Centro Universitário Farias Brito: FB UNI Portal de Periódicos
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Syntax-driven number reading: The identification of digits is dominated by the number’s syntactic structure
No full textReading aloud multi-digit numbers is a surprisingly difficult cognitive operation that involves several visual and verbal processes. The main challenge is the need to handle the number’s syntactic structure, however, the extent to which this syntactic processing guides the number-reading process is still unknown. Here, I asked whether syntax-driven processing exists even in the initial visual stage that identifies each digit, via a mechanism that groups the digits according to language-specific conventions (triplets in most western languages: 23,456). Participants read aloud multi-digit numbers presented with a purely visual manipulation: the digits of each number were presented serially, and the inter-digit stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) was constant except one prolonged SOA – either between the thousand and hundred digits, congruent with the standard division of numbers to triplets, or between the hundred and decade digits (incongruent grouping). Accuracy was higher in the congruent condition than in the incongruent one, indicating that the visual analyzer divides the digit string into triplets in the “standard” manner. Critically, this congruency effect was found not only when the participants read the numbers as syntactically-structured number names (“twelve”), but also when they said each number as a syntax-less series of digit names (“one, two”), i.e., triplet-grouping is not a top-down effect arising from the syntactic properties of the current verbal response. I conclude that the visual analyzer consistently divides the digit strings into “standard” triplets, and that this division guides the digit-identification process
Is Calling Conceptualized Equivalently across Cultures? A Comparative Study across Six Countries
No full textThe concept of work as a calling is deeply rooted in Western culture, but scholarly interest in this topic in other cultures is increasing exponentially. This interest is important for the ongoing development of research on calling, but it is unclear whether calling is conceptualised equivalently across cultures. In this study, we investigate whether an integrated multi-dimensional model of calling is generalizable across three Western (Italy, the United States, and the Netherlands) and three non-Western (India, Türkiye [Turkey], and China) countries (N = 2491). Our results show that the multi-dimensional structure and the relative importance (i.e., loadings) of seven internally- and externally-focused facets of calling in defining the construct are equivalent across cultures and that the overall level of calling is higher in non-Western countries. We also observed small cross-cultural differences in the intensity with which people from different countries approach their calling domain. These results suggest that calling may be a human endeavour that transcends culture, but that culture may influence the intensity with which it is experienced
The global recurrence and variability of kinship terminology structure
No full textThe extent to which kinship terminology varies between linguistic groups is a long-debated but unresolved social and linguistic puzzle. Contemporary research shows that a six-category typology is overly simplistic, but no alternatives have reached broad acceptance. This paper takes a data-driven solution to this problem. Using data from the release of Kinbank, a global database of 1,156 kinship terminology, I quantitatively review the global diversity of kinship terminology to derive a more granular typology of kinship terminology. In a two-part analysis, I show that kinship terminology structure is more diverse than is often assumed across three metrics. Firstly, more than six types are needed to represent the global diversity of kinship terminology. Secondly, typological categories are not equally variable. Some categories may contain identically structured terminology. Others may contain languages that only share a single feature. Finally, different subsets of kin (e.g. cousins vs grandparents) show different levels of variability. In the second part of the analysis, I explore the global distribution of the new typological categories, identifying globally and locally recurring structures. My analysis demonstrates how data can carve this semantic domain at its joints to identify observed clusters of diversity
Pro-Environmental Behavior Increases Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from an Experience Sampling Study and a Randomized Experiment
No full textTwo studies investigated whether engaging in pro-environmental behavior increases a person’s well-being. A 10-day experience sampling study (7,161 total observations; N = 181 adults from 14 countries, primarily the United States) revealed positive within-person and between-person associations, and a randomized, controlled experiment (N = 545 US undergraduates) found that incorporating pro-environmental behavior into individuals’ daily activities increased their experiences of happiness and meaning in life. Indeed, the effect was comparable to incorporating activities selected specifically to elicit such positive states, though these results may be impacted by demand characteristics. The studies also offered some tentative, preliminary evidence about why such an effect might emerge. We found some support for the hypothesis that pro-environmental behavior affects well-being by creating a “warm glow.” But, overall, the findings align more closely with the hypothesis that pro-environmental behavior helps to satisfy individuals’ basic psychological needs
How do college students use digital flashcards during self-regulated learning?
