Still Suspicious: The Suspicious-Coincidence Effect Revisited

Imagine hearing someone call a particular dalmatian a “dax.” The meaning of the novel noun dax is ambiguous between the subordinate meaning (dalmatian) and the basic-level meaning (dog). Yet both children and adults successfully learn noun meanings at the intended level of abstraction from similar evidence. Xu and Tenenbaum (2007a) provided an explanation for this apparent puzzle: Learners assume that examples are sampled from the true underlying category (strong sampling), making cases in which there are more observed exemplars more consistent with a subordinate meaning than cases in which there are fewer exemplars (the suspicious-coincidence effect). Authors of more recent work (Spencer, Perone, Smith, & Samuelson, 2011) have questioned the relevance of this finding, however, arguing that the effect occurs only when the examples are presented to the learner simultaneously. Across a series of 12 experiments ( N = 600), we systematically manipulated several experimental parameters that varied across previous studies, and we successfully replicated the findings of both sets of authors. Taken together, our data suggest that the suspicious-coincidence effect in fact is robust to presentation timing of examples but is sensitive to another factor that varied in the Spencer et al. (2011) experiments, namely, trial order. Our work highlights the influence of pragmatics on behavior in experimental tasks.

Download Full-text

Still suspicious: The suspicious coincidence effect revisited

10.31234/osf.io/x6a2u ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Molly Lewis ◽

Michael C. Frank

Keyword(s):

Recent Work ◽

Experimental Parameters ◽

Coincidence Effect ◽

Subordinate Meaning

In previous work, Xu and Tenenbaum (2007a) provide evidence that learners are able to infer the subordinate meaning of a word from only positive examples of the category. Under their proposal, learners assume that examples are sampled from the true underlying category ("strong sampling''), making certain data patterns more consistent with a subordinate meaning than others (the "suspicious coincidence'' effect). More recent work (Spencer, Perone, Smith & Samuelson, 2011) questions the relevance of this finding by arguing that the effect only occurs when the examples are presented to the learner simultaneously. Across a series of 12 studies, we systematically manipulate several experimental parameters that vary between the previous studies, and successfully replicate the findings of both sets of authors. Taken together, our data suggest that the suspicious coincidence effect in fact is robust to presentation timing of examples, but is sensitive to a confound in previous experiments, namely, trial order.

Download Full-text

The blowfish effect: children and adults use atypical exemplars to infer more narrow categories during word learning

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000919000266 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 46 (05) ◽

pp. 938-954

Author(s):

Lauren L. EMBERSON ◽

Nicole LONCAR ◽

Carolyn MAZZEI ◽

Isaac TREVES ◽

Adele E. GOLDBERG

Keyword(s):

Word Learning ◽

Category Learning ◽

Category Member ◽

Coincidence Effect ◽

Independent Work ◽

Basic Level

AbstractLearners preferentially interpret novel nouns at the basic level (‘dog’) rather than at a more narrow level (‘Labrador’). This ‘basic-level bias’ is mitigated by statistics: children and adults are more likely to interpret a novel noun at a more narrow label if they witness ‘a suspicious coincidence’ – the word applied to three exemplars of the same narrow category. Independent work has found that exemplar typicality influences learners’ inferences and category learning. We bring these lines of work together to investigate whether the content (typicality) of a single exemplar affects the level of interpretation of words and whether an atypicality effect interacts with input statistics. Results demonstrate that both four- to five-year-olds and adults tend to assign a narrower interpretation to a word if it is exemplified by an atypical category member. This atypicality effect is roughly as strong as, and independent of, the suspicious coincidence effect, which is replicated.

Download Full-text

Natural Product Scores and Fingerprints Extracted from Artificial Neural Networks.

10.26434/chemrxiv.14347073.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Janosch Menke ◽

Joana Massa ◽

Oliver Koch

Keyword(s):

Neural Networks ◽

Natural Products ◽

Artificial Neural Networks ◽

Virtual Screening ◽

Natural Product ◽

Recent Work ◽

The Novel ◽

Multi Layer Perceptron ◽

Output Layer ◽

Depth Analysis

<div>Due to its desirable properties, natural products are an important ligand class for medicinal chemists. However, due to their structural distinctiveness, traditional cheminformatic approaches, like ligand-based virtual screening, often perform worse for natural products. Based on our recent work, we evaluated the ability of neural networks to generate fingerprints more appropriate for the use with natural products. A manually curated dataset of natural products and synthetic decoys was used to train a multi-layer perceptron network and an autoencoder-like network. An in-depth analysis showed that the extracted natural product specific neural fingerprints outperforms traditional as well as natural product specific fingerprints on three datasets. Further, we explore how the activation from the output layer of a network can work as a novel natural product likeness score. Overall two natural product specific datasets were generated, which are publicly available together with the code to create the fingerprints and the novel natural product likeness score.<br></div>

Download Full-text

New Instruments and the Meaning of Quantum Mechanics

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences ◽

10.1525/hsns.2008.38.3.325 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 38 (3) ◽

pp. 325-352 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Joan Lisa Bromberg

Keyword(s):

Quantum Mechanics ◽

Recent Work ◽

Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics ◽

The Novel ◽

Scientific Instrumentation ◽

One Step ◽

New Instruments

Historians tracing the development of research into the foundations of quantum mechanics have yet to factor in the role of new scientific instrumentation. Yet physicists repeatedly stress its importance when they write about recent work. This paper looks at two experiments done in the 1980s to illuminate Niels Bohr's concept of complementarity. It lays out the novel instruments that were used and examines the motives of the theorists who proposed the experiments and the experimentalists who carried them out. Understanding their attitudes is one step towards exploring the part that "real" experiments played in reconfiguring foundations research.

