The Einstellung effect occurs when the first idea that comes to mind, triggered by familiar features of a problem, prevents a better solution being found. It has been shown to affect both people facing novel problems and experts within their field of expertise. We show that it works by influencing mechanisms that determine what information is attended to. Having found one solution, expert chess players reported that they were looking for a better one. But their eye movements showed that they (...) continued to look at features of the problem related to the solution they had already thought of. The mechanism which allows the first schema activated by familiar aspects of a problem to control the subsequent direction of attention may contribute to a wide range of biases both in everyday and expert thought - from confirmation bias in hypothesis testing to the tendency of scientists to ignore results that do not fit their favoured theories. (shrink)

In this study, we apply MOSAIC (model of syntax acquisition in children) to the simulation of the developmental patterning of children's optional infinitive (OI) errors in 4 languages: English, Dutch, German, and Spanish. MOSAIC, which has already simulated this phenomenon in Dutch and English, now implements a learning mechanism that better reflects the theoretical assumptions underlying it, as well as a chunking mechanism that results in frequent phrases being treated as 1 unit. Using 1, identical model that learns from child‐directed (...) speech, we obtain a close quantitative fit to the data from all 4 languages despite there being considerable cross‐linguistic and developmental variation in the OI phenomenon. MOSAIC successfully simulates the difference between Spanish (a pro‐drop language in which OI errors are virtually absent) and obligatory subject languages that do display the OI phenomenon. It also highlights differences in the OI phenomenon across German and Dutch, 2 closely related languages whose grammar is virtually identical with respect to the relation between finiteness and verb placement. Taken together, these results suggest that (a) cross‐linguistic differences in the rates at which children produce OIs are graded, quantitative differences that closely reflect the statistical properties of the input they are exposed to and (b) theories of syntax acquisition need to consider more closely the role of input characteristics as determinants of quantitative differences in the cross‐linguistic patterning of phenomena in language acquisition. (shrink)

Computational models of learning provide an alternative technique for identifying the number and type of chunks used by a subject in a specific task. Results from applying CHREST to chess expertise support the theoretical framework of Cowan and a limit in visual short-term memory capacity of 3–4 looms. An application to learning from diagrams illustrates different identifiable forms of chunk.

The Poetic Structure of the World is a major reconsideration of a crucial turningpoint in Western thought and culture: the heliocentric revolution of Copernicus and Kepler. FernandHallyn treats the work of these two figures not simply in terms of the history of science orastronomy, but as events embedded in a wider field of images, symbols, texts, and practices. Thesenew representations of the universe, he insists, cannot be explained by recourse to explanations of"genius" or "intuition."Instead, Hallyn investigates the problem of how (...) new scientific hypothesesare actually formed and the complex way in which certain facts and not others are selected tosupport a particular theory. He contends that the scientific imagination is not fundamentallydifferent from a mythic or poetic imagination and that the work of Copernicus and Kepler must beexamined on the level of rhetorical structure. Hallyn shows the sun-centered universe to beinseparable from the aesthetic, epistemological, theological, and social imperatives of bothneoplatonism and mannerism in the sixteenth centuryFernand Hallyn is a Professor in the Departmentof French Literature at the University of Ghent. Distributed for Zone Books. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of a social desirability response bias as a personality characteristic (self-deception and impression management) and as an item characteristic (perceived desirability of the behavior) on self-reported ethical conduct. Findings from a sample of college students revealed that self-reported ethical conduct is associated with both personality and item characteristics, with perceived desirability of behavior having the greatest influence on self-reported conduct. Implications for research in business ethics are drawn, and suggestions are offered for reducing the effects (...) of a socially desirable response bias. (shrink)

For many years, the game of chess has provided an invaluable task environment for research on cognition, in particular on the differences between novices and experts and the learning that removes these differences, and upon the structure of human memory and its paramaters. The template theory presented by Gobet and Simon based on the EPAM theory offers precise predictions on cognitive processes during the presentation and recall of chess positions. This article describes the behavior of CHREST, a computer implementation of (...) the template theory, in a memory task when the presentation time is varied from one second to sixty, on the recall of game and random positions, and compares the model to human data. Strong players are better than weak players in both types of positions, especially with long presentation times, but even after brief presentations. CHREST predicts the data, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Strong players' superiority with random positions is explained by the large number of chunks they hold in LTM. Their excellent recall with short presentation times is explained by templates, a special class of chunks. CHREST is compared to other theories of chess skill, which either cannot account for the superiority of Masters in random positions or predict too strong a performance of Masters in such positions. (shrink)

In a famous study of expert problem solving, de Groot (1946/1978) examined how chess players found the best move. He reported that there was little difference in the way that the best players (Grand Masters) and very good players (Candidate Masters) searched the board. Although this result has been regularly cited in studies of expertise, it is frequently misquoted. It is often claimed that de Groot found no difference in the way that experts and novices investigate a problem. Comparison of (...) expert and novice chess players on de Groot's problem shows that there are clear differences in their search patterns. We discuss the troublesome theoretical and practical consequences of incorrectly reporting de Groot's findings. (shrink)

