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AROUND 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows.

In videos of the experiment, you can see the children squirming, kicking, hiding their eyes — desperately trying to exercise self-control so they can wait and get two marshmallows. Their performance varied widely. Some broke down and rang the bell within a minute. Others lasted 15 minutes.

The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores. They got into better colleges and had, on average, better adult outcomes.

The old adage “good things come to those who wait” isn’t untrue.  Check out this study.

Technorati Tags: Mischel, marshmallow, self-control, success

• Significantly, a machine prototype has been developed that translates between languages by interpreting the position and vibration of an individual’s mouth and throat.  Machine translation is still a dream a very long way off, but this is a step in the right direction.  The PDF can be downloaded here.
• That sinking feeling you get in your gut when you sit down in your cubicle and suddenly feel the world closing in on you until you get up nervously to use the restroom and make some extra-strong coffee is not just a fluke: cubicles were a giant mistake.
• My own work in the eye-tracking studies of psycholinguistics makes me interested in something that can track your gaze and help you hear with your eyes.  From the article, “[the device] is slightly less elegant than the traditional neural
  implant, with this system you could not only record the goings on of
  your days and “bookmark” important events, but also train the cameras
  to feed you information about your surroundings based on QR codes or
  possibly eventually object recognition; think of it as augmented aural
  reality triggered by giving a passing glance.”
• Deja vu has been studied in a lab setting, and we reap the benefits of their findings.  Still, I’m wondering if it’s not caused by something having to do with dreams … nevertheless we’ll eventually get to the bottom of this.
• Are you a Ghost in the Shell?  Because this is something I’m very interested in from both personal and research points of view, you’ll be seeing more of this.  This is a great article explaining the movie, the concept, and the question of whether we are more or less than the avatars we represent to the outside world.

And by the way, if you get this, you’re a geek. If someone doesn’t do it first, I’m making a teeshirt.

Technorati Tags: psychology, cognition, language, linguistics, avatar, personality, Internet, geek

Backs to the Future from PhysOrg.com

New analysis of the language and gesture of South America’s indigenous Aymara people indicates they have a concept of time opposite to all the world’s studied cultures — so that the past is ahead of them and the future behind.
[…]

This is a highly interesting phenomenon.  We’ve always taken for an axiom of psychology that peoples all over the world have used the position of “forward” to conceive of the future and “rearward” for the past.  What, then, of these peoples of South America, who defy this axiom?

Technorati Tags: cognition, language, South America, tribe

Roderick M. Chisholm, “Intentional Inexistence” (1957)

1.
“It would be an easy matter, of course, to invent a psychological terminology enabling us to describe perceiving, taking, and assuming in sentences which are not intentional. Instead of saying, for example, that a man takes something to be a deer, we could say `His perceptual environment is deer-inclusive.’ But in so doing, we are using technical terms…. And unless we can re-express the deer-sentence once again […] as a nonintentional sentence containing no such technical terms, [the sentence] will conform to our present version of Brentano’s thesis.”

2.
Chisholm is attempting to make a nuanced defense of Franz Brentano’s thesis that the characteristic shared by all mental phenomena, and by no physical phenomena, is intentional inexistence: that when referring to mental acts, we must refer to them as intentional, and not merely in physiological terms. Not only is behavioristic language about reinforcement and physiological processes in the mind too technical for Chisholm, it is also inaccurate because of its deficiency in explaining how perception actually works from a the standpoint of the subject to whom mental phenomena are being presented.

It seems to Chisholm that the only way around using intentional language, especially when describing something about how a person perceives an object in his or her environment, is to use needlessly complex and technical phraseology that does not capture the full meaning of what it is to perceive something. Furthermore, an explanation of perception that does not include intentionality is crippled, according to Chisholm, when explaining how we can take an efficient cause of a presentation to be something that it is not—as in a case, for instance, wherein the man mentioned above could mistake the deer for another animal.

3.
Chisholm begins his article by asking whether Brentano’s intentionality thesis with regard to mental phenomena can also be true of assumptions, and then proceeds to (at least rhetorically) attempt to disprove Brentano’s theory using other peoples’ objections and examples after explaining more fully the terminology Brentano himself was using. For Brentano, as for Chisholm, attitudes and beliefs and other sorts of mental phenomena “intentionally contain an object in themselves,” such that the object presented to consciousness need not exist in real life: I can have a belief about unicorns, or the state of a substance on Twin Earth, or a wish for something that never comes to pass. However, physical (nonpsychological, as Chisholm says) phenomena cannot intentionally contain objects: in order for me to kick a ball, there must necessarily be a ball for me to kick, and so forth.

