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.     

Responsible engineering: Gilbane Gold revisited

This paper addresses several concerns in teaching engineering ethics. First, there is the problem of finding space within already crowded engineering curricula for meaningful discussions of ethical dimensions in engineering. Some engineering programs may offer entire courses on engineering ethics; however, most do not at present and may not in the foreseeable future. A promising possibility is to weave ethics into already existing courses using case studies, but most current case studies are not well integrated with engineering technical analysis. There is a danger that case studies will be viewed by both instructors and students as departures from “business as usual”—interesting perhaps, but not essentially connected with “real” engineering. We offer a case study, inspired by the National Society of Professional Engineer’s popular video Gilbane Gold, that can be used to make the connection. It requires students to engage in technical analysis, but in a context that makes apparent the ethical responsibility of engineers. Further, the case we present marks a significant departure from more typical cases that primarily focus on wrongdoing and its prevention. We concentrate more positively on what responsible engineering requires. There is a need for more such cases, regardless of whether they are to be used in standard engineering courses or in separate courses in engineering ethics. This article is the product of the NSF/Bovay Endowment “Workshop to Develop Numerical Problems Associated With Ethics Cases for use in Required Undergraduate Engineering Courses” (NSF Grant DUE-9455141) held at Texas A&M University in August 1995. For further information about this project, contact Michael J. Rabins, Director of the Ethics and Professionalism Program in the Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. Additional case studies from this workshop are available on the Internet site http://ethics.tamu.edu. The writing of this article was supported in part by “Engineering Ethics: Good Works” (NSF/EVS Grant SBR-930257). Michael Pritchard teaches ethics and is co-author of Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases (1995) with C.E. Harris and Michael Rabins (Wadsworth, Belmont CA). Mark Holtzapple teaches chemical engineering and is author of Foundations of Engineering (McGraw-Hill) which includes an ethics chapter suitable for freshman engineering students.     

Audiences,relevance, and cognitive environments

This paper discusses the fundamental sense in which the components of an argument should be relevant to the intended audience. In particular, the evidence advanced should be relevant to the facts and assumptions that are manifest in the cognitive environment of the audience. A version of Sperber and Wilson's concept of the cognitive environment is applied to argumentative concerns, and from this certain features of audience-relevance are explored: that the relevance of a premise can vary with the audience; that irrelevant premises can be made relevant; that evidence can be relevant by degrees; and that this notion of relevance will assist the argumentation analyst in the identification and assessment of hidden premises.     

PREVENTING SCHOOL VANDALISM AND IMPROVING DISCIPLINE: A THREE-YEAR STUDY

Vandalism is a major problem facing educators and taxpayers alike. The present investigation analyzed how vandalism costs and student disruption were related to the implementation of a training and consultation package designed to increase the reinforcing ambience of the school. A positive environment, it was posited, would displace previous events that may have set the occasion for vandalism, with cues to promote productive school performance. Eighteen elementary and junior high schools were involved over a 3-year period. Using a delayed treatment control design, treatment was delivered following either 4 or 13 months of baseline. During treatment, teams of school personnel attended training workshops in behavioral strategies for reducing vandalism and disruption by students in school. Each team also met regularly on its campus to plan and implement programs on a schoolwide basis. To demonstrate that reinforcing procedures were actually implemented and accompanied by change in student performance, these variables were periodically probed throughout the study. Project staff also provided consultation. Vandalism costs decreased significantly (p < .05) more in treatment than control schools, with an average reduction of 78.5% for all project schools. Rates of praise delivered by project teachers and other randomly selected teachers in the school increased significantly (p < .05), and rates of off-task behavior by students decreased significantly (p < .05) following treatment. The staff development model used in this study appeared to be both feasible and economical.     

