Break philosophy through internally

This paper contrasts and illustrates two types of breakthroughs in philosophy; i.e., external and internal ones. Both are made possible through its application to a newfield. In the external breakthrough, a new field is discovered by such factors without philosophy as encounters with different traditions of thought and advance in technology. In the internal one, a new field is brought into attention by critical examination of one or another assumption within philosophy that has once dismissed the field as too trivial or insignificant to be its proper subject. Based on this distinction, a research guideline for philosophy is proposed that one must always seek the possibility of its internal breakthrough. It is also suggested that the philosophy of science and epistemology can be innovated internally when they are applied to a new field, that is, statistics. Finally the distinction between pure and applied philosophy is reinterpreted in the light of the internal breakthrough.     

Prior experience affects amodal completion in pigeons

In a three-alternative forced-choice task, 4 pigeons were trained to discriminate a target stimulus consisting of two colored shapes, one of which partially occluded the other, from two foil stimuli that portrayed either a complete or an incomplete version of the occluded shape. The dependent measure was the percentage of total errors that the birds committed to the complete foil. At the outset of training, the pigeons committed approximately 50% of total errors to the complete foil, but as training progressed, the percentage of errors to the complete foil rose. When the pigeons were given a second exposure to the initial set of stimuli, they committed 70% of total errors to the complete foil, suggesting that they now saw the complete foil as more similar to the occluded target than the incomplete foil. These results suggest that experience with 2-D images may facilitate amodal completion in pigeons, perhaps via perceptual learning.     

Validating the virtual string task with the gap test

Relational concepts—such as connectedness—may be easy for human adults to appreciate; but, obtaining evidence of other species’ understanding of connectedness has been challenging. One key test of connectedness involves an organism’s responding to variants of the string task. Using a virtual string task, we gave pigeons a pair of strings from which to choose: one connected to a full dish of food and a second disconnected from another full dish of food. Our pigeons did not at first choose the connected string under conditions of non-differential reinforcement; later, the birds rapidly learned to choose the connected string under conditions of differential reinforcement. Our results replicate prior findings with real strings and food dishes, thereby demonstrating that pigeons can appreciate the connectedness between a string tether and a dish of food, and attesting to the utility and fidelity of the virtual string task.     

The benefits of argumentation are cross-culturally robust: The case of Japan

Thanks to the exchange of arguments, groups outperform individuals on some tasks, such as solving logical problems. However, these results stem from experiments conducted among Westerners and they could be due to cultural particularities such as tolerance of contradiction and approval of public debate. Other cultures, collectivistic cultures in particular, are said to frown on argumentation. Moreover, some influential intellectual movements, such as Confucianism, disapprove of argumentation. In two experiments, the hypothesis that Easterners might not share the benefits of argumentation was tested. In Experiment 1, Japanese participants had to solve a standard logical problem individually and then in groups. They performed significantly better in groups. In Experiment 2, Japanese participants had to estimate the weight of various animals. They did so individually, then after learning of another participant's estimates, then after discussing these estimates with the other participant, and then individually again. While the Japanese participants also benefitted from the discussion, these benefits were only visible when participants provided a final individual estimate. This delay is interpreted as reflecting the pressure to preserve social harmony that would have constrained Japanese participants to yield to their partner even when knowing that this did not improve the accuracy of their answer.     

Mixture Factor Analysis for Approximating a Nonnormally Distributed Continuous Latent Factor With Continuous and Dichotomous Observed Variables

Mixture factor analysis is examined as a means of flexibly estimating nonnormally distributed continuous latent factors in the presence of both continuous and dichotomous observed variables. A simulation study compares mixture factor analysis with normal maximum likelihood (ML) latent factor modeling. Different results emerge for continuous versus dichotomous outcomes. For dichotomous outcomes, normal ML path estimates have bias that worsens as latent factor skew/kurtosis increases and does not diminish as sample size increases, whereas the mixture factor analysis model produces nearly unbiased estimators as sample sizes increase (500 and greater) and offers near nominal coverage probability. For continuous outcome variables, both methods produce factor loading estimates with minimal bias regardless of latent factor skew, but the mixture factor analysis is more efficient. The method is demonstrated using data motivated by a study on youth with cystic fibrosis examining predictors of treatment adherence. In summary, mixture factor analysis provides improvements over normal ML estimation in the presence of skewed/kurtotic latent factors, but due to variability in the estimator relating the latent factor to dichotomous outcomes and computational issues, the improvements were only fully realized, in this study, at larger sample sizes (500 and greater).     

Unilateral agraphia after section of the posterior half of the truncus of the corpus callosum

A Japanese patient who had undergone section of the posterior half of the truncus of the corpus callosum in the process of removing an arteriovenous malformation was examined with a battery of special tests. He showed agraphia only with the left hand (unilateral agraphia). The agraphia was more prominent for the words written in Kana characters (phonograms) than for the words written in Kanji characters (ideograms). The patient showed neither unilateral apraxia, nor tactile alexia, nor tactile anomia.     

Perceptual grouping in pigeons

Animal studies reveal that many species perceive partially occluded objects in the same way as do humans. Pigeons have been a notable exception. We re-investigated this anomaly of pigeon perception using a different approach from previous studies. With our method, we show that pigeons perceive occluded objects in the same manner as do other species. In addition, we report that pigeons can recognize perceptually transparent surfaces when the effect is induced by the same perceptual mechanisms as occlusion. These results give behavioral evidence that the perception of both occlusion and transparency is a common visual function shared by pigeons and humans, despite the structural differences between their visual systems.     

Pigeons learn virtual patterned-string problems in a computerized touch screen environment

For many decades, developmental and comparative psychologists have used a variety of string tasks to assess the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of human children of different ages and different species of nonhuman animals. The most important and widely used of these problems are patterned-string tasks, in which the organism is shown two or more strings, only one of which is connected to a reward. The organism must determine which string is attached to the reward and pull it. We report a new way to implement patterned-string tasks via a computerized touch screen apparatus. Pigeons successfully learned such virtual patterned-string tasks and exhibited the same general performance profile as animals given conventional patterned-string tasks. In addition, variations in the length, separation, and alignment of the strings reliably affected the pigeons’ virtual string-pulling behavior. These results not only testify to the power and versatility of our computerized string task, but they also demonstrate that pigeons can concurrently contend with a broad range of demanding patterned-string problems, thereby eliminating many alternative interpretations of their behavior. The virtual patterned-string task may thus permit expanded exploration of other species and variables which would be unlikely to be undertaken either because of inadequacies of conventional methodology or sensorimotor limitations of the studied organisms.     

Amodal completion in bonobos

We trained two bonobos to discriminate among occluded, complete, and incomplete stimuli. The occluded stimulus comprised a pair of colored shapes, one of which appeared to occlude the other. The complete and incomplete stimuli involved the single shape that appeared to have been partially covered in the occluded stimulus; the complete stimulus showed the full shape, whereas the incomplete stimulus showed the same portion of the shape that was visible in the occluded stimulus. The correct response was to select the two-part occluded stimulus. Consistent with amodal completion, the bonobos committed a higher percentage of errors to the complete stimuli than to the incomplete stimuli. As well, the percentage of errors to the complete stimuli rose after repeated training with several different shapes. Extensive experience with two-dimensional images enhances amodal completion of partially occluded stimuli in bonobos.