“You have died of dysentery” – History According to Video Games

Histor

Pinching and Swiping, or How I Won the Digital War

Histor

The Effect of Elaboration and Nonelaboration of Sign List Recall Tasks on Rate of Learning in Deaf Individuals

Purpose: Little research has been done on American Sign Language (ASL) based list learning in deaf individuals. The present study examined the effect of elaboration and non-elaboration of sign list recall tasks on rate of learning in deaf individuals. One of the main approaches for instruction of deaf individuals is the use of elaboration, or the combination of visual with linguistic information in the classroom. Visual aids or visual representations of information are commonly recommended as an effective strategy for teaching deaf individuals (DeafTEC, 2014). The main reasons for this approach are the assumption that vision is a stronger more efficient channel for instruction, “sensory compensation,” and the documented benefits of associating verbal with visual information, also known as dual coding theory (DCT; Paivio, 1971). Functional MRI studies have provided evidence of left temporal activation in deaf signers using ASL (Pettito, 2000), further suggesting that right activation, noted in fMRI studies of DCT, through the addition of pictures should support recall of ASL signs much like English words. The goal of the current study was to investigate the effectiveness of pairing visual imagery with ASL as a common instructional recommendation. Method: Twenty deaf adults, whose primary mode of communication was ASL, were administered two modified versions of the Signed Verbal Learning Test (SVLT; Morere, 2013). One version included line drawings of objects embedded into the video and paired with their associated sign. The other included black screens where the pictures would have been. Session conditions were mixed and administered 3 weeks apart to reduce potential familiarity effects. Participants’ rates of learning over five trials on each version of the SVLT were recorded and statistically analyzed to determine potential effects of the added visual imagery. Results: To test the hypothesis that visual images presented with ASL signs on a list recall task will improve rate of learning in deaf subjects, a repeated measures analysis of variance was conducted. The results show that there was no significant effect of experimental condition, picture/nonpicture, on rate of learning, F(1.0, 20.0) = 2.75, p = .113. Conclusions: While the number of participants and use of adults rather than children in the process of learning language, as well as content, in this study limit the strength of validity, these results suggest that the addition of pictures does not increase rate of learning for ASL signs. This outcome raises further questions regarding the benefit of elaboration in the instruction of deaf individuals whose primary mode of communication is ASL. Additionally, future studies investigating the effectiveness of alternative memory accommodations and strategies for ASL-based list learning could provide valuable information for educators of deaf individuals

Counterfactual History in a New Video Game

Histor

School Food Environments and Policies in U.S. Public Schools

Examines food environments in elementary, middle, and high schools based on seventeen factors, including foods and beverages offered, the availability of vending machines, and how they vary by grade level, location, and other school characteristics

Immigration law : a theological response

Peer reviewedPostprin

The Epistemology of Disagreement: Hume, Kant, and the Current Debate

The epistemological issue of disagreement comprises several related problems which arise in relation to disagreeing with another person. The central questions at issue are: (1) Can a body of evidence confer rationality on opposed propositions? (2) What is the relevance of unshareable evidence to disagreement? (3) What are one’s epistemic responsibilities in the context of disagreement? I consider several arguments from the recent disagreement literature which suggest that reasonable disagreements between people who have shared their evidence and are epistemic peers--i.e., they are equally informed about the disputed issue, and are roughly equal with respect to intelligence, thoughtfulness, carefulness, alertness, and so on--are not possible. I also consider several arguments which suggest that one may rationally persist in one’s views in spite of peer disagreement. In the course of considering these arguments, I discuss the role of “evidential seemings,” seemings of the form “It seems to one that evidence E supports proposition p”; their analogous relationship to perceptual seemings; and how such seemings might be outweighed by higher-order evidence provided by peer disagreement.I propose that the most difficult and interesting aspect of the peer disagreement problem is prolonged disagreement with a recognized epistemic peer, which may undermine one’s evidential seemings in the form of Parity: in the context of peer disagreement, both parties may be aware that things would seem just the same to them as they do if in fact the other party were correct and they were mistaken. This presents a localized skeptical problem that affects what one should believe in the context of such a disagreement, because prolonged peer disagreement puts one’s own evidential seemings into conflict. I propose and discuss three possible solutions to the Parity Problem, one inspired by David Hume, and two inspired by Immanuel Kant: (1) Practical considerations stemming from the underdetermination of one’s views by the available evidence as well as one’s larger epistemic goals can justify maintaining one’s view. Alternatively, judgments that someone else is an epistemic peer may be classified as either (2) empty regulative theoretical judgments (a Kantian category), or (3) non-theoretic judgments (analogous to judgments about taste). In either case, rational disagreement under Parity is possible

Faith and Disbelief

Is faith that p compatible with disbelief that p? I argue that it is. After surveying some recent literature on the compatibility of propositional (so-called faith-that) and non-propositional (faith-in) forms of faith with the lack of belief, I take the next step and offer several arguments for the thesis that both these forms of faith are also compatible, in certain cases, with outright disbelief. This is contrary to the views of some significant recent commentators on propositional faith, including Robert Audi and Daniel Howard-Snyder. The primary argument revolves around the possibility of maintaining a single faith through drastic changes in cognitive attitude. I argue that once we allow that propositional faith is compatible with weaker cognitive attitudes than belief, such as acceptance or assent, there is prima facie reason to consider propositional faith as sometimes compatible with disbelief. I then consider objections and offer some final reflections on the significance of the thesis