The development of spatial category representations from 4 to 7 years

Representation of spatial categories was assessed in 4‐ to 7‐year‐olds. Across nine spatial categories (In, On, Under, In Front, Behind, Above, Below, Left, and Right), children were asked to pick the odd‐one‐out from four images, three of which displayed the same spatial relationship between two objects, and one which showed a different spatial relationship. Results support our proposed model of spatial category representation. Children progressed through three levels of understanding: from rigid (level 1), to abstract (level 2) to broad (including non‐prototypical category exemplars) (level 3) understanding of spatial category membership. This developmental pattern was common to all spatial categories, and the ages at which children reached each level varied across categories, in line with the order in which category representations emerge in infancy.     

Causal explanation and the periodic table

Synthese - The periodic table represents and organizes all known chemical elements on the basis of their properties. While the importance of this table in chemistry is uncontroversial, the role...     

Development and Validation of an Instrument for the Assessment of Dependency Among Bereaved Persons

Dependency among bereaved individuals has been hypothesized to be an important predictor of severe and enduring grief reactions. However, although there are a number of instruments that assess interpersonal dependency as a personality trait or style, no scales are available to assess bereavement-related dependency. Data from 170 widowed participants in a community-based longitudinal investigation, who had been bereaved for an average of 10.8 months, were used to investigate the reliability and validity of the Bereavement Dependency Scale (BDS), an instrument that was developed to assess dependency on the deceased among bereaved persons. Results indicated that the BDS demonstrated acceptable internal reliability and satisfactory convergent, discriminant, and construct validity. The BDS may be a clinically useful predictor of enduring and complicated grief reactions, major depressive disorder, and suicidality among recently bereaved individuals.     

The Practical Work of <Coding>: An Ethnomethodological Inquiry

While previous methodological studies have suggested that coding is a useful technique for analyzing qualitative data, there is a stark lack of discussion about the incongruities that inevitably arise as researchers accomplish the actual work of coding. This article explores the complexities of the coding process, and how incongruities get resolved as researchers accomplish the practical work of coding. Three primary themes emerged from this study: <creating agreement>, <maintaining the integrity of the codes>, and <completing the work>. These three activities are grounded in the naturally evolving work of coding, and are rendered visible through an ethnomethodological investigation into this work.     

Computational Representation of Practical Argument

In this paper we consider persuasion in the context of practical reasoning, and discuss the problems associated with construing reasoning about actions in a manner similar to reasoning about beliefs. We propose a perspective on practical reasoning as presumptive justification of a course of action, along with critical questions of this justification, building on the account of Walton. From this perspective, we articulate an interaction protocol, which we call PARMA, for dialogues over proposed actions based on this theory. We outline an axiomatic semantics for the PARMA Protocol, and discuss two implementations which use this protocol to mediate a discussion between humans. We then show how our proposal can be made computational within the framework of agents based on the Belief-Desire-Intention model, and illustrate this proposal with an example debate within a multi agent system.