Developmental effects of typicality and superordinate property dominance on sentence verification

Second graders (mean age, 8 years 3 months), fourth graders (mean age, 10 years 4 months), and adults verified telegraphic sentences with typical or atypical subject nouns and high or low dominant property predicates. The hypothesis tested was that the similarity in the attribute structures of category members to their superordinate prototype should be related to degree of typicality. Adult reaction time and error data supported the prototype model of semantic category structure. Second and fourth graders showed comparable property knowledge to adults, but evidenced different organizational patterns than predicted by the adult model. The results suggest that with development children learn to simultaneously use many attribute dimensions and to abstract the family resemblance structure and relative importance of category properties.     

Dimensional separability or flexibility of attention? Age trends in perceiving configural stimuli

The hypothesis that perceptual development proceeds from less to greater dimensional separability was tested by giving a speeded classification task to first and fouth graders. In Experiment 1, children sorted line drawings of a cartoon figure into two piles according to his eyes (open or closed) or his mouth (smiling or frowning). First graders exhibited the pattern characteristic of integral dimensions: An interference effect was found when dimensions were combined orthogonally and a facilitation effect when dimensions were correlated, relative to a condition in which only one dimension varied. Fourth graders exhibited an optional separable pattern: There was facilitation in the correlated condition but no interference in the orthogonal condition. These results support the hypothesis that development proceeds toward greater flexibility of attention rather than simply toward increasing separability. A flexible field hypothesis of visual attention was suggested to explain how older children can exercise such optional separability. This hypothesis correctly predicted the asymmetrical relation between dimensions found in Experiments 2 and 3: For both first and fourth graders, the eyes of a cartoon figure (open or closed) and his location (right or left) were nonseparable when the eyes were relevant and separable (or optional separable) when location was relevant.     

Prenominal adjective order and visual discrimination in children

Preschool and third-grade children heard prenominal adjective phrases describing an object. Each phrase contained an article, two adjectives and a head noun. The phrases were constructed with either normal or inverted adjective order. Either after a one second delay or immediately following phrase presentation, Subjects were shown pictures of two objects. One of the objects (target) depicted the object described in the noun phrase. The other object differed from the target along the dimensions of color, size, or both color and size. The Subject's task was to select the target object. It was predicted that adjective order would influence perceptual strategies used by the Subjects in the visual discrimination task. Analysis of response time scores showed that adjective order interacted with the relevant discriminative stimuli in the discrimination task. These results were interpreted as support for hypotheses that suggest that linguistic organization can constrain conceptual processing involving nonlinguistic information. The effects of the delay condition provided additional evidence for these hypotheses plus support for an arousal hypothesis.     

A CRITIQUE OF BOROWITZ'S POSTMODERN JEWISH THEOLOGY

Abstract. Borowitz's book is primarily a systematic response by a liberal Jewish theologian to his perceived challenges from rationalism on one hand and postmodernism on the other. It is within this context that Borowitz discusses issues of the relationship between modern science and Judaism. The first part of this essay is a summary of Borowitz's book. Here I locate Borowitz's place in the general discipline of Jewish philosophy and theology. The second part of the paper is a critique of Borowitz's discussion of postmodernism and liberalism. It is in this concluding section that the issues raised by contemporary science for Jewish religious thought are discussed.     

FROM DNA TO DEAN

Abstract. In this broadly intellectual autobiographical essay, Arthur Peacocke describes how his educational background at Oxford led him eventually to physicochemical studies on DNA and other biological macromolecules and how biological complexity and the general problems it evokes have remained a recurring theme in his thought. He also describes how, although coming from a relatively non ecclesiastical background, this interest has nevertheless been intertwined with the larger questions to which the Christian faith seeks to respond. He outlines how he has been able to reconcile these two strands in his existence-even to becoming a priest-scientist and eventually the Dean of chapel of a Cambridge college. He reflects on the trends in the relation of religion and science over the last four decades and points to some hopeful developments in the relation between the two communities-and to some unanswered questions.     

A reinforcement plus interruption method of eliminating behavioral stereotypy of profoundly retarded persons

Stereotyped responses have been shown to be eliminated by an overcorrection-reinforcement program. The present study evaluated response-interruption as an alternative to the overcorrection component with seven profoundly retarded adults. During the baseline praise condition, stereotypy occurred during 66% of the observations for the seven profoundly retarded adults but decreased to less than one response per half hour in a mean of two sessions of individual training. In the subsequent class situation, stereotypy was reduced to less than 5% on the first day of class, to less than 1% by the fourth day and less than one stereotypy per hour after the third day. The interruption method seems preferable to postural overcorrection because of its apparent and relative nonaversiveness.     

Visual tracking in young infants: Evidence for object identity or object permanence?

Previous research has shown that 5-month-old infants visually anticipate a moving object's appearance after it disappears behind a screen. This experiment assesses the underlying basis for such anticipatory tracking. Three tracking tasks were presented to 5- and 9-month-old infants. In the Permanence task, the object's continuous existence was apparently violated while it was behind a screen. In the Feature and Trajectory tasks, the object's features or trajectory changed while behind the screen. Disruptions in the infant's smooth visual pursuit of the object were recorded. Five-mont-olds showed disruptions of visual tracking in the Feature and Trajectory tasks, but not in the Permanence task. The tracking of the 9-month-olds was disrupted in all three tasks. We conclude that both 5- and 9-month-olds possess rules specifying the identity of a moving object which is occluded. For 5-month-olds these rules are based upon the object's features and trajectory, but not upon a concept of object permanence. For 9-month-olds all three rules—feature, trajectory, and permanence—are utilized in visual tracking.     

负荷水平和作业信息输入输出形式对视觉追踪操作心理负荷评估敏感性的影响

就负荷水平和信息输入形式,输出形式对视觉追踪作业心理负荷评估指标敏感性的影响进行了实验,获得以下主要结果：（１）主任务绩效具有较好的评估敏感性;（２）作业信息输入形式、输出形式对评估指标敏感性有显著影响。     

Toward a New Understanding of Nature, Reality, and the Sacred: A Syllabus

Adjustments in the understanding of the relation of religion and science since the Enlightenment require new considerations in epistemology and metaphysics. Constructionist theories of knowledge and process theories of metaphysics better provide the new paradigms needed both to preserve and to limit the significance of each field of human understanding. In a course taught at Moravian College, this perspective is applied to the concepts of nature, reality, and the sacred, with a view to showing how we might develop one such paradigm. Key resources for this task are to be found in the work of artist René Magritte; theologians Langdon Gilkey, Arthur Peacocke, and John Haught; philosophers and historians of science Alfred North Whitehead, Timothy Ferris, Ernan Mc Mullin, and Ian Barbour; philosopher of religion Paul Ricoeur; and historians of religion Rudolph Otto and Mircea Eliade. Such a new paradigm calls for an ecologically sensitive religious awareness which is both sacramental and holistic.     

ECOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY: SCIENCE AND THEOLOGICAL MODELING

Abstract. The possibility of in-breakings of God in science is discussed. A realist philosophy of science is used as a framework in which new paradigms are seen as providing ever better approximations to the true underlying structure of nature, which will be revealed in the eschaton. It is argued that ecology–the study of the earth as a whole–cannot be treated as a natural science because there can be no paradigms for understanding the earth as a whole. Instead technology is used as a means for interacting with God through nature.