When Starting Over Makes More Sense

When the Use of p Values Actually Makes Some Sense

The consequences of using NHST vary for different areas of psychological research, depending principally on the sizes of the samples typically employed, and on the sizes of the population effects being tested. In the case of mainstream academic experimentation, sample sizes rarely exceed 200 per condition, and it is reasonable to assume that no more than 20% of the experiments involve true popu...

When More Evidence Makes Word Learning Less Suspicious

One challenging problem that children overcome in learning new words is recognizing the hierarchical category of a label. For instance, one object could be called a Dalmatian, a dog, or an animal. Xu and Tenenbaum (2007) proposed a Bayesian model to explain how 3.5 to 5-year-olds solve this ambiguity. They emphasized children's appreciation for “suspicious coincidences:” a label applied to thre...

Polymeric Gas Separation Membranes: What Makes them Industrially more Attractive?

When Less is Less and When Less is More: Starting Small with Staged Input

It has been suggested that external and/or internal limitations may paradoxically lead to superior learning (i.e., the concepts of “starting small” and “less is more”; Elman, 1993; Newport, 1990). In this paper, we explore what conditions might lead to a starting small effect. We report on four artificial grammar learning experiments with human participants. In Experiment 1A, we found an effect...

The platypus makes new sense

The platypus makes new sense M O RE THAN 50 years ago, the great Australian naturalist Harry Burrell speculated that the platypus had a sixth sense. He reasoned that plarypi could not find freely swimming prey in muddy streams by touch alone. And yet they only fed underwater, shutting their eyes, ears, and oses when doing so. It seemed another ense was necessary. A research group in Phys iology...