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Previous research has demonstrated the essential role of time perspective (TP) for numerous vital outcomes, such as health, social behaviors, and well-being. Surprisingly, though, to date the association between TP and religiosity has not been systematically investigated. In the present paper, in a series of three studies (a total N  > 700), we provide an in-depth empirical insight into the complex interplay between individual differences in the process of temporal framing of human experience and various features of religiosity, including general belief in God, Allport's religious orientations, Huber's centrality of religiosity, and religious fundamentalism. Most importantly, we discovered that positive aspects of religiosity correlated with Past-Positive and Future(-Positive) TP. On the other hand, present temporal focus was associated with instrumental and fundamentalist approaches to religious belief. Altogether, then, our results suggest that religiosity is linked to a broad temporal profile. Moreover, it was also found that associations between time perspectives and religiosity remain significant after controlling for personality traits. The present paper discusses these findings in light of time perspective theory and reflects upon possible causal mechanisms underpinning the observed associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This paper investigates the role of epistemic belief in affecting Internet users' decision to share online health rumors. To delve deeper, it examines how the characteristics of rumors-true or false, textual or pictorial, dread or wish-shape the decision-making among epistemologically naïve and robust users separately.Methods: An experiment was conducted. Responses were obtained from 110 participants, who were exposed to eight rumors. This yielded 880 cases (110 participants×8 rumors) for statistical analyses.Results: Epistemologically naive participants were more likely to share online health rumors than epistemologically robust individuals. Epistemologically robust participants were more likely to share textual rumors than pictorial ones. However, there were no differences between true and false rumors or between dread and wish rumors for either epistemologically naive or robust participants.Conclusions: This paper contributes to the understanding of users' health information sharing behavior. It encourages users to cultivate robust epistemic belief in order to improve their online health information processing skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strong version of scientism, such as that of Alex Rosenberg, says, roughly, that natural science reliably delivers rational belief or knowledge, whereas common sense sources of belief, such as moral intuition, memory, and introspection, do not. In this paper I discuss ten reasons that adherents of scientism have or might put forward in defence of scientism. The aim is to show which considerations could plausibly count in favour of scientism and what this implies for the way scientism ought to be formulated. I argue that only three out of these ten reasons potentially hold water and that the evidential weight is, therefore, on their shoulders. These three reasons for embracing scientism are, respectively, particular empirical arguments to the effect that there are good debunking explanations for certain common sense beliefs, that there are incoherences and biases in the doxastic outputs of certain common sense sources of belief, and that beliefs that issue from certain common sense doxastic sources are illusory. From what I argue, it follows that only a version of scientism that is significantly weaker than many versions of scientism that we find in the literature is potentially tenable. I conclude the paper by stating what such a significantly weaker version of scientism could amount to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we address risk assessments of critical operations and in particular the safe job analysis, the main aim being to improve these risk assessments by better reflecting uncertainties and the unforeseen. The work is based on the conviction that current practice does not adequately deal with potential surprises and the knowledge dimension of risk. An adjusted risk assessment approach is presented and illustrated using an example from the oil and gas industry. Several incidents in the oil and gas industry in recent years have shown a lack of proper understanding of risk, and the present paper is to be seen as a contribution to the work of improving the understanding of risk on the part of the personnel involved in critical operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• These methods accurately and efficiently implement fusion of N-D non-Gaussian PDFs • Improving efficiency in belief fusion can be done with little cost to accuracy • The proposed technique is dramatically faster than grid-based fusion • Formulation of multi-Gaussian shapes allows for useful modeling of certain problems • The proposed decision-making method makes full use of probabilistic information This paper describes the mathematical formulation of belief fusion of multi-Gaussian probability distribution functions (PDFs) in N -D, as well as the construction of some useful non-Gaussian structures. An emphasis of this work is the development of concise algorithms for constructing and efficiently fusing these non-Gaussian structures in N -space. In order to address decision-making using multi-Gaussian PDFs, an efficient probabilistic decision-making scheme is introduced and validated here. We investigate the trade-off between precision and efficiency in comparison with spatially discretizing fusion methods, concluding that the proposed techniques offer an improvement in both accuracy and efficiency for many contexts requiring non-Gaussian representation of belief. The proposed framework can be implemented in a diverse range of scenarios, potentially with real-time capability, and often without substantial sacrifice in accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Object Association