La vie et les oeuvres de J. H. Newman ont suscité de nombreux et importants travaux. L'étude de l'homme lui-même a servi de thème à plusieurs ouvrages ; on a cherché à discerner dans son tempérament la raison de l'originalité de son œuvre ou de l'étendue de son influence ; ailleurs on nous a fait connaitre l'historien, le philosophe, le théologien, mais de tous ces Newman divers, l'éducateur est resté le plus ignoré. Cette constatation fut le point de départ de (...) la présente étude. Or l'éducation, cette activité privilégiée, a si bien été le centre même de la vie de Newman, qu'à elle nous devons non seulement un de ses chefs-d'œuvre les plus achevés, (malheureusement trop peu connu de ceux qui se réclament du Newman du Développement ou de l'Assentiment, voire de celui de l'Apologia), mais presque toutes ses œuvres. Il n'a que bien rarement, peut-être jamais, écrit pour écrire ; il a écrit pour enseigner, et à son âme d'éducateur est dû le caractère particulier de son oeuvre. (shrink)

Gemma Frisius (1508–1555), who worked at the university of Louvain, heard about the Copernican system already around 1530 and afterwards was a careful reader of the Narratio prima and the De Revolutionibus. The article argues that his posthumous preface to the Ephemerides (1556) by his pupil Stadius expresses his ultimate opinion on the system of the world. Moreover, it is also the only text where he tackles the epistemological problems of the question. A careful analysis of this preface shows that (...) at the end of his life, on the ground of observations as well as philosophical demands, he admitted at least the first two movements ascribed to the earth by Copernicus. (shrink)

Bajo un signo común de preocupación por la unidad de las ciencias del hombre, Braudel examina los diversos y contrapuestos sentidos que los términos civilización y cultura tienen en diversos autores y ofrece sus propias soluciones; polemiza amistosamente con el estructuralismo de Lévi-Strauss y la sociología de Gurvitch; explica las tendencias de la nueva historia, ocupada en la problemática de la larga duración y de la vida material; y establece los principios para una fructífera colaboración entre historiadores, antropólogos, sociólogos, demógrafos, (...) geógrafos y economistas en pos de objetivos comunes. (shrink)

This paper tries to characterize the factors determining human relations with its environment and to identify the drives of those behavioral patterns and “praxis”. One scrutinizes the physiological and psychological factors that influence those drives, and tries to determine ways of overriding instinctive drives in favor of rational, sustainable ones. It focuses its attention on the way the different ecosystemic, economic and socio-cultural systems work, and pin-points the critical issues in view of the development of sustainable behavioral patterns. Also the (...) values that must build the new behavioral paradigm, as well as the ways to ensure the evolutionary quantum-leap necessary to ensure this sustainable condition, and the fulfilment, at every level, the different needs of humans and human societies, are analyzed. In conclusion, it stresses the fact that any reliable and long lasting change towards a sustainable behavior must start at the individual and the close social groups levels, and of the development of new factors of self-fulfillment and gratification, able to support and foster that change. The proposed epistemological approach is particularly innovative, precisely because of this emphasis on the individual drives and the way they determine the global patterns of environmental use, as well as the way they can evolve into a more rational character. In short, the paper focuses itself in the way man can evolve from its natural animal instincts and drives toward more rational ones, humanizing its behavior and turning, therefore, into an able actor of the process of sustainability building. (shrink)

We standardly evaluate counterfactuals and abilities in temporally asymmetric terms—by keeping the past fixed and holding the future open. Only future events depend counterfactually on what happens now. Past events do not. Conversely, past events are relevant to what abilities one has now in a way that future events are not. Lewis, Sider and others continue to evaluate counterfactuals and abilities in temporally asymmetric terms, even in cases of backwards time travel. I’ll argue that we need more temporally neutral methods. (...) The past shouldn’t always be held fixed, because backwards time travel requires backwards counterfactual dependence. Future events should sometimes be held fixed, because they’re in the causal history of the past, and agents have evidence of them independently of their decisions now. We need temporally neutral methods to maintain connections between causation, counterfactuals and evidence, and if counterfactuals are used to explain the temporal asymmetry of causation. (shrink)

The aim of this text is to present the evolution of the relation between the concept of number and magnitude in ancient Greek mathematics. We will briefly revise the Pythagorean program and its crisis with the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes. Next, we move to the work of Eudoxus and present its advances. He improved the Pythagorean theory of proportions, so that it could also treat incommensurable magnitudes. We will see that, as the time passed by, the existence of incommensurable magnitudes (...) was no longer something strange. Already in the period of Plato and Aristotle, their existence was common place: up to the point of being considered absurd that all magnitudes were commensurable. Aristotle criticized the Pythagorean program and defended that, though belonging to the same category, number and magnitude are of distinct species: number is discrete and magnitude is continuous. We finish by presenting briefly how the concept of number was amplified throughout the centuries until it came also to include the notion of continuity. (shrink)

Ce texte a paru initialement dans ANNALES ESC. Vol. 13, n° 4, oct.-déc. 1958, p. 725-753, puis a été réédité dans Écrits sur l'histoire, Paris, Flammarion, 1969. p. 44-83. Il est également disponible, mais dans une version assez fautive, ici. Il y a crise générale des sciences de l'homme : elles sont toutes accablées sous leurs propres progrès, ne serait-ce qu'en raison de l'accumulation des connaissances nouvelles et de la nécessité d'un travail collectif, dont l'organisation intelligente reste à mettre (...) (...) - Histoire – Nouvel article. (shrink)