A Completeness Proof for a Logic with an Alternative Necessity Operator

We show the completeness of a Hilbert-style system LK defined by M. Valiev involving the knowledge operator K dedicated to the reasoning with incomplete information. The completeness proof uses a variant of Makinson's canonical model construction. Furthermore we prove that the theoremhood problem for LK is co-NP-complete, using techniques similar to those used to prove that the satisfiability problem for propositional S5 is NP-complete.     

儿童认知几何图形干扰因素的研究

本研究旨在探讨影响儿童几何图形认知的几个主要因素及其作用的变化过程。研究对象是５－１０岁儿童１４５名,研究材料有长方形、三角形、梯形、椭圆形、平行四边形。选择直观因素、种类内干扰、种类外干扰３种干扰。采取称名、指认、分类、确认、鉴别５种实验指标。实验结果表明对几何图形非本质因素的摆脱、对变式图形的确认、对非同类相似图形的鉴别是儿童初级几何认知发展的重要标志;采集双重标准分类,对本质特征和非本质特征的离析是儿童几何图形分类能力发展的主要过渡形态;语言提示对儿童几何图形分类的改进作用不大,对确认和鉴别图形有显著性影响;小学二年级儿童的初级几何知识只相当于５岁儿童水平,这种现象值得有关教育部门重视。     

From Logos to Pathos in Social Psychology and Academic Argumentation: Reconciling Postmodernism and Positivism in a Sociology of Persuasion

This paper argues that one can empirically test, via positivist methods, the post-modern attack on positivist epistemologies: Postmodern perspectives hold Knowledge and Truth to be intersubjective, consensus-driven social constructions. But traditional scientific approaches to knowledge, exemplified here by the cognitive social psychology of persuasion, seem oblivious to this and continue to detach the study of attitudes, beliefs, and emotions from that of knowledge, facts, and reason. Abandoning these artificial distinctions in both epistemology and method would enable this social psychology, reconstituted as a Sociology of Persuasion, to contribute greatly to illuminating the processes of Truth and Knowledge construction in social interaction. Moreover, this would facilitate academic engagement in civic discourse.     

Purchasing decisions,partial knowledge,and economic search experimental and simulation evidence

Several experimental studies have discovered high-performing heuristic strategies in the search for the most economic price of a good in situations where a searcher has both full prior knowledge and no prior knowledge of the underlying price distribution. This paper describes a new experiment set in a more realistic ‘partial-knowledge’ framework. Several new search heuristics are suggested which match well with observed behaviour, and which, over a large number of simulated trials, perform well in comparison with the optimal model and better than previously reported ‘no-knowledge’ rules.     

Mind knowledge in infancy: The emergence of intentional communication

When and how infants and young children start to understand that persons are entities different from ‘non-persons ’ is the central issue addressed in this paper. A critical examination is presented of empirical research inspired by the ‘theory of mind ’ approach and relative to the knowledge about the mind exhibited by pre-school children (2–5 years of age). In considering what kind of psychological knowledge pre-linguistic children may acquire, it is argued that the most significant developmental phenomenon is the grasp of the concept of intentional communication, as distinct from both agency and instrumentality. Intentional communication, so defined, implies the capacity to represent and influence the other person's attentional state about aspects of the world, and at the same time to represent the other person as capable of understanding one's communicative intentions.     

The development of young infants' intuitions about support

Previous research has shown that 3-month-old infants, like adults, expect a box to be stable when it is in full contact with a platform, and to fall when it loses all contact with the platform. Do young infants also have expectations about what should happen when the box is only in partial contact with the platform? The present research was designed to address this question. In Experiment 1, 6.5-month-old infants saw two test events: a full-contact and a partial-contact test event. In both events, the infants watched the extended finger of a gloved hand push a box along the top of a platform. In the full-contact event, the box was pushed until its leading edge reached the end of the platform. In the partial-contact event, the box was pushed until only 15% or 70% of its bottom surface remained on the platform. The infants looked reliably longer at the partial-than at the full-contact event when 15%, but not 70%, of the box rested on the platform. These results suggested that the infants were able to judge how much contact was needed between the box and the platform for the box to be stable. A control condition provided evidence for this interpretation. In Experiment 2, 5.5- to 6-month-old infants were found to look equally at the full- and the partial-contact events, even when only 15% of the box's bottom surface remained on the platform. This result suggested that prior to 6.5 months of age infants perceive any amount of contact between the box and the platform to be sufficient to ensure the box's stability. Interpretations of this developmental sequence are considered in the Conclusion.     

