From Classroom to Controversy: Conflict in the Teaching of Religion

What happens when a class assignment becomes a source of controversy? How do we respond? What do we learn? By describing the controversy surrounding an assignment on religion and representation, this article examines conflict's productive role in teaching about New Religious Movements (NRMs) and religion. It suggests that we consider how our personal and institutional dispositions toward conflict influence our pedagogies. Moreover, it urges us to consider how teaching conflicts within and/or between disciplines can enhance our learning objectives and stimulate students' ability to think critically.     

Numerical ordering ability mediates the relation between number-sense and arithmetic competence

What predicts human mathematical competence? While detailed models of number representation in the brain have been developed, it remains to be seen exactly how basic number representations link to higher math abilities. We propose that representation of ordinal associations between numerical symbols is one important factor that underpins this link. We show that individual variability in symbolic number-ordering ability strongly predicts performance on complex mental-arithmetic tasks even when controlling for several competing factors, including approximate number acuity. Crucially, symbolic number-ordering ability fully mediates the previously reported relation between approximate number acuity and more complex mathematical skills, suggesting that symbolic number-ordering may be a stepping stone from approximate number representation to mathematical competence. These results are important for understanding how evolution has interacted with culture to generate complex representations of abstract numerical relationships. Moreover, the finding that symbolic number-ordering ability links approximate number acuity and complex math skills carries implications for designing math-education curricula and identifying reliable markers of math performance during schooling.     

Word learning does not end at fast-mapping: evolution of verb meanings through reorganization of an entire semantic domain

This paper explores the process through which children sort out the relations among verbs belonging to the same semantic domain. Using a set of Chinese verbs denoting a range of action events that are labeled by carrying or holding in English as a test case, we looked at how Chinese-speaking 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds and adults apply 13 different verbs to a range of carrying/holding events. We asked how children learning Chinese originally divide and label the semantic space in this domain, how they discover the boundaries between different words, and how the meanings of verbs in the domain as a whole evolve toward the representations of adults. We also addressed the question of what factors make verb meaning acquisition easy or hard. Results showed that the pattern of children’s verb use is largely different from that of adults and that it takes a long time for children to be able to use all verbs in this domain in the way adults do. We also found that children start to use broad-covering and frequent verbs the earliest, but use of these verbs tends to converge on adult use more slowly because children could not use these verbs as adults did until they had identified boundaries between these verbs and other near-synonyms with more specific meanings. This research highlights the importance of systematic investigation of words that belong to the same domain as a whole, examining how word meanings in a domain develop as parts of a connected system, instead of examining each word on its own: learning the meaning of a verb invites restructuring of the meanings of related, neighboring verbs.     

平滑追踪眼动及其对运动物体时空特征表征和预测的影响

平滑追踪眼动是人们对环境中感兴趣的运动物体进行持续视觉追踪的一种眼动行为, 它受个体在其过程中获得的视觉信息和眼动反馈信息等感知觉因素, 以及心理表征和期待等高水平认知因素的影响。同时, 平滑追踪眼动过程影响着个体的预测性眼动追踪、追赶性眼跳、空间定位和接触时间估计等涉及运动物体时空特征表征和预测的行为。未来的研究应注意探讨在平滑追踪眼动过程中获得的感知觉信息和高水平认知因素对上述时空特征表征和预测行为的影响。     

心理模拟在语言理解中的作用

心理模拟在语言理解中的作用逐渐受到人们重视。相关理论包括知觉符号系统理论、语言的神经理论和语言与情境模拟理论。行为研究发现感知觉运动信息与语言理解存在交互作用,而脑机制研究显示感知觉运动脑区参与语言理解。目前的研究对于心理模拟参与语言理解的机制仍缺乏细致探讨,导致结果存在矛盾之处。对隐喻语言里心理模拟作用的探讨也需加强。此外,心理模拟系统如何与语言学信息交互作用的相关假设也需要完善。     