with a hierarchical credal fusion for vehicular perception. • Robust modeling and identification of camera and 3D LiDAR data de- scribing multi-features of objects. • Association ambiguity resolving thanks to conflict management fusion rules. • Intensive analysis performed on the KITTI database showing the benefits of the proposed solution. In this study, the object association issue is tackled in order to ensure a correct affiliation of perceived objects with known ones. The proposed approach is based on the evidence theory and includes multiple object features in order to manage pairing issues in a complex environment. Two heterogeneous information sources are built based on kinematic features related to the objects: their position and size on one hand and their direction of motion on the other hand. A study on the estimation of the belief expressed by these independent sources is performed. The multiple features are managed through a hierarchical fusion which includes two levels of combination. The first level is a pairwise combination, fusing position and orientation data of each pair of objects and the second one processes sequentially the previously combined information over all possible associations. This paper also investigates the effectiveness of the association according to different combination operators at both levels. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated in the Intelligent Transportation Systems context for which environmental perception is crucial. The validation exploits a large amount of real data issued from a camera and a 3D LiDAR from the KITTI database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to quickly identify parent beliefs, intentions, and behaviors toward childhood vaccination, especially parents of children 19 to 35 months. This paper describes parental immunization beliefs, intentions, and behaviors; assesses the relationships between beliefs and intentions regarding child immunization and actual behaviors; and assesses whether beliefs, intentions, and/or behaviors varied across demographic subgroups. A sample of parents, ages 18 and older, from a mobile panel with people residing in the U.S. were invited to answer immunization behavior, intention, and belief questions using a smartphone app that was not vaccine specific. 10,000 panel members with a child under 18 were sent invitations. 1029 surveys were completed by a respondent with a child 19 to 35 months. The survey instrument replicated many NIS questions and had similar sequencing. Respondents reported that most children received all recommended vaccines, except flu vaccine, suggesting some may not understand the immunization schedule. Demographics closely associated with immunization behaviors were respondents' education and household income. There is strong agreement that vaccines are effective, important to community health, and the child's health. There is concern about the number of shots received, disease prevention, and ingredient safety. Some belief remains about vaccines causing learning disabilities. Positive beliefs about the benefits of childhood vaccines and concomitant risks vary with demographics. This survey provided insights into beliefs and behaviors of parents regarding childhood vaccination. It found evidence of differences in beliefs, particularly related to delaying or declining recommended childhood vaccinations. The survey was conducted in a few days and at lower cost than traditional methods. This serves as a model for health agencies where rapid results or inexpensive approaches are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models of expectation-based reference-dependent preferences proposes that the reference point to which consumption outcomes are compared is endogenously determined as a function of lagged, probabilistic beliefs. This paper presents an experiment designed to test some predictions of expectation-based reference dependence models. The design induces a stochastic reference point via a lottery and then measures valuations for a commodity. The experimental results find no effect of the first stage lottery on commodity valuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Provides a template for high level classification of functions and failures. • Uses BBNs to capture uncertainty in the assessed compliance scenario. • Uses BBNs to extend compliance scenarios to multiple assessments. • Removes the requirement for assessing single credible (often worst-case) scenarios. • Applies BBNs within an aviation SSR "Part 1309" system safety context. • Provides a case study application of unmanned aircraft systems. There can be significant uncertainty as to the safety of novel or complex aviation systems, such as Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS). Current aviation safety assessment and compliance processes do not adequately account for uncertainty. The aim of this research is to support more objective, transparent, systematic and consistent regulatory outcomes in relation to the safety assessment of such systems. The objective of this work is to provide a systematic means of accounting for the various uncertainties inherent to any System Safety Assessment (SSA) process. The paper first defines the system safety compliance process and its modification to account for uncertainty. The SSA process, its various outputs, and associated uncertainties are defined and then applied to a generic RPAS. A Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) is adopted that facilitates a more comprehensive treatment of the uncertainty in each of the outputs of a typical SSA process. A case study of a generic RPAS is used to illustrate the features of the new approach. The adoption of the Proposed SSA approach would allow for the high uncertainty associated with the safety assessment of novel or complex aviation systems, such as RPAS, to be taken into consideration. Such an approach would enable the risk-based regulation of the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possibility of using the belief function theory for developing of trading strategies is considered in this