Uncovering variability in children's concepts and conceptual change

Capturing the structure and development of human conceptual knowledge is a challenging but fundamental task in Cognitive Science. The most prominent approach to uncovering these concepts is Multidimensional scaling (MDS), which has provided insight into the structure of human perception and conceptual knowledge. However, MDS usually requires participants to produce large numbers of similarity judgments, leading to prohibitively long experiments for most developmental research. Furthermore, MDS provides a single psychological space, tailored to a fixed set of stimuli. In contrast, we present a method that learns psychological spaces flexibly and generalizes to novel stimuli. In addition, our approach uses a simple, developmentally appropriate task, which allows for short and engaging developmental studies. We evaluate the feasibility of our approach on simulated data and find that it can uncover the true structure even when the data consists of aggregations of diverse categorizers. We then apply the method to data from the World Color Survey and find that it can discover language-specific color organization. Finally, we use the method in a novel developmental experiment and find age-dependent differences in conceptual spaces for fruit categories. These results suggest that our method is robust and widely applicable in developmental tasks with children as young as four years old.

Structure-Dependent Doppler Broadening Using a Generalized Thermal Scattering Law

The thermal scattering law (TSL), i.e., S(α,β), represents the momentum and energy exchange phase space for a material. The incoherent and coherent components of the TSL correlate an atom’s trajectory with itself and/or with other atoms in the lattice structure. This structural information is especially important for low energies where the wavelength of neutrons is on the order of the lattice interatomic spacing. Both thermal neutron scattering as well as low energy resonance broadening involve processes where incoming neutron responses are lattice dependent. Traditionally, Doppler broadening for absorption resonances approximates these interactions by assuming a Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution for the neutron velocity. For high energies and high temperatures, this approximation is reasonable. However, for low temperatures or low energies, the lattice structure binding effects will influence the velocity distribution. Using the TSL to determine the Doppler broadening directly introduces the material structure into the calculation to most accurately capture the momentum and energy space. Typically, the TSL is derived assuming cubic lattice symmetry. This approximation collapses the directional lattice information, including the polarization vectors and associated energies, into an energy-dependent function called the density of states. The cubic approximation, while valid for highly symmetric and uniformly bonded materials, is insufficient to capture the true structure. In this work, generalized formulation for the exact, lattice-dependent TSL is implemented within the Full Law Analysis Scattering System Hub (FLASSH) using polarization vectors and associated energies as fundamental input. These capabilities are utilized to perform the generalized structure Doppler broadening analysis for UO2.

A modularity analysis helps improving the structure of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature

Background In a recent work I transformed a complex and integrated text like the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature into a network of interconnected parts of text. This new approach allowed understanding that a continuous body of text cannot accurately reflect the true structure of the Code, and provided a scientific methodology to identify a priori parts that could be affected by future revisions. In this next step, I investigate further the structure of the Code, seeking to use the network in order to identify the various conceptual communities grouping the various articles and other text items of the Code. Methods Using the first version of the network of the Code, I perform a comprehensive modularity analysis in two rounds: the first round aims to identify the fewest and largest communities or modules for the entire network, whereas the second round identifies the sub-modules within each larger module. The potential conflicts between the current structure of the Code and the module composition are evaluated with a parcellation analysis. Results The optimal modularity search identified 10 different modules in the entire network of varying size (ranging from 75 to 200 nodes). Each module can be further divided into smaller modules, that all-together allow describing the 65 conceptual groups of text items in the Code. Parcellation analysis revealed that two-thirds of the current chapters of the Code are in excellent or good accordance with the recovered conceptual modules, whereas the current composition of six chapters is in serious conflict with the conceptual structure of the Code. Discussion Judging only the composition and not the order of appearance of the Articles in the Chapters of the Code, I show that in many cases the current structure of the Code is found to correspond quite well to the concepts presented therein. The most important conflict is found on the provisions related to the various groups of names governed by the Code: family-, genus-, and species-group names. Currently, these provisions are spread out in different Articles in different Chapters, along the entire length of the Code. The modularity analysis suggests that re-organizing the Code in chapters that will deal with all aspects related to a given group (e.g., chapters including information on name formation, availability, typification, and validity for a given group), could potentially improve reader experience and, consequently, the applicability of the Code.

