Young Children’s Inductive Inferences Within Animals Are Affected by Whether Animals Are Presented Anthropomorphically in Films

Children are exposed to anthropomorphized animals in a variety of contexts. The literature that analyzes this phenomenon suggests that exposure to anthropomorphic media may strengthen children’s anthropocentric representation of animals. There is an as yet unexplored difference between anthropomorphized and realistic depictions of multiple animal species presented simultaneously in films. The anthropomorphized animals all behave like humans, so they are more behaviorally similar to one another than animals depicted realistically. We asked whether witnessing multiple species depicted anthropomorphically or realistically influences the way 5-year-old children perceive internal commonalities among animals. One group of children (n = 37) watched a cartoon presenting multiple species of anthropomorphized animals, the other group (n = 38) watched a nature documentary that also presented multiple species. Both groups extended a novel internal feature from an animal to a variety of items including diverse animal species. Children watching a cartoon made significantly stronger projections to non-human animals than children watching the documentary. Children’s projections to humans and inanimate objects did not differ between the groups and were uniformly low. One of the possible explanations of the results is in terms of children’s essentialist expectation that behavior is caused by internal properties.

Use of Ground Penetrating Radar in the Evaluation of Wood Structures: A Review

This paper is a review of published studies involving the use of ground penetrating radar (GPR) on wood structures. It also contains background information to help the reader understand how GPR functions. The use of GPR on wood structures began to grow in popularity at the turn of the millennium. GPR has many characteristics that make it attractive as an inspection tool for wood: it is faster than many acoustic and stress wave techniques; it does not require the use of a couplant; while it can also detect the presence of moisture. Moisture detection is of prime concern, and several researchers have labored to measure internal moisture using GPR. While there have been several laboratory studies involving the use of GPR on wood, its use as an inspection tool on large wood structures has been limited. This review identified knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to improve the efficacy of GPR as a reliable inspection tool of wood structure. Chief among these gaps, is the ability to distinguish the type of internal feature from the GPR output and the ability to identify internal decay.

Memory-driven capture occurs for individual features of an object

Items held in working memory (WM) capture attention (memory-driven capture). People can selectively prioritize specific object features in WM. Here, we examined whether feature-specific prioritization within WM modulates memory-driven capture. In Experiment 1, after remembering the color and orientation of a triangle, participants were instructed, via retro-cue, whether the color, the orientation, or both features were relevant. To measure capture, we asked participants to execute a subsequent search task, and we compared performance in displays that did and did not contain the memory-matching feature. Color attracted attention only when it was relevant. No capture by orientation was found. In Experiment 2, we presented the retro-cue at one of the four locations of the search display to direct attention to specific objects. We found capture by color and this capture was larger when it was indicated as relevant. Crucially, orientation also attracted attention, but only when it was relevant. These findings provide evidence for reciprocal interaction between internal prioritization and external attention on the features level. Specifically, internal feature-specific prioritization modulates memory-driven capture but this capture also depends on the salience of the features.

External (Versus Internal) Facial Features Contribute Most to Repetition Priming in Facial Recognition: ERP Evidence

Previous event-related potential (ERP) research demonstrated four successive ERP components in the repetition priming of human face recognition: P100, N170, N250r, and N400. While these components correspond, respectively, to the four stages proposed by the interactive activation and competition (IAC) model, there has been no emphasis in past research on how internal and external facial features affect repetition priming and the sensitivity of these ERP components to item interval. This study was designed to address these issues. We used faces of celebrities as targets, including completely familiar faces, familiar internal feature faces, and familiar external feature faces. We displayed a target face either immediately following its prime (immediate repetition) or after a delay with interference from a presentation of two other faces (delayed repetition). ERP differences at P100 and N170 were nearly statistically non-significant; familiar faces and familiar external feature faces were associated with reliable ERP signals of N250r and N400 in the immediate repetition condition. For delayed repetition, however, N250r and N400 signals were only preserved for the familiar external feature faces. The differences of these ERP components suggest that, compared with internal facial features, external features of a previously presented face contribute more to brain-based facial repetition priming, particularly during the last two stages of the IAC model.

Leibniz’s Early Theodicy and its Unwelcome Implications

To explain why God is not the author of sin, despite grounding all features of the world, the early Leibniz marginalized the divine will and defined existence as harmony. These moves support each other. It is easier to nearly eliminate the divine will from creation if existence itself is something wholly intelligible, and easier to identify existence with an internal feature of the possibles if the divine will is not responsible for creation. Both moves, however, commit Leibniz to a necessitarianism that is stronger than what prominent interpreters such as Robert Sleigh and Mogens Lærke have found in the early Leibniz, and stronger than the necessitarianism that threatens his later philosophy. I defend this reading of Leibniz and propose that some features of Leibniz’s later metaphysics, including his “striving possibles” doctrine, are an artifact of the effort to rescue the early theodicy from its unwelcome implications.

An automatic approach to constrained quadrilateral mesh generation

Purpose Arbitrary constraints might be included into the problem domain in many engineering applications, which represent specific features such as multi-domain interfaces, cracks with small yield stresses, stiffeners attached on the plate for reinforcement and so on. To imprint these constraints into the final mesh, additional techniques need to be developed to treat these constraints properly. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes an automatic approach to generate quadrilateral meshes for the geometric models with complex feature constraints. Firstly, the region is decomposed into sub-regions by the constraints, and then the quadrilateral mesh is generated in each sub-region that satisfies the constraints. A method that deals with constraint lines and points is presented. A distribution function is proposed to represent the distribution of mesh size over the region by using the Laplace equation. The density lines and points can be specified inside the region and reasonable mesh size distribution can be obtained by solving the Laplace equation. Findings An automatic method to define sub-regions is presented, and the user interaction can be avoided. An algorithm for constructing loops from constraint lines is proposed, which can deal with the randomly distributed constraint lines in a general way. A method is developed to deal with constraint points and quality elements can be generated around constraint points. A function defining the distribution of mesh size is put forward. The examples of constrained quadrilateral mesh generation in actual engineering analysis are presented to show the performance of the approach. Originality/value An automatic approach to constrained quadrilateral mesh generation is presented in this paper. It can generate required quality meshes for special applications with complex internal feature constraints.