paper. An analysis of this approach is given on the data of the Russian stock market. The belief and plausibility functions (and their corresponding bodies of evidence) to the system's recommendations (buy, sell or hold) are calculated using fuzzy inference methods for technical indicators. Further, these bodies of evidence are aggregated using the combining rules (Dempster's rule, Yager's rule and others). The discount coefficients of the bodies of evidence are calculated at the stage of the learning under the condition of maximizing the profitability of the trading strategy. The intervals for the buying or selling of assets are determined on the results of such combination. The decision about the corresponding action is taken after comparing these intervals. The study showed that the proposed approach provides an interesting result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Explore the relationship between brain structure and function via deep believe network (DBN). • Efficient connectivity descriptors are adopted to describe connectivity at voxel level. • Multimodal DBN (fMRI/DTI) is used to represent hierarchical brain networks. • Promising results are obtained to represent common brain networks. Studying a common architecture reflecting both brain's structural and functional organizations across individuals and populations in a hierarchical way has been of significant interest in the brain mapping field. Recently, deep learning models exhibited ability in extracting meaningful hierarchical structures from brain imaging data, e.g., fMRI and DTI. However, deep learning models have been rarely used to explore the relation between brain structure and function yet. In this paper, we proposed a novel multimodal deep believe network (DBN) model to discover and quantitatively represent the hierarchical organizations of common and consistent brain networks from both fMRI and DTI data. A prominent characteristic of DBN is that it is capable of extracting meaningful features from complex neuroimaging data with a hierarchical manner. With our proposed DBN model, three hierarchical layers with hundreds of common and consistent brain networks across individual brains are successfully constructed through learning a large dimension of representative features from fMRI/DTI data. Image, graphical abstract The proposed computational framework. (a) Steps to obtain the structural connectivity trace-map and functional connectivity trace-map for each vertex. (b) Feature integration. (c) The 3-layer DBN model using the functional and structural profiles acquired from (a) as the inputs to derive the hierarchical representation across the subjects. (d) Explore and study the hierarchical common brain networks and their characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The use of digital media for parent-teacher communication is increasing. However, many parents and teachers are still reluctant to use such media to enhance two-way pedagogical communication between parents and teachers. This paper explores the parents' and teachers' beliefs regarding the use of e-mails and online platforms for two-way communication. We first developed a theoretical model as an adaptation of the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour tailored specifically to address technological acceptance in parent-teacher interactions, which shows the most important beliefs that support or constrain the use of digital media for family-school communication. Then we compared the participants' views (parents and/or teachers from ICT schools and non-ICT schools) on using e-mails and online platforms in order to provide a more context-based understanding of the beliefs influencing the use of digital media for parent-teacher pedagogical communication. The data were obtained from interviews with 30 families and 35 teachers from 11 different schools in Spain. The findings revealed that parents and teachers hold a set of beliefs about the use of digital media: beliefs about the medium (based on the characteristics of e-mails and online platforms) and beliefs about the context (based on their perceptions of the setting and of themselves), with the latter being the most important barriers to the use of digital media, particularly for teachers. The findings also showed that parents and teachers display more positive stances on the use of digital media in schools where the management team promotes the use of e-mails or online platforms for family-school communication. A major implication of these findings is that management teams should take the first step to introducing digital media to communicate with families. These findings are also important for researchers as they provide a framework to guide further studies, and give an insight into a field in which the literature is scarce. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • Beliefs about the context are key barriers to successful ICT integration in schools. • Convenience and immediacy are highly valued features of digital media. • Efficacy, ease of use and application are both constrainers and supporters. • Positive views on the use of digital media are mainly held in ICT schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do geopolitical beliefs affect the attribution of blame for violent conflict? It is usually assumed that citizens in post-conflict societies come to adopt official nationalist discourses that fixate on the other side. Yet scholars of critical geopolitics recognize the importance of affect and localized interactions in shaping beliefs about the political world. This paper analyzes how geopolitical imagination shapes Azerbaijanis' attribution of blame for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, using data from a quasi-experimental study in Azerbaijan. Despite official narratives that demonize Armenia, the beliefs of Azeris in the study diverge in important ways from the official line. In particular, a disproportionate number of subjects "scaled up" culpability for the conflict and assigned a significant amount of blame to Russia. Subjects were prone to perceive Armenia as a Soviet-Russian