887 research outputs found
The cultural fabric of human causal cognition
Causal cognition emerges early in development and confers an important advantage for survival. But does this mean that it is universal in humans? Our cross-disciplinary review suggests a broad evolutionary basis for core components of causal cognition but also underlines the essential role of culturally transmitted content as being uniquely human. The multiple ways in which both content and the key mechanisms of cultural transmission generate cultural diversity suggest that causal cognition in humans is not only colored by their specific cultural background but also shaped more fundamentally by the very fact that humans are a cultural species.acceptedVersio
Causal Asymmetry Across Cultures: Assigning Causal Roles in Symmetric Physical Settings
Causal cognition in the physical domain has been treated for a long time as if it were (1) objective and (2) independent of culture. Despite some evidence to the contrary, however, these implicit assumptions have been rarely ever explored systematically. While the pervasive tendency of people to consider one of two equally important entities as more important for bringing about an effect (as reported by White, 2006) meanwhile provides one type of counter-evidence for the first assumption, respective findings remained mute to the second. In order to scrutinize how robust such tendencies are across cultures – and, if not, on which aspects of culture they may depend – we asked German and Tongan participants to assign prime causality in nine symmetric settings. For most settings, strong asymmetries in both cultures were found, but not always in the same direction, depending on the task content and by virtue of the multifaceted character of “culture.” This indicates that causal asymmetries, while indeed being a robust phenomenon across cultures, are also modulated by task-specific properties (such as figure–ground relations), and are subject to cultural influences
The Cultural Constitution of Cognition: Taking the Anthropological Perspective
To what extent is cognition affected by culture? And how might cognitive science profit from an intensified collaboration with anthropology in exploring this issue? In order to answer these questions, we will first give a brief description of different perspectives on cognition, one that prevails in most cognitive sciences – particularly in cognitive psychology – and one in anthropology. Three basic assumptions of cognitive science regarding the separability of content and process, the context-independence of processing, and the culture-independence of processing will then be discussed. We argue that these assumptions need to be questioned and scrutinized cross-culturally. A thorough examination of these issues would profit considerably from collaboration with anthropologists, not only by enabling deeper insight into the cultures under scrutiny, but also by synergistic effects that would allow for a more comprehensive understanding of human cognition
Knowledge is belief – and shaped by culture
Under embargo until: 2022-05-19Phillips and colleagues claim that the representation of knowledge is more basic than the representation of belief, presupposing them to be categorically distinct mental states with distinct evolutionary purposes. We argue that the relationship between the two is much more complex, is further shaped by culture and language, and leaves its mark on manifestations of theory of mind and teaching.acceptedVersio
Renormalized transport of inertial particles in surface flows
Surface transport of inertial particles is investigated by means of the
perturbative approach, introduced by Maxey (J. Fluid Mech. 174, 441 (1987)),
which is valid in the case the deflections induced on the particle trajectories
by the fluid flow can be considered small. We consider a class of compressible
random velocity fields, in which the effect of recirculations is modelled by an
oscillatory component in the Eulerian time correlation profile. The main issue
we address here is whether fluid velocity fluctuations, in particular the
effect of recirculation, may produce nontrivial corrections to the streaming
particle velocity. Our result is that a small (large) degree of recirculation
is associated with a decrease (increase) of streaming with respect to a
quiescent fluid. The presence of this effect is confirmed numerically, away
from the perturbative limit. Our approach also allows us to calculate the
explicit expression for the eddy diffusivity, and to compare the efficiency of
diffusive and ballistic transport.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, submitted to JF
PT-symmetry breaking in complex nonlinear wave equations and their deformations
We investigate complex versions of the Korteweg-deVries equations and an Ito
type nonlinear system with two coupled nonlinear fields. We systematically
construct rational, trigonometric/hyperbolic, elliptic and soliton solutions
for these models and focus in particular on physically feasible systems, that
is those with real energies. The reality of the energy is usually attributed to
different realisations of an antilinear symmetry, as for instance PT-symmetry.
It is shown that the symmetry can be spontaneously broken in two alternative
ways either by specific choices of the domain or by manipulating the parameters
in the solutions of the model, thus leading to complex energies. Surprisingly
the reality of the energies can be regained in some cases by a further breaking
of the symmetry on the level of the Hamiltonian. In many examples some of the
fixed points in the complex solution for the field undergo a Hopf bifurcation
in the PT-symmetry breaking process. By employing several different variants of
the symmetries we propose many classes of new invariant extensions of these
models and study their properties. The reduction of some of these models yields
complex quantum mechanical models previously studied.Comment: 50 pages, 39 figures (compressed in order to comply with arXiv
policy; higher resolutions maybe obtained from the authors upon request
Eddy diffusivities of inertial particles under gravity
The large-scale/long-time transport of inertial particles of arbitrary mass
density under gravity is investigated by means of a formal multiple-scale
perturbative expansion in the scale-separation parametre between the carrier
flow and the particle concentration field. The resulting large-scale equation
for the particle concentration is determined, and is found to be diffusive with
a positive-definite eddy diffusivity. The calculation of the latter tensor is
reduced to the resolution of an auxiliary differential problem, consisting of a
coupled set of two differential equations in a (6+1)-dimensional coordinate
system (3 space coordinates plus 3 velocity coordinates plus time). Although
expensive, numerical methods can be exploited to obtain the eddy diffusivity,
for any desirable non-perturbative limit (e.g. arbitrary Stokes and Froude
numbers). The aforementioned large-scale equation is then specialized to deal
with two different relevant perturbative limits: i) vanishing of both Stokes
time and sedimenting particle velocity; ii) vanishing Stokes time and finite
sedimenting particle velocity. Both asymptotics lead to a greatly simplified
auxiliary differential problem, now involving only space coordinates and thus
easy to be tackled by standard numerical techniques. Explicit, exact
expressions for the eddy diffusivities have been calculated, for both
asymptotics, for the class of parallel flows, both static and time-dependent.
This allows us to investigate analytically the role of gravity and inertia on
the diffusion process by varying relevant features of the carrier flow, as e.g.
the form of its temporal correlation function. Our results exclude a universal
role played by gravity and inertia on the diffusive behaviour: regimes of both
enhanced and reduced diffusion may exist, depending on the detailed structure
of the carrier flow.Comment: 8 figures (12 plots), submitted to JF
On the origin of the anomalous behaviour of 2+ excitation energies in the neutron-rich Cd isotopes
Recent experimental results obtained using decay and isomer
spectroscopy indicate an unusual behaviour of the energies of the first excited
2 states in neutron-rich Cd isotopes approaching the N=82 shell closure.
To explain the unexpected trend, changes of the nuclear structure far-off
stability have been suggested, namely a quenching of the N=82 shell gap already
in Cd, only two proton holes away from doubly magic Sn. We
study the behaviour of the 2 energies in the Cd isotopes from N=50 to N=82,
i.e. across the entire span of a major neutron shell using modern beyond mean
field techniques and the Gogny force. We demonstrate that the observed low
2 excitation energy in Cd close to the N=82 shell closure is a
consequence of the doubly magic character of this nucleus for oblate
deformation favoring thereby prolate configurations rather than spherical ones.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to be publised in Phys. Lett.
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