The Competition for Attention and the Evolution of Science

Whenever the amount of information produced exceeds the amount of attention available to consume it, a competition for attention is born. The competition is increasingly fierce in science where the exponential growth of information has forced its producers, consumers and gatekeepers to become increasingly selective in what they attend to and what they ignore. Paradoxically, as the criteria of selection among authors, editors and readers of scientific journal articles co-evolve, they show signs of becoming increasingly unscientific. The present article suggests how the paradox can be addressed with computer simulation, and what its implications for the future of science might be.Attention, Competition, Evolution, Information, Production, Consumption

Beliefs and expectations about the future of personal life and future of the world in a sample of Iranian and Canadian students

This study was aimed to assess expectations about future of personal life and future of the world among a sample of Iranian and Canadian students. 60 Iranians from Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Universities in Iran and and 62 Canadians from Carleton University in Canada completed a researcher made questionnaire asking their beliefs and expectations in four areas such as personal future, generational comparison, future of the world and personal life goals. The results showed that both Iranian and Canadian participants were more optimistic about their personal future than about the future of the world but Iranians were less optimistic about the future of the world than were Canadians. Both groups expect to be richer and have a higher quality of life than their parents, and both expect their children to have a lower quality of life than their parents and to be poorer than themselves. Cultural differences were found in the importance Iranians and Canadians attach to life goals. Results and implications are discussed

On the learning and transfer of multi-cue judgement processes

Three experiments employing a multiple cue probability learning situation were conducted to determine how multi-cue judgement processes are learned and transferred. Each subject was required to predict one of two responses (yes or no) to questions ostensibly answered by four types of stimulus persons each described by values on two dichotomous dimensions, marital status (married or single) and sex (male or female). In the pretest subjects were required to predict, without feedback, each stimulus person's responses to two such questions which varied in their relatedness. In the learning phase subjects continued to predict responses to only one of the two questions but after each prediction they were given feedback about its correctness. In the estimation phase subjects were required to estimate the proportion of yes responses given by each of the four types of stimulus person (married males, married females, single males and single females) and by each of the four stimulus characteristics (marrieds, singles, males and females) on the basis of feedback received in the learning phase. In the posttest subjects were again required to predict, without feedback, each stimulus person's responses to the two questions in the pretest. Each of the three experiments varied the proportion of yes responses given by the four stimulus types. Half the subjects in Experiment I learned and estimated proportions that varied as a function of a main effect of one stimulus dimension (an Additive function), the remainder learned and estimated proportions that varied as a function of the interaction between both stimulus dimensions (an Interactive function). All subjects in Experiment II learned and estimated proportions that varied as a function of the main effect of one stimulus dimension and the interaction between both stimulus dimensions (a Composite function). And all subjects in Experiment III learned and estimated proportions that varied as a function of the main effects of both stimulus dimensions (a Compound function). The results of Experiment I indicated that the Interactive function was learned at an almost identical rate as the Additive function. This supported a class of learning models which assumed that both functions were learned by associating responses with stimulus types or configurations, rather than by associating responses with stimulus characteristics or dimensions. The results of Experiment II indicated that the interaction component of the Composite function was learned more slowly than its main effect. This supported a class of judgement models which assumed that when responses to a stimulus type had not yet been learned, predictions about this type were made by extrapolating from similar stimulus types with learned associations. The results of Experiment III indicated that parameters of the extrapolation process underwent significant changes over time. Over all three experiments the time taken to estimate the proportion of yes responses to each stimulus type was shorter than the time taken to estimate the proportion of yes responses to each stimulus characteristic. However, over all three experiments, the variability of the stimulus type estimates was greater than the variability of the stimulus characteristic estimates. These results gave additional support to the hypothesis that the functions were learned cell-by-cell rather than dimension-by-dimension. It was hypothesized that in the posttest phase of all experiments the judgement process used to predict responses to the question in the learning phase would be transferred to a second question to the extent that the two questions were related in the pretest. Though attempts were made to vary the strength of the pretest relationship by an a priori selection of question pairs, pretest responses to all questions were found to be virtually unrelated to one another. However, in the posttest, the relationships of responses to all question pairs increased, and attained a rank order of strengths originally predicted by the a_ priori selection of questions. A transfer model, similar to the judgement model tested in Experiments II and III, was proposed to account for this finding.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat

Recursive Adaptation, Stopping Rules, and Ironies of Computing

Computers, like all other tools, inevitably create new problems as they are applied to solve exist

Teaching Social Simulation with Matlab

Programming languages for social simulations are rapidly proliferating. The result is a Tower of Babel effect: Many of us find it increasingly effortful to learn and to teach more programming languages and increasingly difficult to sustain an audience beyond the programming dialect of our choice. We need a programming lingua franca. Here I argue why Matlab might be worth our consideration, especially to teach simulation programming techniques.Simulation, Teaching, Social Processes, Programming Languages, Matlab

A Change of Heart: Uses of Qualitative Gerontology

Scientists produce much quantitative research hoping to improve people's decisions by changing the