Search

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the thesis that the child acquires English spatial expressions by learning how to apply them to the child's prior knowledge about space and that the child acquires English temporal expressions in turn by extending the spatial terms in a metaphor about time. The main evidence for this thesis is the strong correspondence between the properties of the spatial terms and the properties of man's innate perceptual apparatus, and between English spatial and temporal expressions. The correspondence is so strong that it simply could not be coincidental, and it, therefore, needs explanation. Time, for example, is not just expressed with an occasional spatial simile, but rather it is based on a thoroughly systematic spatial metaphor, suggesting a complete cognitive system that space and time expressions have in common. The chapter outlines the thesis, its evidence, and what it could mean for the acquisition of English. This theory argues that grammatical relations are fundamentally locative in nature, and they are, therefore, derived ultimately from notions of location.

I WAS INVITED to present a survey of the theory of automata. Since there are already several surveys, especially the very competent ones of Chomsky 10, McNaughton 37, and Rogers 54, all of which deal with various aspects of the theory of automata and more, I shall confine myself to an exposition of what might loosely be called a “philosophy of automata”. On the way, however, I hope to touch upon certain developments of the subject which have come about since McNaughton's 1961 paper. Readers who feel they are up on the theory may wish to omit sections 2 and 3.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the papers by Bransford and Johnson and Clark, Carpenter, and Just on language and cognition. Clark, Carpenter, and Just (CC&J) assumed that an important function of language is to communicate perceptual experience. The key working assumption is that in the structure of English, the way in which alternative interpretations of perceptual experience are encoded can be found. While the locus of the structure of English is not specified, this assumption entails an intuitive examination of the presuppositions of English with reference to perceptual events. The constraints imposed by the latter and how they are realized in the coding system follow a linguistic analysis, rather than vice versa. If it is the constraints of one perceiving objects and relations in Euclidian space that determine the semantic interpretation or coding, then examining the linguistic coding rather than the perceptual one would seem to put the cart before the horse.

In contrast to his views of some years ago Suppes in now convinced that modal concepts are essential to standard scientific talk. Yet he emphasizes two main points: (1) in a majority of cases the modal concepts remain implicit in that talk, and (2) this logic is scarcely used in either theoretical or experimental analysis of empirical phenomena. Furthermore, in dealing with probability and referring in particular to the sample space, he substantially says that modal concepts are left implicit to eliminate excess baggage.

Publisher Summary Models of visual perception specify that the patterned optical array reaching the receptor surface is represented by neural elements in the cortex, although the nature of these representations differs from model to model. Perceivers do not, and cannot see an entire visual field in a single glance and it takes many glances. Much of the visual field is never looked at directly and is never seen in clear vision. Therefore, an integrated view of a continuous world that a human perceives should be constructed out of many glances, and all that is known about the visual world is constructed out of the information contained in icons. An isomorphism between the receptor and the cortical cells is impossible. Granting this, a large number of possibilities remain, at the molecular level and at the level of the conceptual model to be used to explain visual perception. An iconic representation is the first central stage in information extraction or the processing of visual stimulation.

n/a

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the importance of nonhuman primate studies of learning and related phenomena for understanding human cognitive development. It is now generally recognized that man is a primate and the member of the order Primates. The implications of the biological relationship between man and other primate forms are far-reaching but not necessarily obvious to all. The use of nonhuman primates as animal models for the study of certain disease processes has been the greatest single reason for the justification of primate research. Other reasons, however, have become recognized in very recent years. Le Gros Clark (1959) has argued that extant primate forms can be so ordered as to increasingly approximate man.

n/a

(1962). Conceptual Frameworks for Analysis of Social Interaction Comments on Four Papers. The Journal of Experimental Education: Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 323-324.

In their recent paper, Waddington & Robertson (1966) discuss the general importance of disruptive selection and make various points that call for comment.First, their statement that ‘It is most desirable that Thoday's results … should be repeated, with special attention to the strict virginity of the flies used, …’ appears to some readers as a scarcely veiled imputation that my experiments, especially that of Thoday & Gibson (1962), were executed without technical competence, though Waddington has informed me such imputation was not intended.

These ten papers, republished in homage to Sir Gordon Holmes on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, deal with three subjects with which his life and work have been particularly identified—the cerebellum, the cortical representation of vision, and visual orientation and attention. The papers concerning the cerebellum include the early paper on its connections with the inferior olives, that describing the form of cerebellar degeneration now known as the Holmes' type, the study of the symptomatology of cerebellar tumors, and the classic Croonian lectures of 1922 on the clinical symptoms of cerebellar disease and their interpretation, ending with the discussion of the functions of the cerebellum taken from the Hughlings Jackson lecture of 1939. Many of these papers have not been readily available, and, if for no other reason, the guarantors of Brain have provided a real service in making them again obtainable by students of neurology; but this collection

Mr. Meyer ought to have recognized that the whole sting of his criticism depends on a question of Definition. A circle, ellipse, or hyperbola has each its definition consecrated by time: a logarithmic curve, sine curve or the like has not. For the purpose of the paper under discussion we defined a 'logarithmic curve' [and the definition is obvious from the context] as one in which the " ordinates are in Geometrical Progression when the abscissae are in Arithmetical Progression" or vice versa : that is, the curve represented either by y=AeBx or by y=A log Bx. This curve is a direct expression of the Weber-Fechner law, it stands in a definite relation to the axes of co-ordinates-i. e., in our case to the lines of no-sensation and no-stimulus--it has