Recollecting What We Once Knew: My Life in Psycholinguistics

The mid-twentieth century brought a radical change in how the linguistics community formulated its major goal, moving from a largely taxonomic science to Chomsky's revolution, which conceptualized language as a higher-order cognitive function. This article reviews the paths (not always direct) that brought Lila Gleitman into contact with that revolution, her contributions to it, and the evolution in her thinking about how language is learned by every child, regardless of extreme variation in the input received. To understand how that occurs, we need to discover what must be learned by the child and what is already there to guide that learning—what must be, in Plato's terms, “recollected.” The growing picture shows a learner equipped with information-processing mechanisms that extract evidence about word meanings using various evidential sources. Chief among these are the observational and linguistic-syntactic contexts in which words occur. The former is supported by a mechanism Gleitman and her collaborators call “propose but verify,” and the latter by a mechanism known as “syntactic boot-strapping.” Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 73 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Appropriateness of Parametric Bootstrap System for Appraise Mean Time to Failure of a Problematical System

This is a preview paper describes a study of an Appropriateness of Parametric Bootstrap system for appraise mean time to failure of a problematical system, where system having a different failure density functions. Mechanism for complete reliability and analysis with boot strapping can be done by Monte Carlo simulation technique for the complex network has been studied. The method is used with the bridge network. A bridge network is very useful while observation of faulty complex system and provides better accuracy. The result obtained has been compared with those obtained using and Monte Carlo simulation.

The Effect of Natural Celebrity–Brand Association and Para-Social Interaction in Advertising Endorsement for Sustainable Marketing

Celebrity endorsement has been regarded as an effective strategy for enterprises to implement sustainable marketing strategies. However, frequent use of celebrity ads renders consumers skeptical of the ads’ and celebrity’s profit-making intent, which may adversely affect the sustainable marketing of the brand. This has given rise to “natural celebrity-brand association” that features celebrities using the brand in real-life settings, which is usually presented on social media rather than mass media. Using a boot-strapping approach, the study contrasts the effects of natural and commercial endorsements (i.e., natural vs. advertising, natural vs. product placement) on consumer brand responses. Results showed that natural celebrity–brand association exerts superior effects. Further, the mediating variables, para-social interaction (PSI) and its drivers (celebrity attractiveness, consumers’ perceived homophily with the celebrity), which reflect consumer’s emotional connection with a celebrity, also exert significantly stronger effects in the natural (vs. commercial) endorsement context. This research provides insights for advertisers and marketers in exploring new patterns of brand presentation forms in advertisements and gaining competitive advantage in sustainable marketing.

Children Only 3 Years Can Succeed At Conditional "If, Then" Reasoning, Much Earlier Than Anyone Had Thought Possible

We report results showing success at 3 years on conditional discrimination (CD) -- 12-18 months younger than previously reported. Three-year-olds succeeded when color was a property of the stimulus, rather than a property of the background, as in all past CD testing. Previously, we and others found children succeed on the dimensional change card sort (DCCS) test at 3 years -- 12-24 months earlier than previously reported -- by making color a property of the background, instead of a property of the stimulus, as in standard DCCS testing. Neither the change to CD or DCCS affected the rule structure or reasoning requirements of the task. This double dissociation, with 3-year-olds performing better on CD when color and shape were integrated but better on DCCS when color and shape were separated, indicates that when superficial stimulus properties are modified 3-year-olds can do conditional reasoning and grasp a hierarchical rule structure - but they seem to need perceptual boot-strapping to do that. Children of 3 years evidently have difficulty mentally separating physical dimensions (e.g., color and shape) of the same object and difficulty mentally integrating physical dimensions not part of the same object. These results provide the strongest evidence to date against conceptual accounts of why children of 3 years fail conditional discrimination or card sorting.

PDEparams: Parameter fitting toolbox for partial differential equations in Python

MotivationPartial differential equations (PDEs) is a well-established and powerful tool to simulate multi-cellular biological systems. However, available free tools for validation against data are not established. ThePDEparamsmodule provides flexible functionality in Python for parameter estimation in PDE models.ResultsThePDEparamsmodule provides a flexible interface and readily accommodates different parameter analysis tools in PDE models such as computation of likelihood profiles, and parametric boot-strapping, along with direct visualisation of the results. To our knowledge, it is the first open, freely available tool for parameter fitting of PDE models.Availability and implementationThePDEparamsmodule is distributed under the MIT license. The source code, usage instructions and step-by-step examples are freely available on GitHub atgithub.com/systemsmedicine/[email protected]

Abstract of “Cognitive Innovation: A View from the Bridge”

The paper abstracted here is about creativity. It proceeds from an understanding of the promise of the concept of cognitive innovation as a focus for collaboration between the sciences, arts and humanities. The value of the concept in this context lies in its approach to creativity as a boot-strapping cognitive process in which the energies that shape the poem are necessarily indistinguishable from those that shape the poet.