Infants recruit logic to learn about the social world

AbstractWhen perceptually available information is scant, we can leverage logical connections among hypotheses to draw reliable conclusions that guide our reasoning and learning. We investigate whether this function of logical reasoning is present in infancy and aid understanding and learning about the social environment. In our task, infants watch reaching actions directed toward a hidden object whose identity is ambiguous between two alternatives and has to be inferred by elimination. Here we show that infants apply a disjunctive inference to identify the hidden object and use this logical conclusion to assess the consistency of the actions with a preference previously demonstrated by the agent and, importantly, also to acquire new knowledge regarding the preferences of the observed actor. These findings suggest that, early in life, preverbal logical reasoning functions as a reliable source of evidence that can support learning by offering a logical route for knowledge acquisition.

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Watching reality from a distance: class, genre and reality television

Media Culture & Society ◽

10.1177/0163443716663643 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 39 (5) ◽

pp. 697-714 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Fredrik Stiernstedt ◽

Peter Jakobsson

Keyword(s):

Reality Television ◽

Social World ◽

Upper Class ◽

Cultural Significance ◽

Distance Class ◽

Television Programming ◽

Social Elite ◽

The Social ◽

New Knowledge ◽

Detailed Picture

The cultural significance of reality television is based on its claim to represent social reality. On the level of genre, we might argue that reality television constructs a modern day panorama of the social world and its inhabitants and that it thus makes populations appear. This article presents a class analysis of the population of reality television in which 1 year of television programming and over 1000 participants have been analysed. The purpose of this analysis is to deepen our understanding of the cultural and ideological dimensions of reality television as a genre, and to give a more detailed picture of the imaginaries of class in this form of television. The results bring new knowledge about the reality television genre and modify or revise assumptions from previous studies. Most importantly, we show that upper-class people and people belonging to the social elite are strongly over-represented in the genre and appear much more commonly in reality television than in other genres. This result opens up a re-evaluation of the cultural and ideological dimensions of the reality television genre.

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New Lead Seal of Adrian Komnenos, Protosebastos and Megas Domestikos of the Entire West, Discovered in the Area of Rusokastro in Southeastern Bulgaria

Vestnik Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta Serija 4 Istorija Regionovedenie Mezhdunarodnye otnoshenija ◽

10.15688/jvolsu4.2021.6.7 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 26 (6) ◽

pp. 96-101

Author(s):

Nikolay Kanev ◽

Keyword(s):

Present Article ◽

Political Life ◽

Byzantine Empire ◽

Left Hand ◽

Right Hand ◽

12Th Century ◽

The Social ◽

Reliable Source ◽

Available Information ◽

Source Of Information

ntroduction. The present article is a primary publication of a newly discovered sphragistic artefact from the area of the medieval fortress of Rusokastro, which was acquired by the Regional Historical Museum in Burgas in 2019. Methods. In their entirety, the Byzantine lead seals are an important primary and reliable source of information on various aspects of Byzantine history. Byzantine seals are especially important from the perspective of prosopography. First of all, they are invaluable evidence of individuals who, in one way or another, participated in the social and political life of the Byzantine Empire. Therefore, the discovery of each new sphragistic monument is of great importance and the available information must be carefully analyzed. Analysis. This interesting artefact is a lead seal of the brother of the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Komnenos (1081–1118), Adrian Komnenos as a protosebastos and megas domestikos of the entire West. The obverse depicts Saint George, nimbate, standing, facing forward, holding a spear in his right hand, and resting his left hand on a shield. Inscription in 7 lines within dotted border on the reverse: + Κ(ύρι)ε β(οή)θ(ει) τῷ σῷ δούλῳ Ἀδριανῷ (πρωτο)σεβαστῷ (καὶ) μ(ε)γ(άλῳ) δομ[ε]στίκῳ πάσης Δύσεως τῷ Κομνην(ῷ). The seal dates from the end of the 11th century. Results. This new Byzantine lead seal, described in this article, increases the number of medieval sphragistic finds in the Rusokastro area, which belong to an undeniably wide chronological range – from the second half of the 8th century to the beginning of the 12th century. Thus, the number of lead seals from the area of Rusokastro grow to six, five of which are Byzantine and one is a Bulgarian imperial seal.

