Why do children learn to say "Broke"? A model of learning the past tense without feedback

Learning the English past tense is characterized by a U-shaped learning function for the irregular verbs. Existing cognitive models often rely on a sudden increase in vocabulary, a high token-frequency of regular verbs, and complicated schemes of feedback in order to model this phenomenon. All these assumptions are at odds with empirical data. In this paper a hybrid ACT-R model is presented that shows U-shaped learning without direct feedback, changes in vocabulary, or unrealistically high rates of regular verbs. The model is capable of learning the default rule, even if regular forms are infrequent. It can also help explore the question of why there is a distinction between regular and irregular verbs in the first place, by examining the costs and benefits of both types of verbs.     

Group conversion versus group expansion as modes of change in majority and minority positions: all losses hurt but only some gains gratify

This study examined reactions to minority and majority positions that were either stable or reversed through group conversion that transformed opponents (supporters) of the minority (majority) into supporters (opponents) or through group expansion that brought new supporters (opponents) for the minority (majority) into the group. Minorities who became majorities through group expansion, compared with those who changed through group conversion, perceived their supporters and the overall group as significantly more similar to the self, and had significantly higher expectations for future positive interactions within the group. Perception of similarity with the supporters mediated the effect of the experimental conditions on perception of the overall group-self similarity. Implications of changes through conversion and expansion for the functioning of social groups are discussed.     

Contextualizing Nanotechnology Education: Fostering a Hybrid Imagination in Aalborg,Denmark

In the context of worldwide economic and environmental crisis it is increasingly important that nanotechnology, genomics, media engineering and other fields of ‘technoscience’ with immense societal relevance are taught in ways that promote social responsibility and that educational activities are organized so that science and engineering students will be able to integrate the ‘contextual knowledge’ they learn into their professional, technical–scientific identities and forms of competence. Since the 1970s, teaching programmes in science, technology and society for science and engineering have faded away at many universities and have been replaced by courses in economic and commercial aspects, or entrepreneurship and/or ethical and philosophical issues. By recounting our recent efforts in contextualizing nanotechnology education at Aalborg University in Denmark, we consider a socio-cultural approach to contextual learning, one that is meant to contribute to a greater sense of social responsibility on the part of scientists and engineers. It is our contention that the social, political and environmental challenges facing science and engineering in the world today require the fostering of what we have come to call a ‘hybrid imagination’, mixing scientific–technical skills with a sense of social responsibility or global citizenship, if science and engineering are to help solve social problems rather than create new ones. Three exemplary cases of student project work are discussed: one on raspberry solar cells, which connected nanotechnology to the global warming debate, and two in which surveys on the public understanding of nanotechnology were combined with a scientific–technical project.     

Cur deus caro: Jesus and the Cosmos Story

Abstract

There seems to be a vast gulf between the grand-scale story of the world of creation, cosmic in scope and pitiless in its operations, and the small-scale story of Jesus as embodying divine empathy. The concept of deep incarnation offers a bridge by arguing that God's own Logos or Wisdom, when assuming the particular life story of Jesus, also conjoins the material conditions of God's world of creation at large (“all flesh”), shares the fate of all biological life forms (“grass and lilies”), and experiences the pains of all sentient creatures (“sparrows and foxes”). Incarnation is thus the story of God's reach into the very tissue of material and biological existence. In the embodied Logos, the “flesh” of Jesus Christ is co-extensive with his divinity. Otherwise, the incarnation would be skin deep, confined to a historical figure of the past, or merely an external appendix to divine life.     

