Understanding the truth about subjectivity

Results of two experiments show children’s understanding of diversity in personal preference is incomplete. Despite acknowledging diversity, in Experiment 1(N=108), 6- and 8-year-old children were less likely than adults to see preference as a legitimate basis for personal tastes and more likely to say a single truth could be found about a matter of taste. In Experiment 2 (N=96), 7- and 9-year-olds were less likely than 11- and 13-yearolds to say a dispute about a matter of preference might not be resolved. These data suggest that acceptance of the possibility of diversity does not indicate an adult-like understanding of subjectivity. An understanding of the relative emphasis placed on objective and subjective factors in different contexts continues to develop into adolescence

Understanding Something About Nothing: Radiation Zeros

Radiation symmetry is briefly reviewed, along with its historical, experimental, computational, and theoretical relevance. A sketch of the proof of a theorem for radiation zeros is used to highlight the connection between gauge-boson couplings and Poincare transformations. It is emphasized that while mostly bad things happen to good zeros, the weak-boson self-couplings continue to be intimately tied to the best examples of exact or approximate zeros.Comment: 12 pages, revtex. Two minor figures can be obtained by request; to appear in the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Vector Boson Self-Interactions, UCLA, Feb. 1-3, 199

Understanding Concerns about Community Relations in Calderdale

•This study examined attitudes and dispositions towards greater ethnic and religious diversity, as well as community relations more generally, among residents of predominantly white British neighbourhoods. It also examined people’s attitudes and responses to anti-minority protest by groups like the English Defence League (EDL)and towards cohesion policy and practices. A mixed methods design was used combining a (non-representative) household survey (n=212) in three selected research sites (Illingworth, Sowerby Bridge and Todmorden) with eight key informant interviews (across key institutions) and nine focus group discussions (across age-ranges and localities) with local people

Understanding Concerns about Community Relations in Kirklees

This study examined attitudes and dispositions towards greater ethnic and religious diversity, as well as community relations more generally, among residents of predominantly white British neighbourhoods. It also examined people’s attitudes and responses to anti-minority protest by groups like the English Defence League (EDL) and towards cohesion policy and practices. A mixed methods design was used combining a (non-representative) household survey (n=434) in four selected research sites (three areas in north Kirklees, one area in south Kirklees) with six key informant interviews (across key institutions) and fifteen focus group discussions (across age-ranges and localities) with local peopl

Understanding and Affecting Student Reasoning About Sound Waves

Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in terms of sets of resources, i.e. grouped building blocks of thinking that are commonly used in many different settings. Students in our university physics classes often used sets of resources that were different from the ones we wish them to use. By designing curriculum materials that ask students to think about the physics from a different view, we bring about improvement in student understanding of sound waves. Our curriculum modifications are specific to our own classes, but our description of student learning is more generally useful for teachers. We describe how students can use multiple sets of resources in their thinking, and raise questions that should be considered by both instructors and researchers.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, 28 references, 7 notes. Accepted for publication in the International Journal of Science Educatio

Understanding 'The Essential Fact about Capitalism': markets, competition and creative destruction

This paper examines two ways in which competition works in modern capitalist economies to improve productivity. The first is through incentives: encouraging improvements in technology, organisation and effort on the part of existing establishments and firms. The second is through selection: replacing less-productive with more productive establishments and firms, whether smoothly via the transfer of market shares from less to more productive firms, or roughly through the exit of some firms and the entry of others. We report evidence from the UK suggesting that selection is responsible for a large proportion of aggregate productivity growth in manufacturing, and that much of this is due in turn to selection between plants belonging to multi-plant firms. We also investigate whether the nature of the selection process varies across the business cycle and report evidence suggesting that it is less effective in booms and recessions. Finally, although in principle productivity catch-up by low-income countries ought to be easier than innovation at the frontier, in the absence of a well functioning competitive infrastructure (a predicament that characterises many poor countries), selection may be associated with much more turbulence and a lower rate of productivity growth than in relatively prosperous societies. We report results of a survey of firms in transition economies suggesting that, particularly in the former Soviet states (excluding the Baltic states), poor output and productivity performance has not been due to an unwillingness on the part of firms to change and adapt. On the contrary, there has been a great deal of restructuring, much new entry and large reallocations of output between firms; but such activity has been much more weakly associated with improved performance than we would expect in established market economies

Children's suggestibility in relation to their understanding about sources of knowledge

In the experiments reported here, children chose either to maintain their initial belief about an object's identity or to accept the experimenter's contradicting suggestion. Both 3– to 4–year–olds and 4– to 5–year–olds were good at accepting the suggestion only when the experimenter was better informed than they were (implicit source monitoring). They were less accurate at recalling both their own and the experimenter's information access (explicit recall of experience), though they performed well above chance. Children were least accurate at reporting whether their final belief was based on what they were told or on what they experienced directly (explicit source monitoring). Contrasting results emerged when children decided between contradictory suggestions from two differentially informed adults: Three– to 4–year–olds were more accurate at reporting the knowledge source of the adult they believed than at deciding which suggestion was reliable. Decision making in this observation task may require reflective understanding akin to that required for explicit source judgments when the child participates in the task