scholarly journals Simplicity and validity in infant research

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan F. Kominsky ◽  
Kelsey Lucca ◽  
Ashley J Thomas ◽  
Michael C. Frank ◽  
Kiley Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Developmental Research ◽  
Infant Cognition ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Infant Research ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Measurement Validity

Infancy researchers have often drawn rich conclusions about early capacities to understand abstract concepts like "causality" or "prosociality" from infants' responses to highly simplified and artificial stimuli, leading to questions about the validity of studies utilizing these methods. Indeed, do these stimuli effectively illustrate abstract concepts to infant participants? And if they do, why not assess infants’ cognitive capacities using ecologically valid stimuli of the sort that infants encounter in their everyday lives? Here, using examples from infant cognitive and social developmental research, we make explicit the underlying logic of using simplified stimuli in studies with infant populations by discussing the tradeoff infancy researchers are forced to make between measurement validity and ecological validity. Though we agree that concerns about the validity of simplified stimuli that emerge from this trade-off are founded, we argue that results from these studies should not be dismissed purely on ecological grounds. Rather, we present guidelines for productively challenging the validity of infant research in ways that further our understanding of infant cognition.

scholarly journals The Mind In Its Own Place: The Difficulties and Benefits of Thinking for Pleasure

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy D. Wilson ◽  
Erin Corwin Westgate ◽  
Nick Buttrick ◽  
Daniel Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Positive Affect ◽  
Intervention Study ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Is Value

This chapter is concerned with a type of thinking that has received little attention, namely intentional “thinking for pleasure”—the case in which people deliberately focus solely on their thoughts with the goal of generating positive affect. We present a model that describes why it is difficult to enjoy one's thoughts, how it can be done successfully, and when there is value in doing so. We review 36 studies we have conducted on this topic with just over 10,000 participants. We found that thinking for pleasure does not come easily to most people, but can be enjoyable and beneficial under the right conditions. Specifically, we found evidence that thinking for pleasure requires both motivation and the ability to concentrate. For example, several studies show that people enjoy thinking more when it is made easier with the use of “thinking aids.” We present evidence for a trade-off model that holds that people are most likely to enjoy their thoughts if they find those thoughts to be personally meaningful, but that such thinking involves concentration, which lowers enjoyment. Lastly, we review evidence for the benefits of thinking for pleasure, including an intervention study in which participants found thinking for pleasure enjoyable and meaningful in their everyday lives.

scholarly journals Grounding Abstract Spatial Concepts for Language Interaction with Robots

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Paul ◽  
Jacob Arkin ◽  
Nicholas Roy ◽  
Thomas M. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Probabilistic Model ◽  
Robot Manipulator ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Efficiency Gains ◽  
Inference Method ◽  
World Model ◽  
Spatial Concepts ◽  
Trade Off

Our goal is to develop models that allow a robot to understand or ``ground" natural language instructionsin the context of its world model. Contemporary approaches estimate correspondences between an instruction and possible candidate groundings such as objects, regions and goals for a robot's action. However, these approaches are unable to reason about abstract or hierarchical concepts such as rows, columns and groups that are relevant in a manipulation domain. We introduce a probabilistic model that incorporates an expressive space of abstract spatial concepts as well as notions of cardinality and ordinality. Abstract concepts are introduced as explicit hierarchical symbols correlated with concrete groundings. Crucially, the abstract groundings form a Markov boundary over concrete groundings, effectively de-correlating them from the remaining variables in the graph which reduces the complexity of training and inference in the model. Empirical evaluation demonstrates accurate grounding of abstract concepts embedded in complex natural language instructions commanding a robot manipulator. The proposed inference method leads to significant efficiency gains compared to the baseline, with minimal trade-off in accuracy.

The “Eyes” Are Watching You: Social Control in an Introduction to Sociology Classroom

2019 ◽  
pp. 016059761987630
Author(s):  
Jennifer Vanderminden ◽  
Julia F. Waity ◽  
Caroline Robinson
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Content Knowledge ◽  
Learning Activity ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Applied Learning ◽  
Deviant Behaviors ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Everyday Experiences

Students learn more when their minds are engaged, when abstract concepts become constructs they can see and understand in the context of their everyday lives. In this article, we present an activity designed to engage students to apply sociological concepts to their everyday experiences as college students. In this applied learning activity, we use the concept of “eyes” from The Handmaid’s Tale to teach students about deviance, social control, surveillance, and dramaturgical theory in a large (174 student) introduction to sociology class. We assign a portion of the class to be “eyes” and observe their classmates’ deviant behaviors. We measured students’ knowledge of and confidence in the content using pretest and posttest surveys. We found that students engaged in fewer acts of deviance when they knew they were being watched and the activity and lecture increased students’ confidence in the material and content knowledge.

