Many of the problems studied in cognitive science are inductive problems, requiring people to evaluate hypotheses in the light of data. The key to solving these problems successfully is having the right inductive biases--assumptions about the world that make it possible to choose between hypotheses that are equally consistent with the observed…

This article proposes a new model of human concept learning that provides a rational analysis of learning feature-based concepts. This model is built upon Bayesian inference for a grammatically structured hypothesis space--a concept language of logical rules. This article compares the model predictions to human generalization judgments in several…

It has been suggested that prediction may be an organizing principle of the mind and/or the neocortex, with cognitive machinery specifically engineered to detect forward-looking temporal relationships, rather than merely associating temporally contiguous events. There is a remarkable absence of behavioral tests of this idea, however. To address…

Although it is well-established that children with Specific Language Impairment characteristically optionally inflect forms that require tense and agreement marking, their abilities with regards to derivational suffixation are less well understood. In this paper we provide evidence from children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment…

Simple experiments involving musical instruments of the woodwind family can be used to demonstrate the basic physics of vibrating air columns in resonance tubes using nothing more than straightforward measurements and data collection hardware and software. More involved experimentation with the same equipment can provide insight into the effects…

Variability in talker identity, one type of indexical variation, has demonstrable effects on the speed and accuracy of spoken word recognition. Furthermore, neuropsychological evidence suggests that indexical and linguistic information may be represented and processed differently in the 2 cerebral hemispheres, and is consistent with findings from…

According to a prominent theory of human perception and performance (M. A. Goodale & A. D. Milner, 1992), the dorsal, action-related stream only controls visually guided actions in real time. Such a system would be predicted to show little or no action priming from previous experience. The 3 experiments reported here were designed to determine…

For more than 75 years, flies and other insects have been known to serve as mechanical vectors of infectious disease (Hegner, 1926). Flies have been shown to harbor over 100 different species of potentially pathogenic microorganisms and are known to transmit more than 65 infectious diseases (Greenberg, 1965). This laboratory exercise is a simple…

The authors report 4 experiments that examined color grouping and negative carryover effects in preview search via a probe detection task (J. J. Braithwaite, G. W. Humphreys, & J. Hodsoll, 2003). In Experiment 1, there was evidence of a negative color carryover from the preview to new items, using both search and probe detection measures. There…

Four experiments are described in which 1 visual object (the target) was selected from another (the distractor) according to its color (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or its relative location (Experiment 3) and then was classified according to a simple geometric property. Object classification was signaled as fast as possible by a precision or power…

Several previous studies (B. C. Adams, C. Clifton, & D. C. Mitchell, 1998; D. C. Mitchell, 1987; R. P. G. van Gompel & M. J. Pickering, 2001) have explored the question of whether the parser initially analyzes a noun phrase that follows an intransitive verb as the verb's direct object. Three eye-tracking experiments examined this issue in more…

In this article, the authors explore semantic context effects in speaking. In particular, the authors investigate a marked discrepancy between categorically and associatively induced effects; only categorical relationships have been reported to cause interference in object naming. In Experiments 1 and 2, a variant of the semantic blocking paradigm…

The effects of preferred stimulation on the vocal stereotypy of 2 individuals were evaluated in two experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that (a) the vocal stereotypy of both participants persisted in the absence of social consequences, (b) 1 participant manipulated toys that did and did not produce auditory stimulation, but only…

Papini and Pellegrini (Papini, M. R., & Pellegrini, S. "Scaling relative incentive value in consummatory behavior." "Learning and Motivation", in press) observed that, within limits, the level of consummatory responding of rats exposed to incentive downshifts in the concentration of sucrose solutions was similar when the ratio of test/training…

The notions of "idealisation" and "approximation" are strongly linked to the question of "how our theories represent the phenomena in their scope". Although there is no consensus amongst Philosophers on the nature of the process of idealisation and how it affects theoretical representation, at the level of science education much can be gained from…