Conditionals and inferential connections: toward a new semantics

Conditionals and inferential connections: A hypothetical inferential theory

Abductive conditionals as a test case for inferentialism

According to Inferentialism, a conditional is true precisely if there is a compelling argument for its consequent starting from its antecedent conjoined with contextually given background knowledge. As a direct consequence of this view, the truth of a conditional’s component parts does not guarantee the truth of the conditional, given that it is compatible with there not being an argument from the conditional’s antecedent to its consequent. Thus, Inferentialism invalidates the principle called Centering, according to which the joint truth of φ and ψ guarantees the truth of “If φ , ψ ”. This distinguishes Inferentialism from all standard semantics of conditionals, all of which validate Centering. Here, we report the results from a study that registered (i) participants’ truth evaluations of a set of conditionals; (ii) their truth evaluations of the component parts of those conditionals; (iii) their judgements of the strength of the inferential connection between antecedent and consequent for each conditional; and (iv) their metacognitive confidence in the inference strength judgements. The data from (i)–(iii) allowed us to test Centering and to investigate whether possible violations of the principle can be explained in inferentialist terms. The data from (iv) allowed us to make some progress on testing predictions derived from Hypothetical Inferential Theory, the psychological face of Inferentialism. Our findings show that almost 60% of the relevant responses violated Centering; that participants obeyed Centering only when there was a strong inferential link between true antecedent and true consequent; and that the best models were those that involved inference strength and metacognitive confidence, while the Centering model was weak.

Theories of cognitive development relevant to children's thinking in history are examined and previous research relating these to history is discussed. No agreed patterns of development in historical thinking which are based on cognitive psychology have so far been found, and the early stages of children's historical thinking have not been adequately examined. An experiment was set up to investigate young children's ability to develop arguments about a variety of historical evidence. Two groups of twenty eight-year-old children were taught four periods of history over two terms, as part of an integrated curriculum, by the researcher who was their class teacher. Teaching strategies were based on experience (visits to sites and museums), and discussion of key evidence using taught concepts. These experimental groups were compared with a control group in another school, taught the same four periods as the experimental groups, by an experienced teacher, using his siwn methods. At the end of each unit, the control and $erimental groups were given a written test to assess their ability to make deductions about evidence related to the period but previously unseen. The first experimental group also made tape-recordings of discussions of the evidence, led by the teacher. In the second experimental group discussions, no adult was present. The experimental groups were also tested on their ability to write stories based on their knowledge of this period. Assessment scales based on cognitive psychology and previous research were devised. Findings suggested that children were able to make a range of valid deductions about pictures, artefacts, diagrams, maps and writing, using learned vocabulary, and that they could recognise a distinction between certainty and probability. Discussions were more wide-ranging than written answers, whether an adult was present or not. It was suggested that through learning to make a range of valid suppositions about evidence, children begin to consider the attitudes and ideas of other societies. Teaching strategies are significant in developing children's historical understanding.

Radical Cyclic [3]Daisy Chains

Functional brain connectivity and cognition: effects of adult age and task demands

Representation, space and Hollywood Squares: looking at things that aren't there anymore

The authors argue in this article that new approaches are needed in the study of psychological acculturation. They posit that a new model of psychological acculturation should incorporate contemporary work in social and cognitive psychology. The model they present builds on previous research in the areas of social cognition, cultural competence, social identity, and social stigma. Each of these perspectives is discussed in accordance with its relevance to the acculturative processes operating in immigrants. They hypothesize that acculturation is more difficult for those persons who must cope with the stigma of being different because of skin color, language, ethnicity, and so forth. Finally, the authors believe that the theoretical framework present here will lead to more productive insights into the adaptation process of immigrants than has heretofore been the case.

Functional connectivity between right-lateralized ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and insula mediates reappraisal's link to memory control

This article examines the structure and stability of public opinion between the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections. The data consist of a four-wave panel study of 800 residents in Dearborn, Michigan; interviews were conducted in the spring of 1974, 1975, and 1976 and in the fall of 1976 immediately after the presidential election. The paper focuses on the structure of political attitudes, the stability of attitudes, and the impact of attitudes on the presidential votes. A central thesis is that public opinion can be disaggregated into two clusters—the Disintegration Cluster and the Alignment Cluster—one of which disrupts and one of which reinforces partisan voting. On the basis of correlations between the seven factors making up the clusters, we anticipate neither a rapid realignment nor a disintegration of the party system, but instability, with election outcomes affected by attitudinal factors salient to a specific campaign. We find signs of increased crystallization of political attitudes compared to the 1956–1958–1960 national panel. Finally, our voting studies indicate that the Disintegration Cluster had a significant effect on the 1972 election, but that issues in general had little impact in 1976, once controls were introduced for party identification and candidate image.

