Compositionality in language and arithmetic.

Utility maximizing solutions to economic models of choice for goods with either discrete quantities or non-linear prices cannot always be obtained using standard first-order conditions such as Kuhn-Tucker and Roy's identity. When quantities are discrete, there is no guarantee that derivatives of the utility function are equal to derivatives of the budget constraint. Moreover, when prices are nonlinear, as in the case of quantity discounts, first-order conditions can be associated with the minimum rather than the maximum value of utility. In these cases, the utility function must be directly evaluated to determine its maximum. This evaluation can be computationally challenging when there exist many offerings and when stochastic elements are introduced into the utility function. In this paper, we provide an economic model of demand for substitute brands that is flexible, parsimonious, and easy to implement. The methodology is demonstrated with a scanner panel data set of light-beer purchases. The model is used to explore the effects of price promotions on primary and secondary demand, and the utility of product assortment.

Solution processes of two groups of 9‐10 year old children to a common set of fraction problems were contrasted at the conclusion of a teaching experiment. One group was taught meanings for fractions using popsticks as discrete quantity material; the other group used paper strips as continuous quantity material. The study suggests that a knowledge of fractions based upon discrete quantities may have certain advantages over fraction knowledge based on continuous quantities. The Continuous group children were less successful with problems cast in discrete quantity settings. They also displayed unstable strategies when using continuous material. Children of both groups preferred discrete material to solve problems cast in either discrete or continuous contexts. Discrete quantity materials could have a valuable role in the development of fraction knowledge in the elementary school.

I was privileged to have the opportunity to work closely with Melvin Novick on a half a dozen different committees during the last 10 years. These interactions always proved to be useful learning experiences for me. I have encountered few individuals with such a keen analytical mind. The depth and scope of Novick’s contributions deserve special treatment; I hope this review will at least serve as a reminder of some of his significant contributions to the theory and practice of educational and psychological measurement. For a full appreciation of these contributions, however, there is no substitute for his original publications.

Processing number and length in the parietal cortex: Sharing resources, not a common code

A review of the historical measurement theory literature in psychology reveals a recurring focus on a physical rather than a psychological model of the measurement process, whereas the active measurement research literature points to an emphasis on elements of a psychological measurement process. On the basis of the relevant portions of these anomalous findings the authors outline parts of a general measurement structure for psychology that begins with an essential theoretical base. The review first explores a century-old statement that developed a promising starting point within test development. This is followed by a diversionary statement based on physical measurement that mandated discussions of measurement in psychology to a physical model. The statement appeared to be countered by the theory of scale types ( Stevens, 1946 ), which provided a promising element of the psychological measurement process. The legacy of the theory of scales, however, resulted in confusion and inconsistency about the specifics of psychological measurement. After reviewing some of the contributions in the research literature, a conciliation of the positive theory efforts of the past and the protocols for a measurement process are presented that is based upon the standard system of measurement ( Aftanas, 1988 , 2006 ) as the basic theoretically necessary element of measurement. The theoretical framework based on the standard system promises not only to integrate the components of measurement, and categories of psychological measurement that have been referenced in the past, but also to provide an easily assimilated protocol that can serve as a basis for future research and pedagogical exposition.

مقدمه: نظریه عمومی سامانه‌ها خود محصول رویکرد سیستمی در فهم پدیده‌هاست. این نوشتار با هدف شناخت ماهیت و مؤلفه‌های مفهومی این نظریه به پیشینه پیدایش و چگونگی رواج رویکرد سیستمی پرداخته است. همچنین، با در نظر گرفتن مؤلفه‌های مفهومی این نظریه، کوشش شده تا تفسیری از کاربرد نظریه عمومی سامانه‌ها (سیستم‌ها) در حوزه سیبرنتیک ارائه شود. روش‌شناسی: این نوشتار از نوع تحلیل مفهومی است. به طور کلی، تحلیل مفهومی متون، مبتنی بر داده‌های گردآوری شدۀ متنی و با هدف به دست دادن فهمی از ابعاد و مولفه‌های برسازندۀ هر یک از مفاهیم اصلی و نیز تبیین مرزهای مفهومی آنهاست. در این پژوهش نیز متون مرتبط با سیبرنتیک و نظریۀ عمومی سامانه‌ها، تحلیل مفهومی شده‌اند. یافته ها: کنکاش این نوشتار درباره چیستی و مؤلفه‌های مفهومی رویکرد سیستمی، زمینه نظری و چارچوب فلسفی- تاریخی لازم را برای فهم بهتر نظریه عمومی سامانه‌ها فراهم ساخته است. به‌سبب پیوند محکم میان این نظریه و حوزه سیبرنتیک، تفسیر و فهمی سیبرنتیکی از این نظریه ارائه شده است. یافته‌ها نشان داد که سرشاخه‌های این دو حوزه در بسیاری از رشته‌ها از جمله علم اطلاعات به هم رسیده است. نظریه عمومی سامانه‌ها و نیز نظریه سیبرنتیک، هر دو از مؤلفه‌های مهم در توسعه نظریه علم اطلاعات بوده‌اند.طبق نظریه عمومی سامانه‌ها و نیز نظریه سیبرنتیک، سامانه‌‌های سیبرنتیکی مبتنی بر اطلاعات نهفته در کنش‌های کنترل عمل می‌کنند؛ لذا از آنجا‌ که تمامی کنش‌های کنترل در سامانه‌‌های سیبرنتیکی، ریشه اطلاعاتی دارند، می‌توان گفت که عنصر اطلاعات، به‌عنوان یک مؤلفه مهم و اساسی در این سنخ سامانه‌‌ها به‌حساب می‌آید. بحث و نتیجه‌گیری: مطالعه حاضر نشان می‌دهد که یکی دانستن دو حوزه علم سامانه‌ها و سیبرنتیک نوعی بی‌مبالاتی نظری است؛ ولی در عین حال، میان این دو، اندیشه‌ها و مقاصد مشترک فراوانی وجود دارد که به برخی از آنها در این نوشتار اشاره شده است. این هم‌راستایی میان دو حوزه علم سامانه‌ها و سیبرنتیک ناشی از آن است که این دو، محصول یک نگرش و رویکرد مشترک یعنی نگرش سیستمی هستند. در هر دو، مفهوم سامانه یک مفهوم کلیدی و بنیادین است؛ و به‌دست دادن قوانین و اصولی که مشابهت‌آفرین، تعمیم‌بخش و کل‌گرا باشد، یک ارزش اصیل به‌حساب می‌آید.