Behavioral assessment of psychiatric inpatients and normal controls across different environmental contexts

Objectively defined, publicly observable behaviors were time sampled for hospitalized psychiatric patients and normal controls in three distinct environmental contexts: lunch time, free time, and gym time. The behaviors sampled included body activity, extremity activity, proximity, social interactions, participation, visual scanning, laughing/smiling, and idiosyncratic behavior. Patient behaviors were recorded during both a drug-free baseline period and a subsequent medication period. The data suggest that consistent and reliable differences between patients and normals in most behaviors can be observed and that environmental context is an important determinant of these differences. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for assessment procedures and treatment decisions.These investigations were supported in part by State of Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Grants RD836-13 and RD622-02 to the first author. The cooperation of the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute staff is gratefully acknowledged.     

论学习活动的本质

本文将传统的学习理论关于学习概念的定义分为三种基本类型,即结果论、过程论和活动论,指出传统学习理论的混乱基本上是出于没有对学习活动进行全面而系统的分析,并从学习活动的层次性、多侧面性、心理机制、对环境的适应性等方面对学习活动进行了系统的分析。认为学习活动可以分为五种不同的层次,具有五个不同的侧面,拥有两种作用不同的心理机制,最终得出学习活动的本质定义是：学习是一种多层次、多侧面的、适应性的心理活动,它使个体获得经验,并导致个体的已有的心理结构发生适应性的变化。     

CONSTRUCTED-RESPONSE MATCHING TO SAMPLE AND SPELLING INSTRUCTION

The development of interactive programmed instruction using a microcomputer as a teaching machine is described. The program applied a constructed-response matching-to-sample procedure to computer-assisted spelling instruction and review. On each trial, subjects were presented with a sample stimulus and a choice pool consisting of 10 individual letters. In initial training, sample stimuli were arrays of letters, and subjects were taught to construct identical arrays by touching the matching letters in the choice pool. After generalized constructed-response identity matching was established, pictures (line drawings) of common objects were presented as samples. At first, correct spelling was prompted by also presenting the printed name to be “copied” via identity matching; then the prompts were faded out. The program was implemented with 2 mentally retarded individuals. Assessment trials determined appropriate words for training. Correct spelling was established via the prompt-fading procedure; training trials were interspersed among baseline trials that reviewed and maintained spelling of previously learned words. As new words were learned, they were added to a cumulative baseline to generate an individualized review and practice battery for each subject.     

Relevance of physical environment influences for toddler temperament

The present study investigated the relation of the physical environment to toddler and parent temperament. Measurement of the physical environment offers a unique way of disentangling environmental influences on temperament from child influences on the environment. Subjects were 82 12-month-old toddlers. The physical environment was assessed during six separate home observations, using codes from the Purdue Home Stimulation Inventory. Toddler temperament was measured by the Toddler Temperament Scale, and maternal temperament was assessed with the revised Dimensions of Temperament Scale. Results indicated that measures of crowding and availability of objects and visual stimuli were most consistently related to specific dimensions of toddler temperament. Relations between physical environment and maternal temperament were inconsistent. Partialling out maternal temperament did not substantially change observed relations between the physical environment and toddler temperament. Implications of these findings for our understanding of environmental contributions to the expression of temperament are discussed.     

Gadamer and the Otherness of Nature: Elements for an Environmental Education

In this work I search for elements that contribute to the development of the ethical dimension of environmental education. I start with the existence of what C.A. Bowers calls “areas of silence” in the curriculum in both schools and universities. The reason for this silence, I argue, is to be found in the Cartesian conceptual structures of curricula. I suggest that the works of Bacon, Galileo and Descartes provoke a twofold process that I have termed the forgetting of tradition and objectification of nature. As a corrective to this process, I explore the possibilities that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer opens for rehabilitation of tradition and de-objectification of nature. I work with the concept of the “dignity of things” present in Greek dialectics: that nature is not simply a projection of mind (as the neo-Kantians claim), but something that thought suffers. In my conclusions I argue that for nature to be reinserted into almost all areas of knowledge it is necessary that we respect “the otherness of nature.”