Is I Guaranteed to Refer?

Abstract: One claim about I , regularly made and almost universally endorsed, is that uses of the term are logically guaranteed to refer successfully (if they refer at all). The claim is only rarely formulated perspicuously or argued for. Such obscurity helps disguise the fact that those who profess to advance the claim actually turn out to support not a logical guarantee at all but merely high security through fortunate coincidence. This is not surprising. For we have no good reason to accept the claim – granted, any use of I is apt to refer successfully; but that can be explained by pragmatic features of its use. And we have some reason to reject the claim – it is notoriously difficult to see how genuine reference and guaranteed success do not exclude each other when considered as properties of the logic of any term.     

The use of averaged electroencephalic response techniques in the study of auditory processing related to speech and language

This paper reviews a number of studies done by the authors and others, who have utilized various averaged electroencephalic response (AER) techniques to study speech and language processing. Pertinent studies are described in detail. A relatively new AER technique, auditory brainstem responses (ABR), is described and its usefulness in studying auditory processing activity related to speech and language is outlined. In addition, a series of ABR studies, that have demonstrated significant male—female differences in ABR auditory processing abilities, is presented and the relevance of these data to already established differences in male—female language, hearing, and cognitive abilities is discussed.     

Effects of an intervention program for pregnant adolescents: Educational outcomes at two years postpartum

Examined postpartum effects of a school-based intervention program for pregnant adolescents. Interviews were conducted with 102 innercity black, low-income, school-aged mothers who had attended the program, and their academic and medical records were reviewed. For teenagers who had been poor students prior to becoming pregnant, a strong linear effect was found for duration of program attendance: with sufficient time in the program, poorer students became indistinguishable from better students in educational success. Most of the better students were educationally successful at 2 years postpartum, independent of their length of time in the program. For all students, longer durations of postnatal intervention were predictive of lower likelihood of subsequent childbearing. Numerous academic, medical, social, and demographic variables were ruled out as possible confounding factors that might have produced the positive educational outcomes for poorer students. The results suggest that adolescents who appear to have minimal academic promise prior to their pregnancy are nevertheless very responsive to school-based intervention.     

The effects of gendered information in stories on preschool children’s development of gender stereotypes

Social-cognitive theory posits that children learn gender stereotypes through gendered information. The present study examined whether children learn new gender stereotypes from stories when unknown words are linked to a gendered protagonist or context information. In Experiment 1, 40 3- to 6-year-old preschoolers were read stories with either a gendered protagonist embedded within a non-gendered context, or a non-gendered protagonist embedded within a gendered context. In Experiment 2, the same sample of children were read stories with the protagonist and the context displaying congruent or incongruent gender information. Each story featured an unknown activity linked with the stereotypical content. Both experiments indicate that the children rated the activity according to both the gender of the context and of the protagonist; however, the effect of the latter was stronger. In addition, children showed higher interest in the unknown activity if the protagonist’s gender matched their own sex. Thus, gender information in stories influences how children perceive unknown words.     

Parts and wholes in person recognition: developmental trends

This study's aim is the investigation of short-term visual person recognition in 8- and 10-year-olds and adults, within the part-whole paradigm introduced by. Natural unfamiliar whole persons were contrasted with natural unfamiliar faces to test for differences between person processing and face processing. Two experiments showed advantages of whole face recognition over isolated face feature recognition. Also, these was a complete over part probe advantage (CPA, ) for person recognition in all age groups. Thus, recognition became more accurate between 8 years and adulthood, but no developmental shift in visual information processing was observable with face and whole person recognition. I conclude that person recognition does not rely on processes completely different from those of face recognition and that this holds for 8- and 10-year-olds as well as for adults.     

A unified model for perceptual learning

Perceptual learning in adult humans and animals refers to improvements in sensory abilities after training. These improvements had been thought to occur only when attention is focused on the stimuli to be learned (task-relevant learning) but recent studies demonstrate performance improvements outside the focus of attention (task-irrelevant learning). Here, we propose a unified model that explains both task-relevant and task-irrelevant learning. The model suggests that long-term sensitivity enhancements to task-relevant or irrelevant stimuli occur as a result of timely interactions between diffused signals triggered by task performance and signals produced by stimulus presentation. The proposed mechanism uses multiple attentional and reinforcement systems that rely on different underlying neuromodulators. Our model provides insights into how neural modulators, attentional and reinforcement learning systems are related.