Mustang Daily, November 14, 1994

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/studentnewspaper/5780/thumbnail.jp

The acquisition of sentence alternations : how children understand and use the English dative alternation.

Many English verbs expressing transfer can be used in two different constructions, one with no preposition (Rick gave Kate a coffee) and one with the preposition to (Rick gave a coffee to Kate). Whenever speakers use such a verb, they have to choose between these two constructions. This choice is determined in part by some features of the two objects: all other things being equal, speakers are more likely to use whichever construction places a shorter object before a longer one (Rick gave a coffee to the tall and well-dressed woman standing next the the desk at the southern side of the room), an animate object before an inanimate one (Rick gave Kate a coffee), a plural object before a singular one (Rick gave Kate and Roy an espresso machine), and so on. This system of feature-based choices is established very well for adult language using language corpora and experiments, but there are fewer corpora and experimental studies of child language. Because of this dearth of data, it is unknown how children acquire this choice-making system: do they start making choices determined by only one of these features and add the others piecemeal, or do they learn the system wholesale and only tweak which features win out over others? The three experiments in this thesis are a first step in answering this question. They are designed to map out the effects of length, animacy, and grammatical number on these choices over the course of typical first language acquisition. Because animacy is less stable a concept than length and number, the first experiment measures children’s and adults’ conceptions of animacy more indirectly. The second experiment presents the same participants with sentences using give where one of the two objects has been replaced by noise, and measures which of a constrained set of options they gaze at and which they choose to fill the noise gap. This provides measures of their expectations and preferences for the length, animacy, and number of the objects in these gaps. The third experiment has participants reproduce give sentences with different combinations of animacy, number, and construction. Participants reproduce sentences that conform to their choice-making system more easily. The results of these three experiments show that children as young as four years already prefer the animate-before-inanimate order. The shorter-before-longer preference is not found in any age group when the difference in lengths is just one syllable. This evidence adds to a growing body of literature converging on the finding that choices in ordering phenomena are affected by the same features wherever these phenomena occur, throughout language acquisition as well as across languages. Data from the second experiment also substantiates the common assumption that touchscreen input and eye gaze are both closely linked to attention. This will allow researchers in the cognitive sciences to use touchscreens as an alternative to eyetracking more confidently

Australian votes in the making: a critical review of voter behaviour research in Australia

Raphaella Kathryn Crosby conducted a critical review of the theory and method of voter behaviour research, with a focus on the 2019 Australian federal election. She found there was little agreement or consensus among the research, and no common narrative of the election. Using a Grounded Theory approach she identified five distinct battlegrounds of the 2019 election, and proposed two new theories to explain seemingly illogical voter behaviour

Area-wide Integrated Pest Management

Over 98% of sprayed insecticides and 95% of herbicides reach a destination other than their target species, including non-target species, air, water and soil. The extensive reliance on insecticide use reduces biodiversity, contributes to pollinator decline, destroys habitat, and threatens endangered species. This book offers a more effective application of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach, on an area-wide (AW) or population-wide (AW-IPM) basis, which aims at the management of the total population of a pest, involving a coordinated effort over often larger areas. For major livestock pests, vectors of human diseases and pests of high-value crops with low pest tolerance, there are compelling economic reasons for participating in AW-IPM. This new textbook attempts to address various fundamental components of AW-IPM, e.g. the importance of relevant problem-solving research, the need for planning and essential baseline data collection, the significance of integrating adequate tools for appropriate control strategies, and the value of pilot trials, etc. With chapters authored by 184 experts from more than 31 countries, the book includes many technical advances in the areas of genetics, molecular biology, microbiology, resistance management, and social sciences that facilitate the planning and implementing of area-wide strategies. The book is essential reading for the academic and applied research community as well as national and regional government plant and human/animal health authorities with responsibility for protecting plant and human/animal health

Virtue epistemology: some implications for education

The new field o f virtue epistemology has implications for educational debate. In order to identify these implications, I explore the seminal writings of Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski and develop them in directions promising for education. Both see knowledge as true belief arising in a socially-situated cognitive agent from epistemically-virtuous acts, rather than the traditional construal of true belief to which an idealised, individual knower has a duty to assent because o f particular properties of the belief. They differ in emphasis, however: Sosa stresses reliable mechanisms, while Zagzebski accentuates virtuous motivation. In dealing with Sosa’s reliabilist virtue epistemology, I analyse and build on his precursor Robert Nozick’s model in ways propitious for education, including an extension of his use of formal logic, and the importation of some concepts from artificial intelligence theory. One significant outcome of my work on reliabilist virtue epistemology is the importance of subjunctive conditionals, and thus a more nuanced view of educational propositional targets, involving both p and -p. Sosa’s two-tier model o f knowledge is also addressed. I compare Zagzebski to her historical forebear Aristotle, and then develop some lines of thought congenial to education. Zagzebski’s responsibilist virtue epistemology leads to named intellectual virtues. I supplement these and show how they can be co-ordinated between teacher and learner. Substantial consideration is also given to other-regarding epistemic virtue and to testimony. The model of learning and teaching defended amounts to virtuous belief-modification, carried out by an epistemic agent (the learner), using intellectual virtue to bring his doxastic web into closer cognitive alignment with reality via intersubjective triangulation using the webs of others (particularly that of the teacher). I argue that a combination o f the two approaches - virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism - yields a richer, more decent basis for education than rival conceptions, such as technical rationality, can provide