Gender inequality is still an issue of high relevance in society. Previous research indicates that language contributes to gender inequality in various ways: Gender-related information is transmitted through formal and semantic features of language, such as the grammatical category of gender, gender-related connotations of role names (e.g., manager, secretary) or customs of denoting social groups with derogatory vs. neutral names. Both as a formal system and as a means of communication, language passively reflects culture-specific social conditions, but in active use can also be used to express and, potentially, perpetuate those conditions. The research topics considered in the contributions to this proposed Frontiers Research Topic will include: • how languages shape the cognitive representations of gender • how features of languages correspond with gender equality in different societies • how language contributes to social behaviour towards the sexes • how gender equality can be promoted through strategies for gender-fair language use These research topics will be explored both developmentally (across the life span from childhood to old age) and in adults, and will encompass work conducted across a wide range of languages, including some studies that include cross-linguistic comparisons. The proposed contributors (almost all of whom have agreed to contribute a paper to the Research Topic) include both cognitive and social psychologists, and linguists, all of whom have an excellent research standing and all of whom have recently been conducting research on topics related to the general theme of the Research Topic. The contributions will also represent a wide range of methods: from surveys to electro-physiological studies. The contributions we have solicited will provide a wider range of complimentary studies, which will make a substantial contribution to understanding in this important area. Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be in line with the scope of the specialty and field to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Manuscripts discovered during any stage of peer review to be outside of the scope may be transferred to a suitable section or field, or withdrawn from review.

Modelling persuasion strategies as predictors of task outcome has several real-world applications and has received considerable attention from the computational linguistics community. However, previous research has failed to account for the resisting strategies employed by an individual to foil such persuasion attempts. Grounded in prior literature in cognitive and social psychology, we propose a generalised framework for identifying resisting strategies in persuasive conversations. We instantiate our framework on two distinct datasets comprising persuasion and negotiation conversations. We also leverage a hierarchical sequence-labelling neural architecture to infer the aforementioned resisting strategies automatically. Our experiments reveal the asymmetry of power roles in non-collaborative goal-directed conversations and the benefits accrued from incorporating resisting strategies on the final conversation outcome. We also investigate the role of different resisting strategies on the conversation outcome and glean insights that corroborate with past findings. We also make the code and the dataset of this work publicly available at \url{https://github.com/americast/resper}.

Semantic dispositionalism is the theory that a speaker’s meaning something by a given linguistic symbol is determined by her dispositions to use the symbol in a certain way. According to an objection by Kripke, further elaborated in Kusch (Analysis 65(2):156–163, 2005), semantic dispositionalism involves ceteris paribus-clauses and idealisations, such as unbounded memory, that deviate from standard scientific methodology. I argue that Kusch misrepresents both ceteris paribus-laws and idealisation, neither of which factually approximate the behaviour of agents or the course of events, but, rather, identify and isolate nature’s component parts and processes. An analysis of current results in cognitive psychology vindicates the idealisations involved and certain counterfactual assumptions in science generally. In particular, results suggest that there can be causal continuity between the dispositional structure of actual objects and that of highly idealised objects. I conclude by suggesting that we can assimilate ceteris paribus-laws with disposition ascriptions insofar as they involve identical idealising assumptions.

ABSTRACTThe focus of much mathematics teaching has been on the acquisition of counting, an area where children with Down syndrome can experience particular difficulties. Research with typically developing children has highlighted how early awareness of quantity provides a strong platform for the acquisition of later mathematical skills and programmes of early intervention have been introduced. Many of these studies are embedded in the work and traditions of developmental and cognitive psychology and can be difficult to access. Consequently, this is an area that has been largely ignored in the curricula of children with Down syndrome. This paper seeks to make this literature more available. It systematically reviews previous research with children with Down Syndrome on these early foundations. It considers seemingly contradictory findings in the light of differences in tasks, their presentation and instructions, and the responses required, in order to draw conclusions and reflect on the implications for teaching and learning. Some of these propositions are in contrast to existing practices and call for further research to test their effectiveness.

Categorization training increases the perceptual separability of novel dimensions