proxy and to view Armenian behavior as subordinate to Russian interests rather than intrinsically derived. I argue that this causal accounting for the conflict reflects commonsense beliefs about how power is exercised, which were shaped by Azerbaijan's structural position vis-à-vis Russia and historical tropes that emphasize subversion, duplicitousness, and hidden agendas. The findings focus attention on how geopolitical imaginations can shape the ways contemporary events, including conflict, are interpreted. They also demonstrate the need to dig beneath the official discourse to reveal the sometimes surprising ways it is contested or subverted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Belief structures provide more information than belief content for changing beliefs. • A new belief structure, adaptive idealist, is introduced. • An adaptive idealist interprets experiences and vocabulary to justify beliefs. One goal of teacher mathematics education is to transform teachers' beliefs to more closely align with beliefs that promote desired teaching practices. However, beliefs are difficult to change. A construct that helps to explain how and why mathematics teachers' beliefs change is that of belief structures (Cooney et al., 1998). We expand upon belief structures to add a new construct: adaptive idealist. In this case study, we used information gleaned from interviews and reflective papers to introduce a prospective secondary mathematics teacher, describe her beliefs and shifts in beliefs, identify a resistance to change that resonated with our other experiences, and conclude that this new belief structure allows us to explain her reactions and interpretations within our secondary mathematics education program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper we investigate the sensitivity to persuasion linked to the quantum indeterminacy of a decision-maker's beliefs. We formulate the persuasion problem in the context of quantum-like beliefs and we provide an economic example of belief manipulation that illustrates the setting. We next establish a theoretical result showing that in the absence of constraints on measurements, any belief state can be obtained as the result of a suitable sequence of measurements. We finally discuss the practical significance of our result in the context of persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract With the increased rate of hate crimes and racist behavior around the world, a growing school of thought draws a connection between social media use and the rise in racist and hateful behavior. A number of psychologists and theorists have attempted to explain this connection. They argue that the deliberate design of social media websites, which uses algorithms to conform to users' currently held thoughts and beliefs, creates polarization and bias among users, pushing them towards preexisting views. While racist behavior is primarily motivated by bias, social media has the potential to foster such bias. However, although under the theory of confirmation bias this assertion appears theoretically sound and justifiable; few studies have attempted to validate it empirically. In this study, we developed a conceptual framework to examine the effect of social media on bias among its users, with a specific focus on religious beliefs. We then examined the influence of religious bias on racist behavior. We tested the proposed model using data from secondary sources. In conclusion, the findings of our regression analysis did not support the proposed hypothesis. In this paper, we present and discuss our findings, along with their implications for research and policy. Highlights • A growing school of thought draws a connection between social media use and the rise in racist and hateful behavior. • Few studies have attempted to validate this assertion empirically. • We developed a conceptual framework to examine the effect of social media on religious beliefs bias. • The findings of our regression analysis did not support the proposed hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Theoretical account of the interaction between public and personal culture. • Public culture activates cognitive associations beneath conscious awareness. • Partial empirical test of proposed account using survey experiment on childbearing. • Comparison of the effect of beliefs about family and finances on associations. • Discussion of conditions under which this proposed account is relevant to behavior. Abstract This paper proposes a mechanism by which exposure to forms of culture “in the world” activates individuals’ cognitive associations beneath conscious awareness, making certain behaviors more likely. A survey experiment illustrates part of the proposed mechanism, testing whether cues that make salient a shared cultural representation affect the activation of individuals’ associations with childbearing. Drawing on cultural beliefs regarding the ostensible contradiction between close relations and monetary exchange, we expect that making one of these spheres salient would inhibit activation of associations with the other sphere. As predicted, respondents randomly assigned to a cue regarding family have fewer associations between childbearing and finances. We demonstrate the relevance of these findings to respondents’ fertility desires, a measure connected to behavior. We discuss the conditions under which this mechanism may exert the most influence on behavior and outline key future research questions that the proposed model introduces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In real-world applications, apart from being precise-valued or interval-valued, belief structure measurements can also be discrete-valued. However, problems relating to the combination of discrete-valued belief structures have not been resolved. Therefore, in the research presented in this paper, we explore the counterintuitive behavior associated with the combination of discrete evidence and extend the concept of evidential reasoning (ER) to evidential reasoning with a discrete structure in order to serve as the theoretical basis and as technical support for the fusion of discrete information. This method offers an approach to the normalization of discrete evidence, provides a means of objectively determining the weight of discrete evidence, and optimizes the combination of discrete evidence based on evidential reasoning. The results of various examples show that the method not only offers an effective solution to the combination of non-conflicting discrete evidence, but it also overcomes the counterintuitive results of combining internally or externally conflicting evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many linguists are familiar with the question: “How many languages do you speak?” Anecdotally, it is well known among our discipline that non-linguists have misconceptions about linguistics and the work of linguists. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a survey to identify popular beliefs about what linguistics is and what linguists do, to examine these beliefs, and to determine the prevalence of these perceptions. Furthermore, this study seeks to find out if exposure to linguistics can educate the general public about the field and dispel the myths and misconceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Medicine has an obsession with scientific progress and a misplaced belief in the perfectibility of the human body and mind and, as a result, there seems never to be time for the necessary backward glance. If we in healthcare are to learn any of the lessons of history, it seems important that we pay attention to those who have suffered at the sharp end of historical events.Methods and Results: This paper invokes thinkers and writers who lived lives scarred by totalitarian politics. Their testimony emphasises the importance of paying attention to the particularity of individual experience and demonstrates the importance of story, listening, seeing, imagination, and attention.Conclusion: If we are to resist the secular totalitarianism of contemporary healthcare and reinstate the missing person at the centre of what we do, we as healthcare professionals must find the courage to disregard the rules.Practice Implications: In every consultation it is important to be aware of the wider historical, political and social context that may direct and constrain the choices available to both patients and professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several theoretical approaches have been proposed to explain variation in religiosity, including versions of secularization hypotheses, evolved cognitive biases, and cultural transmission. In this paper we test several theories that aim to explain variation in religiosity and compare them in a representative sample collected in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (N = 2022). These two countries represent a natural experiment in religiosity; despite their high level of historical, institutional and cultural similarity, their populations differ markedly in the rate of religious belief. We examine the predictive power of cognitive biases (anthropomorphism, dualism, teleology, mentalizing, and analytic thinking); institutional insecurity; and exposure to credibility displays of belief in childhood on various factors of religious belief. We find that individual differences in cognitive biases predicted 8% of the variance belief in God, but predicted 21% of the variance in paranormal beliefs and almost no variance in religious participation. Perceived institutional insecurity explains little variance in any of these variables, but cultural transmission, measured as exposure to credibility enhancing displays (CREDs) and church attendance in childhood, predicted 17% of the variance in belief in God and 30% of religious participation, and mediated 70% of the difference between these two countries in belief in God and 80% of the difference in religious practice. These findings suggest cognitive biases may explain the existence of belief in the supernatural generally, but cultural transmission through credible belief displays is a more plausible explanation for why people adopt and maintain a specific set of religious beliefs and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examining the extent to which online consumer review (OCR) influences consumer beliefs and participation in online group-buying. We design a conceptual model and propose several hypotheses to articulate the relevant causal relationships in line with the social exchange theory and the theory of institution-based trust. The empirical results unveil that OCR significantly influences consumer perceptions in terms of perceived effectiveness, perceived structure assurance, and familiarity with intermediary, while consumer satisfaction and trust in intermediary significantly mediate the relationships between consumer perceptions and continuance use of online group-buying. The present study advances the theoretical understanding of the impact of consumer review and the mediating effects of consumer beliefs in the context of online group-buying. The findings make contributions to research and practice with managerial implications for the application of social media in electronic commerce and mobile commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to put forward a new kind of partial model for representing belief states. I first introduce some philosophical motivations for working with partial models. Then, I present the standard (total) model proposed by Hintikka, and the partial models studied by Humberstone and Holliday. I then show how to reduce Hintikka’s semantics in order to obtain a partial model which, however, differs from Humberstone’s and Holliday’s. The nature of such differences is assessed, and I provide motivations for using the newly proposed semantics rather than the existing ones. Finally, I review some promising philosophical applications of the ideas developed throughout the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching thinking is important for learning and social practice and teachers around the world are encouraged to integrate thinking skills in teaching. However, little is