The role of action effects in 12-month-olds' action control: a comparison of televised model and live model

The present study investigated differences in infant imitation after watching a televised model and a live model and addressed the issue of whether action effects influence infants’ action control in both cases. In a 2 × 2 design, 12-month-old infants observed a live or a televised model performing a three-step action sequence, in which either the 2nd or the 3rd action step was combined with an acoustical action effect. We assumed that infants would use the observed action-effect relations for their own action control in the test phase afterwards. Even though results exhibited differences in the absolute amount of imitation between the two demonstration groups, both groups showed similar result patterns regarding the action effect manipulation: infants imitated the action step that was followed by a salient action effect more often and mostly as the first target action, emphasizing the important role of action effects in infants’ action control.     

Uncertainty about the rest of the sentence

A word-by-word human sentence processing complexity metric is presented. This metric formalizes the intuition that comprehenders have more trouble on words contributing larger amounts of information about the syntactic structure of the sentence as a whole. The formalization is in terms of the conditional entropy of grammatical continuations, given the words that have been heard so far. To calculate the predictions of this metric, Wilson and Carroll's (1954) original entropy reduction idea is extended to infinite languages. This is demonstrated with a mildly context-sensitive language that includes relative clauses formed on a variety of grammatical relations across the Accessibility Hierarchy of Keenan and Comrie (1977). Predictions are derived that correlate significantly with repetition accuracy results obtained in a sentence-memory experiment (Keenan & Hawkins, 1987).     

The expectation of guilt and resistance to temptation

Children's expectations about the emotions that surround a moral transgression were examined. In experiment 1, children aged 4-6 years and 8-9 years listened to a story about a child who resisted but then yielded to the temptation to take a sweet without permission. In line with earlier findings (Nunner-Winkler and Sodian, 1988), older children were more likely than younger children to expect the wrongdoer to feel pleased at resisting, but to feel bad after yielding to, temptation. In experiment 2, the relation between expectations of emotion and actual resistance to temptation was studied. Children aged 5-6 years again made judgements about a story character who eventually yielded to temptation. Their own resistance to temptation was assessed by means of a cheating task: children were given an opportunity to cheat by peeking during the experimenter's absence. Children who did not peek were more likely to attribute morally oriented feelings to the story protagonist. The results suggest that children who readily anticipate the emotional consequences of wrongdoing are more likely to resist the temptation to transgress.     

Lay understanding of genetic disease: A British study of families attending a genetic counseling service

Although lay people know that various diseases can be inherited, the idea that unhealthy life styles are the crucial cause of ill health has been promoted by health education policy in the United Kingdom. However, a new paradigm seems to be developing. The medical profession is increasingly using genetics to explain ill health, and people are being referred to geneticists for information and counseling. Lay conceptions of genetic disease emerged during this qualitative study of the process of genetic counseling. The results reported in this paper suggest that many lay people lack knowledge of genetics and inheritance, and that there is considerable stigma attached to genetic disease. Misconceptions and fears may not always be recognized or resolved during the process of genetic counseling. The implications of such misunderstandings and beliefs are considered in this paper.     

Künstliche Intelligenz und Philosophie

Artificial Intelligence can be considered as the so far last attempt to decode the anthropological comparison between human beings and machines. Thereby it also represents in a prominent way what can be called systemic thought. Searle's conclusive argument against strong AI (that is the idea of computers having intention in a literal way) refers to his precise distinction between syntax and semantics. This difference obviously opposing some of Searle's other essential ideas will only convince if it also explains the genetic-pragmatic aspect. A theory explaining the life of mind and the possibility of understanding needs to combine representation and intention with the subjective causation of signs. At the same time they have to be contextualized within a model of teleologically interpreted life recognized with the help of self-experience and self-reflection. This suggests that AI is a simulation which wrongly believes to be a real duplication. Actually it is a semiotic reduction (syntax and semantic surface of signs only) and a psychological compensation (Turing test) connected with a genetic or abductive fallacy. The biological decontextualization, in fact the elimination of teleology and intention, the deconstruction of subjectivity, the loss of the genetic-pragmatic dimension and the abductive fallacy induce the strong AI to confuse its surface-illusion of simulated understanding with the real process itself.     

To buy or to sell: cultural differences in stock market decisions based on price trends

Four studies compared the stock market decisions of Canadians and Chinese. In two studies using simple stock market trends, compared with Chinese, Canadians were more willing to sell and less willing to buy falling stock. But when the stock price was rising, the opposite occurred: Canadians were more willing to buy and less willing to sell. A third study showed that for complex stock price trends, Canadians were strongly influenced by the most recent price trends: they tended to predict that recent trends would continue and made selling decisions without considering the rest of the trend patterns; whereas the Chinese made reversal predictions for the dominant trends and made decisions that took both recent and early trends into consideration. Study 4 replicated the finding with experienced individual investors. These findings are consistent with the previous literature on different lay theories of change held by Chinese and North Americans. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The hermeneutic background of C. G. Jung

Hermeneutics has been central to the practice of Jung's psychology from the beginning, although he never fully and consistently developed a hermeneutic method of inquiry and the literature addressing this aspect of his psychology is not extensive. In this paper(1) we undertake a critical re-examination of Jung's relationship to hermeneutic thought, based on his explicit references to hermeneutics in the Collected Works and his theoretical development of the notion of archetypes. Although Jung did not consistently formulate a hermeneutic approach to inquiry, his theoretical development of archetypes is rich in hermeneutic implications. In particular, his notion of the archetype as such can be understood hermeneutically as a form of non-conceptual background understanding. Some implications of this construal of archetypes for Jungian hermeneutics as a form of inquiry are considered.     

Using Social Representations Theory to Examine Lay Explanation of Contemporary Social Crises: The Case of Ireland's Recession

Social actors operate under a basic imperative to construct explanations for the events that surround them. Many issues that dominate the societal agenda today are not available to direct perception, derive from traditionally expert domains and are relatively remote from immediate local experience. This presents a challenge for lay explanation of these issues. Social representations theory offers a useful framework through which the construction of lay explanation for such issues can be examined. The current study recruited this theoretical framework to investigate lay explanations of the recent economic recession in Ireland. Data consisted of semi‐structured interviews with 14 members of the public and a web‐based survey (N = 138). The data suggested that explanations for the recession could be organised into three major themes: Power, Ordinary People and Fatalism. Strictly economic explanations were eschewed; instead, people drew upon a wide range of ideas about society, politics, morality, public spheres and personhood. The implications of these findings for understanding lay explanation of contemporary social crises are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.