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With the explosion of big data, digital repositories of texts and images are growing rapidly. These datasets present new opportunities for psychological research, but they require new methodologies before researchers can use these datasets to yield insights into human cognition. We present a new method that allows psychological researchers to take advantage of text and image databases: a procedure for measuring human categorical representations over large datasets of items, such as arbitrary words or pictures. We call this method discrete Markov chain Monte Carlo with people (d-MCMCP). We illustrate our method by evaluating the following categories over datasets: emotions as represented by facial images, moral concepts as represented by relevant words, and seasons as represented by images drawn from large online databases. Three experiments demonstrate that d-MCMCP is powerful and flexible enough to work with complex, naturalistic stimuli drawn from large online databases.

Em resposta à recente exortação do historiador David Armitage para retornarmos a uma história de “grandes ideias” traçada por longos períodos de tempo, este artigo examina as razões para a resistência a suas propostas, conforme expressa por estudiosos da História Intelectual textualistas e contextualistas. Discutindo a “História Conceitual” e a “Metaforologia” como alternativas à História das Ideias tradicional, defendem-se as virtudes de um método que reconhece e até acolhe a ambiguidade semântica e o campo de força dinâmico das relações em que as ideias estão historicamente inseridas. Em vez de se contentar com a suavização das diferenças inerentes às técnicas de "leitura à distância", baseadas na recuperação digital de tendências de longa duração, pleiteia-se a atenção às rupturas de sentido e às inovações imprevistas que impedem que a História das Ideias seja um exercício de meta-narrativa de progressão, desenvolvimento e disseminação de significados unívocos.

Recent condemnation by progressive Americans of the conservative “weaponization” of free speech for cynical purposes, while accurate in its accusation of hypocrisy, often assumes a problematic “absolutist” notion of free speech as an inherent good. Instead, it should always be understood as functional in the service of another purpose, whether objective, subjective or intersubjective. Most frequently, it enables the epistemological search for the truth, a function stressed by liberals like J.S. Mill and Marxists like Herbert Marcuse (who argued that this search was hampered by “repressive tolerance” for wrong or evil ideas). It can also be defended for allowing the expression of individual opinions and feelings, which is the inherent mark of personal autonomy. Its third function is performative, the ability of language to make something happen in the world. The most heated current controversy reflecting this function concerns the limiting of offensive “hate speech” for committing symbolic violence, but it can have benign intersubjective effects as well. A fourth purpose of unconstrained speech, more semantic than epistemological, expressive or performative, is the generation of new cultural meanings or the critique of conventional ones. Because it can serve all or any of these functions, it is worth protecting even in an imperfect society, pace Marcuse, despite its lacking an absolute justification in itself.

The purpose of this exploratory research is to document the level of personal assistance support provided to students with severe physical disabilities by disability support services in higher education institutions across the United States. A national survey was conducted of members of the Association of Higher Education And Disability (AHEAD) via an online survey. Of the 326 respondents with usable responses, 36 (14.1%) stated they provided some level of personal assistance services to students with severe physical disabilities, ranging from providing emergency services (25 or 69.4%) to providing residential services with in-house personal assistants (4 or 11.1%). Personal assistance support to students with severe physical disabilities were more likely to be provided at master's, comprehensive, and research universities and less likely to be provided at bachelor's, associate's, and trade/technical schools. Those who provided personal assistant support were more likely to be able to identify students with severe physical disabilities who were negatively impacted by the lack of personal assistance support, were more satisfied with their personal assistance support services, had longer tenure in disability support services, and had greater numbers of part-time staff. Implications for service providers and future research are discussed. (Contains 4 tables and 4 figures.)

The purpose of this preliminary study was to explore the residual barriers and facilitators for a selected group of individuals with severe physical disabilities who had been afforded a comprehensive set of strategies and services aimed at meeting their basic personal as well as academic needs. Their perceptions of both barriers and facilitators, experienced while in school and post-graduation, were the focus of this qualitative research study. Due to the funding source, differences between individuals who majored in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM fields were also explored. Personal interviews were conducted with a stratified random sample of 13 individuals with severe physical disabilities (IWSPD) that necessitated personal assistance and had lived at Beckwith Hall and its forerunners at the University of Illinois. Frequent educational barriers included social isolation with fewer attitudinal, programmatic, financial, or health barriers. Career barriers included more instances of social/communication and architectural/environmental barriers. Education facilitators included the disability support staff on campus; living in Beckwith Hall; state and university financial assistance; positive attitudes of faculty, staff, and fellow students; and accessibility of campus. Career facilitators included work supervisors and colleagues, with few other facilitators mentioned. STEM students were more likely to report (a) campus inaccessibility as an educational barrier, (b) career barriers of access, negative attitudes, financial expenses, and health problems, (c) disability support staff and Beckwith Hall as educational facilitators, and (d) a wider variety and frequency of career facilitators. This study provides initial yet valuable insights into the lived experience of IWSPD as they progress through postsecondary education and transition to the world of work. Significant educational supports are needed to ensure the success of IWSPD.