known about teachers’ conceptions, beliefs and practice about integrating thinking skills in foreign language instruction. This paper addresses this issue by examining teachers’ cognition about thinking skills in EFL classrooms in China through the analysis of 473 self-completed questionnaires, four focus group interviews with 18 teachers and a further follow-up classroom observation and video-based reflection of three teachers. Data analysis focuses on bringing all the data together to generate an in-depth understanding about how teachers conceptualise thinking skills and how these skills are perceived to be promoted in subject learning. This study suggests that EFL teachers in China find it difficult to define thinking skills and hold fragmented and insufficient understanding about the concept. The teachers also demonstrated overall positive attitudes towards integrating thinking skills in language classrooms, although they do not believe thinking skills should be promoted specifically in language classrooms. The study also revealed that teachers believe that thinking skills can be taught, and especially through reading, science and maths. Moreover, integrating thinking skills in teaching is closely related to the focus of the English subject, curriculum, class time and textbooks. There is a strong case for arguing for immediate teacher training to develop both content and pedagogical knowledge of teaching thinking skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translation is a crucial step in transmitting genetic information from mRNA to functional protein. Four recent papers provide novel imaging approaches to directly observe translation of single mRNAs in real time in live cells, and represent a powerful toolkit to dissect the molecular mechanisms of translation regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Darwiche and Pearl's seminal 1997 article outlined a number of baseline principles for a logic of iterated belief revision. These principles, the DP postulates, have been supplemented in a number of alternative ways. However, most of the suggestions for doing so have been radical enough to result in a dubious 'reductionist' principle that identifies belief states with orderings of worlds. The present paper offers a more modest strengthening of Darwiche and Pearl's proposal. While the DP postulates constrain the relation between a prior and a posterior conditional belief set, our new principles govern the relation between two posterior conditional belief sets obtained from a common prior by different revisions. We show that operators from the family that these principles characterise, which subsumes both lexicographic and restrained revision, can be represented as relating belief states that are associated with a 'proper ordinal interval' assignment, a structure more fine-grained than a simple ordering of worlds. We close the paper by noting that these operators satisfy iterated versions of a large number of AGM era postulates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their 2019 paper, "A Paleogene ichnological record from the Wilcox Formation: Ophiomorpha and Venericardia (Venicor) zapatai in the Burgos Basin, northern Mexico," Hernández-Ocaña et al. present a stratigraphic, sedimentological, and paleontological reconstruction of the Wilcox Fm. from a limited section located in the western part of the Burgos Basin. In my opinion, this paper contains a series of grave errors that puts in doubt the authors' correlation with the Eocene Wilcox Fm., determination of the species Venericardia (Venericor) zapatai , and stratigraphic interpretation of the described sequence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of interviews with 174 participants solving a problem of elementary mathematics, connected with the part–whole approach to fractions. The motive for the investigation was a specific kind of difficulty observed during a case study conducted to verify the elementary school student's understanding of the concept of fractions. The authors decided to examine the problem in a broader population of mathematics learners at different levels of education: from elementary school to university students and graduates of science majors. Approximately 65% of respondents reported the wrong answer immediately after reading the fraction problem taken from the fourth grade of elementary school. Detailed analysis of the respondents’ performance showed that the source of many wrong answers was a false belief about fractions: The only way to get 1 / n of a given whole is to divide this whole into n equal parts , not yet described in educational literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines Apperly and Butterfill's parallel ‘two systems’ theory of mindreading and argues instead for a cooperative multi-systems architecture. The minimal mindreading system (system 1) described by Butterfill and Apperly is unable to explain the flexibility of infant belief representation or fast and efficient mindreading in adults, and there are strong reasons for thinking that infant belief representation depends on executive cognition and general semantic memory. We propose that schemas, causal representation and mental models help to explain the representational flexibility of infant mindreading and give an alternative interpretation of evidence that has been taken to show automatic, fast and efficient belief representation in adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background This research utilizes the Reasoned Action Approach framework to study which beliefs drive the intention of farmers to participate in a voluntary vaccination scheme against Bluetongue. Scope and approach Knowing the driving beliefs can help in selecting an appropriate mix of policy instruments to enhance the participation rate and thereby improve the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of voluntary vaccination strategies. Results are used to evaluate the policy instruments used by the Dutch government in their 2008 vaccination strategy (communicative intervention and vaccine subsidization). Key findings and conclusions