Task influences on the production and comprehension of compound words

Studies of compound word processing have revealed effects of the compound’s constituents in a wide variety of word production and comprehension tasks. Surprisingly, effects of the compound’s constituents were not found in a recent word production study using the picture-naming task. Here, we examined whether these contrasting constituent effects reflect methodological differences or whether they reflect the influence of task-specific characteristics on compound processing. A large set of compounds was used to elicit picture-naming latencies in Experiment 1 and visual lexical decision latencies in Experiment 2. Regression analyses revealed surface frequency effects in picture naming and lexical decision and constituent effects only in lexical decision. These results rule out methodological differences as the basis for the contrasting constituent effects observed between the various tasks and imply that constituent effects are best understood as arising out of task-specific characteristics.     

Social Welfare and the Psychology of Food Sharing: Short‐Term Hunger Increases Support for Social Welfare

Do politically irrelevant events influence important policy opinions? Previous research on social welfare attitudes has emphasized the role of political factors such as economic self‐interest and ideology. Here, we demonstrate that attitudes to social welfare are also influenced by short‐term fluctuations in hunger. Using theories in evolutionary psychology, we predict that hungry individuals will be greedier and take more resources from others while also attempting to induce others to share by signaling cooperative intentions and expressing support for sharing, including evolutionarily novel forms of sharing such as social welfare. We test these predictions using self‐reported hunger data as well as comparisons of subjects who participated in relevant online studies before and after eating lunch. Across four studies collected in two different welfare regimes—the United Kingdom and Denmark—we consistently find that hungry individuals act in a greedier manner but describe themselves as more cooperative and express greater support for social welfare.     

Is Religiousness Associated with Better Lifestyle and Health Among Danes? Findings from SHARE

Journal of Religion and Health - Evidence of a possible association between religion and health in secular societies is sparse. We therefore conducted a nationwide study using data from 1596 Danes...     

Memory activation and the availability of explanations in sequential diagnostic reasoning

In the field of diagnostic reasoning, it has been argued that memory activation can provide the reasoner with a subset of possible explanations from memory that are highly adaptive for the task at hand. However, few studies have experimentally tested this assumption. Even less empirical and theoretical work has investigated how newly incoming observations affect the availability of explanations in memory over time. In this article we present the results of 2 experiments in which we address these questions. While participants diagnosed sequentially presented medical symptoms, the availability of potential explanations in memory was measured with an implicit probe reaction time task. The results of the experiments were used to test 4 quantitative cognitive models. The models share the general assumption that observations can activate and inhibit explanations in memory. They vary with respect to how newly incoming observations affect the availability of explanations over time. The data of both experiments were predicted best by a model in which all observations in working memory have the same potential to activate explanations from long-term memory and in which these observations do not decay. The results illustrate the power of memory activation processes and show where additional deliberate reasoning strategies might come into play.     

Investigating the Performance of Alternate Regression Weights by Studying All Possible Criteria in Regression Models with a Fixed Set of Predictors

We describe methods for assessing all possible criteria (i.e., dependent variables) and subsets of criteria for regression models with a fixed set of predictors, x (where x is an n×1 vector of independent variables). Our methods build upon the geometry of regression coefficients (hereafter called regression weights) in n-dimensional space. For a full-rank predictor correlation matrix, R _xx, of order n, and for regression models with constant R ² (coefficient of determination), the OLS weight vectors for all possible criteria terminate on the surface of an n-dimensional ellipsoid. The population performance of alternate regression weights—such as equal weights, correlation weights, or rounded weights—can be modeled as a function of the Cartesian coordinates of the ellipsoid. These geometrical notions can be easily extended to assess the sampling performance of alternate regression weights in models with either fixed or random predictors and for models with any value of R ². To illustrate these ideas, we describe algorithms and R (R Development Core Team, 2009) code for: (1) generating points that are uniformly distributed on the surface of an n-dimensional ellipsoid, (2) populating the set of regression (weight) vectors that define an elliptical arc in ℝ ⁿ , and (3) populating the set of regression vectors that have constant cosine with a target vector in ℝ ⁿ . Each algorithm is illustrated with real data. The examples demonstrate the usefulness of studying all possible criteria when evaluating alternate regression weights in regression models with a fixed set of predictors.