依恋表征的意识和无意识性初探

采用关系等级问卷、亲密关系经历问卷和内隐联想测验(IAT)分别作为研究依恋表征的外显和内隐的测量工具,以103名处于恋爱关系中的大学生和研究生为被试,探讨一般依恋表征和特殊依恋表征的意识性与无意识性以及它们的一致性。结果发现:(1)一般依恋表征和特殊依恋表征中,安全型和恐惧型的个体在无意识层面上的反应时表现与外显理论相符,过度投入型的被试意识和无意识的表现不一致;(2)个体在无意识水平上对目标人物积极评价的差异与个体在意识水平上的依恋状况(一般依恋关系和婚恋关系)有关。(3)一般依恋表征中过度投入型和冷漠型被试,内隐联想测验和外显依恋量表结果一致的占33%;特殊依恋表征中过度投入型和冷漠型被试,内隐联想测验和外显依恋量表结果一致的占37%。     

An association between understanding cardinality and analog magnitude representations in preschoolers

The preschool years are a time of great advances in children’s numerical thinking, most notably as they master verbal counting. The present research assessed the relation between analog magnitude representations and cardinal number knowledge in preschool-aged children to ask two questions: (1) Is there a relationship between acuity in the analog magnitude system and cardinality proficiency? (2) Can evidence of the analog magnitude system be found within mappings of number words children have not successfully mastered? To address the first question, Study 1 asked three- to five-year-old children to discriminate side-by-side dot arrays with varying differences in numerical ratio, as well as to complete an assessment of cardinality. Consistent with the analog magnitude system, children became less accurate at discriminating dot arrays as the ratio between the two numbers approached one. Further, contrary to prior work with preschoolers, a significant correlation was found between cardinal number knowledge and non-symbolic numerical discrimination. Study 2 aimed to look for evidence of the analog magnitude system in mappings to the words in preschoolers’ verbal counting list. Based on a modified give-a-number task ( [Wynn, 1990] and [Wynn, 1992] ), three- to five-year-old children were asked to give quantities between 1 and 10 as many times as possible in order to assess analog magnitude variability within their developing cardinality understanding. In this task, even children who have not yet induced the cardinality principle showed signs of analog representations in their understanding of the verbal count list. Implications for the contribution of analog magnitude representations towards mastery of the verbal count list are discussed in light of the present work.     

What matters in scientific explanations: effects of elaboration and content

Given the breadth and depth of available information, determining which components of an explanation are most important is a crucial process for simplifying learning. Three experiments tested whether people believe that components of an explanation with more elaboration are more important. In Experiment 1, participants read separate and unstructured components that comprised explanations of real-world scientific phenomena, rated the components on their importance for understanding the explanations, and drew graphs depicting which components elaborated on which other components. Participants gave higher importance scores for components that they judged to be elaborated upon by other components. Experiment 2 demonstrated that experimentally increasing the amount of elaboration of a component increased the perceived importance of the elaborated component. Furthermore, Experiment 3 demonstrated that elaboration increases the importance of the elaborated information by providing insight into understanding the elaborated information; information that was too technical to provide insight into the elaborated component did not increase the importance of the elaborated component. While learning an explanation, people piece together the structure of elaboration relationships between components and use the insight provided by elaboration to identify important components.     

Seeing bodies in pain: from Hippocrates to Freud

The study of pain has a history as long as that of Western medicine. In the 20th and 21st centuries much has been made about the epistemological problem of seeing somatic as well as psychic pain in the clinical setting. The two schools seem to be those which rely on self-reporting and those that rely on the interpretation of visual materials (expression or brain scans) by trained specialists. That this problem was central to the 19th century study of pain is clear as these origins (especially Darwin) are often cited in today's literature as 'proof' of their validity. That the problem was also central to one of the early 20th century thinkers most indebted to Darwin, Sigmund Freud, is less well known and how he resolved this paradox of self-reporting versus seeing seems to have been overlooked.     

The role of goal representation in preschoolers' flexibility and inhibition

This study addressed the role of goal representation in preschoolers’ inhibition and flexibility performance. A total of 56 4- and 5-year-olds were tested in an adapted version of the Shape School task where the difficulty of goal representation was manipulated by varying the degree of transparency of task cues. The findings showed that both age groups’ performance in the flexibility phase was increased when demands on goal representation were alleviated by using transparent cues instead of arbitrary cues. Furthermore, 4-year-olds performed more accurately on go trials in the inhibition phase with transparent cues than with arbitrary cues. These results confirm the critical role of goal representation in flexibility and reveal its influence in inhibition contexts. Altogether, this study suggests that goal representation is a key element for efficient executive function across a variety of settings involving different executive functions.