Shake,Rattle, and … One or Two Objects? Young Infants' Use of Auditory Information to Individuate Objects

Most research on object individuation in infants has focused on the visual domain. Yet the problem of object individuation is not unique to the visual system, but shared by other sensory modalities. This research examined 4.5‐month‐old infants' capacity to use auditory information to individuate objects. Infants were presented with events in which they heard 2 distinct sounds, separated by a temporal gap, emanate from behind a wide screen; the screen was then lowered to reveal 1 or 2 objects. Longer looking to the 1‐ than 2‐object display was taken as evidence that the infants (a) interpreted the auditory event as involving 2 objects and (b) found the presence of only 1 object when the screen was lowered unexpected. The results indicated that the infants used sounds produced by rattles, but not sounds produced by an electronic keyboard, as the basis for object individuation (Experiments 1 and 2). Data collected with adult participants revealed that adults are also more sensitive to rattle sounds than electronic tones. A final experiment assessed conditions under which young infants attend to rattle sounds (Experiment 3). Collectively, the outcomes of these experiments suggest that infants and adults are more likely to use some sounds than others as the basis for individuating objects. We propose that these results reflect a processing bias to attend to sounds that reveal something about the physical properties of an object—sounds that are obviously linked to object structure—when determining object identity.     

The Problem of the Unity of Knowledge in Comte's Philosophy of Science*

Comte's philosophy of science is re-examined from the point of view of the rationalist problematic of the unity of knowledge. It is argued that Comte's attempt to answer this metaphysical problem is the single most important factor determining the final form of his system of positive philosophy, his hierarchy of the sciences, his conception of sociology, and ultimately his positive religion of Humanity. After rejecting the main solutions offered by modern rationalism, Comte provides a subjective unity for the sciences by establishing Humanity as the principle of organization for all knowledge. The article describes the various components of the positive synthesis, their background in the history of ideas, and the contemporary relevance of the problem of unity for logical empiricism and Husserl. Some have said that need for unity expresses the identity of the self; others, that it stands for economy of thought. Possibly, but this is interpretation, psychologically or sociologically tinged. The need for unity is a historical fact and, as such, unresolved. It is also a symbol of science, and its myth. Science is a finely defined and articulated system of symbols; but the ultimate symbol, that of unity, can have no referent. Rather one might say it stands for the totality of the knowable and the unknowable. A confusing situation for the scientific mind, but one it cannot escape. For the conflict at the heart of rationalism is the source of its strength, as long as it lasts. Once the faith is lost, something else has to be found. Under the relentless pressure of social change, with the growing operationalism of physical theory and the metaphysical devastations attendant on Darwinism, the myth of unity could no longer hold. It had to be replaced by unification. But with that the status of science is changed and also that of the scientist. The mirror of nature that reason had endeavored to build up through the ages is shattered, and we look for the first time straight out into an unknown world.     

Understanding health inequalities: from ‘Transmitted Deprivation’ to ‘Social Capital’

This article examines the conceptualisation and use of memory in the social sciences, both as a methodological tool and as an object of research. The article situates memory as a vast potential resource for the social sciences in the exploration of relations between public and private life, agency and power, and the past, present and future. It goes on to recognise that the methodological issues surrounding the use of memory have, with few exceptions, rarely received sustained attention. The article argues for, and moves towards, developing a coherent account of the variety of practical techniques of using memory in data collection and analysis, and their appropriate use within a clear epistemological framework which distinguishes itself from conventional historiography and it’s criteria of validity. It is argued that without this attention to method, memory will remain on the margins of social science research.     

