TheoryDigital technologies have become an integral part of everyday life that children are exposed to. Therefore, it is important for children to acquire an understanding of these technologies early on by teaching them computational thinking as a part of STEM. However, primary school teachers are often reluctant to teach CT. Expectancy-value theory suggests that motivational components play an important role in teaching and learning. Thus, one hindrance to teachers’ willingness to teach CT might be their low expectancies of success and (...) high emotional costs, e.g., anxiety towards CT. Thus, introducing preservice teachers to CT during their university years might be a promising way to support their expectancies and values, while simultaneously alleviating their emotional costs. Prior CT competences might contribute to these outcomes.AimsWe investigated whether a specifically designed seminar on CT affected preservice teachers’ expectancies and values towards programming.Method: A total of 311 German primary school and special education preservice teachers took part in the study. The primary school preservice teachers received a seminar on CT and programming with low-threshold programming tasks, while the special education teachers served as a baseline group. The seminar was specifically designed to enhance expectancies and values and decrease emotional costs, following implications of research on expectancy-value theory.ResultsThe preservice teachers who visited the seminar gained higher expectancies and values towards CT and programming compared to the baseline group. Moreover, their emotional costs decreased. CT was positively related to change in expectancies and values and negatively related to emotional costs.DiscussionInterventions with low-threshold programming tasks can support primary school preservice teachers in finding trust in their abilities and values towards CT. Moreover, their anxiety towards CT and programming can be alleviated. Thus, first steps in preparing preservice teachers to teach CT in their future classrooms can be taken in university. (shrink)

What factors drove the transformation of the cyanobacterial progenitor of plastids (e.g. chloroplasts) from endosymbiont to bona fide organelle? This question lies at the heart of organelle genesis because, whereas intracellular endosymbionts are widespread in both unicellular and multicellular eukaryotes (e.g. rhizobial bacteria, Chlorella cells in ciliates, Buchnera in aphids), only two canonical eukaryotic organelles of endosymbiotic origin are recognized, the plastids of algae and plants and the mitochondrion. Emerging data on (1) the discovery of non‐canonical plastid protein targeting, (2) (...) the recent origin of a cyanobacterial‐derived organelle in the filose amoeba Paulinella chromatophora, and (3) the extraordinarily reduced genomes of psyllid bacterial endosymbionts begin to blur the distinction between endosymbiont and organelle. Here we discuss the use of these terms in light of new data in order to highlight the unique aspects of plastids and mitochondria and underscore their central role in eukaryotic evolution. BioEssays 29:1239–1246, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Psychometrically sound instruments that assess temporal dynamics of creative abilities are limited. The Ambulatory Battery of Creativity is designed to assess creative ideation performance multiple times in everyday life and was proven to capture the intra-individual dynamic of creative abilities reliably and validly. The present ambulatory study aimed to replicate and extend the psychometric evidence of the novel ABC. Sixty-nine participants worked on the ABC during a 5-day ambulatory assessment protocol. Each day, participants completed six randomly presented items of the (...) verbal and the figural ABC. Matching previous psychometric analyses, the results indicated good between-person and good within-person reliability. Furthermore, evidence for between-person and within-person validity of the ABC was obtained. Performance in the verbal and the figural ABC were interrelated and correlated with an independent measure of creative potential. The verbal ABC was further associated with openness, self-reported creative behavior, creative activities, and creative achievements, thus providing additional evidence of construct validity, especially for the verbal ABC. Finally, the verbal and the figural ABC yielded convincing within-person validity: Longer response times and higher subjective originality ratings were associated with more original ideas. This replication and extension of the ABC’s psychometric properties indicates that it enables a reliable and valid assessment of moment-to-moment fluctuations of creative ideation abilities in everyday life, which may facilitate the investigation of exciting new research questions related to dynamic aspects of creative ability. (shrink)