Chisholm argues that we can talk about states of mind or psychological “directedness” by way of certain types of sentences; in this way he clarifies and re-states Brentano’s original thesis through statements such as, “We may now say that a compound declarative sentence is intentional if and only if one or more of its component sentences is intentional.” Various psychologists and philosophers have tried to re-state the ways of talking about mental phenomena apart from intentionality in various ways, one of which is exemplified by Ayer’s objection that “to think of” something is “to be conscious of the symbols which designate” that thing, but Chisholm says that even this is intentional, since by saying X is designated by Y, we posit nothing about the ontological status or nature of X. Other objections, according to Chisholm, always inevitably refer back to intentional bases, and so assumptions, being mental, must also be intentional.

The overarching point for which Chisholm is attempting to build a case is that in order to describe psychological phenomena, we must use sentences and language that is necessarily intentional, lest we confuse the issues with overly technical language, or by not capturing all there is to a mental act. We can, and according to Chisholm, should, describe physical phenomena from the standpoint of non-intentional sentences; but this is insufficient for psychological language, since intentionality is not reducible to the physical. Therefore, intentional language is the only kind of language adequate for discussing matters of psychology and of the objects of cognition.

Reference: Chisholm, R. M. (1957). “Intentional inexistence.” From Perceiving: A Philosophical Study. New York: Cornell UP.

“Rice University study focuses on merged vowel sounds in different dialects.”

I’m working in the psycholinguistics lab at the University of South Carolina, so this kind of research is right up my alley. This is a novel study because it shows that people from different dialects of the same language (for instance, Appalachian versus Boston English) have the same kinds of trouble as non-native speakers to a secondary language. (E.g., the Japanese and “L” and “R” sounds in English, rendering the name of this language, “Engrish.”)

This phenomenon also happens in listening to music—if your untrained, Western ears are used to piano and you hear an indigenous Indian instrument (the name of which I have forgotten), there are notes so close together that the untrained ear can’t hear them.

If you’re interested in linguistics, language-learning, or psycholinguistics, check out the article.

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Tonight I was at a birthday party, and everyone began talking about hermeneutics (without using the word expicitly) and the nature of language. The main thrust of the conversation centered around the idea that if language were perfectly expressible in, for instance, mathematics or mathematical terms, then we would lose something of the foundational “good” of language.

Then the discussion turned to the matter of whether a mathematical language would be able to convey nuance, and whether this was important.

We never got anywhere. Now, I’m odd in that I’m a philosophy major who likes to get somewhere, probably; but this conversation just highlighted for me the whole matter of the way everyone has something to say, and no one listens. It was convicting, really: how often do I pine for a willing ear only to play the part of the overfull mouth? How often do you, gentle reader?

I think I left the actual PPT on the server at the office, but my premise was, of course, that adverbs are activated in the same way that McKoon & Ratcliff (1994) saw their objects of their sentences being activated.

I’ll upload that shortly.

I designed a presentation on a series of papers to give the class Tuesday. Next Tuesday is another presentation, but meanwhile, check this one out: PSYC572 presentation (220.7KB PDF).

The thesis is, if psycholinguistically we interpret objects of subject-verb pairs more quickly if they fit in context than if not—then do we interpret adverbs in the same way? Hmm.

References:

McKoon, G., Ratcliff, R., & Ward, G. (1994). Testing theories of language processing: An empirical investigation of the on-line lexical decision task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 1219-1228.

Nicol, J. L., Fodor, J. D., & Swinney, D. (1994). Using cross-modal lexical decision tasks to investigate sentence processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 1229-1238.

Nicol, J. L., & Swinney, D. (1989). The role of structure in coreference assignment during sentence comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 18, 5-20.

Sharkey, A., & Sharkey, N. (1992). Weak contextual constraints in text and word priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 543-572.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. - George Washington

I’m not normally one to quote the founding fathers unless it’s early July or a political cocktail party where most people don’t realize what a randy fellow Ben Franklin really was, in his day; but I really liked this quote, especially after what’s been going on lately. This goes along with something that Camus says in his Notebooks about friendship and expectations—but I’ll get there in due time.

I’ve been learning German quickly as possible through the Pimsleur Method. It’s slow but steady going. My professor tried to talk me out of it, though, when he heard that I was starting from scratch with this and I got near-fluency on Spanish lo these many moons ago. I may end up having to do Spanish for my foreign language, but I’d rather just learn that on my own time as need dictates: German is the über-tongue, pun intended.