Jean-Philippe Massonie. Introduction to the theory of measurement. Words such as « statistics », « measure », « quantitative » are often used with confused or even contradictory meanings in the human and social sciences. What does « quantitative history » mean ? The author speaks from the viewpoint of a mathematician. The use of statistical methods implies the building of a model, even a very simple one. The statements of the problem arising from the building of a model, is nothing but the formulating of an hypothesis ; and the answer to it results from analysing and exploring the possible relations between the objects under study and certain mathematical properties (order structures, metrical spaces and distances, topological spaces, vectorial spaces). This process must not been confused with measure itself, which is a set of operations which are distinct from statistical analysis, the axiomatics of which has been formalised by the mathematicians. Lengths, surfaces, weights and even probabilities are measures, which have in common the character of additivity. Measures and measured spaces involve the concepts of norm and class. The historian in his own work will use measure in two different ways : in doing « physical » measures ; in describing a given population with a number. In the last case, the theory of measure may be applied to data which are not at first sight measurable, in the strictest sense of the word.

The human intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is implicated in processing symbolic number information and possibly in nonsymbolic number information. Specific IPS activity for discrete quantities (numerosities) as compared with continuous, analogue quantity has not been demonstrated. Here we use a stimulus-driven paradigm to distinguish automatic estimation of "how many things" from "how much" and "how long." The discrete analogue response task (DART) uses the perception of hues which can change either abruptly (discrete, numerous stimuli) or smoothly (analogue, nonnumerous stimuli) in space or in time. Subjects decide whether they saw more green or more blue. A conjunction analysis of spatial and temporal conditions revealed that bilateral IPS was significantly more active during the processing of discrete stimuli than during analogue stimuli, as was a parietal-occipital transition zone. We suggest that processing numerosity is a distinct process from processing analogue quantity, whether extended in space or time, and that an intraparietal network connects objects' segmentation to the estimation of their numerosity.

Public attitudes toward social problems such as delinquency, alcoholism and drug addiction, and toward ways of dealing with them, are influenced very little by scientific theories. Rather, lay theories — everyday, often implicit, assumptions about the causes and effects of deviant behavior, and of the possibilities of changing it — are much more influential. The varying effects of prevention campaigns that use messages based upon expert knowledge may be at least partially explained by differences between everyday and scientific logic. This study dealt mainly with the comparative dimensional analysis of lay images of delinquency, alcohol, drug and youth problems. Content and structural aspects are described, as well as typical procedures and indicators of everyday logic that play a role in attributional processes. The methods used in classical survey studies have been inadequate for this task. Such terms as “ideology of deviant behavior”, “lay theories”, “world views” are very often simply expressions of dichotomous attitudinal “yes/no” items. Researchers do not appear to realize that, by using as stimuli such ambiguous terms as “disease” and “responsibility”, they receive responses that neither reflect the underlying meaning which the respondents attribute to them, nor are valid indicators of these complex concepts. Especially these studies tell us little about the structural properties of lay concepts. They only touch upon the question of consistency and they make assumptions about the relation in the lay person’s mind between medical and moralistic world views and the corresponding imputation of responsibility (see e.g. Linsky 1970; Mulford and Miller 1964; Orcutt 1976; Caddy, Goldman and Hübner 1976; Ries 1977). Research so far has not dealt with breadth of knowledge or lack of knowledge, the extent to which concepts reflect ideology, or level of abstraction — characteristics that are discussed, for example, in political sociology with reference to the question “how do people organize their political world?” (see Conover and Feldman 1984).