Modern zoos strive to educate visitors about zoo animals and their wild counterparts’ conservation needs while fostering appreciation for wildlife in general. This research review examines how zoos influence those who visit them. Much of the research to-date examines zoo visitors’ behaviors and perceptions in relation to specific exhibits, animals and/or programs. In general, visitors have more positive perceptions and behaviors about zoos, their animals and conservation initiatives the more they interact with animals, naturalistic exhibits, and zoo programming/staff. Furthermore, zoo (...) visitors are receptive to conservation messaging and initiatives at zoos, and are more likely to participate in on-site conservation opportunities as opposed to after their visits. The research also suggests that repeat visitors are even more inclined to seek out conservation efforts compared to those visiting zoos for the first time. While current research suggests that repeat-visitors are more likely to engage in conservation efforts, little is known about causal factors related to such findings, and almost no research exists to-date comparing the conservation efforts of visitors vs. non-visitors. This latter comparison will likely play a greater role in future zoo visitor research, since it poses one of the most important metrics for evaluating the specific effects visiting a zoo can have on people engaging in conservation efforts in general. (shrink)

People often discriminate based on negative or positive stereotypes about others. Important examples of this are highlighted by the theory of ambivalent sexism. This theory distinguishes sexist stereotypes that are negative (hostile sexism) from those that are positive (benevolent sexism). While both forms of sexism are considered wrong towards women, hostile sexism seems intuitively worse than benevolent sexism. In this article, we ask whether the difference between discriminating based on positive vs. negative stereotypes in itself makes a morally relevant difference. (...) We suggest that it does not. By examining a number of prominent accounts of what makes discrimination wrong, we defend the Moral Irrelevance View according to which stereotype valence is irrelevant to the moral evaluation of discrimination, all else equal. (shrink)

As business and society is an inherently multi-disciplinary scholarly area, the book will draw from work in areas outside of business and management, such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, religious studies, economics and other related fields, as well as the natural sciences, education, and other professional areas of study.

This article investigates the hitherto under-examined relations between affirmative action, paternalism and respect. We provide three main arguments. First, we argue that affirmative action initiatives are typically paternalistic and thus disrespectful towards those intended beneficiaries who oppose the initiatives in question. Second, we argue that not introducing affirmative action can also be disrespectful towards these potential beneficiaries because such inaction involves a failure to adequately recognize their moral worth. Third, we argue that the paternalistic disrespect involved in affirmative action is (...) alleviated when the potential beneficiaries’ preferences against such initiatives are adaptive. We conclude that although there is a relevant sense in which paternalistic affirmative action is disrespectful, it may well be more disrespectful not to pursue such policies. (shrink)

This article engages with socialist republicanism, which is preoccupied with extending freedom as non-domination, central to the neo-republican revival, from the political sphere of formal democracy to the economic sphere of capitalist production. Firstly, we discuss the transition from neo-republicanism to socialist republicanism. Secondly, we reconstruct the socialist republicanism of Antonio Gramsci, who was involved in the council movements in Turin in 1919–20. We argue that Gramsci applies the republican vocabulary of servitude to describe the capitalist workplace and analyse the (...) workers’ councils as republican forms, allowing for popular self-determination in the economic sphere. Consequently, we contribute to the ongoing exploration of the historical, political, and conceptual affinities between republicanism and socialism and inscribe Gramsci as a key thinker in this endeavour. (shrink)

In this chapter I propose to understand the current paradigm shift in biology as the origination of a biology of subjects. A description of living beings as experiencing selves has the potential to transform the current mechanistic approach of biology into an embodied-hermeneutic one, culminating in a poetics of nature. We are at the right moment for that: The findings of complex systems research, autopoiesis theory, and evolutionary developmental biology are converging into a picture where the living can not longer (...) be described in terms of causal mechanisms (as is, e. g., the Watson-Crick “central dogma”). Instead, organisms bring forth themselves physically and thereby generate a hermeneutic standpoint, interpreting external and internal stimuli interfering with their auto-creation according to embodied values. This can be observed empirically during embryonic develoment, where genetic instructions do not act as orders, but rather as perturbations being interpreted by an auto-maintaining developmental centre. The notion of organic subjectivity opens the living realm to a hermeneutic perspective. Since any encounter has a meaning and is interpreted accordingly, it creates a perspective of innerness or self. This self experiences all external and internal stimuli as values. The innerness is coextensive with the material dimensions of biochemical processes as their other, or symbolic, side. By this process the subjective perspective of organisms is open to other’s experience. Meaning and value become visible, as they are generated in material, embodied form. Instead of being separate from nature as pure “mind” or “language”, man shares with any other being the same “conditio vitae” of experienced meaning and expressive feeling. (shrink)

