Peirce on Education: Nurturing the First Rule of Reason

Through an exegetic reading of Peirce’s minor texts on higher education, I find that Peirce’s conception of a “Liberal Education” is close to the Herbartian conception of Bildung. Peirce calls for a general education with the ambition of qualifying critical thinkers with the capacity to go beyond the strict rules and narrow borders of the artes liberales, – the different subject matters or sciences taught at a university. Thus, Peirce’s conception of a liberal education is closely linked to his interpretation of common sense – or sensis communis – as a critical commonsensism. To him, it is urgent to educate and nurture “the first rule of reason,” described as a will to learn, a curiosity, a dissatisfaction of what you already incline to think, and an intense desire to find things out. The nurturing of this “first rule of reason” is thus about educating an intellectual community of critical thinkers who are able to question authoritative beliefs, knowing how to debunk them, and how to turn away from obiter dictum.     

Bending rules: the shape of the perceptual generalisation gradient is sensitive to inference rules

Generalising what is learned about one stimulus to other but perceptually related stimuli is a basic behavioural phenomenon. We evaluated whether a rule learning mechanism may serve to explain such generalisation. To this end, we assessed whether inference rules communicated through verbal instructions affect generalisation. Expectancy ratings, but not valence ratings, proved sensitive to this manipulation. In addition to revealing a role for inference rules in generalisation, our study has clinical implications as well. More specifically, we argue that targeting inference rules might prove to be an effective strategy to affect the excessive generalisation that is often observed in psychopathology.     

Strategy combination during execution of memory strategies in young and older adults

The present study investigated whether people can combine two memory strategies to encode pairs of words more efficiently than with a single strategy, and age-related differences in such strategy combination. Young and older adults were asked to encode pairs of words (e.g., satellite-tunnel). For each item, participants were told to use either the interactive-imagery strategy (e.g., mentally visualising the two words and making them interact), the sentence-generation strategy (i.e., generate a sentence linking the two words), or with strategy combination (i.e., generating a sentence while mentally visualising it). Participants obtained better recall performance on items encoded with strategy combination than on items encoded with interactive-imagery or sentence-generation strategies. Moreover, we found age-related decline in such strategy combination. These findings have important implications to further our understanding of execution of memory strategies, and suggest that strategy combination occurs in a variety of cognitive domains.     

特质应对与展现规则对情绪劳动的影响

采用2×3组间设计, 检测特质应对(积极与消极)与展现规则(积极、消极、无规则)对情绪劳动的影响。结果表明, 积极应对引起更多深层动作; 积极规则下出现较少表层扮演(与消极应对比)。积极和消极规则都引起较多深层和表层动作。积极应对在积极规则下表层扮演较少(与消极规则比); 消极应对在积极规则下表层扮演较多(与消极规则比)。研究提示, 特质情绪性可能是调节展现规则与情绪劳动关系的重要原因。     

谜语问题解决中线索的作用

汉语谜语在性质上属于顿悟问题,当谜语的谜底为汉语成语时,这样的谜语问题称为成语谜语问题。本研究探讨线索在成语谜语问题解决中的作用特点与方式。三个实验以汉语成语谜语问题为实验材料,采用了语义线索与规则线索,操纵了线索的有效性（有效线索占75％,无效线索占25％）,以及线索呈现的时间长短（长时间即阈限上呈现线索（实验1）,短时间（20ms）即阈限下呈现线索（实验2与实验3））两个因素。实验1与实验2的任务是要求被试写出成语谜语问题的答案（谜底）,实验3则要求被试从6个备择答案中选择出正确的答案。被试为武汉某大学的206名低年级本科生。实验结果表明,（1）无论是阈限上还是阈限下呈现规则线索,有效规则线索对成语谜语问题的解决具有促进作用;（2）有效语义线索对谜语问题的解决具有促进作用,而且,阈限上有效语义线索对谜语问题解决的促进作用更大;（3）阈限上呈现两类无效线索时,它们对成语谜语问题的解决都具有干扰作用;但是,阈限下呈现两类无效线索时,它们对成语谜语问题的解决没有干扰作用。     

