Characterizing the Dynamics of Learning in Repeated Reference Games

The language we use over the course of conversation changes as we establish common ground and learn what our partner finds meaningful. Here we draw upon recent advances in natural language processing to provide a finer-grained characterization of the dynamics of this learning process. We release an open corpus (>15,000 utterances) of extended dyadic interactions in a classic repeated reference game task where pairs of participants had to coordinate on how to refer to initially difficult-to-describe tangram stimuli. We find that different pairs discover a wide variety of idiosyncratic but efficient and stable solutions to the problem of reference. Furthermore, these conventions are shaped by the communicative context: words that are more discriminative in the initial context (i.e., that are used for one target more than others) are more likely to persist through the final repetition. Finally, we find systematic structure in how a speaker's referring expressions become more efficient over time: Syntactic units drop out in clusters following positive feedback from the listener, eventually leaving short labels containing open-class parts of speech. These findings provide a higher resolution look at the quantitative dynamics of ad hoc convention formation and support further development of computational models of learning in communication.     

Sustainable transportation in Argentina: Values,beliefs, norms and car use reduction

Most Latin American countries face important environmental and societal problems associated with an increase in car traffic, and only recently, transport policies aimed at reducing these harmful consequences of car use have begun to be discussed and put on the public agenda of these countries. Surprisingly, little is known about the factors influencing the acceptability of transport policies and intentions to reduce car use in Latin America, as studies on acceptability of transport policies have typically been conducted in Europe. Previous evidence from European samples – where reducing car used had been widely discussed – showed that the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory of environmentalism was an adequate theoretical framework to predict the acceptability of a transport pricing policy, as well as the intention to reduce car use when this policy would be implemented. But can these results be generalised to non-European samples? In this paper, we report results of a questionnaire study among 160 participants from Buenos Aires, Argentina, aimed to test the VBN theory. We found that the VBN theory was indeed also successful in explaining policy acceptability and intention to reduce car use in Argentina. In addition, we found support for the causal structure of the variables in VBN theory. Interestingly, biospheric and hedonic values were also directly and significantly related to feelings of moral obligation when intermediate variables were controlled for. These results suggest that normative considerations, activated by values, indeed predict policy acceptability and the intention to reduce car use in Argentina and that these considerations should be taken into account to increase the acceptability of policies aimed at reducing car use.     

Parental decision-making: infant engagement with smartphones

Smartphones have become a ubiquitous part of life, and as a result, many children are engaging with smartphones beginning in infancy. Little is known regarding the thought processes used by parents in deciding when and how to allow their infants to engage with smartphones. Using a sample of twelve parents with infants younger than one year, this qualitative study examines parental smartphone use, their perspectives regarding use by their young children, and what sources informed their decision-making about allowing their infants to use a smartphone. Results found that the smartphone has become such a common part of everyday life that choices to use a smartphone around, and with, infants has become one that is nearly automatic. These research data showed that most parents are largely unaware of guidelines for childhood screen time provided by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization. Given our current knowledge that smartphone use can have a significant impact on the cognitive development of young children, this topic is an important area of future research.     

Isolating automatic photism generation from strategic photism use in grapheme-colour synaesthesia

Grapheme-colour synaesthesia is a phenomenon in which ordinary black numbers and letters (graphemes) trigger the experience of highly specific colours (photisms). The Synaesthetic Stroop task has been used to demonstrate that graphemes trigger photisms automatically. In the standard Stroop task, congruent trial probability (CTP) has been manipulated to isolate effects of automaticity from higher-order strategic effects, with larger Stroop effects at high CTP attributed to participants strategically attending to the stimulus word to facilitate responding, and smaller Stroop effects at low CTP reflecting automatic word processing. Here we apply this logic for the first time to the Synaesthetic Stroop task. At high CTP we showed larger Stroop effects due to synaesthetes using their synaesthetic colours strategically. At low CTP Stroop effects were reduced but were still significant. We directly isolate automatic processing of graphemes from strategic effects and conclusively show that, in synaesthesia, viewing black graphemes automatically triggers colour experiences.     

Parental media monitoring,prosocial violent media exposure,and adolescents' prosocial and aggressive behaviors

Prosocial violent media (e.g., media that combines both violent and prosocial content) is especially popular in entertainment media today. However, it remains unclear how parental media monitoring is associated with exposure to prosocial violent content and adolescent behavior. Accordingly, 1,193 adolescents were asked about parental media monitoring, media content exposure, and behavior. Main findings suggest that autonomy supportive restrictive monitoring was associated with lower levels of exposure to prosocial violent content, but only among older adolescents. Additionally, autonomy supportive restrictive monitoring was the only form of parental media monitoring associated with lower levels of violent content and higher levels of prosocial content, and autonomy supportive active monitoring was the only parental monitoring strategy that promoted prosocial behavior via exposure to prosocial media content. Discussion focuses on the importance of autonomy supportive parental monitoring, as well as the implications of parents encouraging their children to watch media with limited violent content—even if it is prosocial violent content.