No full textOver the past two decades, digital flashcards—that is, computer programmes, smartphone apps, and online services that mimic, and potentially improve upon, the capabilities of traditional paper flashcards—have grown in variety and popularity. Many digital flashcard platforms allow learners to make or use flashcards from a variety of sources and customise the way in which flashcards are used. Yet relatively little is known about why and how students actually use digital flashcards during self-regulated learning, and whether such uses are supported by research from the science of learning. To address these questions, we conducted a large survey of undergraduate students (n = 901) at a major U.S. university. The survey revealed insights into the popularity, acquisition, and usage of digital flashcards, beliefs about how digital flashcards are to be used during self-regulated learning, and differences in uses of paper versus digital flashcards, all of which have implications for the optimisation of student learning. Overall, our results suggest that college students commonly use digital flashcards in a manner that only partially reflects evidence-based learning principles, and as such, the pedagogical potential of digital flashcards remains to be fully realised
Why are you telling me this? The availability and timing of relevance inferences
No full textPart of successful communication involves recognising the purpose of, or the intentions underlying, what speakers choose to say. Often, such pragmatic inferences are studied with an emphasis on informativity. The present work however moves beyond the types of inferences typically studied in prior work and instead investigates inferences from more naturalistic utterances, specifically those whose triviality may invite addressees to reason about why a speaker would have made such a discourse contribution. We present four studies (total N=777) using offline and online methods to investigate how and when listeners derive relevance inferences from trivial utterances. We manipulate speaker knowledge, speaker style, and linguistic properties of the utterances to show that, even in the absence of explicit emphasis cues, trivial utterances such as “the library walls are blue” are likely to be understood as conveying more than what is stated explicitly (e.g. that the walls used to be a different colour), and that these inferences are more likely to arise when produced by a speaker who is knowledgeable about the situation and who does not typically talk a lot. Our results suggest that comprehenders have pervasive expectations of cooperativity which, when seemingly violated by a speaker’s trivial utterance, prompt reasoning about a speaker’s motivation for speaking to determine how the communicated content is relevant. We then turn to the processing costs of computing triviality-driven inferences and find evidence that there may be a cost to deriving relevance inferences. These findings extend previous work on inferencing, which typically targets specific classes of words that give rise to inferences and demonstrates that broader, systematic inferencing that can arise when addressees reason about speaker goals even in the absence of cues to pragmatic enrichment
Miners' Reward Elasticity and Stability of Competing Proof-of-Work Cryptocurrencies
No full textProof-of-Work cryptocurrencies employ miners to sustain the system through algorithmic reward adjustments. We develop a stochastic model of the multicurrency mining market and identify conditions for stable transaction speeds. Bitcoin's algorithm requires hash supply elasticity < 1 for stability, while ASERT remains stable for any elasticity and can be interpreted as a form of stochastic gradient descent under a certain loss function. Interactions with other currencies can relax Bitcoin's stability requirements. Using a halving event, we estimate miners' hash supply elasticity and conduct counterfactual simulations. Our findings reveal Bitcoin's heavy reliance on low hash supply elasticity and interactions with smaller cryptocurrencies, suggesting an algorithm upgrade is crucial for stability
Global language diversification is linked to socio-ecology and threat status
No full textGlobal linguistic diversity reflects the gradual gain and loss of languages over millennia, yet half of the world’s ~6-7000 languages are threatened with extinction by the end of this century. Attempts to identify factors that promote or reduce linguistic diversity have focused largely on the correlates of current language richness (languages per unit area) and threat status. However, much less work has examined how linguistic diversity is shaped by evolutionary history and the processes of lineage diversification and extinction that underlie it. Here, we use Bayesian phylogenetic inference techniques to generate a supertree of extant human languages (n=6635) that integrates prior knowledge and uncertainty about linguistic diversification around the globe. Our posterior treeset, which represents more than 10 million years of language change, reveals net diversification rates are higher in regions of moderate population density and landscape traversability, for languages spoken over a larger area and further from cities, and for cultures that are reliant on agriculture and maintain political links beyond the local community. By combining our global tree with data on language threat status we also show that evolutionary distinctness (how distantly related a language is to its closest relatives) is positively related to endangerment, and generate a ranking and map of the world’s most evolutionarily distinct, globally endangered (EDGE) languages. Our findings provide insight into the forces shaping linguistic diversity, indicate more of the evolutionary history of languages is at risk than expected under a random threat distribution, reinforce the need to act now to document and protect this diversity, and pave the way for further refinement of the global tree of human languages
User-generated versus pre-made digital flashcards
No full textDigital flashcard users typically must choose between creating their own flashcard content or using freely-available flashcard sets. The latter is more convenient and saves time, but is it more effective for learning? We conducted six experiments, each involving the use of user-generated or pre-made flashcards to learn material drawn from educational text passages, followed by a 48-hr delayed criterial test. Different approaches to generating content and variations in the quality of pre-made content were also examined. Across experiments, user-generated flashcards improved memory relative to pre-made flashcards (an estimated advantage of d = 0.45, 95% C.I. [0.25, 0.66]), and in most cases, enhanced performance on application questions (an estimated advantage of d = 0.29, 95% C.I. [0.12, 0.45]). These results suggest that generating one’s own flashcards enables productive learning processes that enhance memory and comprehension. Accordingly, digital flashcard users may benefit from eschewing pre-made versions in favor of making their own
Descriptive Norms Influence Children’s Injunctive and Moral Norm Beliefs
No full textHow do children integrate descriptive norms about how others commonly behave with their injunctive norm beliefs about how they should behave? Does this relationship vary depending on the type of normative behavior? We investigated these questions in 6-9-year-olds (N = 234) from the US in two preregistered studies. In Study 1, we examined whether children’s injunctive beliefs, moral evaluations, behavioral intentions, and punishment ratings were influenced by descriptive norm information that a behavior is relatively common or uncommon. In Study 2, we tested whether children updated their own beliefs in response to descriptive norm information using a within-subject, pre-post design. We also explored whether the influence of descriptive norm information varies by the type of normative behavior (Studies 1 & 2: negatively valenced conventional, positively valenced conventional, personal preferences; Study 1 only: COVID19 health behaviors). Across both studies, we found that by 6 years of age, children integrated descriptive norm information such that their average belief ratings were influenced more by common than uncommon descriptive norms for all behaviors except personal preferences. In contrast to our predictions, children did not consistently update their prior beliefs in response to novel descriptive norm information. However, when they did update, they did so to different extents depending on the normative belief measure, type of behavior, and its frequency. Our findings suggest that, by middle-childhood, children’s injunctive norm and moral beliefs are influenced by the frequency of descriptive normative information and, more broadly, point to the bottom-up influences of children’s normative beliefs