Teacher–child relationships and academic achievement: A multilevel propensity score model approach

A robust body of research finds positive cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between teacher–child relationships and children's academic achievement in elementary school. Estimating the causal effect of teacher–child relationships on children's academic achievement, however, is challenged by selection bias at the individual and school level. To address these issues, we used two multilevel propensity score matching approaches to estimate the effect of high-quality teacher–child relationships in kindergarten on math and reading achievement during children's transition to first grade. Multi-informant data were collected on 324 low-income, Black and Hispanic students, and 112 kindergarten and first-grade teachers. Results revealed significant effects of high-quality teacher–child relationships in kindergarten on math achievement in first grade. No significant effects of teacher–child relationships were detected for reading achievement. Implications for intervention development and public policy are discussed.     

Dual frames for causal induction: the normative and the heuristic

Causal induction in the real world often has to be quick and efficient as well as accurate. We propose that people use two different frames to achieve these goals. The A-frame consists of heuristic processes that presuppose rarity and can detect causally relevant factors quickly. The B-frame consists of analytic processes that can be highly accurate in detecting actual causes. Our dual frame theory implies that several factors affect whether people use the A-frame or the B-frame in causal induction: among these are symmetrical negation, intervention and commitment. This theory is tested and sustained in two experiments. The results also provide broad support for dual process accounts of human thinking in general.     

Transforming valences through transitive inference: How are faces emotionally dissonant?

Information that is emotionally incongruous with self-concepts can produce feelings of unease. This implies that embedding incongruous information in newly formed relational structures would have little effect on their previous emotive properties. Alternatively, Relational Frame Theory highlights the importance of contextualized stimulus-stimulus relations, where the structure of a relational series is key in determining the function of its elements. To see whether series membership can mitigate ‘dissonance’ when a salient element is employed, the present investigation trained and tested a seven-term relational series (X>A>B>C>D>E>Y) using blurred faces as stimuli. Specifically, Stimuli X, A, B, D, E and Y were blurred unfamiliar faces and Stimulus C constituted of the participant’s own blurred face, assumed to be more salient than the former. To assess how the valences of the related stimuli were transformed by relational series membership, self-report ratings and electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were collected before and after training the X>A>B>C>D>E>Y series. These pre vs. post contrasts revealed that, for unfamiliar faces, stimulus valence transformed as a function of relational structure. Conversely, the lack of difference in pre vs. post contrasts of Stimulus C, which maintained a high valence, suggest that relational series membership may not suffice to mitigate emotionally dissonant information.     

现实预期与意愿预期在文本阅读中的保持

文本阅读中, 读者往往对事件的后续发展进行预期推理。预期推理有两种倾向, 要么是倾向于根据客观现实条件进行的现实预期, 要么是倾向于根据主观的个人意愿进行的意愿预期。3个实验通过自定步调阅读范式探讨了文本阅读中读者产生的现实预期和意愿预期的保持。结果发现, 现实预期和意愿预期在长时记忆中的保持情况差异明显, 现实预期不能在长时记忆中保持, 而意愿预期则能保持; 但意愿预期也不能单独存在, 会受到现实条件的制约, 在受到现实否定后即时消退, 不再影响读者的进一步阅读。     

Are People Successful at Learning Sequences of Actions on a Perceptual Matching Task?

We report the results of an experiment in which human subjects were trained to perform a perceptual matching task. Subjects were asked to manipulate comparison objects until they matched target objects using the fewest manipulations possible. An unusual feature of the experimental task is that efficient performance requires an understanding of the hidden or latent causal structure governing the relationships between actions and perceptual outcomes. We use two benchmarks to evaluate the quality of subjects' learning. One benchmark is based on optimal performance as calculated by a dynamic programming procedure. The other is based on an adaptive computational agent that uses a reinforcement-learning method known as Q-learning to learn to perform the task. Our analyses suggest that subjects were successful learners. In particular, they learned to perform the perceptual matching task in a near-optimal manner (i.e., using a small number of manipulations) at the end of training. Subjects were able to achieve near-optimal performance because they learned, at least partially, the causal structure underlying the task. In addition, subjects' performances were broadly consistent with those of model-based reinforcement-learning agents that built and used internal models of how their actions influenced the external environment. We hypothesize that people will achieve near-optimal performances on tasks requiring sequences of action-especially sensorimotor tasks with underlying latent causal structures-when they can detect the effects of their actions on the environment, and when they can represent and reason about these effects using an internal mental model.     

