Darwinian language evolution

Haider’s target paper presents a fresh and inspiring look at the nature of grammar change. The overall impression of his approach is very convincing, especially his insistence on the point that language was not selected for communication – hence it is no adaptation to communicative use. Nevertheless, I think three topics are in need of further discussion and elaboration. First, I will discuss the question whether Haider’s conception of Darwinian selection covers all aspects of grammar change. Second, I will consider the question of whether an approach that dispenses with UG (as Haider’s does) can explain why grammars are the way they are. Third, I will question Haider’s equation of grammar with the genotype and of speech with the phenotype and develop an alternative and more appropriate proposal where, among others, speech corresponds to behavior.

Talent: A contestable, but not contested, concept?

Our target article on ‘Innate talent’ had two objectives, first to acknowledge the 20th anniversary of the seminal contribution by Howe, Davidson and Sloboda (1998) and second, to update this information as it relates to talent in the domain of sport. Many thanks to all the authors that took the time to provide commentaries on our review. Broadly, our target paper focused on 1) whether the concept of innate talent was reasonable and scientifically sound and 2) whether the concept of innate talent had any utility to those working at the coalface of sport science (e.g., coaches, scouts, etc.). All of the commentaries were complimentary to our review, which suggested continued interest in this area (although this was noted as surprising by Hambrick and Burgoyne). We have tried to respond to all of the interesting points raised by the commentaries, but this was not always possible. That said, we grouped our responses under general themes below. Our impression, based on the commentaries, is that innate talent is not a contested concept; in that there appears to be agreement (for the most part) that, ‘this thing exists’. Rather, the concept of innate talent is contestable (Gallie, 1956); that is, there is debate about exactly what it is, the degree of its influence, and how useful the concept of innate talent is.

Assessing unlimited associative learning as a transition marker

The target paper (building on Ginsburg and Jablonka in JTB 381:55–60, 2015, The evolution of the sensitive soul: Learning and the origins of consciousness, MIT Press, USA, 2019) makes a significant and novel claim: that positive cases of non-human consciousness can be identified via the capacity of unlimited associative learning (UAL). In turn, this claim is generated by a novel methodology, which is that of identifying an evolutionary ‘transition marker’, which is claimed to have theoretical and empirical advantages over other approaches. In this commentary I argue that UAL does not function as a successful transition marker (as defined by the authors), and has internal problems of its own. However, I conclude that it is still a very productive anchor for new research on the evolution of consciousness.

Analisis Akurasi Algoritma Extended Word Similarity Based Clustering (EWSB) pada Mesin Penerjemah Bahasa Indonesia-Minang

Extended Word Similarity Based (EWSB) Clustering adalah algoritma pengklasteran kata berdasarkan nilai kemiripan kata yang didapat dari hasil komputasi terhadap sebuah korpus. Salah satu manfaat dari hasil pengklasteran dengan algoritma ini adalah untuk meningkatkan kualitas output dari sebuah mesin penerjemah berbasis statistik (MPS). Dari hasil penelitian sebelumnya, hasil pengklasteran dengan algoritma EWSB terbukti memperbaiki akurasi mesin penerjemah bahasa Inggris sebagai Bahasa asal ke bahasa Indonesia sebagai Bahasa target, dimana algoritma tersebut diaplikasikan pada bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa target. Paper ini mendiskusikan hasil penelitian penggunaan EWSB pada MPS dari bahasa Indonesia ke bahasa Minang, dimana algoritma tersebut diaplikasikan pada bahasa Minang sebagai bahasa target. Penelitian yang dilakukan memperoleh hasil bahwa algoritma EWSB cukup efektif jika digunakan pada bahasa Minang sebagai bahasa target. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan algoritma EWSB dapat meningkatkan tingkat akurasi terjemahan sebesar 6,36%.

Commentary on Shaffer et al.: A cluster analysis of harmony in the McGill Billboard dataset

This short commentary on the target paper by "A cluster analysis of harmony in the McGill Billboard" by Shaffer et al. starts with observing that not all harmonic progressions that are theoretically possible are equally common. Instead, some progressions are more popular than others in popular. In fact, certain harmonic progressions are closely associated with specific styles and sub-genres and it is the aim of the target paper to provide a meaningful classification system for harmonic progression. The commentary identifies several strengths of the target paper, including a nice balance between rigorous empirical work and providing a context and interpretations that are musicologically well-informed. In its critique the commentary points to the limitations of only using harmonic bigrams (i.e. the transitions between two chords) as the empirical data and the missing link to related literature on harmonic modelling in the music information retrieval community.

Open peer commentaries in Theory & Psychology

In this issue, Theory & Psychology is trialing a new format for engaging readers and contributors to the journal. In particular, we designated a target article for which we solicited open peer commentaries. Open peer commentaries should reflect engagement from diverse perspectives with the key themes and arguments of the target paper. Future calls for open peer commentaries will focus on different topics. Authors interested in writing commentaries should ensure that they are familiar with the research literature on the topic before submitting proposals.

Measuring Stereotypes in Music: A Commentary on Susino and Schubert (2019)

In this commentary, I first discuss the strengths of the target paper and provide suggestions for future research. I proceed to point out an important limitation of the target study as well as contribute considerations relevant to measuring stereotypes in music. Finally, I present a novel theoretical account to explain music stereotyping, namely, the representativeness heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), which I discuss within the broader framework of the behavioral economics of music.

Commentary on Microtonal Analysis of "Blue Notes" and the Blues Scale by Court B. Cutting

This commentary discusses the target paper Microtonal Analysis of "Blue Notes" and the Blues Scale by Court B. Cutting. Overall, the paper is an interesting and very valuable attempt to shed light on the intonation practice of blue notes in traditional blues music, using an empirical approach which is based in modern acoustic measurements. While the approach and empirical results presented in the target paper undoubtedly have their merits, the paper nonetheless raises some methodological and conceptual questions, leading to some further thoughts that are discussed in this commentary. The issues raised in this commentary might serve as guidance for future empirical investigations into the nature and usage of blue notes.