Getting It Together: Psychological Unity and Deflationary Accounts of Animal Metacognition

Experimenters claim some nonhuman mammals have metacognition. If correct, the results indicate some animal minds are more complex than ordinarily presumed. However, some philosophers argue for a deflationary reading of metacognition experiments, suggesting that the results can be explained in first-order terms. We agree with the deflationary interpretation of the data but we argue that the metacognition research forces the need to recognize a heretofore underappreciated feature in the theory of animal minds, which we call Unity. The disparate mental states of an animal must be unified if deflationary accounts of metacognition are to hold and untoward implications avoided. Furthermore, once Unity is acknowledged, the deflationary interpretation of the experiments reveals an elevated moral standing for the nonhumans in question

Horace H. Comstock, John Kean, and William Baker with Norman Little, August 2, 1836

Indenture for the sale of land in Saginaw, Michigan from Norman Little to Horace H. Comstock, John Kean, and William Baker.https://digitalcommons.kean.edu/lhc_1830s/1112/thumbnail.jp

The Detroit Youth Tobacco Survey: Results from Middle School Students

Background: The Detroit Youth Tobacco Survey (DYTS) provided representative data from middle school students, 84.7% of whom were African-American/Black, on self-reported prevalence of tobacco use and awareness, smoking cessation, peer and family influence, environmental tobacco smoke, media exposure and access to tobacco. Results: Over half of the students (53.0%; +/-4.1) used some form of tobacco at least once, with the majority trying cigarettes (47.5%; +/-3.9) and about a quarter (23.1%; +/-3.5) trying cigars. Ten percent (10.2%; +/-2.3) tried bidis or kreteks, and 7.4% (+/-1.4) tried smokeless tobacco. Of middle school students who smoked, nearly one out of four (23.2%; +/-3.1) had their first cigarette before age eleven. Smokers were more likely to have parents who smoked. The majority of middle school students who smoked would like to quit. A third had practiced ways to say “no” to tobacco at school and a quarter had participated in a community event discouraging them from using tobacco. Conclusion: Additional consideration should be given to innovative strategies for middle school students for smoking prevention, reduction of tobacco use and minimizing exposure to environmental tobacco smoke

Developing a real-time translator from neural signals to text: An articulatory phonetics approach

New developments in brain-computer interfaces (BCI) harness machine learning to decode spoken language from electrocorticographic (ECoG) and local field potential (LFP) signals. Orienting to signals associated with motor movements that produce articulatory features improves phoneme detection quality: individual phonemes share features, but possess a unique feature set; classification by feature set allows for a finer distinction between neural signals. Data indicates vowels are more detectable, consonants have greater detection accuracy, place of articulation informs precision, and manner of articulation affects recall. Findings have implications for the multisensory integration of speech and the role of motor imagery in phonemic neural representations

New American Hesperiidae

23 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.Includes bibliographical references (p. 22-23)

Scholarship in Review 89(1)

Scholarship in Review was a magazine highlighting research and scholarly activities at Central Washington University, published by the Office of Graduate Studies and Research.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/scholarship_in_review/1005/thumbnail.jp

Variation in Heliconius charitonius

21 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.Includes bibliographical references (p. 19-21)

Biometrics of Heliconius charitonius

53 p. : ill. ; 24 cm