Infants’ reasoning about ambiguous motion events: The role of spatiotemporal and dispositional status information

Two experiments investigate whether 7-month-olds reason about the origin of motion events by considering two sources of causally relevant information: spatiotemporal cues and dispositional status information derived from the identification of an object as either animate (with the enduring causal property of self-initiated motion) or inanimate (requiring an external cause of motion). Infants were shown a ball, a human hand, and an animal engaged in a motion event. While dispositional status information remained constant, spatiotemporal relations varied across conditions. Based on looking time data, we conclude that infants attend flexibly to both types of information. Without spatiotemporal cues, infants rely on dispositional status information. When two objects provide dispositional cues to motion origin, but only one also provides corresponding spatiotemporal information, infants attribute the motion to the object providing both types of information. Given an ambiguous motion event with two dispositional motion originators but no additional spatiotemporal cues, infants may prefer either of the two.     

Pragmatic enrichment: beyond Gricean rational reconstruction – a response to Mandy Simons

It has been claimed that pragmatic effects that arise in embedded clauses pose a problem for the Gricean reasoning procedure. I maintain, however, that the real issue these phenomena raise for Grice, as he himself acknowledged, is their violation of his saying/implicating distinction. While these effects can be accounted for by Gricean reasoning, which Mandy Simons clearly demonstrates, there is no way round this latter problem other than a major revision of Grice’s notion of ‘saying’ and hence of the saying/implicating distinction.     

What Are the “True” Statistics of the Environment?

A widespread assumption in the contemporary discussion of probabilistic models of cognition, often attributed to the Bayesian program, is that inference is optimal when the observer's priors match the true priors in the world—the actual “statistics of the environment.” But in fact the idea of a “true” prior plays no role in traditional Bayesian philosophy, which regards probability as a quantification of belief, not an objective characteristic of the world. In this paper I discuss the significance of the traditional Bayesian epistemic view of probability and its mismatch with the more objectivist assumptions about probability that are widely held in contemporary cognitive science. I then introduce a novel mathematical framework, the observer lattice, that aims to clarify this issue while avoiding philosophically tendentious assumptions. The mathematical argument shows that even if we assume that “ground truth” probabilities actually do exist, there is no objective way to tell what they are. Different observers, conditioning on different information, will inevitably have different probability estimates, and there is no general procedure to determine which one is right. The argument sheds light on the use of probabilistic models in cognitive science, and in particular on what exactly it means for the mind to be “tuned” to its environment.     

Effects of Manipulation on Attributions of Causation,Free Will,and Moral Responsibility

If someone brings about an outcome without intending to, is she causally and morally responsible for it? What if she acts intentionally, but as the result of manipulation by another agent? Previous research has shown that an agent's mental states can affect attributions of causal and moral responsibility to that agent , but little is known about what effect one agent's mental states can have on attributions to another agent. In Experiment 1, we replicate findings that manipulation lowers attributions of responsibility to manipulated agents. Experiments 2–7 isolate which features of manipulation drive this effect, a crucial issue for both philosophical debates about free will and attributions of responsibility in situations involving social influence more generally. Our results suggest that “bypassing” a manipulated agent's mental states generates the greatest reduction in responsibility, and we explain our results in terms of the effects that one agent's mental states can have on the counterfactual relations between another agent and an outcome.