Children's understanding of natural language hierarchies

Three experiments examined young children's ability to evaluate the relationship between concepts as one of inclusion. In Experiment 1, the same group of 4-to 7-year-old children were given three tasks: one in which they made judgments about whether “all” or “some” members of a category were included in another category, and two tasks in which they made inferences based on knowledge of inclusion relations. The majority of children succeeded on at least one of the tasks, thereby implying that they could evaluate inclusion relations. Two further experiments provided more evidence for this hypothesis: Experiment 2 confirmed that nursery children could answer quantitative questions about conceptual interrelationts; Experiment 3 demonstrated that nursery schoolers could solve certain inference problems involving the construction and evaluation of hierarchies.     

Testing hypotheses about other people: The use of historical knowledge

Three experiments were conducted to examine the use of historical knowledge to test contemporary hypotheses about the personal attributes of other people. In the first and second experiments, participants read an extensive account of events in one week of the life of a woman named Jane. Two days later, they used this previously learned information to test hypotheses about Jane's suitability for one of two jobs: either the rather extraverted job of real estate salesperson, or the rather introverted job of research librarian. In their hypothesis-testing activities, participants first reported all those previously learned facts that they regarded as relevant to assessing Jane's suitability for the job under consideration, and then reported their judgments of her job suitability. Participants reported greater amounts of hypothesis-confirming than hypothesis-disconfirming factual material. Moreover, having tested hypotheses about Jane's suitability for one job, participants judged her to be better suited for that job than for the other job. In the third experiment, participants framed hypotheses for assessing job suitability and defined the task of testing these hypotheses. Participants framed hypotheses in terms of those attributes whose presence would confirm the hypotheses and defined the hypothesis-testing task as one of preferentially collecting hypothesis-confirming evidence. The nature and consequences of confirmatory hypothesis-testing strategies are discussed.     

Bidirectional operant conditioning of heart rate in rats with sucrose reward

Sucrose was used to reinforce heart rate (HR) increases in one group of unrestrained rats and to reinforce decreases in another. A third group received noncontingent sucrose presentations, and a fourth was presented with an empty dipper. After 10 conditioning sessions HR, as measured by changes in tonic levels, was significantly greater in the Fast group than in the Noncontingent group, which in turn maintained significantly higher levels than the Slow group. There was no difference between the Noncontingent and No-sucrose groups. Behavioral observations indicated that the Fast animals increased the percentage of time spent in such high-HR categories as rearing and walking; however, there were no corresponding systematic decreases in the Slow animals. Moreover, the Fast and Slow groups differed significantly with regard to the HRs associated with five behavioral categories. The overall pattern of results suggests that some degree of cardiospecific effect may have been exerted by the operant contingencies.     

Conference spaces as emotional sites for becoming campus sustainability leaders

This paper applies a feminist political ecology approach to ask: How do sustainability in higher education (SHE) conference events co-produce the subjectivities and expertise of campus sustainability professionals (CSPs) emotionally? Specifically, how do SHE conference spaces cultivate particular embodied practices and discourses in CSPs who are meant to translate at times irreconcilable practices and discourses in their daily campus-based work? Through multi-event ethnography and autoethnography of SHE events and comparisons with academic conferences more broadly in my role as a teacher-scholar-activist, I analyze how CSPs encounter and challenge ‘green’ knowledge claims emotionally. Vignettes from a sample of conference spaces demonstrate that SHE events provoke a confusion of conflicting emotions, all while promoting products, services and solutions to ‘fix’ the distressing emotions they provoke. Furthermore, the emergence of informal and formal wellness discourses and performances at SHE conferences re-directs CSPs away from critical questions of power toward self-centered, technocratic and technophilic solutions. A politics of failure can challenge audit culture, the bullshitization of sustainability work and neoliberal tropes of professionalism and self-improvement. Such a politics compliments ongoing efforts to center justice-oriented work in sustainability.     

傣医药在澜湄流域传统医药文化交流中的影响

通过对傣族传统医药知识体系进行总结,探索并思考傣医药在澜湄流域传统医药文化交流中的影响,包括其独特的地域分布、发展历史、医理文化内涵及保健价值对澜湄流域内国家与族群具有的重要历史和现实双重意义,以及其体现出的傣泰民族健康理念,以宗教信仰、民间风俗、饮食习惯等形态出现的行为模式等,以期充分发挥傣医药在澜湄流域各国交流与互动中的纽带作用,为人们的健康提供保障,强化民族认同感,推动国家间友好合作。     

The paramenstruum and negative moods in normal young women

The present study investigated the effects of depressogenic statements on 154 normal young women, in relation to the late luteal phase of the female monthly cycle (paramenstruum). The women were allocated to a depressive-induction group or to either of two non-treatment groups. Multivariate ANOVAs indicated that paramenstrual women given the depressogenic statements reported more negative post-induction mood states than did other women. Four of the 12 mood states measured by the Differential Emotions Scale (DES-IV) were significantly elevated for the paramenstrual women in the depressive-induction group only (viz. Sadness, Hostility, Fear and Shame subscales). It was concluded that paramenstrual women appear to be more sensitive to depressive stimuli, and therefore, more prone to experience negative mood states than women at other stages in their monthly cycles.     

Access to attitude-relevant information in memory as a determinant of persuasion: The role of message attributes

Recipients with access to attitude-relevant information in memory were thought to draw on these beliefs and prior experiences to evaluate the validity of message arguments. Consistent with this idea, persuasion for these recipients was largely a function of the perceived validity of message content: Messages containing high-quality arguments were more persuasive than messages containing lowquality arguments, whereas variations in a structural attribute of the message (its length) proved to have little impact on opinion change. In contrast, people who tend to retrieve little attitude-relevant information were believed to be less able to evaluate the validity of message arguments in terms of information accessed from memory. Instead, it was anticipated that they would base their opinion judgments on a more superficial analysis of persuasion cues, focusing on attributes like message length. Consistent with this reasoning, these recipients were more persuaded by long than short messages. Recipients with moderate levels of retrieval functioned much like the high-retrieval subjects.     

Contextual determinants of retrieval in three-month-old infants

Three-month old infants learned to kick to produce movement in an overhead crib mobile on a conjugate reinforcement (FRI) schedule. All infants were trained in the presence of one of two distinctive crib bumpers. In Experiment 1, infants receiving cued-recall tests in the presence of the original training bumper remembered the conditioned association 1 week later, but those tested in the presence of a different bumper did not. Two weeks later, neither training group evidenced retention of the contingency. In Experiment 2, infants who received a 3-min exposure (“a reactivation treatment”) to the original training bumper 24 h prior to the 2-week retention test exhibited excellent long-term retention, whereas those exposed to a different bumper as a reminder did not, irrepective of whether it was identical to the test bumper or not. These findings demonstrate that the context alone, even though it was never exclusively paired with reinforcement, can act as a retrieval cue.