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Summary Can preverbal infants utilize logical reasoning such as disjunctive inference? This logical operation requires keeping two alternatives open (A or B), until one of them is eliminated (if not A), allowing the inference: B is true. We presented to 10-month-old infants an ambiguous situation in which a female voice was paired with two faces. Subsequently, one of the two faces was presented with the voice of a male. We measured infants' preference for the correct face when both faces and the initial voice were presented again. Infant pupillary response was measured and utilized as an indicator of cognitive load at the critical moment of disjunctive inference. We controlled for other possible explanations in three additional experiments. Our results show that 10-month-olds can correctly deploy disjunction and negation to disambiguate scenes, suggesting that disjunctive inference does not rely on linguistic constructs. Highlights • 10-month-old infants have no logical operators in their lexicon • Nevertheless, they can use logical deduction in case of an ambiguous situation • They correctly deduce which faces and voices are paired through disjunctive inference • Infants' performance in this task can be followed by measuring their pupil dilation Biological Science, Neuroscience, Cognitive neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience Graphical abstract

In this paper, we investigate patterns of persistence and change affecting the syntax of nominal structures in Italiot Greek in comparison to Modern (and Ancient) Greek, and we explore the role of Southern Italo-Romance as a potential source of interference. Our aim is to highlight the dynamics that favor syntactic contact in this domain: we provide an overview of the social context where these dynamics have taken place and of the linguistic structures involved.

AbstractScientific writings, as one essential part of human culture, have evolved over centuries into their current form. Knowing how scientific writings evolved is particularly helpful in understanding how trends in scientific culture developed. It also allows us to better understand how scientific culture was interwoven with human culture generally. The availability of massive digitized texts and the progress in computational technologies today provide us with a convenient and credible way to discern the evolutionary patterns in scientific writings by examining the diachronic linguistic changes. The linguistic changes in scientific writings reflect the genre shifts that took place with historical changes in science and scientific writings. This study investigates a general evolutionary linguistic pattern in scientific writings. It does so by merging two credible computational methods: relative entropy; word-embedding concreteness and imageability. It thus creates a novel quantitative methodology and applies this to the examination of diachronic changes in the Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society (PTRS, 1665–1869). The data from two computational approaches can be well mapped to support the argument that this journal followed the evolutionary trend of increasing professionalization and specialization. But it also shows that language use in this journal was greatly influenced by historical events and other socio-cultural factors. This study, as a “culturomic” approach, demonstrates that the linguistic evolutionary patterns in scientific discourse have been interrupted by external factors even though this scientific discourse would likely have cumulatively developed into a professional and specialized genre. The approaches proposed by this study can make a great contribution to full-text analysis in scientometrics.

It is known that, although the level of light is the primary determinant of pupil size, cognitive factors can also affect pupil diameter. It has been demonstrated that photographs of the sun produce pupil constriction independently of their luminance and other low-level features, suggesting that high-level visual processing may also modulate pupil response. Here, we measure pupil response to artistic paintings of the sun, moon, or containing a uniform lighting, that, being mediated by the artist's interpretation of reality and his technical rendering, require an even higher level of interpretation compared with photographs. We also study how chromatic content and spatial layout affect the results by presenting grey-scale and inverted versions of each painting. Finally, we assess directly with a categorization test how subjective image interpretation affects pupil response. We find that paintings with the sun elicit a smaller pupil size than paintings with the moon, or paintings containing no visible light source. The effect produced by sun paintings is reduced by disrupting contextual information, such as by removing color or manipulating the relations between paintings features that make more difficult to identify the source of light. Finally, and more importantly, pupil diameter changes according to observers' interpretation of the scene represented in the same stimulus. In conclusion, results show that the subcortical pupillary response to light is modulated by subjective interpretation of luminous objects, suggesting the involvement of cortical systems in charge of cognitive processes, such as attention, object recognition, familiarity, memory, and imagination.

open 2 no Rebus and acrophony are crucial in the development of ancient invented scripts from Mesopotamia (cuneiform), China, Mesoamerica (Maya), Egypt, and scripts which may have been created through exposure to literate cultures (Anatolian Hieroglyphic and Nahuatl). Yet, these two linguistic mechanisms have been understudied from a terminological, contextual and comparative perspective. This article aims to address issues regarding their definition, development and application in script formation. The scope of our study is all attested writing systems that are largely iconic in their sign repertoire, and whose phonetic values were generated anew based on an underlying language (hence ‘invented’). This allows us to chart how writing systems are created ex novo and what trajectories of development are put into practice when phonetisation takes place. We show some reliable patterns of universal mechanisms, observable from a comparative perspective. We also demonstrate that these patterns attest to a verifiable degree of phonological awareness that ties the process of phonetisation to the path to script formation. We further highlight that the tendencies discerned from deciphered writing systems provide ways to test hypotheses in the study of iconic writing systems which are undeciphered, such as the Indus Valley script and the Rongorongo of Easter Island embargoed_20210320 Miguel Valério; Silvia Ferrara Miguel Valério; Silvia Ferrara

© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Why do grandparents invest so heavily in their grandchildren and what impact does this investment have on families? A multitude of factors influence the roles grandparents play in their families. Here, we present an interdisciplinary perspective of grandparenting incorporating theory and research from evolutionary biology, sociology and economics. Discriminative grandparental solicitude, biological relatedness and the impact of resource availability are three phenomena used to illustrate how these perspectives, within such a multi-level approach, add value by complementing not competing with each other. Changing demographics mean there is greater demand and opportunity for actively engaged grandparents to help their families, especially in times of need. Grandparents have been filling this emerging niche because in some societies the role of community and government never has, or increasingly cannot, meet the diverse needs of families. Built on an empirical foundation of descriptive and correlational research, grandparent research has rapidly entered a phase where the potential causal relationships between grandparents’ roles and family health, well-being and structure can be scrutinised. Together, these investigations are producing high-quality evidence that ultimately can support informed public policy and service delivery decisions. We finish by detailing two examples of such research efforts that highlight opportunities for future research.

According to influential accounts of scientific method, e.g., critical rationalism, scientific knowledge grows by repeatedly testing our best hypotheses. But despite the popularity of hypothesis tests in statistical inference and science in general, their philosophical foundations remain shaky. In particular, the interpretation of non-significant results---those that do not refute the tested hypothesis---poses a major philosophical challenge. To what extent do they corroborate the tested hypothesis or provide a reason to accept it? Karl R. Popper sought for measures of corroboration that could adequately answer this question. According to Popper, corroboration is different from probability-raising, and grounded in the predictive success and testability of a hypothesis. As such, corroboration becomes an indicator of the scientific value of a hypothesis and guides our practical preferences over hypotheses which have been subjected to severe tests. This paper proves two impossibility results for corroboration measures that are specified along the above lines. The generality of these results shows that Popper's qualitative characterization of corroboration must be misguided. I explore what a more promising, and scientifically useful concept of corroboration could look like.

This article briefly appraises the state of the art in the history of emotions, looking to its theoretical and methodological underpinnings and some of the notable scholarship in the contemporary field. The predominant focus, however, lies on the future direction of the history of emotions, based on a convergence of the humanities and neurosciences, and according to important observations about the biocultural status of human beings. While the article stops short of exhorting historians to become competent neuroscientists themselves, it does demand that historians of emotions take note of the implications of social neuroscientific research in particular, with a view to capturing the potential of the emotions to unlock the history of experience, and with a mind to unlocking the political importance of work in this area, namely, the shifting ground of what it means —how it feels— to be human.

[FR] La responsabilité individuelle de l’homme est une notion centrale en théologie musulmane. Or une justification rationnelle de notre responsabilité morale présuppose que nos actes sont d’une certaine manière sous notre contrôle. Pour les théologiens, il était donc important de formuler une théorie de l’acte humain qui tienne compte de l’autodétermination humaine. Cet article analyse les réflexions d’alBāqillānī sur le sujet de l’acte humain dans le contexte des discussions qui eurent lieu en son temps. Je récapitulerai brièvement la théorie muʿtazilite du libre arbitre, théorie à laquelle s’opposa l’école ašʿarite en formulant sa propre position. Ensuite, j’esquisserai les fondements du point de vue d’Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ašʿarī qui proposa de baser l’autodétermination humaine sur la volontarité. Finalement, je discuterai comment al-Bāqillānī développe sa théorie en partant des idées d’al-Ašʿarī. Sur la base des volumes préservés de la Hidāyat al-mustaršidīn d’al-Bāqillānī, j’argumenterai qu’il envisage de donner plus de cohérence à la célèbre théorie d’“acquisition” (kasb) en soutenant deux principes: a) l’acte humain est créé par dieu; b) malgré cela, il existe une corrélation réelle entre l’homme et son acte “acquis” [EN] Man's individual responsibility is a very central notion in Muslim theology. Rational foundations for moral responsibility presuppose, however, that man has in some way control over his actions. It was therefore of central concern to theologians to formulate theories of action that were coherent enough to account for human self-determination. This article examines al-Bāqillānī's reflections on human acts and attempts to contextualise his thought within the discussions of his time. I will briefly review the Muʿtazilites’ theory of freedom of action, against which the Ašʿarite school developed its own position. I will then outline the fundamentals of the opposing standpoint adopted by Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ašʿarī, who proposed to base human self-determination on voluntariness. Finally, I will discuss how al-Bāqillānī drew on and further developed al-Ašʿarī's ideas. Based on the extant volumes of al-Bāqillānī's Hidāyat al-mustaršidīn, I argue that he attempts to coherently organise the school's understanding of the famous theory of “acquisition” (kasb) by affirming two fundamental principles: a) that human acts are created by God and b) that there is nevertheless a real correlation between man and his “acquired” acts. This research was supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation’s M4HUMAN programme Peer reviewed