Is the study about spontaneous attention to exact quantity based on studies of spontaneous focusing on numerosity?

Li and Baroody present a study in which they investigate toddlers’ spontaneous attention to exact quantity without acknowledging how previous studies of spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) are related to their concept and methods. In this commentary requested by the European Journal of Developmental Psychology, we argue that the concept and the methods of spontaneous attention to exact quantity in the study of Li and Baroody clearly arise from previous research on SFON, as the authors have previously noted in their paper published in 2008. It is highly questionable whether their approach can be theoretically or methodologically dissociated from the previous research on SFON tendency to the extent that it is necessary to use an alternative name for the concept in their study.     

Studies on spontaneous attention to number (SAN) are based on spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON)

Li and Baroody presented a study in which they investigate children’ spontaneous attention to exact quantity without acknowledging how previous studies of spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) are related to their concept and methods. The authors’ reaction to our pointing this out makes it is clear that SFON research has had foundational role in the development of Baroody and his colleagues spontaneous attention to number (SAN) idea. Thus the authors must acknowledge the SFON literature as the substantial part of their theoretical and methodological construct. The latest definition of SAN states this undeniably. “SAN is the attentional process that underlies exact number recognition initiated by the mathematical thinking triggered by SFON (e.g., attention to “threeness” directed by conceptual knowledge of “three” activated by SFON).” Furthermore, in their response, Dr Baroody and Dr Li admit that “An awareness of the SFON literature did help us explicitly recognize that, given the ambiguous instructions that do not explicitly direct a child’s attention to number, both the nonverbal production and matching tasks were useful in assessing unguided or spontaneous attention to a number.” It is surprising that in their response to the European Journal of Educational Psychology, the authors maintain their claim that they have cited the SFON literature adequately in their study about SAN.     

Anxiety meets fear in perception of dynamic expressive gaze

This study investigated in 2 experiments whether reflexive cuing of attention that occurs after perception of a gaze cue is greater for fearful than for happy faces in normal participants, as hypothesized from a social neuroscience perspective. To increase neuroecological validity, dynamic stimulus presentation was used to display faces that simultaneously morphed from a neutral expression into a happy or fearful one and shifted eye gaze from the center to the periphery. Shifts of attention resulting from a natural fearful gaze were expected to be related to participants' anxiety traits, in agreement with the often found increased selective attention to threat in anxious participants. Both hypotheses were confirmed: Fearful faces induced stronger gaze cuing than happy faces, and the strength of this cuing effect was correlated to participants' anxiety levels. These results suggest a neural network, which integrates the processing of gaze, expression, and emotional states to adaptively prime vigilance under threatening circumstances.     

Emotional stroop performance for masked angry faces: it's BAS, not BIS

Theoretical models concerning selective attention to emotional stimuli predict heightened vigilance to angry faces in people with heightened trait anxiety or greater activity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS). Recent evidence from electroencephalographic lateralization and affect studies and from studies assessing attentional biases to angry faces suggest, however, that heightened anger and activity of the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) should predict vigilant responding to angry faces. Social anxiety should predict avoidance of angry faces. Results from a masked emotional Stroop task verified these hypotheses, but an unmasked emotional Stroop provided no reliable relations. This dissociation confirms earlier claims that masked emotional Stroop performance is impervious to conscious control over the cognitive-emotional processes, as measured by the Stroop task.     

A suicide epidemic in a psychiatric hospital.

The authors report in detail on an epidemic of six inpatient suicides in a psychiatric hospital in Finland. Suggestion and identification had an effect on the timing as well as on the method of four of the suicides. The epidemic is viewed from individual, network, and organizational perspectives. The authors speculate on how such epidemics could be avoided. An increase in inpatient suicide rates has been reported from many countries, and the Werther effect may thus become a topic of considerable importance in psychiatric hospitals in the future.     

Early Developmental Trajectories Toward Concepts of Rational Numbers

Difficulties with rational numbers have been explained by a natural number bias, where concepts of natural numbers are inappropriately applied to rational numbers. Overcoming this difficulty may require a radical restructuring of previous knowledge. In order to capture this development, we examined third- to fifth-grade students' understanding of the size of rational numbers across a 1-year period. On three occasions, students answered a test about the size of decimals and fractions. Latent transition analysis allowed profiling five different rational number size concepts and mapping students' developmental trajectories during the early learning of this topic. Development from natural number-based reasoning to mathematically correct understanding was almost nonexistent during this time period. Instead, students appear to move through intermediary concepts. Locating these temporary and mediating number concepts supports the idea of a slow and gradually developing conceptual change in rational numbers.     

Practical Hermeneutics: Noticing in Bible Study Interaction

This article presents an ethnomethodological respecification of the philosophical problem of the hermeneutics of ancient texts. I analyze an interactional practice, namely, noticing an aspect of the Bible text in Seventh-day Adventist Bible study. I show how noticings are used to make the text “speak” to the participants of the Bible study and discuss how the participants show their orientation to this action in the next turn and how they rely on various cultural resources to make sense of the text. The article shows how the actions of the participants are contextual, cultural and moral in nature. Cultural resources and morality are embedded in the locally produced hermeneutical achievement. I discuss how this analysis can be instructive for philosophical hermeneutics.     

On the Impossibility of Amalgamating Evidence

It is argued in this paper that amalgamating confirmation from various sources is relevantly different from social-choice contexts, and that proving an impossibility theorem for aggregating confirmation measures directs attention to irrelevant issues.