Evidence against integration of spatial maps in humans: generality across real and virtual environments

A real-world open-field search task was implemented with humans as an analogue of Blaisdell and Cook’s (Anim Cogn 8:7–16, 2005) pigeon foraging task and Sturz, Bodily, and Katz’s (Anim Cogn 9:207–217, 2006) human virtual foraging task to 1) determine whether humans were capable of integrating independently learned spatial maps and 2) make explicit comparisons of mechanisms used by humans to navigate real and virtual environments. Participants searched for a hidden goal located in one of 16 bins arranged in a 4 × 4 grid. In Phase 1, the goal was hidden between two landmarks (blue T and red L). In Phase 2, the goal was hidden to the left and in front of a single landmark (blue T). Following training, goal-absent trials were conducted in which the red L from Phase 1 was presented alone. Bin choices during goal-absent trials assessed participants’ strategies: association (from Phase 1), generalization (from Phase 2), or integration (combination of Phase 1 and 2). Results were inconsistent with those obtained with pigeons but were consistent with those obtained with humans in a virtual environment. Specifically, during testing, participants did not integrate independently learned spatial maps but used a generalization strategy followed by a shift in search behavior away from the test landmark. These results were confirmed by a control condition in which a novel landmark was presented during testing. Results are consistent with the bulk of recent findings suggesting the use of alternative navigational strategies to cognitive mapping. Results also add to a growing body of literature suggesting that virtual environment approaches to the study of spatial learning and memory have external validity and that spatial mechanisms used by human participants in navigating virtual environments are similar to those used in navigating real-world environments.     

Interaction and bio-cognitive order

The role of interaction in learning is essential and profound: it must provide the means to solve open problems (those only vaguely specified in advance), but cannot be captured using our familiar formal cognitive tools. This presents an impasse to those confined to present formalisms; but interaction is fundamentally dynamical, not formal, and with its importance thus underlined it invites the development of a distinctively interactivist account of life and mind. This account is provided, from its roots in the interactivist biological constitution of life, through the evolution of the dual internal regulatory capacities expressed as intentionality and intelligence, to its expression in self-directed anticipative learning in persons and in science.     

Small Acts of Living: Everyday Resistance to Violence and Other Forms of Oppression

The author describes an approach to therapy which is based on the observation that whenever persons are badly treated, they resist. Case illustrations are given in which individuals seeking therapy had been subjected to violence and oppression.     

Actuality and World-Indexed Sentences

Some logical properties of modal languages in which actuality is expressible are investigated. It is argued that, if a sentence like 'Actually, Quine is a distinguished philosopher' is understood as a special case of world-indexed sentences (the index being the actual world), then actuality can be expressed only under strong modal assumptions. Some rival rigid and indexical approaches to actuality are discussed. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

艾伟的阅读心理研究

艾伟是中国现代著名教育心理学家,对中国科学教育心理学体系的构建与发展做出了重要贡献．本文通过大量的史料分析,发现其运用最新的测验、实验与统计技术在阅读心理领域所进行的系统研究,不仅内容丰富,涵括默读心理、阅读兴趣及辞句学习,而且为当时中小学国文教学改革进程的科学化提供了实验支持。     

The judicial dialogue

A variety of theoretical positions are emerging to explain the judicial process from such perspectives as hermeneutics, semiotics, critical theory and argumentation/rhetoric. They ask such questions as these: What is the source of judicial authority? How do judges arrive at their decisions? By what logic are decisions to be tested? In this essay I argue that a focus on decisions and their justifications alone masks the broader process in which judges, along with all the other relevant groups, engage in a continuing and evolving dialogue to structure their normative universe through the complementary processes of dialectic and rhetoric. Contemporary concepts of argumentation can serve to analyze this process critically.     

Altering student responses through changes in teacher verbal behavior

Two experiments were conducted in a junior-high special-education class of eight pupils in an inner-city school. In the first experiment, the teacher doubled the number of words used by the pupils in answering questions by altering the type of questions asked. In the second experiment, the number of words used by students and the percentage of answers given in complete sentences, increased from less than 5% to approximately 90% when the teacher instructed the pupils to answer in complete sentences and asked another pupil to answer using a sentence if the first one did not do so. In both experiments, a brief return to baseline conditions brought a return to low levels of verbal responding. An analysis of which pupils were called on by the teacher, teacher praise, and in the second experiment the types of questions asked, indicated that these variables were not responsible for the increases in verbal responding.     

The family check-up: a pilot study of a brief intervention to improve family functioning in adults

Many barriers exist for families seeking appropriate treatment for family problems. In an effort to minimize some of these barriers, we developed the Family Check-Up, a brief two-session family intervention. The Family Check-Up is based on the Drinker's Check-Up and consists of assessment, feedback, discussion, and goal setting. The purpose of the intervention is to help families identify and become motivated to make needed changes in any aspect of their family functioning. We conducted an open pilot trial of the Family Check-Up with 32 families. Our data suggest that the Family Check-Up (1) is sought out by the target audience, namely those with family problems; (2) is sought out by people with elevated depression symptoms or a history of treatment for depression or anxiety; (3) is feasible to conduct; (4) is acceptable to families; and (5) may be associated with changes in family functioning and depression symptoms over time. These results suggest that further research, particularly a randomized clinical trial, is warranted.     

Defining Location in the Mental Health System: A Case Study of a Consumer-Run Agency

In this ethnographic study of a mental health service agency staffed by “consumers,” or fellow “recipients” of services for serious mental illness, the concept of community narrative provides the framework for examining how such an agency preserves its consumer identity while providing services dictated by the established service system. Locating the agency's narrative in its “origins tale,” analysis revealed five principles comprising the agency's identity: a normalizing view of mental illness, a commitment to helping, a dual-valued understanding of the mental health system, and beliefs in recovery and in the significance of employment as a criterion for recovery. Predicted consequences of narrative functioning emerged in social climate and staff expressions of cohesion and commitment. The local meaning of these narrative themes reveals the agency's view of the consumer element in its work and its solution to the dilemma of being both inside and outside of the mental health system.