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Beyond Supervenience and Construction

Journal of Social Ontology ◽

10.1515/jso-2014-0033 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 121-141 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

David-Hillel Ruben

Keyword(s):

Social Relationships ◽

Social Action ◽

Physical Environment ◽

Social World ◽

John Searle ◽

Social Actions ◽

The Social ◽

The Mind ◽

The Relationship ◽

Two Alternatives

AbstractI assume that identity theories and reductive strategies generally about the relationship between both the physical and the mental and the non-social and the social fail and I remind the reader why this is so. The mind cannot be reduced to body and the social (and this includes social action) cannot be reduced to what goes on in the minds of individuals and to their non-social actions, even when physical environment is added to the allegedly reducing base. I canvass two alternatives: supervenience and constructivism. My discussion of supervenience is by way of a survey of the work of others. Supervenience turns out to be too ‘brute’ a relation to account for the mind-body or the nonsocial-social relationships (I explain the idea of ‘brute’ in the paper). Supervenience is essentially a co-variance relation and even if the social were to supervene on the nonsocial, or the mental on the physical, supervenience leaves that co-variance inexplicable and mysterious. I ask whether constructivist solutions could explain the co-variance between levels any better (I look specifically at the work of John Searle) and I raise some issues with regard to the ability of constructivism to explain these relationships. Searle sees the institutional and social world through the perspective of various levels, in ways similar to the way in which the reductionist and the supervenience theorists did. My main argument is to offer an analogue problem for constructivism that was raised for supervenience. I conclude that constructivism could escape the problem of ‘brute’ co-variation between levels only by adopting a thoroughgoing irrealist perspective on the institutional and social.

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Pathways to Agricultural Skill Development in the Indian Himalayas

Journal of South Asian Development ◽

10.1177/0973174120943081 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 270-292

Author(s):

Trent Brown

Keyword(s):

Social Environment ◽

Social Factors ◽

Skill Development ◽

Local Power ◽

Power Structures ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

The Social ◽

New Knowledge ◽

Transition To Agriculture ◽

Indian Himalayas

Policymakers and practitioners in the field of skill development often carry individualist and narrowly instrumental understandings of the reasons people enrol in their programmes. This article argues that people in the Global South seek to develop skills for a range of reasons, many of which are strongly influenced by their social environment and factors outside of their control. It presents the findings of a study involving surveys and semi-structured interviews with 53 trainees enrolled in agricultural skill development programmes in the state of Himachal Pradesh in the Indian Himalayas. Trainees’ responses were analysed to determine common ‘pathways’ to agricultural skill development programmes. Seven major pathways were identified: supporting one’s family; adopting commercial approaches to agriculture; managing a transition to agriculture after working in other sectors; gaining new knowledge; contributing to society; working from home; and developing a fallback option while seeking other work. These pathways were highly inflected by gender, age and caste. It is suggested that agricultural skill development practitioners will benefit from working with these pathways rather than assuming trainees carry more economistic motivations, but also from being critically aware of how the social factors that impinge on trainees’ pathways are influenced by local power structures.

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The creation and consequences of the social world: an interactional analysis of extraversion

European Journal of Personality ◽

10.1002/per.477 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 17 (5) ◽

pp. 375-395 ◽

Cited By ~ 51

Author(s):

Leslie G. Eaton ◽

David C. Funder

Keyword(s):

Social Environment ◽

Social World ◽

Positive Affectivity ◽

Path Analyses ◽

The Social ◽

Opposite Sex ◽

Interactional Analysis ◽

The Creation ◽

Behavioural Factors ◽

Research Assistants

Seventy‐six previously unacquainted, opposite‐sex pairs of undergraduate participants engaged in a 5 min videotaped interaction, then provided their mutual impressions. Research assistants coded 64 behaviours from the videotapes; these ratings were combined into behavioural factors. Participants provided self‐descriptions of personality and were described by two acquaintances. Path analyses indicated that targets extraversion was associated with their behavioural involvement, which in turn was associated with partners subsequent ratings of their personality. Targets interpersonal positive affectivity was associated with their partners extraversion. Similar patterns of behavioural associations were found in relation to self‐reported, partner‐reported, and acquaintance‐reported extraversion. These results demonstrate how extraverts may create a positive social environment through their own positivity and by creating a social press for positivity in return. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Creating a Shared Representational Space

10.31234/osf.io/g2z74 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Katalin Oláh ◽

Fruzsina Elekes ◽

Ildikó Király

Keyword(s):

Theory Of Mind ◽

Social Environment ◽

Cognitive Functions ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Social Categorization ◽

Social World ◽

Epistemic States ◽

Categorization Theory ◽

Representational Space ◽

The Social

The mechanisms that make the unique sociality of humans possible have long been in the focus of cognitive science. In this paper, we review recent advancements in the study of three fundamental social cognitive functions (social categorization, theory of mind and social learning) in order to outline a theory that emphasizes the need to consider their interconnectedness. We propose that the ability to represent the social world along categories and the capacity to read others’ minds are used in an integrated way to efficiently assess the epistemic states of fellow humans by creating a shared representational space. We propose that the emergence of this shared representational space is both the result of and a prerequisite to efficiently learn about the physical and social environment.

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