Incidence of verbal comparisons in beginners' books and in metaphor comprehension research: a search for ecological validity

1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Broderick
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
Children’S Books ◽  
Developmental Research ◽  
Rare Form ◽  
Metaphor Comprehension ◽  
Syntactic Form

ABSTRACTExplicit verbal comparisons in 53 popular children's books were syntactically and semantically classified. Comparison types found in these books were contrasted with comparisons used as comprehension stimuli in extant developmental research. Although noun-phrase metaphor has been a popular syntactic form in research, it is a rare form in children's literature. Implications for the design of future stimulus sets are discussed.

scholarly journals Using WhatsApp for focus group discussions: ecological validity, inclusion and deliberation

2021 ◽  
pp. 146879412098607
Author(s):  
Anna Colom
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Western Kenya ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Online Focus Groups ◽  
Group Deliberation ◽  
Asynchronous Interactions

WhatsApp’s ubiquity in many people’s everyday lives points at new possibilities for conducting online and mobile focus groups. Yet, research on the benefits and potential pitfalls of this is negligible. This paper offers new empirical insights from using the method as part of a digital ethnography with young activists in Western Kenya. The presence of WhatsApp in participants’ everyday lives offers a context with high ecological validity. The paper suggests that this opens up new options for designing online focus groups, transcending the traditional categorisation between synchronous and asynchronous interactions and some limitations of both approaches. WhatsApp also offers opportunities for creating more inclusive group discussions. Using discourse analysis of the WhatsApp focus group, the paper also finds that this familiarity and inclusivity affords the potential for group deliberation, which can be particularly valuable in participatory research.

The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti
Keyword(s):  
Irrational Beliefs ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Irrational Belief ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Epistemic Innocence

Ideally, we would have beliefs that satisfy norms of truth and rationality, as well as fostering the acquisition, retention and use of other relevant information. In reality, we have limited cognitive capacities and are subject to motivational biases on an everyday basis, and may also experience impairments in perception, memory, learning, and reasoning in the course of our lives. Such limitations and impairments give rise to distorted memory beliefs, confabulated explanations, elaborated delusional beliefs, motivated delusional beliefs, and optimistically biased beliefs. In the book, Bortolotti argues that some irrational beliefs qualify as epistemically innocent, where the notion of epistemic innocence captures the fact that in some contexts the adoption, maintenance or reporting of the beliefs delivers significant epistemic benefits that could not be easily attained otherwise. Epistemic innocence is a weaker notion than epistemic justification, as it does not imply that the epistemic benefits of the irrational belief outweigh its epistemic costs. However, it clarifies the relationship between the epistemic and psychological effects of irrational beliefs on agency. It is misleading to assume that epistemic rationality and psychological adaptiveness always go hand-in-hand, but also that there is a straight-forward trade off between them. Rather, epistemic irrationality can lead to psychological adaptiveness and psychological adaptiveness in turn can support the attainment of epistemic goals. Recognising the circumstances in which irrational beliefs enhance or restore epistemic performance informs our mutual interactions and enables us to take measures to reduce their irrationality without undermining the conditions for epistemic success.

How is the moral stance related to the intentional stance and group thinking?

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannes Rakoczy
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Group Thinking ◽  
Moral Stance

Abstract The natural history of our moral stance told here in this commentary reveals the close nexus of morality and basic social-cognitive capacities. Big mysteries about morality thus transform into smaller and more manageable ones. Here, I raise questions regarding the conceptual, ontogenetic, and evolutionary relations of the moral stance to the intentional and group stances and to shared intentionality.

A Flow-Preserving Algorithm for the Time-Cost Trade-Off Problem

1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suleyman Tufekci
Keyword(s):  
Time Cost ◽  
Trade Off

Neuropsychology in the Real World

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 233-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Peper ◽  
Simone N. Loeffler
Keyword(s):  
Neuropsychological Assessment ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Traditional Assessment ◽  
Life Data ◽  
Real Life Data ◽  
Assessment And Treatment

Current ambulatory technologies are highly relevant for neuropsychological assessment and treatment as they provide a gateway to real life data. Ambulatory assessment of cognitive complaints, skills and emotional states in natural contexts provides information that has a greater ecological validity than traditional assessment approaches. This issue presents an overview of current technological and methodological innovations, opportunities, problems and limitations of these methods designed for the context-sensitive measurement of cognitive, emotional and behavioral function. The usefulness of selected ambulatory approaches is demonstrated and their relevance for an ecologically valid neuropsychology is highlighted.

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