Harmonic analysis on a locally compact group is the study of certain spaces and algebras of functions and measures defined on the group. The function spaces in question are defined by measurability and integrability conditions; manipulation of the relevant measures requires delicate techniques from measure and integration theory. Also, the fundamental theorems of the theory of representations of locally compact groups [see §22] depend wholly upon the study of a certain space of square integrable functions. Thus the theories of measure and integration play a vital role in the present book.

In this article we review the discussion over the thesis that language serves as an integrator of contents coming from different cognitive modules. After presenting the theoretical considerations, we examine two strands of empirical research that tested the hypothesis—spatial cognition and mathematical cognition. The idea shared by both of them is that each is composed of two separate modules processing information of a specific kind. For spatial thinking these are geometric information about the location of the object and the information about the object’s properties such as color or size. For mathematical thinking, they are the absolute representation of small numbers and the approximate representation of numerosities. Language is said to integrate the two kinds of information within each of these domains, which the reviewed data demonstrates. In the final part of the paper, we offer some comments on the theoretical side of the discussion.

Why do Koskela and others argue that the underlying theory of project management (PM) is obsolete? Project management works for the manufacturing industry, and for the construction industry at both the physical production level and the subcontractor level. Stakeholders, including the owner (along with due diligence, and O&M teams), architect (and the design team), general contractor (and its subcontractor team) create, transmit, process, manage and use information. The boundary between information (creation and transmission) and physical production is where PM controls and predicts cost and schedule and where quality controls fail to work as intended. This paper argues that subcontractors give project numbers for the physical part of the project, while general contractors' project numbers are actually a project of projects (those of the subcontractors). The general contractor manages a meta-project (term and definition, as related to building construction, coined by Fernandez-Solis). The meta-project paradigm has significant consequences and is the key to a novel understanding of the general contractor role. Lean construction's percent (or promise) plan complete (PPC) gages the reliability of promises made, is a useful and viable indicator of the quality of the schedule, and serves as a surrogate measure of project flow – how smoothly or chaotically a project runs. The PPC is operationalized as an index that meta-project stakeholders can use to calibrate the reliability of work in progress and provide feedback on the predictability/variability of logistic plans. The methodology of this paper uses conceptual analysis, the metonymic mapping of key concepts from the thermodynamics domain to the construction domain and showcases the concepts through PPC case studies. Information entropy theories are discerned in the PPC reports. In conclusion, scientific information theories, principles and characteristics of flow, in contrast to managerial principles, provide a clearer background for visualizing a novel understanding of the state of the project flow at the meta-project level. It could be argued that this paper is about defining a reference discipline and construed as “construction science viewed through the lens of entropy” but this is not the focus of this paper but the topic of the next.

Quantity representation in children and rhesus monkeys: Linear versus logarithmic scales

Purpose – The philosophical position known as critical realism is briefly introduced, and some of its central features are used to connect the philosophy and the realist social theory to some current library and information science (LIS) models of information behaviour.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a literature‐based analysis of the critical realism concepts of a stratified social reality, the importance of contextualisation, and the relation between structure and agency. These features are discussed in relation to various models of information‐seeking behaviour, but also to the “interpretative” approach to information as meaning which can only be achieved through discourses in a human community.Findings – The critical realism perspective could lay a fruitful foundation for an interdisciplinary research field like LIS, and its user studies in particular, concerned with many levels of information creation, seeking, use and processing. It is the task of the LIS researcher to explain the mecha...

Psychoanalysis proffers a wealth of phenomenological tools to advance the study of consciousness. Techniques for elucidating the structures of subjective life are sorely lacking in the cognitive sciences; as such, experiential reporting techniques must rise to meet both complex theories of brain function and increasingly sophisticated neuroimaging technologies. Analysis may offer valuable methods for bridging the gap between first-person and third-person accounts of the mind. Using both systematic observational approaches alongside unstructured narrative interactions, psychoanalysts help patients articulate their experience and bring unconscious mental contents into awareness. Similar to seasoned meditators or phenomenologists, individuals who have undergone analysis are experts in discerning and describing their subjective experience, thus making them ideal candidates for neurophenomenology. Moreover, analytic techniques may provide a means of guiding untrained experimental participants to greater awareness of their mental continuum, as well as gathering subjective reports about fundamental yet elusive aspects of experience including selfhood, temporality, and inter-subjectivity. Mining psychoanalysis for its methodological innovations provides a fresh turn for the neuropsychoanalysis movement and cognitive science as a whole – showcasing the integrity of analysis alongside the irreducibility of human experience.