Logical epistemology unduly sways theories of thinking that formulate problems of nonmonotonic reasoning as issues of nondeductive operations on logically phrased beliefs, because the fundamental concepts underlying such reasoning have little to do with logic or belief. These formulations make the resulting theories inappropriately special and hide the characteristic structures of nonmonotonic reasoning amid many unrelated structures. We present a more direct mathematical development of nonmonotonic reasoning free of extraneous logical and epistemological assumptions, and argue that the insights gained in this way exemplify the benefits obtained by approaching psychology as a subject for mathematical investigation through the discipline of rational psychology. For Joseph A. Schatz, teacher and friend 1. Reasoning, logic, and psychology Nonmonotonic reasoning, the study of making and revising assumptions in a reasoned or principled way, needs little introduction in artificial...

Four studies investigated whether and when infants connect information about an actor's affect and perception to their action. Arguably, this may be a crucial way in which infants come to recognize the intentional behaviors of others. In Study 1 an actor grasped one of two objects in a situation where cues from the actor's gaze and expression could serve to determine which object would be grasped, specifically the actor first looked at and emoted positively about one object but not the other. Twelve-month-olds, but not 8-month-olds, recognized that the actor was likely to grasp the object which she had visually regarded with positive affect. Studies 2, 3, and 4 replicated the main finding from Study 1 with 12- and 14-month-olds and included several contrasting conditions and controls. These studies provide evidence that the ability to use information about an adult's direction of gaze and emotional expression to predict action is both present, and developing at the end of the first year of life. q 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

This chapter describes the successful linkage of basic research on visual imagery and spatial thinking to the activities of soldiers tasked to neutralize highly feared (Hackworth & England, 2002) and common weapons of both war and terrorism. More specifically, the chapter’s purpose is to describe contributions of fundamental science on visuo-spatial cognition to two applied projects whose impact illustrates the practical value of cognitive science. Both projects employed cognitive engineering to create training programs for operators of equipment that the U.S. military uses to detect landmines. The projects shared a common approach to training development: Equipment-specific models of expert operators ’ skills provided content for designing the training programs. The analyses supporting model construction suggested that significant components of the experts ’ skills involved spatial information processing. Visual information-processing studies, particularly research on visual imagery and mental synthesis, guided the analyses and the translation of findings into strategies for training. Translating the expert models ’ contents into training activities required more than just an 231 Chapter-09.qxd 6/26/2006 7:41 PM Page 232 232 STASZEWSKI understanding of the mechanisms that produced the expert operators’ performance. Here, studies of categorization of spatial displays and individual differences in spatial ability guided not only the design of training activities, but also the development and use of training aids. Both projects achieved their objectives and, more importantly, have improved U.S. soldiers ’ mine detection capability. Field test results for the training program developed for standard detection equipment used by the U.S. Army in countermine operations—the AN/PSS-12 (PSS-12, shown in

This study investigates how college students solve their cognitive conflicts when receiving peers ’ suggestions and corrections in online text revision. A sample of 45 undergraduate students were recruited to read their peer writers ’ texts, edit peer writers ’ errors, evaluate peer editors ’ corrections and suggestions, and finally rewrite their own texts. Stratified sampling was employed to identify three profiles from students I, II, and III in representing participants ’ resolution process of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium respectively. Results of this study showed that student I seemed to be unaware of cognitive conflicts between her first draft (prior knowledge) and peer editors ’ corrections and suggestions (new information). She then directly duplicated peer editors ’ corrections into her final draft. This resulted in few differences between her first and final drafts in spite of some revisions in grammatical forms. In contrast, student II and III were aware of cognitive conflicts between their first drafts and peer editors ’ suggestions and corrections. They were actively engaged in the process of evaluation in making choices and decisions on accepting or rejecting peer editors ’ suggestions and corrections. They then revised their texts in local revision (grammatical corrections), global revision (corrections on the style, organization, or development of a text), and perspective revision (e.g. to view their own texts from readers ’ perspectives). This study suggests the importance of arousing students ’ language awareness of

This article was originally the presidential address for the 2010