Single-letter coloring and spatial cuing do not eliminate or reduce a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect

The automaticity of semantic activation in the Stroop task is still the subject of considerable debate (Augustinova & Ferrand, 2007; Manwell, Roberts, & Besner, 2004). The present experiments were designed to assess whether coloring and cuing a single letter (vs. all letters) in the Stroop task reliably eliminates semantically based Stroop interference or whether the elimination observed by Manwell et al. was due to insufficient statistical power. Experiment 1 was an exact replication of the experiment conducted by Manwell and colleagues and involved a large population. Experiment 2 replicated and extended Experiment 1 by controlling for initial fixation. In line with previous findings obtained by Augustinova and Ferrand, both experiments indicated that coloring and cuing a single letter failed to eliminate or even reduce the semantically based Stroop effect. Thus, these results add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that semantic activation in the Stroop task is automatic.     

Algorithmic correspondence and completeness in modal logic. V. Recursive extensions of SQEMA

The previously introduced algorithm SQEMA computes first-order frame equivalents for modal formulae and also proves their canonicity. Here we extend SQEMA with an additional rule based on a recursive version of Ackermann's lemma, which enables the algorithm to compute local frame equivalents of modal formulae in the extension of first-order logic with monadic least fixed-points FOμ. This computation operates by transforming input formulae into locally frame equivalent ones in the pure fragment of the hybrid μ-calculus. In particular, we prove that the recursive extension of SQEMA succeeds on the class of ‘recursive formulae’. We also show that a certain version of this algorithm guarantees the canonicity of the formulae on which it succeeds.     

Bimodality in the Berlin model of intelligence structure (BIS): A replication study

The bimodal structure of intelligence as proposed in the ‘Berlin model of intelligence structure’ (BIS) (Jäger, 1982) and measured by the BIS-4 test was analysed in a sample of 182 subjects. According to this theory two modalities characterize the structure, both emerging from results in 45 mental tasks and containing a total of seven components: Operations (processing speed, memory, creativity, processing capacity), and contents (verbal, numerical, figurai ability), as well as the general factor (g). Exploratory analysis following Jäger's approach revealed the existence of four operations and three contents. The simultaneous examination of the bimodality in the structure of the BIS was performed by means of confirmatory factor analysis. The theoretically proposed bimodal model (four operations and three contents) was compared with a unimodal model involving seven correlated factors of the same level and with other alternative unimodal models. In these analyses a slight superiority of operations over contents was observed. The reasons for our preference of the bimodal BIS structure compared to other unimodal solutions are clarified and the role of operations and contents in the construct of intelligence is discussed.     

Trolls,bans and reverts: simulating Wikipedia

Synthese - The surprisingly high reliability of Wikipedia has often been seen as a beneficial effect of the aggregation of diverse contributors, or as an instance of the wisdom of crowds...     

Axiomatizations with Context Rules of Inference in Modal Logic

A certain type of inference rules in (multi-) modal logics, generalizing Gabbay's Irreflexivity rule, is introduced and some general completeness results about modal logics axiomatized with such rules are proved.     

Data-driven type checking in open domain question answering

Many open domain question answering systems answer questions by first harvesting a large number of candidate answers, and then picking the most promising one from the list. One criterion for this answer selection is type checking: deciding whether the candidate answer is of the semantic type expected by the question. We define a general strategy for building redundancy-based type checkers, built around the notions of comparison set and scoring method, where the former provide a set of potential answer types and the latter are meant to capture the relation between a candidate answer and an answer type. Our focus is on scoring methods. We discuss nine such methods, provide a detailed experimental comparison and analysis of these methods, and find that the best performing scoring method performs at the same level as knowledge-intensive methods, although our experiments do not reveal a clear-cut answer on the question whether any of the scoring methods we consider should be preferred over the others.     

Fundamental Movement Skills and Children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Peer Comparisons and Stimulant Effects

The purpose of this study was to compare the fundamental movement skills of 22 children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), from 6 to 12 years of age, to gender- and age-matched peers without ADHD and assess the effects of stimulant medication on the movement skill performance of the children with ADHD. Repeated measures analyses revealed significant skill differences between children with and without ADHD (p ≤ 0.001). Results from the stimulant medication trials indicated no significant effect of medication on the movement skill patterns of children with ADHD. It is concluded that children with ADHD may be at risk for developmental delays in movement skill performance. Potential factors underlying the movement skill difficulties are discussed, with suggestions for future research.