Estimating the Standard Deviation From the Range: a Replication of Analysis of Demographic Data Reported in Marriage & Family Review, 2016-2017

Abstract

A major concern in the social sciences is lack of replication of previous studies. An important methodological concern in the social sciences is the ability to determine effect sizes in addition to statistical significance levels. Effect sizes cannot be easily calculated in the absence of sufficient data; usually standard deviations are needed. If standard deviations are not available, how can they be estimated? Various proposals have been offered to solve this question. One solution is to divide the range (maximum–minimum) by four; a variety of more complicated solutions, based on sample size or the skew of the variable’s distribution, have been suggested (Schumm, Higgins, et al., 2017). Here, 30 cases involving the demographic variable of age, from 23 articles published in Marriage & Family Review between 2016 and 2017, are assessed to replicate the previous report of Schumm, Higgins et al. (2017). Our results indicated that both linear and power functions significantly predicted the size of standard deviations, with larger samples featuring smaller standard deviations. Aside from sample size, the best solution appears to be to divide the range by 4.5–5.0; although for very small samples (N?<?50), it is probably better to divide by 3.5–4.0 whereas for larger samples, especially those that involve higher levels of skew, it may be better to divide by 5.0 or higher. The Wan et al. (2014) estimation procedure appears to be approximately a power function of sample size. For samples up to several thousand in size, the range of divisors appears to run between 3.0 and 8.0, extremes that could be used to determine the largest or smallest possible standard deviations, respectively. Values far below 3.0 or above 8.0 may reflect typographical errors in data reports or possibly be evidence of artificially generated data, if not scientific fraud. When a variable is split into subsamples, its standard deviations should usually increase for the subsamples compared with the total sample. Similar assessments remain in progress for non-demographic variables in social sciences.     

Homo ludens im sozialwissenschaftlichen Seminar

The teaching of social sciences consists of social interactions and is, therefore, an appropriate object for scientific analysis. A game-theoretic approach reveals that ”chicken games“ and ”prisoner’s dilemmas“ are abundant in university level courses. It can also deliver systematic solutions to the problems of cooperation students and teachers are confronted with in everyday a cademic life. One of these solutions is the reforming of courses into games, as based on a perspective borrowed from cultural anthropology. ”Excitement and fun“ become the ”selective incentives“ which may boost seminar interaction and output, and forge ”privileged groups“, i.e. ”teams“.     

Distribution and selection of experts in the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES): the case of the regional assessment for Africa

In 2013, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) agreed to carry out a regional assessment for Africa. Since then, roughly 100 authors have been working to deliver, in 2018, a document that not only synthesises existing knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services for the African region but to distil from it knowledge that is relevant, credible, and legitimate for both societal and scientific practise. This requires, firstly, to carefully constituting the group of authors and, secondly, to design an assessment process that allows for deriving at an integrated perspective amongst these experts. Such a joint process of knowledge production that encompasses both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration can be framed as co-creation. In this contribution, we analyse whether the IPBES African assessment accounts for these two prerequisites for an effective assessment process. Our particular interest lays in the question whether scholars from social sciences and the humanities are sufficiently involved. Our analysis is based on the curriculum vitae of 97 members of the expert group, and reads quite straightforward: there is an overall lack of non-natural science perspectives and expertise that might lead to essential knowledge and data gaps when wishing to understand the effects of the diverse human concepts of and activities on biodiversity and ecosystem services. In order to address these gaps and to derive at an assessment report truly relevant for policy makers as well as other social and scientific actors, IPBES needs to widen its outreach to networks of scholars from the social sciences and the humanities and to inform them appropriately about the specific roles they could play within IPBES processes, particularly assessments.     

Not Forbidding Isn't Allowing: The Cognitive Basis of the Forbid-Allow Asymmetry

Previous research demonstrated that respondents are more likelyto endorse the idea that something should "not be allowed" (or"not be forbidden") than to endorse the idea that it shouldbe "forbidden" (or "allowed"), even though these expressionsseem logically equivalent. The hypothesis is advanced that thisasymmetry is due to the response behavior of indifferent respondentswho neither endorse that something should be forbidden nor thatit should be allowed, resulting in higher endorsements of thenegative form of both question wordings. Data consistent withthat explanation are presented and the cognitive mechanism underlyingthe response behavior of indifferents is discussed.     