The paper posits that social interaction mechanisms, such as peer group pressure, might advance the design of voluntary vaccination strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpreting other peoples’ actions relies on an understanding of their current mental states (e.g. beliefs, desires and intentions). In this paper, we distinguish between listeners’ ability to infer others’ perspectives and their explicit use of this knowledge to predict subsequent actions. In a visual-world study, two groups of participants (passive observers vs . active participants) watched short videos, depicting transfer events, where one character (‘Jane’) either held a true or false belief about an object’s location. We tracked participants’ eye-movements around the final visual scene, time-locked to related auditory descriptions (e.g. “Jane will look for the chocolates in the container on the left”.). Results showed that active participants had already inferred the character’s belief in the 1 s preview period prior to auditory onset, before it was possible to use this information to predict an outcome. Moreover, they used this inference to correctly anticipate reference to the object’s initial location on false belief trials at the earliest possible point (i.e. from “Jane” onwards). In contrast, passive observers only showed evidence of a belief inference from the onset of “Jane”, and did not show reliable use of this inference to predict Jane’s behaviour on false belief trials until much later, when the location (“left/right”) was auditorily available. These results show that active engagement in a task activates earlier inferences about others’ perspectives, and drives immediate use of this information to anticipate others’ actions, compared to passive observers, who are susceptible to influences from egocentric or reality biases. Finally, we review evidence that using other peoples’ perspectives to predict their behaviour is more cognitively effortful than simply using one’s own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the increasing global emphasis on creativity, creative teaching has become an issue of concern for a large number of researchers. This study addresses this issue by exploring the belief of Hong Kong teachers on creative teaching. The research results obtained through qualitative approach show that the beliefs of Hong Kong teachers about creative teaching cover process and product dimensions. The informants can be grouped into five categories with reference to their various preferences. The evidence shows that a part of the beliefs of Hong Kong teachers is aligned with ideal theoretical framework advanced by scholars. The deficiency and problems in the belief of teachers in creative teaching are also discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evil eye belief is a widespread superstition according to which people can cause harm by a mere envious glance at coveted objects or their owners. This paper argues that such belief originated and persisted as a useful heuristic under conditions in which envy was likely to trigger destructive behavior and the avoidance of other people's envy, effectively prescribed by the evil eye belief, was a proper response to that threat. We hypothesize that in weakly institutionalized societies wealth differentiation and vulnerability of productive assets were the key factors enabling envy-induced destructive behavior and contributing to the emergence and spread of the evil eye belief as a cultural defense mechanism. Evidence from small-scale preindustrial societies shows that there is indeed a robust positive association between the incidence of the belief and measures of wealth inequality, controlling for potential confounding factors such as patterns of spatial and cross-cultural diffusion and various dimensions of early economic development. Furthermore, the evil eye belief is more prevalent in agro-pastoral societies that tend to sustain higher levels of inequality and where vulnerable material wealth plays a dominant role in the subsistence economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes underlying individual differences in reasoning performance are not entirely understood. What do people who do well on reasoning tasks where beliefs and logic conflict do differently from other people? Because abundant evidence shows that even poorer reasoners detect these conflicts, it has been suggested that individual differences in reasoning performance arise from inhibition failures later in the reasoning process. The present paper argues that a minority of highly skilled reasoners may deviate from this general reasoning process from an early stage. Two studies investigated signs of belief inhibition using a lexical access paradigm (Study 1) and a negative priming paradigm (Study 2). Study 1 showed that while other people exhibited signs of belief inhibition following a belief–logic conflict, people with the highest disposition for cognitive reflection did not. In Study 2, this finding was replicated and similar results were also obtained when comparing groups with higher and lower general cognitive ability. Two possible explanations are discussed. The reasoners with a highly reflective cognitive style or high general cognitive ability may have engaged and inhibited belief processing but if so, they may have been exceptionally efficient at recovering from it, wherefore no belief inhibition effects were found. An alternative account is that these reasoners started Type 2 processing directly, without first engaging in and then inhibiting belief-based processing. Under either explanation, the results indicate that individual differences in reasoning may partly arise from differences that occur early in the reasoning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

