Education and Understanding Structural Causes for Group Inequalities

Group inequalities in the United States are most often attributed to the characteristics of the individuals who belong to these groups; thinking about structural causes of group inequalities is rare. This paper reviews cognitive, cultural, and systemic reasons for this bias. The efficacy of education as a way to increase structural thinking was investigated in two studies of college students' causal thinking about group inequalities. Both studies involved a course on intergroup relations that covered structural sources of racial or ethnic inequalities. Results supported hypotheses that the course would increase structural thinking about racial or ethnic inequality, and that structural thinking would generalize to inequalities not explicitly covered in the course. Both course content and active learning pedagogy were related to structural thinking about inequalities. Active learning was also related to applying structural thinking to targets of change.     

Empiricism,judgment, and argument; Toward an informal logic of science

In an attempt to explore the role of argumentation in scientific inquiry, I explore the conception of argument that appears fruitful in the light of the recent trends in the philosophy of science, away from logical empiricism, and toward a greater emphasis on change, disagreement, and history. I begin by contrasting typical instances philosopers theories of both empiricism and apriorism, with typical instances of scientists uses of these two attitudes, suggesting that such practice shows a judiciousness lacking in epistemological theory. Then I examine at some length three important version of scientific judgement, namely Einstein's opportunism, Boltzmann's pluralism, and Huygens's eclecticism. I go on to discuss some recent work in the philosophy of science, exploring connections between the notion of judgment and Feyerabend's anarchism, Harold Brown's view of rationality, and Dudley Shapere's analysis of scientific change. All of this suggests a notion of argument in the sense of informallogic, and I examine some aspects of Galileo's work in its terms.     

Metacomprehension: A Brief History and How to Improve Its Accuracy

ABSTRACT— People's judgments about how well they have learned and comprehended text materials can be important for effectively regulating learning, but only if those judgments are accurate. Over two decades of research examining judgments of text learning—or metacomprehension —has consistently demonstrated that people's judgment accuracy is quite poor. We review recent research that has shown some success in improving judgment accuracy and then argue that the most common method used to investigate metacomprehension accuracy may inadvertently constrain it. We describe a new method that sidesteps some problems of the older method and present evidence showing how people can achieve high levels of metacomprehension accuracy.     

不同训练方法对小学生分享行为影响的实验研究

本研究采用情境讨论、角色扮演和归因训练法对小学生分享行为进行为期两个月的训练,结果表明不同训练方法对培养小学生的分享行为都有明显作用,其中角色扮演法对小学生分享行为影响的效果最好,归因训练法次之,情景讨论法稍差;实验训练对培养小学女生分享行为的效果要明显优于对小学男生的效果,但情景讨论法对女生影响的效果优于男生,角色扮演训练对男生的影响效果要稍优于女生,但差异都不明显,而归因训练法对女生的训练效果明显地优于男生。     

Numerical order and quantity processing in number comparison

We investigated processing of numerical order information and its relation to mechanisms of numerical quantity processing. In two experiments, performance on a quantity-comparison task (e.g. 2 5; which is larger?) was compared with performance on a relative-order judgment task (e.g. 2 5; ascending or descending order?). The comparison task consistently produced the standard distance effect (faster judgments for far relative to close number pairs), but the distance effect was smaller for ascending (e.g. 2 5) compared to descending pairs (e.g. 5 2). The order task produced a pair-order effect (faster judgments for ascending pairs) and a reverse distance effect for consecutive pairs in ascending order. The reverse effect implies an order-specific process, such as serial search or direct recognition of order for successive numbers. Thus, numerical quantity and order judgments recruited different cognitive mechanisms. Nonetheless, the reduced distance effect for ascending pairs in the quantity task implies involvement of order-related processes in magnitude comparison. Accordingly, distance effects in the quantity-comparison task are not necessarily a process-pure measure of magnitude representation.     

The Role of Race and Severity of Abuse in Teachers' Recognition or Reporting of Child Abuse

In the United States, reported child abuse rates vary dramatically with race. We employed a scenario methodology to examine whether teachers, whose professional obligations include reporting suspected instances of abuse, exhibit bias in evaluating a possibly abused child. Each teacher (180 White, 180 Black, and 180 Hispanic) read one of six profiles about a hypothetical elementary school student and then expressed extent of agreement with either a statement that the child is being physically abused or a statement that the child should be reported as being physically abused. Within the set of profiles, race of the child and severity of abuse were manipulated. When the child in the profile was severely abused, responses for the two judgmental tasks were comparable. However, when the child was moderately abused, teachers asked whether the child was abused gave higher responses than their counterparts who were asked whether the child should be reported. No effects of race of the child or race of the teacher were observed.     

情景判断测验的性质、功能与开发编制

给出了情景判断测验的定义,对其性质、功能作了探讨,提出了开发编制的两种基本模式。特别是,分析了行为情景所蕴涵的问题常系结构不良,而对行为反应选项所作判断却属定向比较选择,指出了二者间的不同;同时,主张引进表征水平理论等来指导试题编写。     

反馈干预对学习判断的影响

将反馈干预作为外部线索引入元记忆研究,采用重复学习任务,在第一轮次学习-测验之后插入反馈干预,用两个实验分别考查任务反馈和能力反馈两种形式下的反馈效价对第二轮次即时学习判断的影响.结果表明：①在学习过程中,学习者会进行自我监测;②在任务反馈形式下,反馈信息与自我监测信息冲突,导致反馈干预对元认知监测和认知过程没有影响;③在能力反馈形式下,反馈信息与自我监测信息的冲突消失,结果消极反馈影响了元认知监测.由此得出结论：只有在不与自我监测信息冲突的情况下,反馈干预才对学习判断产生影响.此外,在有反馈干预的情况下,两个实验中都出现了显著的练习伴随低估效应.     

Slowing Down the Clock: A Review of Experimental Studies Investigating Psychological Time Dilation

A review of 24 experiments investigated the factors that produce a subjective time dilation. The aim of this review was to investigate the magnitude of the obtained time dilation. The mean time duration judgment ratio of subjective time to objective time for the selected studies was 1.31, SD = .24. The analyses revealed that experimental studies investigating subjective time dilation tend to obtain small to moderate time dilation and that several factors can be manipulated in order to make a specific time interval appear longer than it is. Highlighting the factors that lead to a subjective time dilation has both research implications, by pointing to the underlying cognitive mechanisms of time perception, and practical implications, by indicating the factors that can be manipulated in order to control how we perceive time.