Incidentally, here is a nice list of the “Best German Films for German-Learners“. Also, an entire series of freely-streamable (but not freely-downloadable) television-based German lessons here. (”Fokus Deutsch” is a classroom method, book not included on the website.)

A parting thought. Is the alienation we feel in America, the sociological WASP problem (i.e., single white male Protestants are the most likely demographic to commit suicide—need I look into Orthodoxy? ), and the general anomie people tend to experience with capitalism—is all of this being addressed by Eastern thought? I have a feeling that what’s pushing most of my peers to dabble in Buddhism (Zen, Theravadan, or otherwise) instead of straight, all-American atheism or some such, is at least the illusion of communion with others, a community atmosphere, a collectivist mindset. Your thoughts?

In Hebrew, adding “-im” (pronounced “EEM”) to the end of a word makes it plural. So “Ben,” or “Son,” becomes “Benim,” “Sons.”

To that end, it has become fashionable in recent years to use “Seraphim” in relation to oneself as either a screenname, an avatar, or just a “cool thing to which to liken something.” Unfortunately, however cool it sounds, it’s often misused.

Seraphim is the masculine plural form of the Hebrew noun “Seraph” (also transliterated “saraph,” a Hebrew verb meaning “to consume with fire” or, less probably, a noun meaning “a flying, fiery serpent”). Seraphim are the first order of angels, of which traditionally Gabriel and Lucifer are two, and are described in the sixth chapter of Isaiah to have three pairs of wings—one covering their eyes, one their feet, and one by which they are borne up. They are distinct from the cherubim (or “cherubs,” as your or someone else’s grandmother has probably described a gathering of infants), who veil or disclose God, in that they are active, ministering servants.

The Wachowski brothers, whatever else people might accuse them of having screwed up with the Matrix series, got the singularity of Seraph’s name right. Keep it in mind next time you hear reference, and see if it’s understood as plural or singular.

Just received a Google search from Austria about what it means “to cough up” something, or at least, that’s how I read the query. (Wenn Sie gestatten, gut �sterreicher.)

The literal translation, I think, is “abhusten” or “aushusten,” and it means “to come up with (quickly).” Usually it carries violent connotations, or is used in a threat: “Cough up the money by tonight or I’ll break your fingers.” Or, it can be used in a way that implies sympathy toward the actor: “You’re going to have a tough time coughing up more collateral, I know, but I can’t give you the loan without something more substantial.”

I hope that helps!

I updated my BBClone installation today, so the stats were reset and now the Google queries are pouring in. Glad I have readers, even overseas! [Yes, the timestamp is ridiculous. That’s what I get for having too much on my mind and trying to use midday sleep to escape! Ha!]

Updated some internal software tonight, including the forum software and some hit-tracking PHP stuff. Judging by some of the latest search strings, here are some quick answers to things I didn’t quite have, but almost.

• Hebrew verb “to kiss” is nashaq, Strong’s number 05401, pronounced with the first “a” like “aw” in “saw,” with the emphasis on the latter half of the word. It’s spelled Nun-Shin-Qoph (also spelled and identical with Nun-Sin-Qoph). Usually used where phileo is used in the Greek NT. See this page for details.
• Setting up a Canoscan scanner under Fedora Core X where X >=2 is fairly easy. Run xsane-config as root, let it yell at you, then try it as a normal user. (This seems to initialize it for me.) According to the Linux USB Scanners page, the Canoscans use a Plustek backend, which you can find here.
• Rafaello Sanzio (Raphael) actually included himself in the far right of the School at Athens (i.e., Scuola di Atene); you can find him beside Sodoma in the far right and center of the painting. He’s looking at you, wearing a cap on his head. (He signified hereby that he was very much on the scientific/Aristotelian end of things.) Here is a closeup of the fellow from this picture. You can find his self-portrait at this link, but the text is in Greek. Poli kalo!