This paper describes the semiotic approach to organism in two proto-biosemiotic thinkers, Susanne K. Langer and Hans Jonas. Both authors develop ideas that have become central terms of biosemiotics: the organism as subject, the realisation of the living as a closed circular self, the value concept, and, in the case of Langer, the concept of symbol. Langer tries to develop a theory of cultural symbolism based on a theory of organism as a self-realising entity creating meaning and value. This paper (...) deals mainly with what both authors independently call “feeling”. Both authors describe “feeling” as a value-based perspective, established as a result of the active self interest manifested by an organic system. The findings of Jonas and Langer show the generation of a subject pole, or biosemiotic agent, under a more precise accent, as e.g. Uexküll does. Their ideas can also be affiliated to the interpretation of autopoiesis given by the late Francisco Varela (embodied cognition or “enactivism”). A synthesis of these positions might lead to insights how symbolic expression arises from biological conditions of living. (shrink)

Nautilus Award Gold Medal Winner, Ecology & Environment In Matter and Desire, internationally renowned biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber rewrites ecology as a tender practice of forging relationships, of yearning for connections, and of expressing these desires through our bodies. Being alive is an erotic process--constantly transforming the self through contact with others, desiring ever more life. In clever and surprising ways, Weber recognizes that love--the impulse to establish connections, to intermingle, to weave our existence poetically together (...) with that of other beings--is a foundational principle of reality. The fact that we disregard this principle lies at the core of a global crisis of meaning that plays out in the avalanche of species loss and in our belief that the world is a dead mechanism controlled through economic efficiency. Although rooted in scientific observation, Matter and Desire becomes a tender philosophy for the Anthropocene, a "poetic materialism," that closes the gap between mind and matter. Ultimately, Weber discovers, in order to save life on Earth--and our own meaningful existence as human beings--we must learn to love. (shrink)

This paper proposes a basic revision of the understanding of teleology in biological sciences. Since Kant, it has become customary to view purposiveness in organisms as a bias added by the observer; the recent notion of teleonomy expresses well this as-if character of natural purposes. In recent developments in science, however, notions such as self-organization (or complex systems) and the autopoiesis viewpoint, have displaced emergence and circular self-production as central features of life. Contrary to an often superficial reading, Kant gives (...) a multi-faceted account of the living, and anticipates this modern reading of the organism, even introducing the term self-organization for the first time. Our re-reading of Kant in this light is strengthened by a group of philosophers of biology, with Hans Jonas as the central figure, who put back on center stage an organism-centered view of the living, an autonomous center of concern capable of providing an interior perspective. Thus, what is present in nuce in Kant, finds a convergent development from this current of philosophy of biology and the scientific ideas around autopoeisis, two independent but parallel developments culminating in the 1970s. Instead of viewing meaning or value as artifacts or illusions, both agree on a new understanding of a form of immanent teleology as truly biological features, inevitably intertwined with the self-establishment of an identity which is the living process. (shrink)

Andreas Follesdal,Victor Muñiz Fraticelli | : A Principle of Subsidiarity regulates the allocation and/or use of authority within a political order where authority is dispersed between a centre and various sub-units. Section 1 sketches the role of such principle of subsidiarity in the EU, and some of its significance in Canada. Section 2 presents some conceptions of subsidiarity that indicate the range of alternatives. Section 3 considers some areas where such conceptions might add value to constitutional and political deliberations (...) in Canada. Section 4 concludes with some reminders of crucial contested issues not fully resolved by appeals to subsidiarity alone, exemplified by the protection of human rights. | : Un principe de subsidiarité réglemente la répartition et/ou l’usage de l’autorité au sein d’un ordre politique où l’autorité est dispersée entre un centre et des sous-unités variées. La section 1 de cet article montre le rôle d’un tel principe de subsidiarité dans l’Union européenne, et certaines de ses implications au Canada. La section 2 présente des conceptions de la subsidiarité qui indiquent un éventail d’alternatives. La section 3 considère certains domaines où de telles conceptions pourraient ajouter de la valeur aux délibérations constitutionnelles et politiques au Canada. La section 4 conclut en rappelant certains problèmes cruciaux contestés, non entièrement résolus par les seuls appels à la subsidiarité, exemplifiés par la protection des droits humains. (shrink)

