation. We addressed the fundamental question of how infants of different ages segment words from their native language using a meta‐analytic approach. Based on previous popular theoretical and experimental work, we expected infants to display familiarity preferences early on, with a switch to novelty preferences as infants become more proficient at processing and segmenting native speech. We also considered the possibility that this switch may occur at different points in time as a function of infants' native language and took into account the impact of various task‐ and stimulus‐related factors that might affect difficulty. The combined results from 168 experiments reporting on data gathered from 3774 infants revealed a persistent familiarity preference across all ages. There was no significant effect of additional factors, including native language and experiment design. Further analyses revealed no sign of selective data collection or reporting. We conclude that models of infant information processing that are frequently cited in this domain may not, in fact, apply in the case of segmenting words from native speech.     

The Flushtration Count Illusion: Attribute substitution tricks our interpretation of a simple visual event sequence

When faced with a difficult question, people sometimes work out an answer to a related, easier question without realizing that a substitution has taken place (e.g., Kahneman, 2011, Thinking, fast and slow. New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux). In two experiments, we investigated whether this attribute substitution effect can also affect the interpretation of a simple visual event sequence. We used a magic trick called the ‘Flushtration Count Illusion’, which involves a technique used by magicians to give the illusion of having seen multiple cards with identical backs, when in fact only the back of one card (the bottom card) is repeatedly shown. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that most participants are susceptible to the illusion, even if they have the visual and analytical reasoning capacity to correctly process the sequence. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that participants construct a biased and simplified representation of the Flushtration Count by substituting some attributes of the event sequence. We discussed of the psychological processes underlying this attribute substitution effect.