Relationships Between Need for Cognition,Knowledge, and Verbal Ability

The authors investigated the relationships between need for cognition. knowledge, and verbal ability. Participants completed scales that measured their need for cognition, verbal ability, and knowledge about people and events that occurred during the Vietnam War era. Correlational analyses showed that the participants' need for cognition scores were modestly but positively correlated with verbal ability and knowledge and that verbal ability and knowledge were also positively correlated. The correlation between need for cognition and knowledge was small but significant when verbal ability was controlled. The conclusion drawn from these results is that need for cognition contributes to the acquisition of knowledge beyond the contribution of verbal ability.     

A Cerebral Hyperventilation Index for Electroencephalography

This study was an attempt to determine the effect of drive on probability learning. Each of two groups of Ss was divided into high- and low-drive groups on the basis of MAS scores. Each S was given 200 trials on a probability learning task, with 70 per cent reinforcement on one side and 30 per cent reinforcement on the other. At the .05 level, there was no difference between groups in probability choices, and neither group differed from the objective probability scores. The results are discussed in terms of the number of trials involved, the introduction of emotional arousal, and Hullian theory. On the basis of a comparison with the results of previous studies, it was suggested that investigators be cautious in generalizing probability learning results from one species to another.     

Re‐framing systemic paradigms for the art of learning

Thoughtful people are increasingly concerned that the current paradigms for social, corporate, and educational activities are in disgraceful disarray. The “problem‐solving” or analytical model, the competitive or game model, the commercial or consumer model, the bureaucratic or institutional model, and the disease or illness model which prevail in public discourse are proving to be especially unwholesome. We cannot, however, educate ourselves without paradigms. A credible educational paradigm must be generally accessible without being simplistic, informative without being monothematic, and accommodating as well as discriminating. Given our disquiet with the current cognitive situation, a renewing paradigm must be somehow novel; given the character of human nature, a sustaining paradigm must be somehow familiar.

For a very long time now, professional Sciences have committed themselves to paradigms about “reality out there,” while professional Arts have devoted themselves to expressing “imagination from within here.” The more these two worldviews polarize in opposition to one another, the more room there is—and the more human heed there becomes—for mediation by an applied philosophy which accommodates the “real” as well as the “imaginary” in a complementary way. Such a philosophy would address not only “what do you know?” and “how do you do?” but also “how do you know?” and “why do you do?” In earlier times, people would have been considered neither educated nor wise unless they appreciated the Sciences and the Arts whole. In our time, we may not survive unless we can re‐integrate our fractured perceptions. How might we proceed to do so? There may be a systemological way.     

The demotion of alpha‐homo sapiens: Consciousness,punctuated equilibrium,and the laws of the game

The result of using Eigen and Winkler's LIFE/DEATH GAME to integrate Rashevksy's social physics and Rapoport's mathematical game theory, synchrony removes the arbitrariness from problems of ethics. It focuses on the primary conflicts between strategies that optimize individual survival and those that optimize survival of groups. According to synchrony, cooperation is an optimal strategy, not because cooperation conforms to some ethical pattern, but because the evolution of our technical societies has made the alternatives to cooperation potentially lethal at all levels of human interaction. Eigen and Winkler offer hypercycles as a possible method of resolving problems that conventional wisdom has labeled “irreconcilable differences.”

Combined with the findings of clinical psychologist Paul Meehl and cultural anthropologist Magoroh Maruyama, Eigen and Winkler's LIFE/ DEATH GAME indicates that a pattern of reasoning, called Alpha‐H, is not only a formidable obstacle to cooperation, it threatens contemporary societies with extinction through violent conflicts, social upheavals economic collapse or all three together.

The Demotion of Alpha‐H argues that an inability to deal constructively with change and/or diversity is Alpha‐H's fatal flaw. And the removal of gender bias toward opponent processes reasoning is a crucial step toward correcting it. The key concept is the LIFE/DEATH GAME.     

Countertheses: Communication,material conditions,and future sociocultural development

Chaos in brain function. Edited by Erol Basar Springer‐Verlag, 1990, Berlin. Softcover, 176 pp., 66 figures, index.     

Knowledge and economic growth—creativity,learning and knowledge utilization

The purpose of this study is to discuss the dynamic interdependence of knowledge and economic growth. We show that the traditional economics, which treats knowledge as parameters and is mainly developed within linearized, stable and static frameworks can hardly explain the modern economic complexity. We argue that it is necessary to treat creativity, learning and knowledge utilization as endogenous dynamic processes of social and economic evolution. To handle with the complicated dynamic interdependence of wealth and knowledge accumulation, we need to apply genuine nonlinear dynamic theory. In particular, we discuss possible benefits of government's intervention in education and science to the society when the social and economic evolution is characterized of nonlinearity, instability and multi‐equilibria.     

The choreography of everyday life—a missing brick in the general evolution theory

The “choreography of everyday life refers to the existence of rules of daily life, correspondingly to those of dances: the rules impose order upon individual behavior beyond the level of pure improvisation. The fact that acts of everyday life repeat themselves supports the idea that there exist some mechanisms generating order to daily practices. The replicative model of evolution is a candidate to explain this process of routinization. At the beginning of a replicative cycle behavioral patterns might change radically. In the course of time integrative and competitive selective forces start working. Finally some established rules, choreography, determining daily practices will emerge. In this mature phase identical replication takes place.     

An Integral Perspective On The Political Economy Of “Big Change”

The integral age demands a new economic vision. This has to emphasize exchange as a processes not the exchange of things. It must address humanity's unique compulsion to learn using collaborative learning networks. These are what energize the self-organizing global change now accelerating the emergence of new global economic institutions and processes. This new vision requires political economy (i.e., economics integrated with its sociopolitical context).     

Predicting early emotion knowledge development among children of colour living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods: consideration of child pre-academic abilities,self-regulation,peer relations and parental education

ABSTRACT

Emotion knowledge, the ability to accurately perceive and label emotions, predicts higher quality peer relations, higher social competence, higher academic achievement, and fewer behaviour problems. Less is known, however, about predictors of early development of emotion knowledge. This study examines emotion knowledge development among children attending pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten programmes in high-poverty urban schools. The study considers child pre-academic abilities, self-regulation, peer relations and parental education as predictors of emotion knowledge development over two years. The sample (n?=?1034) of children living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods was primarily Black (85%) and low-income (～61%). The sample was part of a longitudinal follow-up study of a cluster (school) randomised controlled trial in ten public elementary schools. Children’s emotion knowledge was assessed with a series of tasks three times over a two-year period. At baseline, parents and teachers reported on peer relations, children completed a test of pre-academic abilities, independent observers rated child self-regulation, and parents reported on their educational attainment. Results demonstrate that emotion knowledge increases over time, and pre-academic abilities, self-regulation, peer relations, and parent education independently predict children’s emotion knowledge. This study highlights multiple factors that predict emotion knowledge among primarily Black children living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods.