Manipulating number generation: Loud + long = large?

Humans make numerous choices every day and tend to perceive these choices as free. The present study shows how simple free choices are biased by experiencing unrelated auditory information. In two experiments, participants categorized tones according to their intensity on the dimensions volume and duration on the majority of trials. On some trials, however, they were to randomly generate a number, and we found these choices to be influenced by tone intensity. Particularly, if participants were cued toward volume, loud tones clearly biased participants to generate larger numbers. For tone duration, a similar effect only emerged if spatial information was reinforced by the motor context of the task. The findings extend previous findings relating to the ATOM framework (A Theory of Magnitude) by an explicit focus on auditory magnitude processing. As such, they also constrain ATOM by showing that the connections between different magnitude dimensions vary to a considerable degree.     

Uniform Test Assembly

In educational practice, a test assembly problem is formulated as a system of inequalities induced by test specifications. Each solution to the system is a test, represented by a 0–1 vector, where each element corresponds to an item included (1) or not included (0) into the test. Therefore, the size of a 0–1 vector equals the number of items n in a given item pool. All solutions form a feasible set—a subset of 2 ⁿ vertices of the unit cube in an n-dimensional vector space. Test assembly is uniform if each test from the feasible set has an equal probability of being assembled. This paper demonstrates several important applications of uniform test assembly for educational practice. Based on Slepian’s inequality, a binary program was analytically studied as a candidate for uniform test assembly. The results of this study establish a connection between combinatorial optimization and probability inequalities. They identify combinatorial properties of the feasible set that control the uniformity of the binary programming test assembly. Computer experiments illustrating the concepts of this paper are presented.     

Is Justice Binary?: A Free‐Will‐Related Exploration

Abstract: This article asks whether justice is binary, whether matters are either‐or with respect to it. This question has been inexplicably neglected, and the elementary conceptual work has not been done. We consider this question through exploring the implications of free‐will‐related justice. We see that there are actually two questions of very different scope here, and that two distinct notions of binarity need to be distinguished. In the process, the plausibility of considering justice as a binary notion is evaluated.     

自我表征特点与成败情境下的自我关注选择倾向

本研究以小学三年级学生为被试进行情境实验,探讨成功与挫败情景下儿童的自我关注状态。实验结果表明,被试的自我描述选择在一定程度上受成败评语的影响。并且,被试自我概念特征与成败情景下的反应存在着一定的关系,来自不同学习环境的被试自我表征有不同的倾向性。本文分析了这些现象在儿童自我发展中的意义。     

Septal area lesions impair spatial working memory in homing pigeons (Columba livia)

The septo-hippocampal system in birds resembles that of mammals, motivating research into the function of the avian hippocampus while surprisingly little attention has been given to the septum. To investigate a possible role of the avian septum in memory, the effects of septal area lesions on a spatial working memory (SpWM) task was tested in homing pigeons. After preoperative training on an analogue eight-arm (feeders) radial maze, now sham-operated control and septal lesioned pigeons were then trained again on the same task of locating the four feeders on the test phase of a trial that were not baited during the sample phase of a trial. During the test phase of a working memory trial, septal lesioned pigeons, compared to both their own preoperative performance and the performance of the controls, required significantly more choices to locate the four baited feeders not baited during the sample phase of a trial, and they made significantly fewer correct responses to the now baited feeders on their first four choices. The results demonstrate that, like its mammalian counterpart, the avian septum plays an important role in SpWM, suggesting that at least some functional properties of the septum are evolutionarily conserved in birds and mammals.     

Parenting in relation to child and adolescent vocational development

Processes of child and adolescent vocational development include acquisition of knowledge, beliefs, and values about work options and requirements, exploration of interests that will be relevant for occupational interest development, development of academic aspirations, self-efficacy, expectations, and attainment. These elements serve to provide preparation for entry into a range of occupations and provide for the establishment of vocational aspirations, occupational self-efficacy, expectations, planning, and attainment. Parenting occurs within a family context influenced by a myriad of factors, including availability of financial capital, human capital, social capital, child agency, work-family interfacing, family roles, family structure, and the historical conditions affecting parents. These family contextual factors promote our understanding of differences in parenting in relation to child and adolescent vocational development. Far more complex than specific steps to entering the labor market per se, child and adolescent vocational development includes the interfacing of parenting and developmental processes.     

Don't Count Calorie Labeling Out: Calorie Counts on the Left Side of Menu Items Lead to Lower Calorie Food Choices

Providing calorie counts on restaurants’ menus/menu boards is one of the most prominent policy interventions that has been implemented to combat the obesity epidemic in America. However, previous research across multiple disciplines has found little effect of providing calorie counts on calories ordered, leading some to call calorie provision a failed policy. The authors propose that this failure is partly due to not considering how people process information when making food choices: Americans read from left‐to‐right, processing calorie information only after processing the food item's name. Thus, the authors test a simple way to improve the effectiveness of calorie counts: display calorie counts to the left (vs. right) of food items. A field study and a laboratory study with American participants found that calorie counts to the left (vs. right) decreased calories ordered by 16.31%. A final laboratory study demonstrated that this effect is reversed among Hebrew‐speakers, who read from right‐to‐left, providing further evidence that the order in which calorie information is processed matters. Accordingly, calling calorie labeling a policy failure may be premature.     

Tucker2 hierarchical classes analysis

This paper presents a new hierarchical classes model, called Tucker2-HICLAS, for binary three-way three-mode data. As any three-way hierarchical classes model, the Tucker2-HICLAS model includes a representation of the association relation among the three modes and a hierarchical classification of the elements of each mode. A distinctive feature of the Tucker2-HICLAS model, being closely related to the Tucker3-HICLAS model (Ceulemans, Van Mechelen & Leenen, 2003), is that one of the three modes is minimally reduced and, hence, that the differences among the association patterns of the elements of this mode are maximally retained in the model. Moreover, as compared to Tucker3-HICLAS, Tucker2-HICLAS implies three rather than four different types of parameters and as such is simpler to interpret. Two types of Tucker2-HICLAS models are distinguished: a disjunctive and a conjunctive type. An algorithm for fitting the Tucker2-HICLAS model is described and evaluated in a simulation study. The model is illustrated with longitudinal data on interpersonal emotions. The first author is a Researcher of the Fund for Scientific Research—Flanders (Belgium). The research reported in this paper was partially supported by the Research Council of K.U. Leuven (GOA/2000/02). The authors are grateful to Iwin Leenen for the fruitful discussions.