A tale of two cafes:What's the difference betwen the Flore and the Deux Magots? The essence of fashionabilitty.

Taha Toros Arşivi, Dosya Adı: Taha Torosİstanbul Kalkınma Ajansı (TR10/14/YEN/0033) İstanbul Development Agency (TR10/14/YEN/0033

Constraining bridges between levels of analysis : a computational justification for locally Bayesian learning

Different levels of analysis provide different insights into behavior: computational-level analyses determine the problem an organism must solve and algorithmic-level analyses determine the mechanisms that drive behavior. However, many attempts to model behavior are pitched at a single level of analysis. Research into human and animal learning provides a prime example, with some researchers using computational-level models to understand the sensitivity organisms display to environmental statistics but other researchers using algorithmic-level models to understand organisms’ trial order effects, including effects of primacy and recency. Recently, attempts have been made to bridge these two levels of analysis. Locally Bayesian Learning (LBL) creates a bridge by taking a view inspired by evolutionary psychology: Our minds are composed of modules that are each individually Bayesian but communicate with restricted messages. A different inspiration comes from computer science and statistics: Our brains are implementing the algorithms developed for approximating complex probability distributions. We show that these different inspirations for how to bridge levels of analysis are not necessarily in conflict by developing a computational justification for LBL. We demonstrate that a scheme that maximizes computational fidelity while using a restricted factorized representation produces the trial order effects that motivated the development of LBL. This scheme uses the same modular motivation as LBL, passing messages about the attended cues between modules, but does not use the rapid shifts of attention considered key for the LBL approximation. This work illustrates a new way of tying together psychological and computational constraints

How Could Children’s Storybooks Promote Empathy? A Conceptual Framework Based on Developmental Psychology and Literary Theory

This conceptual paper proposes a framework for understanding the developmental mechanisms and literary characteristics that bind children’s storybooks with empathy. The article begins with a taxonomy of empathy composed of three key continuous dimensions: cognitive/emotional empathy, empathy for in-group and out-group members and empathy with positive and negative consequences. Insights from developmental psychology and literary theory form the basis for an interdisciplinary framework based on three premises: (1) book-reading can support empathy if it fosters in-group/out-group identification and minimizes in-group/out-group bias; (2) identification with characters who are dissimilar from the readers is the most valuable contribution of children’s storybooks to cognitive empathy; and (3) the quality of language positions children’s storybooks as an exceptional, but not exclusive, empathy-building form of fictional narratives. Implications for future intervention and empirical work are provided

La reescritura de la naturaleza: Darwin novelista

Traducción: Leticia Mora Perdom

Talk: "Lincoln and Darwin"

Plan II Honors Progra

High & Low : Modern Art and Popular Culture

Outlining histories of graffiti, caricature, comics and advertising, Varnedoe and Gopnik examine the interplay between popular culture and major 20th century movements in art. Bibl. 21 p