Just in case you didn’t catch all that, I do check the logs (more than I should!), and I do notice who comes to the site and why you’re here. Thank you for your patronage; come back often and let me know if I can do anything to help you.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been jotting down some notes about things that are worth revisiting once I have enough of them and the time, and I wanted to get them down here now that I have several miscellaneous observations. (Don’t stop at the end of lines when reading poetry; etymology of “barbarian” and “matter”.)
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192833723/thinkblogorg-20

viii.13

Hereagain, we have Augustine expounding childhood development as a byproduct of psycholinguistic training. Interesting to me is how he links memory to intelligence and learning natural language: I have recently been thinking about the link between intelligence and memory myself. Intelligence seems to be largely the ability to recall to mind precisely what fits at that moment in time, whether it be a word or a gesture, a social action or a concept that ties in with another concept. Of course, the difference between “conventional” (however extraordinary) intelligence and autism is, in part, the ability to know when to wield one’s memory, and how. Perhaps, having been away from the texts for too long, I’m stabbing unskillfully in the dark with my own rusty blade of memory.

Natural vocabulary, for Augustine, seems composed of gestures. These are the first symbols we see as infants of the objects we desire, symbols for all objects outside ourselves. Again I think of a discussion on the PCYG in which I argued that, when humanity was in its infancy we required concrete modes of reference (OT sacrifices & ceremonies, Hebrew language lacking abstract words, &c., early development of art, sculpture, music) to that which we felt, thought, understood, and believed. As we grow older, we can understand more and more, what computer programmers call holding more or less “state” in one’s head. In chess this is shown by thinking for the other player and predicting his moves, &c. So what application does this have theologically? What can this tell me about the nature of Christ and of our relationship to Him? Perhaps it is this: that when we are spiritual infants we have to have things concretely spelled out for us—we ask for a briar (it looks pretty, after all) and we see our Father shake His head and offer us laurels instead—but when we are older He sends us cleverly-worded emails that all amount to the same thing: “I’m still in control, beloved, and I am taking care of you.” (That analogy breaks down if you blink, granted, but I’m convinced there’s something there, whether or not I can presently express it.)

Augustine, St. Confessions. Henry Chadwick, trans. ISBN 0-19-283372-3 (Paperback).

http://thinkblog.org/media/papers/PhillipsNonstdSpcLangComp.pdf

This paper is an evaluation of the work done by Arnold, et al. (2004) and Gordon, et al. (1993) and how their work fits together. Some very interesting findings; if I can work out whether it’s legal for me to post the articles, I’ll do so.

• Arnold, J. E., Tanenhaus, M. K., Altmann, R. J., & Fagnano, M. (2004). The old and thee, uh, new: Disfluency and reference resolution. Psychological Science, 15(9), 578-582.
• Gordon, P. C., Grosz, B. J., & Gilliom, L. A. (1993). Pronouns, names, and the centering of attention in discourse. Cognitive Science, 17, 311-347.

Click the title of the post for the PDF version. Be advised, the only revisions I’ve done have been minor reformatting, so if you see the clumsy sentences, be forgiving. Alternately to the PDF, feel free to read more below for the full text. All text that follows is Copyright © 2004-2005 Michael Phillips.
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Call me OCD, but people these days really don’t seem to understand the logic behind contractions. I don’t mean “don’t” and “can’t”; most native speakers of average intelligence can see why those are the way they are. But today I was in a class and a professor had a group of presentation slides on the same subject, flowing from one to another. So the guy has on the slides,

Subject Heading (con’t)

This shows a lack of understanding about the nature of the apostrophe and its function in a word. (Notice, as a related aside, that there’s no apostrophe in “its” here because that would signify a contraction of the being phrase, “it is” and not a neutered possessive singular pronoun.) Of course we all know that what my professor meant was to abbreviate the word “continued.” How would you do that? Like so:

cont’d

That’s because the apostrophe serves to signify content that has been omitted from a word, a phrase, or other language structure. If we take my professor’s example, we have nothing omitted where it is signified, and if we were to take this abbreviation literally, since it does not use a period (”cont.”), we would be left with a word that ends in `t’ and starts with “con”–with some indeterminate number of letters therebetwixt! Observe:

con[?]t.

Now note the structure of the logical reduction signified by the apostrophe in “cont’d”:

continued.

And, have mercy, this same concept applies to that aberrant member of the English language resting on so many Southern tongues like a plague, “y’all.” This contraction is almost invariably written as “ya’ll”. If you’re going to use this abbreviated version of “you all,” at least omit where omission is necessary. The reason for this being misspelled is most likely because “ya” is popularly being used as the auxiliary/slang second-person pronoun of indeterminate number (”you” v. “you”–either could be singular or plural). “Ya” is not a word in English, unless it’s a transliteration of the German affirmative (ja). So here note the examples:

ya’ll becomes ya all

Versus the following:

y’all becomes you all

Thank you, that is all.