Download Full-text

The Skeleton Key—A Curiosity

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1984.55.1.48 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 55 (1) ◽

pp. 48-50

Author(s):

Paul H. Wiener

Keyword(s):

Internal Consistency ◽

The Novel ◽

Basic Level

The novel Skeleton Key technique was developed to determine the probable correct answers to questions whose correct answers are unknown, but for which the answers of a large number of people are available. The technique is a bootstraps' method that assumes a basic level of internal consistency of answers to a set of questions. It works according to the principle of psychometric discrimination but in reverse of the usual application. The operation of the technique is explained, and successful trials are reported.

Download Full-text

An Interview with Tony Ardizzone

Writers in Conversation ◽

10.22356/wic.v4i1.5 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Elisabetta Marino

Keyword(s):

Recent Work ◽

Short Fiction ◽

Flannery O'connor ◽

National Endowment ◽

The Novel ◽

Evening News ◽

The North ◽

North Side ◽

The Arts ◽

Foundation Award

Tony Ardizzone was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago and is the author of eight books of fiction. His most recent work includes the novel The Whale Chaser and an interconnected story collection set in Rome, By the Fountain of the Four Rivers. He has also written the novels In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, Heart of the Order, and In the Name of the Father, as well as the story collections Larabi's Ox: Stories of Morocco, Taking It Home: Stories from the Neighborhood, and The Evening News. Ardizzone's writing has been awarded the Chicago Foundation for Literature Award for Fiction, the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Pushcart Prize, the Virginia Prize for Fiction, the Milkweed Editions National Fiction Prize, the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize, the Lawrence Foundation Award, as well as two individual artist fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Download Full-text

Restrictions and Methodologies for Distributed Sensor Network Security using Sensor Node Technology

International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology - Regular Issue ◽

10.35940/ijeat.f1189.0886s219 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (6S2) ◽

pp. 649-651

Keyword(s):

Focal Point ◽

The Novel ◽

Edge Information ◽

Distributed Sensor ◽

High Data ◽

Distributed Sensor Network ◽

Physical Sensors ◽

Sensor Network Security ◽

Basic Level ◽

Wide Assortment

Dissipated sensor outlines (DSNs) impact the amazing filtering of edge information utilizing a wide assortment of physical sensors (for example acoustic, seismic, visual) through a uniquely named remote framework affiliation. Advances in little scale electromechanical frameworks (MEMS) improvement empower instruments to be reprogrammable in the field of battle, self-obligatory and low-basic, remote, multi-impact the board while, simultaneously, requiring on a very basic level unimportant pre-plan. So as to strengthen dependably the molded controller, affiliation and broadcasting fringes, the device frameworks will productively deal with both the decentralized control and the self-ruling direct sensor. Sensor gatherings will be little, lightweight, expert and low-control. Gone in sporadic diagrams over the finished remote and as every now and again as possible undermining conditions, will the sensor center around self-choice mean agreeable, dissipated developments? Sensor structures should be effective and enduring, paying little character to the novel focal point of disappointment and sporadic system. High data verification will be furnished with little regard to the utilization of unattended sensor bunches with reasonably touchy impenetrability to adjustment.

Download Full-text

Evaluation of a spectroscopic tandem method using information theory

Chemical Papers ◽

10.2478/s11696-008-0016-0 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 62 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Silvia Ružičková ◽

Mikuláš Matherny

Keyword(s):

Information Theory ◽

Spectroscopic Data ◽

Spectroscopic Method ◽

Evaluation Process ◽

The Novel ◽

Complex Evaluation ◽

Experimental Parameters ◽

Method Optimization ◽

Novel Method ◽

The Given

AbstractTo obtain vital spectroscopic data, a specific tandem spectroscopic method consisting of excitation in the DC are separated from the evaporation process was applied. Recently developed tandem spectroscopic methods require a complex evaluation process that can be described by metrological characteristics and from them derived parameters. Evaluation of the novel method optimization process is a part of the application of some chosen, specific, and generally accepted statistical methods. For this purpose, it is suitable to determine parameters of the information theory. It is necessary to compare experimental parameters of the information theory with tolerance parameters representing the values which are supposed to be achieved. To evaluate the given parameters, influence of the concentration range used was taken into account.

Download Full-text

“In the Name of Love”

James Baldwin Review ◽

10.7227/jbr.7.8 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 138-158

Author(s):

Matty Hemming

Keyword(s):

Recent Work ◽

Black Feminism ◽

Sexual Politics ◽

Sexual Relationships ◽

The Novel ◽

Gay Male ◽

Queer Of Color Critique ◽

Queer Of Color ◽

Black Queer ◽

The Erotic

This essay explores Black queer feminist readings of the sexual politics of James Baldwin’s Another Country. Recent work at the intersection of queer of color critique and Black feminism allows us to newly appreciate Baldwin’s prescient theorization of the workings of racialized and gendered power within the erotic. Previous interpretations of Another Country have focused on what is perceived as a liberal idealization of white gay male intimacy. I argue that this approach requires a selective reading of the novel that occludes its more complex portrayal of a web of racially fraught, power-stricken, and often violent sexual relationships. When we de-prioritize white gay male eroticism and pursue analyses of a broader range of erotic scenes, a different vision of Baldwin’s sexual imaginary emerges. I argue that far from idealizing, Another Country presents sex within a racist, homophobic, and sexist world to be a messy terrain of pleasure, pain, and political urgency. An unsettling vision, to be sure, but one that, if we as readers are to seek more equitable erotic imaginaries, must be reckoned with.

Download Full-text