Does category-training facilitate 11-month-olds’ acquisition of unfamiliar category-property associations?

The ability to form category-property links allows infants to extend a property from one category member to another. In two experiments, we examined whether orienting infants to the demands of the task, through categorization training, would facilitate 11-month-old infants’ category-property extensions when familiarized with a single exemplar of an unfamiliar animal category. In Experiment 1, 11-month-olds (N = 35) were trained with two familiar animal-sound pairings (i.e., dog-bark, cat-meow), familiarized with two unfamiliar animal-sound pairings and then tested on their learning and generalization of the unfamiliar animal-sound associations. Across two conditions, Experiment 2 familiarized 11-month-olds (N = 69) to one familiar (i.e., dog-bark) and one novel animal-sound pairing. Conditions differed in their presentation of familiarization trials (i.e., random or blocked). Infants were then tested on their learning and extension of the animal-sound associations. In both experiments, infants did not demonstrate learning of the original animal sound pairing, nor generalization of the sound property to new members of the animal categories. These results indicate that the two category training paradigms implemented in the current studies did not facilitate 11-month-olds’ ability to learn or generalize an unfamiliar animal-sound association, when familiarized with a single exemplar.     

‘If I only had a little humility,I would be perfect’: Children’s and adults’ perceptions of intellectually arrogant,humble, and diffident people

Abstract

Intellectual humility is usually regarded as a virtue. In this paper, we conceptualized intellectual humility along two dimensions: (1) placing an adequate level of confidence in one’s own beliefs; (2) being willing to consider other people’s beliefs. We tested whether children (ages 4 to 11 years) and adults perceived intellectual humility as positive and how these perceptions changed across development. To do so, we asked participants to evaluate an intellectually humble person as compared to an intellectually arrogant person, who readily dismissed other people’s beliefs, or to an intellectually diffident person, who was unsure of a well-supported belief. Young children did not favor the intellectually humble person over the others, but older children and adults liked this person better and tended to consider her nicer than the arrogant one and smarter than the diffident one. These findings suggest that the virtuousness of intellectual humility in others is recognized from mid-childhood on.     

The narcissism-overclaiming link revisited

The present research investigated how different dimensions of narcissism (i.e., assertive, antagonistic, and vulnerable) and content-specific forms of assertive narcissism (i.e., intellectual ability, physical attractiveness, social dominance) are related to overclaiming bias (i.e., the tendency to illegitimately claim knowledge). In the data from a large-scale online study (N = 1,658), the associations between overclaiming bias and any kind of narcissism were smaller than in many previous studies. Furthermore, assertive narcissism was more positively related to overclaiming bias than antagonistic and vulnerable narcissism were. Intellectual-ability-specific and social-dominance-specific assertive narcissism were more positively related to overclaiming bias than physical-attractiveness-specific assertive narcissism was. Finally, multiple regression analyses suggested that the narcissism-overclaiming link is most robust for social-dominance-specific assertive narcissism.     

The influence of motor function on processing speed in preterm and term-born children

This study investigates the relationship between motor function and processing speed in preterm children. Processing speed was compared in 145 adolescents, born 25–41 weeks gestational age, utilizing tasks including differing motor demands. The influence of motor cortex excitability and functional motor skills on task performance was assessed. For tasks with motoric demands, differences in performance between preterm and term-born children were mediated by the relationship between gestational age, corticomotor excitability, and motor function. There were no differences in non-motor processing speed task performance between preterm and term-born children. Measures of processing speed may be confounded by a timed motor component.     

Personal Respect, Private Property, And Market Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel

The aim of the present paper is to show that Hegel’s concept of personal respect is of great interest to contemporary Critical Theory. The author first analyzes this notion as it appears in the Philosophy of Right and then offers a new interpretation of the conceptual relation between personal respect and the institutions of (private) property and (capitalist) markets. In doing so, he shows why Hegel’s concept of personal respect allows us to understand markets as possible institutionalizations of this kind of recognition, and why it is compatible with a critique of neoliberal capitalism. He argues that due to these features Hegel’s notion of personal respect is of great interest to theoreticians within the tradition of critical theory.

Asymmetric dominance and phantom decoy effects in games

In individual choices between alternatives x and y, the availability of a third alternative z, judged inferior to x but not to y, tends to increase preferences for x. Two experiments investigated corresponding strategic asymmetric dominance effects in games. In Experiment 1, 72 players chose strategies in six symmetric 3 × 3 games, each having one strategy dominating just one other, or in reduced 2 × 2 games constructed by deleting the dominated strategies. Asymmetrically dominated strategies, even when unavailable (phantom decoy), increased choices of the strategies that dominated them and bolstered decision confidence. In Experiment 2, 81 participants played 12 similar but asymmetric games with or without dominated strategies, and similar asymmetric dominance, phantom decoy, and confidence effects were found.     

