Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

SEEING TWO AS ONE:

Abstract -Object tokens are episodic visual representations that mediate the ability to track visual events as they move about and change over time. Multiple tokens also allow the viewer to individuate multiple instances of a single type of object. In the present study, we established a functional link for object tokens in two seemingly disparate visual phenomena: apparent motion and repetition blindness [RB]. In RB, repeated items are more difficult to perceive than unre-peated items. Using displays in which two sets of alphanumeric characters streamed in opposite directions across a computer screen in apparent motion, we found increased RB for targets appearing within a single apparent motion stream, relative to targets in different apparent motion streams. The results are inconsistent with refractory period or memory retrieval accounts of RB and support the role of object tokens in both apparent motion and RB.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

Repetition blindness under minimum memory load: Effects of spatial and temporal proximity and the encoding effectiveness of the first item

Repetition blindness (RB) refers to the reduced performance in reporting a repeated as opposed to a nonrepeated item in rapid serial visual presentation. In Experiment 1, we found RB for two-item stimuli in uncertain locations. The magnitude of RB decreased significantly with increases in interstimulus interval, but not with increases in spatial separation, indicating that RB is determined primarily by temporal factors. In Experiment 2, we found RB when subjects were required to report only the second of two successively presented items. The magnitude of RB increased with the duration of the first item, indicating that RB is determined by the encoding effectiveness of the first item. The results of this study collectively indicate that RB is not a memory or a sensory phenomenon, but rather a perceptual phenomenon occurring at the stage of identity encoding. The findings also undermine the arguments (Kanwisher, 1987) that have been offered in favor of the type-token binding failure hypothesis and indicate instead that type-node refractoriness may be the cause of RB.     

PERCEPTUAL PROCESS AND THE EBBINGHAUS ILLUSION

Perception is shown in a block diagram which includes the instrumental errors in the sensing device, the transmission distortion in the nerves and the perceptual misjudgment in the high center. The perceptual misjudgment originates from the variation of comparison standards and the method of comparison, and would correspond to the mis-programming of the computer. A general mathematical formula for perception under the influence of various background stimuli is presented. The mechanism and equation for predicting the Ebbinghaus illusion are also presented.