Stochastic processes and the guttman simplex

The problem of whether a precise connection exists between stochastic processes of the type considered in mathematical learning theory and the Guttman simplex is investigated. The approach is to consider a class of models that characterize the sequential properties of discrete data, and to derive a set of conditions which a model must satisfy in order to generate inter-trial correlationsr _ij with the ‘perfect simplex’ property:r _ik =r _ij r _jk for all trialsi<j<k. It is shown that the Chapman-Kolomogorov Equations provide a necessary and sufficient condition for this property to hold. It follows that a process which is Markovian in the errors and successes will have this property. It is also shown that, if certain reliability assumptions are introduced, then the all-or-none model has the simplex property if the appropriate correlation coefficients are corrected for attenuation. This research was supported by a grant from the United States Public Health Service, NIMH 07722.     

Laws of language use and formal logic

After a review of recent work connected with Grice's maxims of conversation, special attention is paid to the principles related to the concept of informativeness. The operation of those principles constrains logic by limiting the meaning of logical particles and, more importantly, by contradicting axioms and many theorems of the propositional calculus. It is argued that, as the development of the individual's formal operations proceeds, a conflict with laws of language use arises. The notion of a conflict between two subsystems, logical and linguistic, is used in a developmental perspective to account, in a unified manner, for the observed discrepancy between subjects' behavior in deductive and inductive reasoning tasks and predictions based on formal logic.     

Intentional communication in the chimpanzee: The development of deception

Communication about the location of a hidden incentive was studied in chimpanzee-human dyads, in which each member of a pair served alternately as “sender” and “recipient” of information. When the human cooperated with the chimpanzee in finding the goal, from the very beginning the chimpanzees were able to produce and comprehend behavioral cues which conveyed accurate locational information. When the human and chimpanzee competed for the goal, the chimpanzees learned both to withhold information or mislead the recipient, and to discount or controvert the sender's own misleading cues. The chimpanzee's ability to convey and utilize both accurate and misleading information, by taking into account the nature of the sender or recipient, provides evidence of a capacity for intentional communication in this nonhuman primate species.     

Daily and long-term consequences of support seeking in Chinese couples: Between-person differences and within-person processes

It is widely accepted that support-seeking behaviour is culture-specific, such that Asians are less likely to seek support when stressed compared with Westerners. However, mounting evidence is based on the vignette methodology or the cross-sectional survey and utilised students sample. Little is known about how such behaviour manifests in real life and incurs relational consequences. Moreover, psychological theories predict both differences in support-seeking behaviour between persons and the variability of such behaviour within persons. The current study aims to explore between-and within-person associations between support seeking and relationship satisfaction in Chinese couples. Eighty-four Chinese couples reported their daily stressors, support seeking behaviour, and relationship satisfaction every evening for 7 days and overall relationship satisfaction before the diary study and 1 year later. We found that support seeking matters in Asian couples: On days when couples sought more support, they would be more satisfied with their relationship. Notably, no negative associations between couples' own support seeking and partners' relationship satisfaction were found. This study advances our understanding of general and temporal support-seeking processes in Asian couples in the course of everyday life and over time. Results entail important theoretical and practical implications.     

National-level Indicators of Androgens are Related to the Global Distribution of Scientific Productivity and Science Nobel Prizes

There are national differences in scientific activity that are not well accounted for by economic and intellectual factors alone. We examine the novel hypothesis that androgen levels may also play a role. Androgens are often referred to as male hormones, but are present in both men and women, and have been linked to performance in other domains, such as sports and entrepreneurship. National-level empirical data on scientific productivity, in terms of numbers of publications, and science Nobel laureates were compared to seven national-level androgen indicators; namely androgenic body hair, the length of the CAG repeat on the androgen receptor gene, prostate cancer incidence, male and female 2D:4D finger ratio, and sex frequency and number of partners. The majority of these indicators were associated in the expected direction with per capita number of scientific publications and Nobel prizes. Moreover, several indicators significantly interacted with national-level estimates of intelligence, such that androgen levels are related to measures of the scientific achievement only when the level of intelligence is relatively high. These findings may partly explain the global distribution of scientific productivity, achievements, and Nobel prizes.     

A timing-specific memory distortion effect in young children

It has been suggested that there are systematic distortions in children's memory for temporal durations, such that children's memory is not just less accurate than that of adults but qualitatively different. Experiment 1 replicated the memory distortion effect by demonstrating developmental change in the tendency to confuse a reference duration with one that is shorter rather than longer than it. When the long-term memory demands of the task were reduced by providing reminders of the reference duration on every trial, there were no such qualitative changes in error patterns (Experiment 2). Further evidence for developmental changes in memory distortion was found in the temporal generalization task of Experiment 3, in which stimuli were spaced logarithmically rather than linearly. In Experiment 4, a similar distortion pattern was absent in a task in which children made judgments about the pitch rather than the duration of stimuli, suggesting the effect may be specific to time estimation.     

Reasoning with conditionals

This paper reviews the psychological investigation of reasoning with conditionals, putting an emphasis on recent work. In the first part, a few methodological remarks are presented. In the second part, the main theories of deductive reasoning (mental rules, mental models, and the probabilistic approach) are considered in turn; their content is summarised and the semantics they assume for if and the way they explain formal conditional reasoning are discussed, in particular in the light of experimental work on the probability of conditionals. The last part presents the recent shift of interest towards the study of conditional reasoning in context, that is, with large knowledge bases and uncertain premises.