Effects of a Dependent Group-Oriented Contingency on Middle School Physical Education Students’ Fair Play Behaviors

This study investigated the effects of a dependent group-oriented contingency on the supportive and non-supportive fair play behaviors of 6th grade students engaged in volleyball games as part of their physical education instruction. Six students, one male and one female per class, from three classes, identified as demonstrating low incidences of supportive behaviors during volleyball games, were participants in this study. A multiple baseline across classes design was used to examine the data. During baseline few incidences of non-supportive behaviors occurred among all six students. However, the participants seldom displayed supportive behaviors during games (i.e., encouraged each other). Following the introduction of the dependent group contingency, supportive behaviors for all participants increased. Follow-up data, collected in an alternative setting, indicated variable maintenance. The results are discussed in the context of group contingencies and social behaviors in sports.     

Detecting contingency: A key to understanding development of self and social cognition

Abstract:  Detecting contingency between self-produced actions and the consequences plays a crucial role for basic cognitive functions, such as construction of self body-image and tool-use. This paper reviews our recent studies focusing on the temporal aspect of contingency. Three studies concerning the detection of proprioceptive-visual contingency in infants, children and adults are summarized. All of these studies use delayed self-image as a tool to investigate the temporal aspect of contingency detection. Based on the results of these studies and related preceding research, the paper proposes the ubiquity of a contingency detector among the development of self and social interaction.     

Is ZF a hack?: Comparing the complexity of some (formalist interpretations of) foundational systems for mathematics

This paper presents Automath encodings (which are also valid in LF/λP) of various kinds of foundations of mathematics. Then it compares these encodings according to their size, to find out which foundation is the simplest.

The systems analyzed in this way are two kinds of set theory (ZFC and NF), two systems based on Church's higher order logic (Isabelle/Pure and HOL), three kinds of type theory (the calculus of constructions, Luo's extended calculus of constructions, and Martin-Löf's predicative type theory) and one foundation based on category theory.

The conclusions of this paper are that the simplest system is type theory (the calculus of constructions), but that type theories that know about serious mathematics are not simple at all. In that case the set theories are the simplest. If one looks at the number of concepts needed to explain such a system, then higher order logic is the simplest, with twenty-five concepts. On the other side of the scale, category theory is relatively complex, as is Martin-Löf's type theory.

(The full Automath sources of the contexts described in this paper are one the web at http://www.cs.ru.nl/~freek/zfc-etc/.)     

自尊权变性的概念、性质和作用及其研究展望

旨在介绍和评价西方研究者在自尊权变性的理论探讨和实证研究方面的成果。首先简述了自尊权变性的基本概念,然后分别对自尊领域权变性的概念、测量、作用、形成与发展等内容以及自尊权变性与最优自尊的关系作出了总结,最后,针对有关研究中反映出的问题进行了分析和展望。     

Dream content: Individual and generic aspects

Dream reports were collected from normal subjects in an effort to determine the degree to which dream reports can be used to identify individual dreamers. Judges were asked to group the reports by their authors. The judges scored the reports correctly at chance levels. This finding indicated that dreams may be at least as much like each other as they are the signature of individual dreamers. Our results suggest that dream reports cannot be used to identify the individuals who produced them when identifiers like names and gender of friends and family members are removed from the dream report. In addition to using dreams to learn about an individual, we must look at dreams as telling us about important common or generic aspects of human consciousness.     

DO INFANTS SHOW GENERALIZED IMITATION OF GESTURES?