This paper describes the semiotic approach to organism in two proto-biosemiotic thinkers, Susanne K. Langer and Hans Jonas. Both authors develop ideas that have become central terms of biosemiotics: the organism as subject, the realisation of the living as a closed circular self, the value concept, and, in the case of Langer, the concept of symbol. Langer tries to develop a theory of cultural symbolism based on a theory of organism as a self-realising entity creating meaning and value. This paper (...) deals mainly with what both authors independently call “feeling”. Both authors describe “feeling” as a value-based perspective, established as a result of the active self interest manifested by an organic system. The findings of Jonas and Langer show the generation of a subject pole, or biosemiotic agent, under a more precise accent, as e.g. Uexküll does. Their ideas can also be affiliated to the interpretation of autopoiesis given by the late Francisco Varela (embodied cognition or “enactivism”). A synthesis of these positions might lead to insights how symbolic expression arises from biological conditions of living. (shrink)

In their most informative text, Zuk et al. (2023) describe the perspectives researchers take on DBS and aDBS when discussing changes in patients’ personality, mood, or behavior. To this end, Zuk et...

Sein heißt Teilen. Teilen heißt Sein, auf allen Ebenen, vom Atom bis zu unserer Erfahrung von Glück. Lebendigsein folgt der Sehnsucht, ganz Individuum zu werden - und diese erfüllt sich nur in Austausch und Verwandlung. Erst aus Teilhabe entsteht Stimmigkeit, das Gefühl, ein eigenes Selbst, Zentrum der eigenen Erfahrung zu sein. Unser Stoffwechsel, gelingende Beziehungen, Sinnerfahrungen, aber auch der Austausch von Gütern und Leistungen können nur gedeihen, wenn wir sie als gemeinsame Teilhabe an einer schöpferischen Wirklichkeit erschaffen. Diese ist Stoff, (...) und sie ist Fantasie. Atmen heißt Teilen, Körpersein ist Teilen und Lieben bedeutet Teilen. Sein durch Teilen ist die Seele der lebendigen Wirklichkeit. In dieser durchdringen sich Innen und Außen. Sie ist ein leidenschaftlicher Beziehungsprozess, in dem das Begehren nach Identität erst im Leuchten des Anderen eingelöst wird. (shrink)

Sein heißt Teilen. Teilen heißt Sein, auf allen Ebenen, vom Atom bis zu unserer Erfahrung von Glück. Lebendigsein folgt der Sehnsucht, ganz Individuum zu werden - und diese erfüllt sich nur in Austausch und Verwandlung. Erst aus Teilhabe entsteht Stimmigkeit, das Gefühl, ein eigenes Selbst, Zentrum der eigenen Erfahrung zu sein. Unser Stoffwechsel, gelingende Beziehungen, Sinnerfahrungen, aber auch der Austausch von Gütern und Leistungen können nur gedeihen, wenn wir sie als gemeinsame Teilhabe an einer schöpferischen Wirklichkeit erschaffen. Diese ist Stoff, (...) und sie ist Fantasie. Atmen heißt Teilen, Körpersein ist Teilen und Lieben bedeutet Teilen. Sein durch Teilen ist die Seele der lebendigen Wirklichkeit. In dieser durchdringen sich Innen und Außen. Sie ist ein leidenschaftlicher Beziehungsprozess, in dem das Begehren nach Identität erst im Leuchten des Anderen eingelöst wird. (shrink)

This paper describes the semiotic approach to organism in two proto-biosemiotic thinkers, Susanne K. Langer and Hans Jonas. Both authors develop ideas that have become central terms of biosemiotics: the organism as subject, the realisation of the living as a closed circular self, the value concept, and, in the case of Langer, the concept of symbol. Langer tries to develop a theory of cultural symbolism based on a theory of organism as a self-realising entity creating meaning and value. This paper (...) deals mainly with what both authors independently call “feeling”. Both authors describe “feeling” as a value-based perspective, established as a result of the active self interest manifested by an organic system. The findings of Jonas and Langer show the generation of a subject pole, or biosemiotic agent, under a more precise accent, as e.g. Uexküll does. Their ideas can also be affiliated to the interpretation of autopoiesis given by the late Francisco Varela (embodied cognition or “enactivism”). A synthesis of these positions might lead to insights how symbolic expression arises from biological conditions of living. (shrink)