Ernest Becker and the Psychology of Worldviews

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski offer experimental confirmation for Ernest Becker's claim that the fear of death is a powerful unconscious motive producing polarized worldviews and scapegoating. Their suggestion that their findings also prove Sigmund Freud's theory of repression, with worldviews as its irrational products, is questionable, although Becker's own statements about worldviews as "illusions" seem to invite such interpretation. Their basic theory does not depend on this, however, and abandoning it would enable them to take better advantage of their finding that worldviews incorporating the values of rationality and tolerance tend to counteract polarization effects.     

Individuation and paideia

This article attempts to discover an important historical precedent for the concept of individuation in the idea of paideia , which today, mistakenly, is often understood to have been simply the form of 'education' practised in ancient Greece. Paideia , however, was not limited to the instruction of youth and was based on no fixed programmes. It was conceived as continuing throughout the life of the individual, and as a development of natural, in-born potential. Paideia articulated a notion of 'inner culture', or cultura animi , which has since receded from Western civilization, with its anti-psychological emphasis on progress, specialization and extra-version, and with its notion that a civilization's 'culture' is primarily defined by its social structures and material tools. Present-day interest in the Jungian concept of individuation can thus be seen as a return of the repressed. An analysis of the Telemachy - the opening cantos of the Odyssey - in which Odysseus' son, Telemachus, accomplishes his passage to adulthood, reveals the need for the realization of natural potential to be an innate and archetypal ideal. Homeric poetry is then seen to have furnished a unified canon for the whole human being, whereas the subsequent course of European civilization, starting with the Greek Sophists and an ever more specialized notion of philosophy, is seen to have fostered a unilateral mode of maturation. It is argued that nostalgia for paideia indirectly reasserts itself through the widespread cultural interest in the idea of individuation.     

英语单词记忆过程中策略的选用和评价的研究

问卷结果表明 :普通大学生和 GRE考生在有关记忆过程的知识方面没有差异 ;绝大多数 GRE考生有选用“较多的”策略趋势 ,且在规定单词记忆量和精细加工策略方面差异显著 ;两类被试在对策略的评价的总体上具有一致性 ,但两类被试在选择比较有效和值得推荐的策略时 ,在一些自我监控策略上的选取比率表现出差异 ,在选择效果不佳和基本无效策略时 ,在某些一般记忆加工策略上选取比率也存在差异 ;绝大多数被试推荐策略是基于经验 ,判定策略无效是源于直觉判断。本文结合前人的研究成果 ,探讨了知识、情景因素与策略的选择和运用的关系 ;提出了实际学习情景下策略有效性意识形成的两个因素及可能途径。     

Effects of a physical education intervention programme for ninth-graders on physical activity-related health competence: Findings from the GEKOS cluster randomised controlled trial

The main purpose of this cluster randomised controlled trial was to investigate the effects of a physical education (PE) intervention programme combining theoretical and practical components on students' knowledge, skills, abilities and motivation related to competence for a healthy active lifestyle. The intervention used learning tasks to combine theory on health and physical fitness with either running/jumping activities or small-sided ball games and was compared to regular PE classes. Forty-eight PE classes were randomly assigned to intervention (IG-run, IG-game play; 27 classes) and control (CG-run, CG-game play; 21 classes) groups. Overall, 841 ninth-graders (51.1% girls, M_age = 14.20, SD = 0.51) were tested before and after the six-week intervention and in an eight-to-twelve-week follow-up. Students completed a health-related fitness knowledge test, questionnaires on control competence for physical training, health- and fitness-related interest and attitudes, and physical fitness tests. Regressions in structural equation models revealed positive treatment effects of the game play intervention on students' knowledge (β_StdY = 0.33, 99.6% CI [0.12, 0.55]) and control competence for physical training (β_StdY = 0.26, 99.6% CI [0.02, 0.50]) at the post-test. No significant effects were found at the follow-up test. Treatment effects were independent of gender. The results indicate the short-term effectiveness of learning tasks combining theory with ball games in order to develop knowledge and control competence for physical training in PE. Further studies have to clarify how to sustain effects over time and address students' physical fitness and health- and fitness-related interest and attitudes in interventions combining theory and practice.Trial registrationThis study was retrospectively registered with the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS), DRKS-ID: DRKS00016349.