Following the Path to Equality Through Law: Reflections on Baker et al., <Emphasis Type="Italic">Equality: from Theory to Action</Emphasis>

This article assesses the significance of Baker et al., Equality: from Theory to Action from the perspective of current concerns occupying legal equality scholars in the UK, focusing in particular on the practical relevance of equality studies to the kinds of issues arising from the debate over the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). The article highlights and considers key issues, including the delineation of the sphere of inequality protection, the normative content of the concept of equality espoused by law and the potential of law to reach beyond its current limits to embrace the broader dimensions of (in)equality identified in Baker et al.’s account.     

Are the Bundle Theory and the Substratum Theory Really Twin Brothers?

In a recent paper, Jiri Benovsky argues that the bundle theory and the substratum theory, traditionally regarded as ‘deadly enemies’ in the metaphysics literature, are in fact ‘twin brothers’. That is, they turn out to be ‘equivalent for all theoretical purposes’ upon analysis. The only exception, according to Benovsky, is a particular version of the bundle theory whose distinguishing features render unappealing. In the present reply article, I critically analyse these undoubtedly relevant claims, and reject them.

Critical thinking in North America: A new theory of knowledge,learning, and literacy

The pace of change in the world is accelerating, yet educational institutions have not kept pace. Indeed, schools have historically been the most static of social institutions, uncritically passing down from generation to generation outmoded didactic, lecture-and-drill-based, models of instruction. Predictable results follow. Students, on the whole, do not learn how to work by, or think for, themselves. They do not learn how to gather, analyze, synthesize and assess information. They do not learn how to analyze the diverse logic of the questions and problems they face and hence how to adjust their thinking to those problems. They do not learn how to enter sympathetically into the thinking of others, nor how to deal rationally with conflicting points of view. They do not learn to become critical readers, writers, speakers and listeners. They do not learn how to use their native languages clearly, precisely, or persuasively. They do not, therefore, become literate, in the proper sense of the word. Neither do they gain much in the way of genuine knowledge since, for the most part, they could not explain the basis for what they believe. They would be hard pressed to explain, for example, which of their beliefs were based on rational assent and which on simple conformity to what they have been told. They have little sense as to how they might critically analyze their own experience, or identify national or group bias in their own thinking. They are much more apt to learn on the basis of irrational than rational modes of thought. They lack the traits of mind of a genuinely educated person: intellectual humility, courage, integrity, perseverance, and faith in reason.Happily, there is a movement in education today striving to address these problems in a global way, with strategies and materials for the modification of instruction at all levels of education. At its foundation is an emerging new theory of knowledge, learning, and literacy, one which recognizes the centrality of independent critical thinking to all substantial learning, one which recognizes that higher-order, multilogical thinking is as important to childhood as to adult learning, and as important to foundational learning in monological as in multilogical disciplines. This educational reform movement is not proposing an educational miracle cure, for its leading proponents recognize that many social and historical forces must come together before the ideals of the critical thinking movement will become a full academic reality. Schools do not exist in a social vacuum. To the extent that the broader society is uncritical so, on the whole, will be society's schools. Nevertheless, the social conditions necessary for fundamental changes in schooling are increasingly apparent. The pressure for fundamental change is growing. Whether and to what extent these needed basic changes will be delayed or side-tracked, thus requiring new periodic resurgences of this movement, with new, more elaborate articulations of its ideals, goals, and methods — only time will tell.     

The development of memory structure as reflected by semantic-priming effects

This study was designed to investigate the development of knowledge about categorical and associative relationships as reflected by the presence or absence of semantic priming effects. Kindergarteners and second-graders were shown pairs of pictures, one picture at a time, and asked to name each picture as rapidly and accurately as possible. Picture pairs were of four types which reflected the factorial combination of associative relatedness (high and low) with categorial relatedness (high and low). An analysis of naming times revealed a significant main effect of associative relatedness, i.e., second pictures or “target” pictures in high-associative pairs were named faster than those in low-associative pairs. This reduction in naming latency, or priming effect, was independent of developmental level. However, the effects of category relatedness varied with developmental level, i.e., target pictures in high-categorical pairs were named significantly faster than those in low pairs by second-graders, but not by kindergarteners. These findings are discussed in terms of previous estimates of children's semantic competence.