中文新异组合概念的解释及影响因素

通过分析600名中国大学生对32个概念组成的160个新异组合概念的解释,考察了中文名词-名词组合概念的解释策略及影响因素。结果表明：⑴关系解释和属性解释是两种主要的解释策略;⑵第一个子概念具有显著属性的组合概念得到更多的属性解释;⑶子概念之间相似性的高低不影响属性解释出现的比率,但影响关系解释出现的比率;⑷生物组合概念比人造物组合概念得到更多的属性解释。其中的新发现既不支持关系竞争理论,也不支持双重加工理论,引出了有待研究的新问题。     

Promoting Student Cognitive Development

This study focused on a theoretically grounded counselor preparation curriculum that was designed to enhance the moral reasoning and cognitive complexity of students as well as teach them the basic skills and theories of counselor education. The curriculum for the counselor training was rooted in a teaching–learning framework that included conditions for facilitating cognitive–developmental growth and skill and theoretical training components. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the developmental effects of the counselor training program as measured in 2 domains of cognitive development: conceptual level and level of moral reasoning. The participants were assessed at 3 different times: prior to entering the counseling program, 1-year into the program, and the month marking the completion of their 2nd year in the program. The Paragraph Completion Method (PCM) and the Defining Issues Test (DIT) were used as estimates of cognitive–developmental level. Analysis of the results revealed a significant gain for the group on the PCM between the 2nd and 3rd assessments and a positive but nonsignificant trend for the DIT.     

Russia and the West: The Root of the Problem of Mutual Understanding

I examine issues tied to the allegeddifficulties of mutual understanding betweenRussia and the West. I show that some of thebackground to these issues lies in thedifference of culturally grounded differencesin perceptual and conceptual schemata. In theWest, a broadly understood Aristotelianism andin Russia Neoplatonism designate dominantattitudes to the world. The Russian `lunar'consciousness, in comparison with the `solar'consciousness of the West, tends by and largeprecipitously to totalize the world, and theexperienced multiplicity of the real isreferred to its imagined center. The differencebetween Russia and the West, limited to somedegree by mutual similarities, can become thebasis of an axiological and intellectualdialogue important for one side and theother.     

STUDENT THINKING WHEN STUDYING SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION

Thirteen theology/religious studies students were interviewed while studying science‐and‐religion courses at four different institutions of higher education in the United Kingdom. They held a range of views about science and religion, their respective ontological status, and their science‐and‐religion studies. The interviews reveal that it may be possible to assign individuals to one of four different religioscientific conceptual frameworks and, furthermore, to relate differences in their approach when studying science‐and‐religion to their conceptual framework. The implications for course designers are discussed, including how the frameworks may enable teachers to be more aware of the range of possible reactions students may have while being introduced to science‐and‐religion topics.     

Analytical Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

The paper examines the plausibility of analytical dispositionalism about practical reason, according to which the following claims are conceptual truths about common sense ethical discourse: i) Ethics: agents have reasons to act in some ways rather than others, and ii) Metaphysical Modesty: there is no such thing as a response independent normative reality. By elucidating two uncontroversial assumptions which are fundamental to the common sense commitment to ethics, I argue that common sense ethical discourse is most plausibly construed as committed to the denial of metaphysical modesty, and thereby as committed to the existence of a response independent normative reality.     

Interjections in Interviews

A psycholinguistic hypothesis regarding the use of interjections in spoken utterances, originally formulated by Ameka (1992b, 1994) for the English language, but not confirmed in the German-language research of Kowal and OConnell (2004 a & c), was tested: The local syntactic isolation of interjections is paralleled by their articulatory isolation in spoken utterances, i.e., by their occurrence between a preceding and a following pause. The corpus consisted of four TV and two radio interviews of Hillary Clinton that had coincided with the publication of her book Living History (2003) and one TV interview of Robin Williams by James Lipton. No evidence was found for articulatory isolation of English-language interjections. In the Hillary Clinton interviews and Robin Williams interviews, respectively, 71% and 73% of all interjections occurred initially, i.e., at the onset of various units of spoken discourse: at the beginning of turns; at the beginning of articulatory phrases within turns, i.e., after a preceding pause; and at the beginning of a citation within a turn (either Direct Reported Speech [DRS] or what we have designated Hypothetical Speaker Formulation [HSF]. One conventional interjection (OH) occurred most frequently. The Robin Williams interview had a much higher occurrence of interjections, especially nonconventional ones, than the Hillary Clinton interviews had. It is suggested that the onset or initializing role of interjections reflects the temporal priority of the affective and the intuitive over the analytic, grammatical, and cognitive in speech production. Both this temporal priority and the spontaneous and emotional use of interjections are consonant with Wundts (1900) characterization of the primary interjection as psychologically primitive. The interjection is indeed the purest verbal implementation of conceptual orality.     

