Mental Models of the Day/Night Cycle

This article presents the results of an experiment which investigated elementary school children's explanations of the day/night cycle. First, third, and fifth grade children were asked to explain certain phenomena, such as the disappearance of the sun during the night, the disappearance of stars during the day, the apparent movement of the moon, and the alteration of day and night. The results showed that the majority of the children in our sample used in a consistent fashion a small number of relatively well-defined mental models of the earth, the sun, and the moon to explain the day/night cycle. These mental models of the day/night cycle were empirically accurate, logically consistent and revealed some sensitivity on the part of the children to issues of simplicity of explanation. The younger children formed Initial mental models which provided explanations of the day/night cycle based on everyday experience (e.g., the sun goes down behind mountains, clouds cover up the sun). The older children constructed synthetic mental models (e.g., the sun and the moon revolve around the stationary earth every 24 hours; the earth rotates in an up/down direction and the sun and moon are fixed on opposite sides) which represented attempts to synthesize the culturally accepted view with aspects of their Initial models. A few of the older children appeared to have constructed a mental model of the day/night cycle similar to the scientific one. A theoretical framework is outlined which explains the formation of initial, synthetic, and scientific models of the day/night cycle in terms of the reinterpretation of a hierarchy of constraints, some of which are present early in the child's life, and others which emerge later out of the structure of the acquired knowledge.     

Risk Factors for Attempting Suicide in Prisoners

We wished to examine determinants of suicidal behavior in prisoners. 903 male prisoners had a psychiatric interview which included various psychometric tests. Suicide attempters were compared with prisoners who had never attempted suicide. Significantly more of the attempters had a history of psychiatric disorder, substance abuse, a family history of suicidal behavior, convictions for violent crime, had exhibited aggressive behavior in jail, and had higher BGLHA aggression scores. A similar pattern of risk factors was found for prisoners with suicidal ideation. A lifetime history of attempting suicide, or of having suicidal ideation, is frequent in prisoners. Risk factors include family, developmental, aggression, personality, psychiatric, and substance abuse factors.     

The influence of adaptation on absolute threshold measurements for olfactory stimuli

A group-test method of determining the mean absolute olfactory threshold to a test stimulus for a group of subjects is described. Probit analysis is employed to evaluate the results. This technique is utilized to measure the change in sensitivity to the test stimulus due to adaptation to the masking stimulus. When the values of the logarithm of the threshold concentration of the test stimulus are plotted against the logarithm of the concentration of the masking stimulus for a pair of odorous materials, a straight line is obtained. It is suggested that the gradient of this line may be used as a measure of the degree of community of odour-property between the pair of substances.     

Representations of numerical and non‐numerical magnitude both contribute to mathematical competence in children

A growing body of evidence suggests that non‐symbolic representations of number, which humans share with nonhuman animals, are functionally related to uniquely human mathematical thought. Other research suggesting that numerical and non‐numerical magnitudes not only share analog format but also form part of a general magnitude system raises questions about whether the non‐symbolic basis of mathematical thinking is unique to numerical magnitude. Here we examined this issue in 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children using comparison tasks of non‐symbolic number arrays and cumulative area as well as standardized tests of math competence. One set of findings revealed that scores on both magnitude comparison tasks were modulated by ratio, consistent with shared analog format. Moreover, scores on these tasks were moderately correlated, suggesting overlap in the precision of numerical and non‐numerical magnitudes, as expected under a general magnitude system. Another set of findings revealed that the precision of both types of magnitude contributed shared and unique variance to the same math measures (e.g. calculation and geometry), after accounting for age and verbal competence. These findings argue against an exclusive role for non‐symbolic number in supporting early mathematical understanding. Moreover, they suggest that mathematical understanding may be rooted in a general system of magnitude representation that is not specific to numerical magnitude but that also encompasses non‐numerical magnitude.     

“Metaphysics Without Ethics is Blind”: The Legacy of Hilary Putnam

Two convictions underlie the following article. The first is that Hilary Putnam has been one of the greatest thinkers of our time, a philosopher who was able to propose groundbreaking ideas in virtually every area of philosophy. As the reader will see, the topics he tackled in his writings included questions of philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and logic, philosophy of mind, metaethics, the fact-value dichotomy, the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later thought, the question of relativism, the analysis of rationality, the analysis of religious experience, the character of Jewish philosophy, the interpretation of pragmatism, the elucidation of the concept of truth, the question of realism, the relationship between mind and the world. The second is that the changes some of his positions underwent, far from being a point of weakness—as some critics have sometimes felt compelled to claim—reveal the freshness and genuineness of Putnam’s way of philosophising and at the same time the essence of philosophical discussion itself.     

Naturally together: pitch-height and brightness as coupled factors for eliciting the SMARC effect in non-musicians

Psychological Research - Pitch-height is often labeled spatially (i.e., low or high) as a function of the fundamental frequency of the tone. This correspondence is highlighted by the so-called...     

How does preference reversal appear and disappear? Effects of the evaluation mode

Preference reversal is a systematic change in the preference order between options when different response methods are used (e.g., choice vs. judgment). The present study focuses on procedures used to elicit preferences according to an evaluability hypothesis. Two experiments compared joint vs. separate evaluations and explicit vs. non‐explicit joint evaluations. Subjects had to express preferences between high‐variance gambles (HVGs) and low‐variance gambles (LVGs) either by choosing one gamble to play in a lottery or by assigning gambles minimum selling prices. We show that HVGs are preferred in both choice and pricing conditions when gambles are evaluated separately, and LVGs are preferred in both choice and selling conditions when gambles are evaluated in pairs: i.e., when the evaluation mode is held constant, classic preference reversal disappears. These results support the evaluability hypothesis, and suggest that preferences depend on whether subjects are allowed to compare the options they are asked to choose from or judge, independently of the nature of the scale (i.e., attractiveness vs. minimum selling price) they are required to adopt. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

West vs. West like East vs. West? A comparison between Italian and US American context sensitivity and Fear of Isolation

Easterners tend to process information more holistically than Westerners. Kim and Markman (J Exp Soc Psychol 42(3):350–364, 2006) suggest that these differences are rooted in higher chronic levels of Fear of Isolation (FOI) for those cultures that process information more holistically. The goal of this study was to determine if these differences and their suggested cause could be found with two different Western cultures. Testing Italian (IT) and US American (US) adults, we found that IT participants processed information more holistically and had a higher chronic level of FOI than US participants; furthermore, the manipulation of FOI affected context sensitivity more for IT than for US participants. The results demonstrate that IT participants were more similar to previous research with Eastern populations than with Western populations (Kim and Markman in J Exp Soc Psychol 42(3):350–364, 2006) and indicate a within-Western culture difference for reasoning styles and support the hypothesis that this difference is due to different chronic levels of FOI.     

Sex difference in subjective duration of looming and receding sounds

Looming sounds (sounds increasing in intensity over time) are more salient than receding sounds (a looming sound reversed in time). For example, they are estimated as being longer, louder, and more changing in loudness than receding sounds. Some authors interpret the looming salience as evolutionarily adaptive, because it increases the margins of safety of the perceiver in the case of preparatory behaviours (e.g., a motor reaction to an approaching sound source). Recently, Neuhoff et al (2009, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 35 225-234) found that females more than males show overestimation of the spatiotemporal properties of virtually simulated looming sound sources. Here, I investigated whether the sex difference could be observed for the subjective duration of looming and receding sounds, and found that females more than males overestimate the duration of looming sounds in comparison to receding sounds.