Lay rationalism and inconsistency between predicted experience and decision

Decision‐makers are sometimes depicted as impulsive and overly influenced by ‘hot’, affective factors. The present research suggests that decision‐makers may be too ‘cold’ and overly focus on rationalistic attributes, such as economic values, quantitative specifications, and functions. In support of this proposition, we find a systematic inconsistency between predicted experience and decision. That is, people are more likely to favor a rationalistically‐superior option when they make a decision than when they predict experience. We discuss how this work contributes to research on predicted and decision utilities; we also discuss when decision‐makers overweight hot factors and when they overweight cold factors. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of member expertise on group decision-making and performance

This study assesses the effects of member expertise on group decision-making and group performance. Three-person cooperative groups and three independent individuals solved either an easy or moderately difficult version of the deductive logic game Mastermind. Experimental groups were given veridical performance information, i.e., the members' rankings on prior individual administrations of the task. Control groups were not provided with this information. Results supported the predictions of this study: (1) groups gave more weight to the input of their highest performing members with the group decision-making process being best approximated by post hoc “expert weighted” social decision schemes and (2) groups performed at the level of the best of an equivalent number of individuals.     

10～12岁儿童在平衡秤任务上的规则使用及其复杂性

以256名10～12岁儿童为被试,采取规则评估方法探讨了儿童在平衡秤任务上的规则使用类型及其年龄特点,并尝试使用认知复杂性和控制理论对此加以分析和解释.结果表明:(1)除了Siegler所谓的四种规则和补偿规则以外,儿童还使用了规则ⅢA和距离规则,其中规则ⅢA并不特指单一的规则,而是代表儿童在掌握了规则Ⅲ之后向更高级的规则Ⅳ发展的不稳定期和过渡期;(2)10～12岁儿童中使用规则Ⅲ的人数显著多于使用补偿规则的人数,对此认知复杂性和控制理论能够提供较好的解释;(3)规则Ⅰ仍是10～12岁儿童使用的主要规则,并非Siegler认为的主要是4、5岁儿童使用此规则.     

A new formulation of the Principle of Indifference

The idea of a probabilistic logic of inductive inference based on some form of the principle of indifference has always retained a powerful appeal. However, up to now all modifications of the principle failed. In this paper, a new formulation of such a principle is provided that avoids generating paradoxes and inconsistencies. Because of these results, the thesis that probabilities cannot be logical quantities, determined in an objective way through some form of the principle of indifference, is no longer supportable. Later, the paper investigates some implications of the new principle of indifference. To conclude, a re-examination of the foundations of the so-called objective Bayesian inference is called for.     

Preliminary evidence that specific candidate genes are associated with adolescent-onset antisocial behavior

Though initially conceptualized as resulting from peer imitation of child-onset or life-course-persistent youth [Moffitt, 1993], there is mounting evidence from twin studies that adolescent-onset or adolescent-limited antisocial behavior may also be genetically influenced. This study sought to provide preliminary molecular genetic evidence in support of these findings. We further evaluated whether genetic associations varied between behavioral subtypes of ASB (i.e., physical aggression and nonaggressive rule-breaking), given that only the latter has been found to characterize adolescent-onset ASB. The sample consisted of 211 undergraduate men of European-American ancestry. Three polymorphisms with theoretical and/or empirical ties to ASB or related traits (i.e., tryptophan hydroxylase-A218C, 5HT(2A) His452Tyr, and the DAT1 variable nucleotide tandem repeat) were genotyped. Analyses revealed that two of the three polymorphisms (i.e., His452Tyr and DAT1) were associated with adolescent ASB. Moreover, these associations appeared to be specific to the nonaggressive, rule-breaking form of ASB, and did not extend to physical aggression, further supporting ties to adolescent ASB in particular. Such results thus constructively replicate earlier findings of genetic influence on adolescent ASB. They also offer preliminary evidence that the genetic processes underlying aggressive and nonaggressive antisocial behavior may be (at least partially) distinct.