Pushing back the margins: power,identity and marginalia in survey research with young people

The study of marginalia has not been widely discussed in social sciences research and occupies a marginal space in terms of methodological legitimacy. We highlight the value of paying attention to the ways in which participants speak back to the researcher. This paper draws on marginalia found in surveys written or drawn by young people in classrooms across South Wales, demonstrating how various notes and marks made spontaneously by participants can tell us something important and worthwhile about how young people engage with research. We position marginalia as a manifestation of complex power dynamics in the research process that illuminate participants’ negotiation of complex and multiple subjectivities in the literal margins and between the lines of the survey pages. Whilst the sensitive and rigorous analysis of marginalia is fraught with ethical and methodological challenges, we argue that paying closer attention to marginalia presents an opportunity for deeper engagement with participants when undertaking survey research.     

From boundary-work to boundary object: how biology left and re-entered the social sciences

In an archaeological spirit this paper comes back to a founding event in the construction of the twentieth-century episteme, the moment at which the life- and the social sciences parted ways and intense boundary-work was carried out on the biology/society border, with significant benefits for both sides. Galton and Weismann for biology, and Alfred Kroeber for anthropology delimit this founding moment and I argue, expanding on an existing body of historical scholarship, for an implicit convergence of their views. After this excavation, I look at recent developments in the life sciences, which I have named the ‘social turn’ in biology (Meloni, 2014), and in particular at epigenetics with its promise to destabilize the social/biological border. I claim here that today a different account of ‘the biological’ to that established during the Galton–Kroeber period is emerging. Rather than being used to support a form of boundary-work, biology has become a boundary object that crosses previously erected barriers, allowing different research communities to draw from it.     

International comparisons in science studies: what and why do we compare?

This article is based on experiences with EU-funded research projects over the last 10 years. They have posed many methodological difficulties: many classifications do not fit the objects and actual issues are not measured or observed. They question the effectiveness of comparative research in the social sciences as it is being conducted now. We need new methodologies to make comparisons without overlooking specific contexts and effective tools to analyze large amounts of data, taking into account translation problems and mixing various types of data: qualitative, quantitative, more or less certain, first-hand and second-hand, statistical, from case studies. Furthermore, international comparisons assume that we can identify good practice and common indicators. Scientific governance is based on such assumptions, but what happens to that model if the comparative methodology is not so relevant? Rethinking methodology for social sciences and humanities in science studies could lead to rethinking the governance of science itself.     

Why the social sciences won't become high-consensus,rapid-discovery science

A research front of rapid discovery, leaving a trail of cognitive consensus behind it, is characteristic of natural sciences since about the 17th century in Europe. The basis of this high-consensus, rapid-discovery science is not empiricism, since empirical research existed in the natural sciences before the 17th century. The key is appropriation of genealogies of research technologies, which are pragmatically manipulated and modified to produce new phenomena; high consensus results because there is higher social prestige in moving ahead to new research discoveries than by continuing to dispute the interpretation of older discoveries. The social sciences have not acquired this pattern of rapid discovery with high consensus behind the research front. Their fundamental disability is not lack of empirical research, nor failure to adhere to a scientific epistemology, nor the greater ideological controversy that surrounds social topics. What is fundamentally lacking in the social sciences is a genealogy of research technology, whose manipulation reliably produces new phenomena and a rapidly moving research front. Unless the social sciences invent new research hardware, they will likely never acquire much consensus or rapid discovery. Possibilities may exist for such development stemming from research technologies in microsociology and in artificial intelligence.     

Expectation management for public sector organizations

Transparency and collecting stakeholder feedback are becoming the norm also in the public sector. Though much of feedback is related to stakeholder experiences, we propose that it is more beneficial to study expectations than experiences, as expectations affect future satisfaction. This study reports a process of collecting and analyzing stakeholder expectations in one health-care oriented public sector organization in Finland, and reports how these expectations and their implications were assessed by the organization's top management. The study suggests that to ensure stakeholder satisfaction and organizational success, top management should be guided to work through the feedback. We propose a “fix or fit” approach where expectations are first grouped and then analyzed as either something that requires changing of organizational functions, or as something that requires guiding of stakeholders’ expectations to fit existing functions.     