White and Bruning (2005) distinguished two sets of writing beliefs: transactional and transmissional beliefs. In this paper we analyse their beliefs scale and suggest two hypotheses about how such beliefs relate to writing performance. The single-process hypothesis treats the beliefs as different amounts of engagement, whereas the dual-process hypothesis claims that the beliefs represent different types of engagement. We then describe the results of an experiment with 84 university students as participants that assessed the relationship between writing beliefs, different forms of pre-planning and different aspects of writing performance. Our results support the dual-process hypothesis, and suggest that transactional beliefs are about the preference for a top-down strategy or a bottom-up strategy, while transmissional beliefs are about the content that is written about. These beliefs interact in their effects on text quality, the amount and type of revision carried out, and the extent to which writers develop their understanding. They also moderate the effectiveness of outlining as a strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tested a model in which beliefs about writing, writing self-efficacy, and writing apprehension predict writing performance. The Beliefs About Writing Survey, the Writing Self-Efficacy Index, and the modified Writing Apprehension Test were administered to 738 undergraduates to predict their grade on a class paper. In a hierarchical regression, beliefs about writing predicted variance in writing scores beyond that accounted for by writing self-efficacy and apprehension. Audience Orientation, a new belief associated with expert practice, was the strongest positive predictor of the students' grade. Transmission, a belief in relying on material published by authorities, was the leading negative predictor. Writing self-efficacy predicted performance, albeit modestly. The traditional measure of writing apprehension (anxiety about being critiqued) was not significant, but Apprehension About Grammar, a new construct, significantly and negatively predicted performance. These results support the possibility that beliefs about writing could be a leverage point for teaching students to write. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sacred forest groves in the Western Ghats of India are small fragments of tropical forest that have received protection due to religious beliefs and cultural practices. These forest fragments are an example of community-based conservation and they serve as refugia for many forest-dwelling species in otherwise highly anthropogenic tropical forest-agriculture landscapes of the Indian Western Ghats. Many of these sacred forest groves are considered ancient woodlands, but there is very little information on their origins. For instance: How old are these sacred groves? Are they relics of forest that was once continuous or are they patches of regenerated vegetation? How do changes in the surrounding landscape influence the vegetation in these groves? Based on palaeoecological reconstruction in two such sacred forest groves, we determined the age of these forest fragments. Both reconstructions indicate transition from non-forest open landscape to tree-covered landscape at these sites. These finding from two sacred groves challenge the common perception that sacred forest groves are remnants of once-continuous forest; instead, some sacred groves such as those studied might be regenerated forest patches that are approximately 400 years old. This further raises a number of questions about the drivers of reforestation in these groves. What were the social and cultural circumstances which led to the recovery of forest within these patches? How did land tenure influence forest recovery? What role did religious beliefs play in forest restoration? Using Wallace's (1956) framework of 'cultural revitalization' and based on historical literature and palaeoecological analysis of the two sacred groves, this paper examines the drivers of reforestation in the Western Ghats of India. It suggests various social, ecological and economic drivers of such revitalization, recognizing strong linkages between the 'social' and the 'ecological' within the social-ecological system of sacred forest groves. This example of reforestation suggests that contemporary restoration of forests needs to operate at a landscape scale and look at restoration as a social-ecological intervention in forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EAP practitioner scholarship is a key element of EAP teacher professional development (Martin, 2014) and the credibility of EAP as a discipline (Hamps-Lyon, 2011; Ding & Bruce, 2017). It also allows a professional knowledge base to develop and pedagogical advancements to be made (Borg, 2013). Whilst the BALEAP community values and promotes such scholarship (Gillett, 2021), limited research has been conducted into EAP practitioner beliefs about the written outputs of this activity (Davis, 2019). In particular, there is an absence of research exploring the process by which EAP practitioners begin their scholarship writing. This paper presents a case study of an EAP setting in which a workload allocation has been introduced for scholarship. It explores the motivations, challenges and professional identity implications of scholarship writing for EAP practitioners in this context. The findings suggest that the institutional workload initiative facilitated a cultural shift in which scholarship writing became more normalised and academic identities of EAP practitioners were strengthened. The inclusive institutional understandings of scholarship were also seen to promote practitioner agency in overcoming perceived challenges to the production of early written scholarship outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to survey and discuss some key connections between information and confirmation within a broadly Bayesian framework. We mean to show that treating information and confirmation in a unified fashion is an intuitive and fruitful approach, fostering insights and prospects in the analysis of a variety of related notions such as belief change, partial entailment, entropy, the value of experiments, and more besides. To this end, we recapitulate established theoretical achievements, disclose a number of underlying links, and provide a few novel results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]