Confirmation of Scientific Hypotheses as Relations

Summary  In spite of several attempts to explicate the relationship between a scientific hypothesis and evidence, the issue still cries for a satisfactory solution. Logical approaches to confirmation, such as the hypothetico-deductive method and the positive instance account of confirmation, are problematic because of their neglect of the semantic dimension of hypothesis confirmation. Probabilistic accounts of confirmation are no better than logical approaches in this regard. An outstanding probabilistic account of confirmation, the Bayesian approach, for instance, is found to be defective in that it treats evidence as a formal entity and this creates the problem of relevance of evidence to the hypothesis at issue, in addition to the difficulties arising from the subjective interpretation of probabilities. This essay purports to satisfy the need for a successful account of hypothesis confirmation by offering an original formulation based on the notion of instantiation of the relation urged by an hypothesis.     

Comprehending Semantic and Grammatical Violations in Italian. N400 and P600 Comparison with Visual and Auditory Stimuli

Arguments about the existence of language-specific neural systems and specifically about the independence of syntactic and semantic processing have focused on the event-related brain measures (ERPs) as tool to monitoring moment-by-moment the cognitive processes underlaid. In the present experiments, the available evidence indicates that the ERP response to semantic anomalies is at least partially distinct from the ERP response to syntactic anomalies and that two distinct processes are activated in sentences comprehension. ERPs were recorded from 10 electrodes while subjects read (Experiment 1) or listened (Experiment 2) to sentences containing semantic or syntactic violations. Final-words that were inconsistent with the sentence context elicited a negative-going wave at about 400 ms poststimulus, whereas penultimate-word incongruous with the grammatical structure (subject–verb non-agreement) elicited a positive-going wave about 600 ms poststimulus. No differences based on the perceptual modality of the stimulus (visual or auditory) nor different ERP correlates as a function of task-relevance (explicit/implicit task induction) were found. The implications of our results for Italian language are explained.     

Partial Knowledge of Word Meanings: Thematic and Taxonomic Representations

The type of information (taxonomic or thematic) available at different levels of knowledge was investigated. Following extensive norming to identify taxonomic and thematic associates of low-frequency nouns, participants determined if taxonomic or thematic associates were meaningfully related to target words at three levels of knowledge: target words they correctly defined (known), recognized as familiar (frontier), or mistakenly denied as part of the language (unknown). In another experiment, participants reported which type of relationship (taxonomic or thematic) was preferred. Results indicated that both types of information were available at all levels of knowledge. However, accuracy and preference were greater for taxonomic associates across word levels. A differential increase in available thematic information relative to taxonomic information was found. Implications for the acquisition and representation of word meanings are discussed.     

The effects of noise and gender on children's episodic and semantic memory

The main objectives in the present study were to examine meaningful irrelevant speech and road traffic noise effects on episodic and semantic memory, and to evaluate whether gender differences in memory performance interact with noise. A total of 96 subjects, aged 13-14 years (n = 16 boys and 16 girls in each of three groups), were randomly assigned to a silent or two noise conditions. Noise effects found were restricted to impairments from meaningful irrelevant speech on recognition and cued recall of a text in episodic memory and of word comprehension in semantic memory. The obtained noise effect suggests that the meaning of the speech were processed semantically by the pupils, which reduced their ability to comprehend a text that also involved processing of meaning. Meaningful irrelevant speech was also assumed to cause a poorer access to the knowledge base in semantic memory. Girls outperformed boys in episodic and semantic memory materials, but these differences did not interact with noise.     

A Kripke Semantics for the Logic of Gelfand Quantales

Gelfand quantales are complete unital quantales with an involution, *, satisfying the property that for any element a, if a b a for all b, then a a* a = a. A Hilbert-style axiom system is given for a propositional logic, called Gelfand Logic, which is sound and complete with respect to Gelfand quantales. A Kripke semantics is presented for which the soundness and completeness of Gelfand logic is shown. The completeness theorem relies on a Stone style representation theorem for complete lattices. A Rasiowa/Sikorski style semantic tableau system is also presented with the property that if all branches of a tableau are closed, then the formula in question is a theorem of Gelfand Logic. An open branch in a completed tableaux guarantees the existence of an Kripke model in which the formula is not valid; hence it is not a theorem of Gelfand Logic.     

What the Liar Taught Achilles

Zeno's paradoxes of motion and the semantic paradoxes of the Liar have long been thought to have metaphorical affinities. There are, in fact, isomorphisms between variations of Zeno's paradoxes and variations of the Liar paradox in infinite-valued logic. Representing these paradoxes in dynamical systems theory reveals fractal images and provides other geometric ways of visualizing and conceptualizing the paradoxes.     

The role of the response-reinforcer relation in delay-of-reinforcement effects

The role of the response-reinforcer relation in maintaining operant behavior under conditions of delayed reinforcement was investigated by using a two-operandum (i.e., two-key) procedure with pigeons. Responding on one key was reinforced under a tandem variable-interval differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior (tandem VI DRO) schedule. The schedule defined a resetting unsignaled delay-of-reinforcement procedure in that a response was required when the interfood interval of the VI schedule lapsed, but further responding during the DRO component on either key reset the time interval. This ensured a fixed delay duration between any response and reinforcement. Responding on another key, physically identical to the first one except for spatial location, otherwise was without consequence. The location of the key correlated with the delay-of-reinforcement procedure varied between sessions according to a semirandom sequence. Differences in response rates between the two keys were greater, with proportionally higher rates on the key correlated with the delay-of-reinforcement procedure, the longer the delay-of-reinforcement procedure remained correlated with the same key. Differences in responding on the two keys also increased within individual sessions. These results suggest that the response-reinforcer relation is the primary determinant of responding when responding is acquired and maintained with delayed reinforcement.     

语义信息在大小数量表征中的作用

本研究采用注意瞬脱实验范式探讨了语义信息在数量表征中的作用。结果发现：（1）在双任务方式中,字母辨认任务对大数（5及以上）的辨认产生干扰,但不影响小数（4及以下）的辨认绩效;（2）数量表征在视野上出现差异性,表现为在小数辨认时,左侧视野呈现绩效高于右侧;大数辨认正好相反,即右侧视野呈现高于左侧。结果表明,语义信息在表征小数和大数中的作用不同：小数的表征无需语言参与;而大数则更多地涉及语义信息,可能需语音回路中无声复述机制的参与。     

Disruption of writing processes by the semanticity of background speech

Previous studies have noted that writing processes are impaired by task-irrelevant background sound. However, what makes sound distracting to writing processes has remained unaddressed. The experiment reported here investigated whether the semanticity of irrelevant speech contributes to disruption of writing processes beyond the acoustic properties of the sound. The participants wrote stories against a background of normal speech, spectrally-rotated speech (i.e., a meaningless sound with marked acoustic resemblance to speech) or silence. Normal speech impaired quantitative (e.g., number of characters produced) and qualitative/semantic (e.g., uncorrected typing errors, proposition generation) aspects of the written material, in comparison with the other two sound conditions, and it increased the duration of pauses between words. No difference was found between the silent and the rotated-speech condition. These results suggest that writing is susceptible to disruption from the semanticity of speech but not especially susceptible to disruption from the acoustic properties of speech.