Source of complexity in the social and managerial sciences: an extended Sen’s theorem

Many disciplines, including the social, behavioral, and management sciences, search for appropriate aggregated outcomes—a search that can be frustrated by complexities and inefficiencies. As shown here, explanations for these difficulties can be found in social choice. Indeed, it is shown why some of these problems are direct consequences of adopted approaches (e.g., management style, choice of a division of labor, or even the use of expertise and experts), and they cannot be avoided. These results are motivated by Sen’s Theorem from decision theory.     

Text(S) from place,space & non-place: discourses of poland

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the author has participated in several projects aiming to change the practice of management in Central Europe. He has now moved from trying to facilitate reform to writing about the cultural, managerial and intellectual difference(s) experienced. This confronts the possibility of text-ualizing these (Central European) experiences as something: (i) to be gazed at, (ii) as glances towards an object wherein (authorial) gaze took precedence, (iii) as an indefinable activity of gazing. In this article, these textual strategies are explained, and an example of each is presented and commented upon.     

Disability and the promises of technology: Technology, subjectivity and embodiment within an order of the normal

The topic of this article is the promises of technology for disabled people. The starting point is that disabled is not something one is but something one becomes, and, further, that disability is enacted and ordered in situated and quite specific ways. The question, then, is how people become, and are made, disabled - and, in particular, what role technologies and other material arrangements play in enabling and or disabling interactions. Drawing on a study of the uses of new technologies in the lives of disabled people in Norway, and recent work in disability studies as well as social studies of science and technology, this article explores precisely what positions and capacities are enabled; how these are made possible in practice; the specific configuration of subjectivity, embodiment and disability that emerges; and the limits to this mode of ordering disability and its technologies. The argument is that in this context the mobilization of new technologies works to build an order of the normal and turn disabled people into competent normal subjects. However, this strategy based on compensation achieves its goals only at a very high price: by continuing to reproduce boundaries between abled and disabled, and normal and deviant, which constitute some people as disabled in the first place. There are thus limits to normalization. And so, notwithstanding their generative and transformative power, technologies working within an order of the normal are implicated in the (re)production of the asymmetries that they and it seek to undo.     

Studying dynamic social processes with ARIMA modeling

With the increasing use of information and communication technologies, there is a wealth of longitudinal data available, which open up new research directions. This availability necessitates special analytical tools, namely time series analysis methods. The paper focuses on Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) modeling and provides an outline of how it can be used in social sciences to study dynamic social processes. It provides a typology of dynamics of social processes, using the distinctions between stability vs. fluctuation of a communication process and exogenous vs. endogenous changes. Five distinct types of dynamics of social processes are outlined: stability; linear trend; different attractors; permanent effect; and not permanent effect. Further, the paper examines how these types can be analyzed with the use of ARIMA modeling, and what this means for understanding of the underlying social process. Conclusions are drawn for the use of ARIMA in social sciences, and for understanding of dynamics of social processes.     

Zur Fundierung einer sozialen Lerntheorie

Almost all recent works on teaching and learning ascribe to the social aspects a significant role. However, the question why learning is something social remains unanswered, if it is asked at all. For the most part, only the observation of social activities surrounding learning processes delivers the raw material for the concepts on which sociality is based, whereas the conncections between learning and the relationships between human beings remain unconsidered. The following paper therefore pursues the question, in how far sociality can be seen as a constituting factor for learning processes. On the basis of the socialisation theory of Alfred Lorenzer it will be shown that in the relation of the child to it’s primary object of relationship interaction forms related to this object are practised, although the psychological situation of the infant does not make a separation between subject and object. Lorenzer therefore speaks of individualism and socialisation as a single unit of function. For this reason the others, whether factual or virtual, dwell within every learning process, however individual or autodidactic. This knowledge is currently supported by neurobiological research which therefore is drawn upon for comparison. The meaning of the social environment is above all stressed by the research in the genetic-environment-interaction as well as the discovery of mirror neurons. The aim of this discussion is also to show that the demand for social learning is not a mode of pedagogical welfare, but rather a man-oriented structural feature and therefore takes a key position in the definition of pedagogical professionality.