Don’t Use a Bifactor Model Unless You Believe the True Structure Is Bifactor

The current article provides a response to concerns raised by Dombrowski, McGill, Canivez, Watkins, & Beaujean (2020) regarding the methodological confounds identified by Decker, Bridges, Luedke, and Eason (2020) for using a bifactor (BF) model and Schmid–Leiman (SL) procedure in previous studies supporting a general factor of intelligence (i.e., “g”). While Dombrowski et al. (2020) raised important theoretical and practical issues, the theoretical justification for using a BF model and SL procedure to identify cognitive dimensions remain unaddressed, as well as significant concerns for using these statistical methods as the basis for informing the use of cognitive tests in clinical applications.

Four-Dimensional Sparse Bayesian Tensor Decomposition for Gene Expression Data

Disease etiology may be better understood through the study of gene expression in four dimensional (4D) experiments that consist of measurements on multiple individuals, genes, tissues and under multiple conditions or through time. We have developed a sparse Bayesian four dimensional tensor decomposition method aimed at uncovering latent components or gene networks that could be linked to genetic variation. We used a Variational Bayes algorithm to fit the model which provides fast and accurate analysis. In this brief note we illustrate the utility of the method using simulated datasets, and show that when 4D data is available our method shows improved performance in estimating the true structure in the dataset, when compared to using a 3D method on a single slice of the 4D dataset. We also compare the results of the 4D method to that of the 3D method on a suitable unfolding of the dataset, demonstrating that similar performance is observed in this case, while the 4D method accurately recovers the additional structure in the data. We provide software that implements the method in R.

Children are more exploratory and learn more than adults in an approach-avoid task

Intuitively, children appear to be more exploratory than adults, and this exploration seems to help children learn, but there have been few clear tests of this idea. We test whether exploration and learning change across development using a task that presents a “learning trap.” In this task, exploitation—maximizing immediate reward—may lead the learner to draw incorrect conclusions, while exploration may lead to better learning but be more costly. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that preschoolers and school-aged children explore more than adults and learn the true structure of the environment better. Study 3 demonstrates that children explore more than adults even though they understand that their choices are risky, and also shows that exploration and learning are correlated. Study 4 provides evidence for a causal link between children’s increased exploration and more accurate learning, and it shows that children use what they have learned to make decisions. Together, these studies support the idea that children may be more exploratory than adults and learn more as result.

A FEW REMARKS ON LEGAL ASPECTS REGARDING THE SO-CALLED “MATERNITY PENSION”

Contrary to the popular belief, the supplementary parental benefit called the “maternity pension” introduced by the Law of 31 January 2019 is not a retirement benefit in the literal sense, financed from the Social Insurance Fund. What is more, it is not a guaranteed benefit for those who raised four or more children, but a discretionary provision benefit financed from the state budget. Unfortunately, at first, a significant part of the society was impressed by the very idea of granting a “benefit” to people who instead of work brought up a large group of children, and did not go into the details of this program, which, as it turned out later, are crucial. This study aims to provide a detailed analysis of the provisions of the Law on supplementary parental benefit, so as to show in detail its true structure. In addition, it will also present the effects of the maternal law and indicate other solutions that could be introduced so that the assumption of honouring the effort put into the education of numerous offspring is fully implemented for all on equal terms.

Positive Aspects of Modern Russian Bureaucracy

Despite the general dissatisfaction with the domestic bureaucracy, bureaucracy is a universal and most common apparatus of government in any developed state. In the paper the author tries to identify and analyze only the positive qualities of the bureaucratic management system in relation to modern conditions, deliberately not affecting the shortcomings of the bureaucratic organization. This approach is usually not used by researchers who seek to focus on the defects of bureaucracy. At the same time, it is necessary to know both the positive and negative sides of the modern bureaucratic apparatus in order to transfer them to the newly formed governing structures.The author reveals the positive aspects of such qualities of the bureaucracy as strict regulation of activities, vertical hierarchy (with its inherent unity of command and centralization), the specification of the labor function of the official and structural units of the apparatus, the competence of officials, as well as the impersonality of relations between them. A rational bureaucracy resembles a well-programmed mechanism aimed at efficiently solving the problems that arise before it. Their implementation in the system of modern domestic bureaucracy is shown following the example of the norms of the current Russian legislation.The author divides the concepts of «bureaucracy» and «bureaucratism», offering to be guided not by populist slogans about the elimination of bureaucracy at all, but by minimizing the defects of the managerial impact of the bureaucratic apparatus. The task of the political leadership of the country is to choose the structure that best meets the goals and objectives of the state, as well as the internal and external factors affecting it. It is important not to dwell on the search for the «only true» structure of the control apparatus, and learn to identify the positive and negative sides of the existing system and adjust them to meet the challenges.