Relying heavily on Thomas Dunfee's work, this article conducts an in-depth analysis of the relationship between law and business ethics in the context of corporate information security. It debunks the two dominant arguments against corporate investment in information security and explains why socially responsible corporate conduct necessitates strong information security practices. This article argues that companies have ethical obligations to improve information security arising out of a duty to avoid knowingly causing harm to others and, potentially, a duty to exercise (...) unique capabilities for the greater social good and to buttress stable functioning of social institutions. (shrink)

Francisco Varela highlighted many links between his philosophy of cognition and Buddhism. This paper focuses on those connections which Varela did not make explicit. Varela was a disciple of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, a renowned master of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. This school emphasizes the direct experience of the 'nature of the mind' — hence, reality. Only by taking into account how this experience formed Varela's thinking do we understand the full scope of his idea of life. For Varela, (...) living beings act from the perspective of a self, although this self does not exist as a place or organ in the organism. In his training with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Varela realized that this 'selfless' self in the centre of an organism is the activity of giving life. In it, matter and inwardness, the subjective perspective and the perspective of 'being everything', are not separate. An organism is the gift of life coming from this centre, which is pure original consciousness — the 'nature of the mind'. (shrink)

In this paper I pursue the influences of Jakob von Uexküll’s biosemiotics on the anthropology of Ernst Cassirer. I propose that Cassirer in his Philosophy of the Symbolic Forms has written a cultural semiotics which in certain core ideas is grounded on biosemiotic presuppositions, some explicit (as the “emotive basic ground” of experience), some more implicit. I try to trace the connecting lines to a biosemiotic approach with the goal of formulating a comprehensive semiotic anthropology which understands man as embodied (...) being and culture as a phenomenon of general semioses. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the literature on conceptual change by engaging in direct theoretical and empirical comparison of contrasting views. We take up the question of whether naïve physical ideas are coherent or fragmented, building specifically on recent work supporting claims of coherence with respect to the concept of force by Ioannides and Vosniadou [Ioannides, C., & Vosniadou, C. (2002). The changing meanings of force. Cognitive Science Quarterly 2, 5–61]. We first engage in a theoretical inquiry on the (...) nature of coherence and fragmentation, concluding that these terms are not well‐defined, and proposing a set of issues that may be better specified. The issues have to do with contextuality, which concerns the range of contexts in which a concept (meaning, model, theory) applies, and relational structure, which is how elements of a concept (meaning, model, or theory) relate to one another. We further propose an enhanced theoretical and empirical accountability for what and how much one needs to say in order to have specified a concept. Vague specification of the meaning of a concept can lead to many kinds of difficulties.Empirically, we conducted two studies. A study patterned closely on Ioannides and Vosniadou's work (which we call a quasi‐replication) failed to confirm their operationalizations of “coherent.” An extension study, based on a more encompassing specification of the concept of force, showed three kinds of results: (1) Subjects attend to more features than mentioned by Ioannides and Vosniadou, and they changed answers systematically based on these features; (2)We found substantial differences in the way subjects thought about the new contexts we asked about, which undermined claims for homogeneity within even the category of subjects (having one particular meaning associated with “force”) that best survived our quasi‐replication; (3) We found much reasoning of subjects about forces that cannot be accounted for by the meanings specified by Ioannides and Vosniadou. All in all, we argue that, with a greater attention to contextuality and with an appropriately broad specification of the meaning of a concept like force, Ioannides and Vosniadou's claims to have demonstrated coherence seem strongly undermined. Students' ideas are not random and chaotic; but neither are they simply described and strongly systematic. (shrink)

In contemporary scholarship on Chinese ideological debates, both pro-system Chinese intellectuals and Western-based academics present China’s future as a binary choice between a “China Model” of authoritarian statism and a “Western” vision of democratic liberalism. This article deconstructs this dichotomy by proposing a new heuristic for conceptualizing ideological cleavage. Informed by interviews with twenty-eight leading Chinese intellectuals, the case is made for a two-dimensional spectrum allowing for ideological co-variation, on one axis, between two contending socioeconomic roads of national revival, capitalism (...) and socialism, and on the other axis between paternalism and fraternalism as conflicting ideals for the political system. This model not only resonates with Chinese intellectual history, but also allows us to uncover two crucial ideological tendencies that disappear with the China Model/western Path dichotomy: (i) the emerging hybrid of Confucian politics and free market economics, and (ii) the tabooed fraternalist-socialist legacy of the 1989 movement. (shrink)