Individuals with disabilities are attending postsecondary institutions at higher rates than ever before, although many struggle to adjust in college environments. On one hand, higher education positively correlates with better employment outcomes, while on the other, higher education represents more stringent academic requirements and more diffused disability supports. One intervention used to check the "trauma" of transition from high school to postsecondary education is mentoring. This article describes four successful mentorship programs, in various stages of maturity, which are currently funded by the National Science Foundation. The case studies describe the structure of each program, recruitment strategies, the students involved, and outcomes achieved to date. Implications or "lessons learned" are also discussed to provide other important information and impetus for those anticipating such programs.

Individuals with disabilities are underrepresented in postsecondary education; in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors; in graduate and post-doctoral work; and in faculty positions, particularly in STEM. Despite these lags behind their non-disabled counterparts, few organizations recruit persons with disabilities into postsecondary education and/or STEM careers and, thus, scant literature exists on targeted recruitment efforts. The intent of this article is to examine data concerning these lags, to review what literature does exist on recruitment of students with disabilities, and to report on promising practices developed by the Midwest Alliance, an NSF-funded endeavor to increase the number of individuals with disabilities in STEM. It is believed that these efforts and descriptions may help other organizations recruit individuals with disabilities into their postsecondary programs. (Contains 4 tables.)

Además del testimonio de la propia “experiencia histórica sublime” del autor durante una visita al campo de concentración de Theresienstadt, este ensayo se basa en el análisis de Georges Didi-Huberman de cuatro fotografías del Holocausto en su Images in Spite of All, para demostrar el poder del argumento de Ankersmit. Especula sobre la relación entre esas experiencias y las nociones teo- lógicas de la “presencia real”, la cual, además, busca colapsar la distancia entre el pasado y el presente, y confundir las nociones historicistas convencionales de continuidad temporal y determinación contextual. Contra la declaración de Ankersmit, que sostiene que las experiencias históricas sublimes ocurren sólo cuando una transformación civilizatoria provoca nostalgia por un pasado perdido, este artículo argumenta que, tal vez, también se puedan sentir cuando acontecimientos traumáticos, cuyo retorno nadie anhela, interrumpen la inteligibilidad de las narrativas históricas y la representación significativa.

Exploring how people represent natural categories is a key step toward developing a better understanding of how people learn, form memories, and make decisions. Much research on categorization has focused on artificial categories that are created in the laboratory, since studying natural categories defined on high-dimensional stimuli such as images is methodologically challenging. Recent work has produced methods for identifying these representations from observed behavior, such as reverse correlation (RC). We compare RC against an alternative method for inferring the structure of natural categories called Markov chain Monte Carlo with People (MCMCP). Based on an algorithm used in computer science and statistics, MCMCP provides a way to sample from the set of stimuli associated with a natural category. We apply MCMCP and RC to the problem of recovering natural categories that correspond to two kinds of facial affect (happy and sad) from realistic images of faces. Our results show that MCMCP requires fewer trials to obtain a higher quality estimate of people's mental representations of these two categories. (Contains 5 figures.)

Relativismo Cultural e a Virada Visual

“A ideia escandalosa de que os sentidos tem uma história, como Karl Marx uma vez observou, é um dos marcos de nossa historicidade”. Assim escreveu o eminente crítico literário americano Fredric Jameson em 1981. Nos anos que se seguiram, talvez não tenhamos passado a ler a história em termos marxistas tal como Jameson gostaria, mas o escândalo há muito já se dissipou. Pelo contrário, explorar a infinita variedade de experiências sensórias tornou-se matéria-prima da análise histórica contemporânea, assim como dos estudos culturais e das ciências sociais de forma mais ampla.

The small-scale digesters treating agricultural wastewater and producing energy are analyzed in order to explore different ways for increasing the efficiency of the systems. The analysis has shown that the small-scale digesters can provide methane and electricity to meet household needs resulting in increase in household income and decrease in water pollution and deforestation.