Adults’ number-line estimation strategies: Evidence from eye movements

Although the development of number-line estimation ability is well documented, little is known of the processes underlying successful estimators’ mappings of numerical information onto spatial representations during these tasks. We tracked adults’ eye movements during a number-line estimation task to investigate the processes underlying number-to-space translation, with three main results. First, eye movements were strongly related to the target number’s location, and early processing measures directly predicted later estimation performance. Second, fixations and estimates were influenced by the size of the first number presented, indicating that adults calibrate their estimates online. Third, adults’ number-line estimates demonstrated patterns of error consistent with the predictions of psychophysical models of proportion estimation, and eye movement data predicted the specific error patterns we observed. These results support proportion-based accounts of number-line estimation and suggest that adults’ translation of numerical information into spatial representations is a rapid, online process.     

A computer-generated face database with ratings on realism, masculinity, race, and stereotypy

Ratings of realism, masculinity, race, and racial stereotypy were collected on a set of computer-generated faces representing European, South East Asian, and African American ethnicities. To determine if these faces are processed in the same way as photographs of real faces, we demonstrated with these faces superior memory performance for upright faces over inverted faces (the face inversion effect). Further, in observers of European decent, we found both superior memory for European faces and a larger inversion effect for European than African American faces. Based on these results, we believe that this set of faces may be of use in perceptual investigations in which race is a critical manipulation.     

Young children's haptic exploratory procedures

Adults vary their haptic exploratory behavior reliably with variation both in the sensory input and in the task goals. Little is known about the development of these connections between perceptual goals and exploratory behaviors. A total of 36 children ages 3, 4, and 5 years and 20 adults completed a haptic intramodal match-to-sample task. Participants were instructed to feel the shape, texture, rigidity, or weight of a sample object and then were asked to find which of three test objects matched the sample on that specific property. Hand movements were examined to determine whether children produced the same exploratory procedures while gathering perceptual information about each property as adults who searched for the same kind of information. Children demonstrated that they had good haptic abilities in two ways: They matched the sample objects on the specified perceptual dimension at near ceiling levels, and they produced the same hand movement patterns to find the same properties as adults.     

Phenomenology and Theology: Situating Heidegger’s Philosophy of Religion

This essay considers the philosophical and theological significance of the phenomenological analysis of Christian faith offered by the early Heidegger. It shows, first, that Heidegger poses a radical and controversial challenge to philosophers by calling them to do without God in an unfettered pursuit of the question of being (through his ‘destruction of onto-theology’); and, second, that this exclusion nonetheless leaves room for a form of philosophical reflection upon the nature of faith and discourse concerning God, namely for a philosophy of religion in a phenomenological mode (as exemplified most clearly in Heidegger’s 1920/21 lectures on the phenomenology of religious life). However, it is argued that the theological roots of Heidegger’s own phenomenological analyses subvert his frequently asserted claim concerning the incompatibility of Christian faith and philosophical inquiry.     

On Habermas’s Critique of Husserl

Over four decades, Habermas has put to paper many critical remarks on Husserl’s work as occasion has demanded. These scattered critical engagements nonetheless do add up to a coherent (if contestable) position regarding the project of transcendental phenomenology. This essay provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the arguments Habermas makes and offers a critical assessment of them. With an eye in particular to the theme of intersubjectivity (a theme of fundamental interest to both thinkers), it is argued that Habermas’s arguments do indeed show up deficiencies in Husserlian phenomenology and yet that they do not succeed in proving that we must abandon the methods and tasks of phenomenological research. On the contrary, it is argued that phenomenological methods may well be needed in order to investigate certain philosophical questions that Habermas’s theory of communication has thus far only partially addressed.