Outgrowing representationalism: Semantic remarks on Tracy Llanera's Richard Rorty: Outgrowing modern nihilism

This article provides a semantic reading of Tracy Llanera's brilliant book Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism. Llanera is reframing the debate of how to react to the malaise of modern nihilism by proposing a change of metaphor: instead of trying to “overcome” nihilism, we should try to “outgrow” nihilism. This article invites Llanera to shed more light on her project with respect to the semantic categories of realism and representationalism, and with respect to the growing field of conceptual engineering. Can Llanera's project be fruitfully understood as engineering the concepts of “transcendence” and “redemption”? How much of the project hangs on the idea that language does not represent but is rather a tool that helps us fulfill our varying needs? How neat is the entanglement of semantic and existential meaning?     

Not only encoding and retrieval: The enactment effect as a function of task preparation

Three experiments examined the implications of adding a fourth preparation stage to the encoding-retention-retrieval stage analysis of memory. Action memory was selected as the research domain. The results demonstrated that systematic variation of the preparation stage yields new insights about enactment effects in memory. Together with effects of enactment in the preparatory stage, enactment was also shown to give differential effects in encoding and retrieval, with interactions between these three factors. The experimental results were discussed in relation to a strategy processing interpretation of action memory.     

The effects of a community-based literacy program on young children's language and conceptual development

Effects of a community-based literacy program on 1−, 2−, and 3-year-old children's language and conceptual development were assessed. University students were trained to teach Head Start parents effective methods for reading to their children. Families were randomly assigned to receive 18, 3, or 0 instructional visits. Results indicated that parents in the 18-instructional-visit program increased their participation in appropriate literacy behaviors such as reading to their children, teaching concepts to their children, and using the library, more than parents in the 0-instructional-visit groups. Children in the 18-instructional-visit program showed greater gains in language and conceptual development than children in the 0-instructional-visit group. Few differences were found between children in the 3-visti and 0-instructional-visit groups. Thus, only a high-intensity community-based intervention designed to train parents was effective in increasing emergent literacy in low-income ethnic children. Supported by Commission on National and Community Service grant 92HELOCA0039, the Dr. Seuss Foundation, Head Start, and the College of Sciences at San Diego State University. The authors gratefully acknowledge William A. Hillix, Leah K. Gensheimer, and Larry Fenson for their helpful reviews of drafts of this article, Florence Goldman for her training of tutors in techniques for developing emergent literacy, and the many students who assisted in the implementation and evaluation of this project.     

Science education,conceptual change and breaking with everyday experience

Science educators and those who investigate science learning have tended, for good reason, to focus their attention on students' conceptual development, Such a focus is, however, too narrow to provide full and proper understanding of the complexities of original science learning. Recently developmental cognitive psychologists have called on the work of postpositivistic philosophers of science, especially Thomas Kuhn, to bolster their research into conceptual development in science acquisition. What these psychologists have not recognized is that Kuhn's position is actually a derivative of Wittgenstein's methodological nominalism, a viewpoint far more favorable to behaviorism than cognitive psychology. After drawing out some of the consequences of this fact for the developmental cognitive psychologist program for studying science learning, we suggest our own radical alternative. Drawing on Floden, Buchmann and Schwille's idea of Breaking with Everyday Experience we propose an alternative notion of original science learning in terms of Alfred Schutz's modification of Williams James' many worlds thesis. The many worlds thesis will allow us to better understand students' difficulty in learning idealized worlds such as science, worlds that represent a discontinuous break with ordinary everyday practical experience.