Children use whole-part juxtaposition as a pragmatic cue to word meaning

When parents label novel parts of familiar objects, they typically provide familiar whole-object terms before offering novel part terms (e.g., "See this cup? This is the rim."). Such whole-part juxtaposition might help children to accurately interpret the meaning of novel part terms, but it can do so only if they recognize the conjunction as a potential cue to part meaning. Two studies examined (a) whether 3- to 4-year-olds use whole-part juxtaposition to accurately interpret novel part terms and (b) how they might do so. Study 1 confirmed that children indeed use juxtaposition to guide learning of novel part terms. Furthermore, 2 control conditions clarified that children's use of juxtaposition was not simply due to memory effects, such as the facilitation of lexical access, nor to recognition of the grammatical frame that typically accompanies juxtaposition. Study 2 revealed that children readily use juxtaposition in a novel, gestural format. Such flexibility in recognizing and utilizing novel variants of juxtaposition strongly suggests that pragmatic understanding lies at the heart of children's sensitivity to whole-part juxtaposition.     

Object Perception,Attention, and Memory 2008 Conference Report 16th Annual Meeting,Chicago, IL,USA

We investigated how processing unfolds across time as adults view novel manual activity. Adults advanced through slideshows of an actor performing sleight-of-hand manoeuvres; dwell times were recorded to each slide. As in past work involving larger-scale intentional action scenarios, adults allocated more attention to slides depicting breakpoints—transitions from one event segment to the next—than slides displaying mid-stream action, indicating that dwell times are sensitive to adults' recovery of segmental structure in intricate manual activity. Adults also allocated increased attention towards slides indicative of causal structure, indicating that dwell times index processing of causally relevant information as well as segmental structure. We were additionally curious if adults' learning outcomes would differ as a function of whether they paced themselves or watched slideshows advance at a computer-controlled pace. Memory did not differ, but adults viewing computer-controlled slideshows displayed an advantage in performing the tricks. A single attentional focus may have helped adults learn to re-enact the actions, relative to a split attentional focus.     

Putting the Burden of Proof in Its Place: When Are Differential Allocations Legitimate?

It is widely assumed that legitimate differential allocations of the burden of proof are ubiquitous: that in all cases in which opposing views are being debated, one side has the responsibility of proving their claim and if they fail, the opposing view wins by default. We argue that the cases in which one party has the burden of proof are exceptions. In general, participants in reasoned discourse are all required to provide reasons for the claims they make. We distinguish between truth‐directed and non‐truth‐directed discourse, argue that the paradigm contexts in which there are legitimate differential allocations of the burden of proof (law and formal debate) are non‐truth‐directed, and suggest that in truth‐directed contexts, except in certain special cases, differential allocation of the burden of proof is not warranted.     

Science,Social Scientisation and Hybridisation of Knowledges

ABSTRACT

The contestation between mainstream science and counter-science is a longstanding phenomenon. The current issue of Science as Culture addresses the need for scientists to consciously engage in a broad-spectrum science that simultaneously focuses its lens on the social and natural dimensions of the universe. The question of how this objective can be achieved by Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars is, therefore, the main thrust of this special issue.