Two experiments were conducted to investigate generalized imitation of manual gestures in 1- to 2-year-old infants. In Experiment 1, 6 infants were first trained four baseline matching relations (e.g., when instructed "Do this", to raise their arms after they saw the experimenter do so). Next, four novel gestures that the infants did not match in probe trials were selected as target behaviors during generalized imitation Test 1; models of these gestures were presented on unreinforced matching trials interspersed with intermittently reinforced baseline matching trials. None of the infants matched the target behaviors. To ensure that these behaviors were in the infants' motor skills repertoires, the infants were next trained to produce them, at least once, under stimulus control that did not include an antecedent model of the target behavior. In repeat generalized imitation trials (Test 2), the infants again failed to match the target behaviors. Five infants (3 from Experiment 1) participated in Experiment 2, which was identical to Experiment 1 except that, following generalized imitation Test 1, the motor-skills training was implemented to a higher criterion (21 responses per target behavior), and in a multiple-baseline, across-target-behaviors procedure. In the final generalized imitation test, 1 infant matched one, and another infant matched two target behaviors; the remaining 17 target behaviors still were not matched. The results did not provide convincing evidence of generalized imitation, even though baseline matching was well maintained and the target behaviors were in the infants' motor skills repertoires, raising the question of what are the conditions that reliably give rise to generalized imitation.     

On ethical order

The existent ethical relationships are the result of the historical amalgamation of objective and subjective conditions. Ethical relationships are essential relationships in the real and rational order, which are maintained by a system of regulations on morals, laws and customs, and infused with a spirit of subjectivity. Rationality and legitimacy are the primary concerns of those relationships. A distinction between morals and ethos needs to be made when studying ethical order. Sound ethical order lies in effective regulation of morals and effective control of law. In the process of social reform, ethical order promotes social development through the dialectical movement of freedom and necessity. A harmonious society is a society which is based on legitimate and just ethical order. Translated by Cui Hui from Lunlixue yanjiu 伦理学研究 (Studies in Ethics), 2007, (5): 1–8     

A Bayesian analysis of human decision-making on bandit problems

The bandit problem is a dynamic decision-making task that is simply described, well-suited to controlled laboratory study, and representative of a broad class of real-world problems. In bandit problems, people must choose between a set of alternatives, each with different unknown reward rates, to maximize the total reward they receive over a fixed number of trials. A key feature of the task is that it challenges people to balance the exploration of unfamiliar choices with the exploitation of familiar ones. We use a Bayesian model of optimal decision-making on the task, in which how people balance exploration with exploitation depends on their assumptions about the distribution of reward rates. We also use Bayesian model selection measures that assess how well people adhere to an optimal decision process, compared to simpler heuristic decision strategies. Using these models, we make inferences about the decision-making of 451 participants who completed a set of bandit problems, and relate various measures of their performance to other psychological variables, including psychometric assessments of cognitive abilities and personality traits. We find clear evidence of individual differences in the way the participants made decisions on the bandit problems, and some interesting correlations with measures of general intelligence.     

DO CHILDREN PREFER CONTINGENCIES? AN EVALUATION OF THE EFFICACY OF AND PREFERENCE FOR CONTINGENT VERSUS NONCONTINGENT SOCIAL REINFORCEMENT DURING PLAY

Discovering whether children prefer reinforcement via a contingency or independent of their behavior is important considering the ubiquity of these programmed schedules of reinforcement. The current study evaluated the efficacy of and preference for social interaction within differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) and noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) schedules with typically developing children. Results showed that 7 of the 8 children preferred the DRA schedule; 1 child was indifferent. We also demonstrated a high degree of procedural fidelity, which suggested that preference is influenced by the presence of a contingency under which reinforcement can be obtained. These findings are discussed in terms of (a) the selection of reinforcement schedules in practice, (b) variables that influence children's preferences for contexts, and (c) the selection of experimental control procedures when evaluating the effects of reinforcement.     

Impact of auditory selective attention on verbal short-term memory and vocabulary development

This study investigated the role of auditory selective attention capacities as a possible mediator of the well-established association between verbal short-term memory (STM) and vocabulary development. A total of 47 6- and 7-year-olds were administered verbal immediate serial recall and auditory attention tasks. Both task types probed processing of item and serial order information because recent studies have shown this distinction to be critical when exploring relations between STM and lexical development. Multiple regression and variance partitioning analyses highlighted two variables as determinants of vocabulary development: (a) a serial order processing variable shared by STM order recall and a selective attention task for sequence information and (b) an attentional variable shared by selective attention measures targeting item or sequence information. The current study highlights the need for integrative STM models, accounting for conjoined influences of attentional capacities and serial order processing capacities on STM performance and the establishment of the lexical language network.