This paper attempts to put forward an aesthetic theory of nature based on a biosemiotic description of the living, which in turn is derived from an autopoietic theory of organism (p. Varela). An autopoietic system's reaction to material constraints is the unfolding of a dimension of meaning. In the outward Gestalt of autopoietic systems, meaning appears as fonn, and as such it reveals itself in a sensually graspable manner. The mode of being of organisms has an irreducible aesthetic side in (...) which this mode of being becomes visible. Nature thus displays a kind of transparency of its own functioning: in a nondiscursive way organisms show traces of their conditio vitae through their material self-presentation. Living beings hence always show a basic level of expressiveness as a necessary component of their organic mode of being. This is called the ecstatic dimension of nature (G. Böhme, R. Corrington). Autopoiesis in its full consequence then amounts to a view reminding of Paracelsus' idea of the signatura rerum (c. Glacken, H. Böhme): nature is transparent, not because it is organized digitally as a linguistic text or code, but rather because it displays analogically the kind of intentionality engendered by autopoiesis. Nature as a whole, as «living fonn" (S. Langer), is a symbol for organic intentionality. The most fundamental meaning of nature protection thus is to guarantee the «real presence" of our soul. (shrink)

In this paper I pursue the influences of Jakob von Uexküll’s biosemiotics on the anthropology of Ernst Cassirer. I propose that Cassirer in his Philosophy of the Symbolic Forms has written a cultural semiotics which in certain core ideas is grounded on biosemiotic presuppositions, some explicit (as the “emotive basic ground” of experience), some more implicit. I try to trace the connecting lines to a biosemiotic approach with the goal of formulating a comprehensive semiotic anthropology which understands man as embodied (...) being and culture as a phenomenon of general semioses. (shrink)

In this paper I pursue the influences of Jakob von Uexküll’s biosemiotics on the anthropology of Ernst Cassirer. I propose that Cassirer in his Philosophy of the Symbolic Forms has written a cultural semiotics which in certain core ideas is grounded on biosemiotic presuppositions, some explicit (as the “emotive basic ground” of experience), some more implicit. I try to trace the connecting lines to a biosemiotic approach with the goal of formulating a comprehensive semiotic anthropology which understands man as embodied (...) being and culture as a phenomenon of general semioses. (shrink)

As part of his program to unify linear algebra and geometry using the language of Clifford algebra, David Hestenes has constructed a (well-known) isomorphism between the conformal group and the orthogonal group of a space two dimensions higher, thus obtaining homogeneous coordinates for conformal geometry.(1) In this paper we show that this construction is the Clifford algebra analogue of a hyperbolic model of Euclidean geometry that has actually been known since Bolyai, Lobachevsky, and Gauss, and we explore its wider invariant (...) theoretic implications. In particular, we show that the Euclidean distance function has a very simple representation in this model, as demonstrated by J. J. Seidel.(18). (shrink)

Anecdotal evidence has long lamented the status of social studies in elementary classrooms as observed by preservice teachers. As standardized testing has risen for mathematics and language arts, social studies has been pushed aside. In the aftermath of accountability legislation such as No Child Left Behind, research indicates that social studies is less visible in elementary classrooms due to an instructional focus on tested content areas (e.g. math, language arts, reading). In this study, approximately 90 elementary preservice teachers enrolled in (...) a social studies methods course responded to a survey and indicated the frequency and quality of lessons they observed over the course of a single semester. Findings report that preservice elementary teachers witnessed few, if any, lessons in social studies in the elementary classroom. Implications for teacher education are discussed. (shrink)

Animals depleting one patch of resources must decide when to leave and switch to a fresh patch. Foraging theory has predicted various decision mechanisms; which is best depends on environmental variation in patch quality. Previously we tested whether these mechanisms underlie human decision making when foraging for external resources; here we test whether humans behave similarly in a cognitive task seeking internally generated solutions. Subjects searched for meaningful words made from random letter sequences, and as their success rate declined, they (...) could opt to switch to a fresh sequence. As in the external foraging context, time since the previous success and the interval preceding it had a major influence on when subjects switched. Subjects also used the commonness of sequence letters as a proximal cue to patch quality that influenced when to switch. Contrary to optimality predictions, switching decisions were independent of whether sequences differed little or widely in quality. (shrink)