Peer Review — An Insult to the Reader and to Society: Milton's View

Peer review is, with near universality, now insisted upon as required pre-certification before a work can be published — allegedly, and questioningly, serving as a stamp of approval that assures the reader of its quality, validity, and accuracy. Today’s peer review is different in substance, but not in form, from the pre-publication censorship that so enraged Milton and led him to write his _Areopagitica_. The position he took nearly four hundred years ago reminds us that pre-publication restraint is the expres-sion of the interlinked fears of nonconformity, of the vulnerability of professional territorial turf, of disturbance of the status quo, and fear of independence of thought and resulting innovation. We are reminded that the principal target of intellectual suppression is the creative mind

Epistemological Intelligence

The monograph’s twofold purpose is to recognize epistemological intelligence as a distinguishable variety of human intelligence, one that is especially important to philosophers, and to understand the challenges posed by the psychological profile of philosophers that can impede the development and cultivation of the skills associated with epistemological intelligence

The Objectivity of Truth, Morality, and Beauty

Whether truth, morality, and beauty have an objective basis has been a perennial question for philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics, while for a great many relativists and skeptics it poses a problem without a solution. In this essay, the author proposes an innovative approach that shows how cognitive intelligence, moral intelligence, and aesthetic intelligence provide the basis needed for objective judgments about truth, morality, and beauty

Preliminary Evidence: Diagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease But Not MCI Affects Working Memory Capacity: 0.7 of 2.7 Memory Slots is Lost

Recently it was shown explicitly that free recall consists of two stages: the first few recalls empty working memory (narrowly defined) and a second stage, a reactivation stage, concludes the recall (Tarnow, 2015; for a review of the theoretical predictions see Murdock, 1974). It was also shown that the serial position curve changes in mild Alzheimer’s disease – lowered total recall and lessened primacy - are similar to second stage recall and different from recall from working memory.\ud The Tarnow Unchunkable Test (TUT, Tarnow, 2013) uses double integer items to separate out only the first stage, the emptying of working memory, by making it difficult to reactivate items due to the lack of intra-item relationships. \ud Here it is shown that subject TUT selects out diagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease but not MCI. On average, diagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease is correlated with a loss of 0.7 memory slots (out of an average of 2.7 slots).\ud The identification of a lost memory slot may have implications for improved stage definitions of Alzheimer’s disease and for remediation therapy via working memory capacity management. In conjunction with the Alzheimer’s disease process map, it may also be useful to identify the exact location of working memory.\u

A Precise Measure of Working Memory Reveals Subjects\ud Difficulties Managing Limited Capacity

Free recall consists of two separate stages: the emptying of working memory and reactivation [1]. The Tarnow Unchunkable Test (TUT, [2]) uses double integer items to separate out only the first stage by making it difficult to reactivate items due to the lack of intra-item relationships. \ud 193 Russian college students were tested via the internet version of the TUT. The average number of items remembered in the 3 item test was 2.54 items. In the 4 item test, the average number of items decreased to 2.38. This, and a number of other qualitative distribution differences between the 3 and 4 item tests, indicates that the average capacity limit of working memory has been reached at 3 items. This provides the first direct measurement of the unchunkable capacity limit of language based items.\ud That the average number of items remembered decreased as the number of items increased from 3 to 4 indicates that most subjects were unable to manage their working memories as the number of items increased just beyond the average capacity. Further evidence for the difficulty in managing the capacity limit is that 25% of subjects could not remember any items correctly at least in one of three 4 item tests and that the Pearson correlation between the 3 item and 4 item subject recalls was a relatively small 38%.\ud This failure of managing a basic memory resource should have important consequences for pedagogy including instruction, text book design and test design. Because working memory scores are important for academic achievement, it also suggests that an individual can gain academically by learning how to manage her or his capacity limit.\u

The Idea of Will

This article presents a new conceptual view on the conscious will. This new concept approaches our will from the perspective of the requirements of our neural-muscular system and not from our anthropocentric perspective. This approach not only repositions the will at the core of behavior control, it also integrates the studies of Libet and Wegner, which seem to support the opposite. The will does not return as an instrument we use to steer, but rather as part of the way we learn new automatic behavior and of how our neural system steers us. The new concept suggests that understanding of our will is more about understanding of our daily behavior then about the will itself

Sentence syntax trees should be made from morphemes. Semantically ordered trees

Some critique of usage of sentence parse trees in modern linguistics. Two propositions on constructing trees, as mentioned in the title. Introduction of an English-to-Tatar translator program that is being developed by the author. Precedence by specificity

Does a combined dialogic and print referencing reading program improve the vocabulary and print knowledge of children aged 4-5?

Dialogic reading (Whitehurst et al., 1988) has a positive effect on the vocabulary of young children (Whitehurst et al., 1994). Knowledge of print is a strong predictor of later reading ability (McCardle et al., 2001). Adults using a print referencing style refer explicitly to aspects of the printed word (Justice & Ezell, 2004). Justice et al. (2009a) recommended coupling the reading styles to see if their simultaneous use could improve both the vocabulary and print knowledge of young children. This current study is the first assessment of a combined approach. Within the between-subjects design 55 children aged 4-5 were recruited from 2 schools. The children in the experimental condition read with the researcher using the print referencing/ dialogic reading program in small groups over a 5 week period. The children in the control condition were read to in a more didactic way. The children’s receptive vocabulary was assessed, both before and after the program, using the PPVT-4 scale. They were also tested on their expressive and receptive vocabulary, and print knowledge using researcher-designed tests. A Quade’s rank analysis of covariance indicated there was a significant improvement in children’s print knowledge but no improvement in vocabulary. Correlational analysis suggested there were significant relationships between both receptive and expressive vocabulary, and print knowledge. Future studies of this program may be useful to determine whether a more long-term or intensive program might improve vocabulary and if the program could be adapted for use with pre-schoolers

A Morse alphabet

A compact alphabetic form of the Morse code is constructed following some simple rules. It is mostly useful in learning the Morse code and using it in writing form

Mosaic Brains? A Methodological Critique of Joel et al. (2015)

(no abstract