Ryan Tweney | Bowling Green State University (original) (raw)
Books by Ryan Tweney
Cognitive psychological and social psychological studies of scientific thinking are covered in 15... more Cognitive psychological and social psychological studies of scientific thinking are covered in 15 chapters by 19 contributors, including David Gooding, Nancy Nersessian, Kevin Dunbar, and others.
An illustrated inventory of all of the preparations of gold and other metals made by Faraday in 1... more An illustrated inventory of all of the preparations of gold and other metals made by Faraday in 1856. Hundreds of specimens are included.
Papers by Ryan Tweney
Discourse Processes, Jul 1, 1983
The psycholinguistic properties of American Sign Language (ASL) have been the focus of a good dea... more The psycholinguistic properties of American Sign Language (ASL) have been the focus of a good deal of recent research. The unique characteristics of this language lead to a large number of issues which can be resolved empirically. Thus, it has been shown that ASL signs are retained in short-term memory in an encoded form based upon linguistically significant structural features (Bellugi, Klima, & Siple, 1975; Poizner, Bellugi, & Tweney, 1981). Furthermore, such features have been shown to be implicated in the production of ...
The pseudodiagnosticity task has been used as an example of the tendency on the part of participa... more The pseudodiagnosticity task has been used as an example of the tendency on the part of participants to incorrectly assess Bayesian constraints in assessing data, and as a failure to consider alternative hypotheses in a probabilistic inference task. In the task, participants are given one value, the anchor value, corresponding to P(D1|H) and may choose one other value, either P(D1|¬!H),
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2006
Recent research has shown a memory advantage for minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts, over ... more Recent research has shown a memory advantage for minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts, over concepts that are either intuitive (INT) or maximally counterintuitive (MXCI), although the general result is heavily affected by context. Items from one such study were given to subjects who were asked to create novel stories using at least three concepts from a list containing all three types. Results indicated a preference for using MCI items (as in the recall studies), and further disclosed two styles of usage, an accommodative style and an assimilative style. The results extend recent memory research and suggest extensions to recent theories intended to explain the prevalence of counterintuitive religious concepts.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2007
Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intu... more Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intuitive ontological expectation of domain-specifi c natural kinds, are remembered as well as or better than intuitive concepts with no violations of ontological expectations, and much better than maximally counterintuitive concepts with more than one violation of ontological violations (Barrett and Nyhoff , 2001;. It is also well established that concepts rated as high in imagery, (e.g., apple) are recalled better than concepts that are low in imagery (e.g., justice; see . We conducted three studies to test whether imagery levels aff ected recall rates of intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, and maximally counterintuitive concepts. In study 1, we obtained imagery level ratings for 48 three-word items. In study 2, we used the ratings obtained in study 1 in a 2 × 3 recall task in which imagery (high vs. low) was manipulated along with counterintutiveness (intuitive vs. minimally counterintuitive vs. maximally counterintuitive). High imagery items were recalled signifi cantly better than low imagery items for intuitive and maximally counterintuitive items but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Study 3, replicated the fi ndings from study 2 in a 2 × 2 study using a larger number of intuitive and minimally counterintuitive items. In both studies, High imagery items were recalled signifi cantly better than low imagery items for intuitive but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Th us, minimally counterintuitive concepts appear insulated from imagery eff ects on recall.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2006
Abstract: Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, an... more Abstract: Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, and have been used to explain the retention and transmission of such beliefs. To resolve some inconsistencies in the literature concerning counterintuitiveness, we conducted ...
Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2008
Why do men find young women more attractive than older women? Why do women find high status men m... more Why do men find young women more attractive than older women? Why do women find high status men more attractive? The answer from recent evolutionary psychologists is that younger women are more likely to be fertile and healthy, and their progeny are more likely to survive. Thus, natural selection, acting primarily on our Pleistocene huntergatherer forebears, has led men's preferences to be driven by genetic makeup to optimize the chances of their genes being preserved. Women's preferences, by contrast, have been ...
Science & Education, 2008
Abstract This special issue reports a project in which the replication of historically meaningful... more Abstract This special issue reports a project in which the replication of historically meaningful studies was carried out by graduate students in a history of psychology course. In this introduction, I outline the nature of the project and its rationale, and briefly sketch the results. The subsequent five papers represent scholarly presentations of five selected replications written by students in the course. These are followed by a commentary on the project by an educational psychologist.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1989
Abstract While Brunswik's conception of ecological validity has been widely discussed, h... more Abstract While Brunswik's conception of ecological validity has been widely discussed, his conception of ecological unreliability, or error in the data on which inferences or predictions are based, has been largely ignored. Further, when psychologists discuss error in continuous data, that error has, perhaps because of the impact of classical psychometric theory, been thought of as Gaussian, and labeled measurement error. The present paper reports a two-cue MCPL experiment in which there are multiple observations of each cue ...
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1979
Black English and Standard English grammatical sentences were presented to 122 Black and White se... more Black English and Standard English grammatical sentences were presented to 122 Black and White second graders in a modified cloze task. Both race and social class differences were sampled from within a single primary school, and both Black and White experimenters were utilized. No effects due to social class were found. Black subjects did better on Black English sentences than White subjects and showed fewer errors in the direction of Standard English syntax. An analysis of hit rates and false alarm rates suggested that Black subjects were more likely to emit Black English responses than White subjects but that both groups possessed equivalent sensitivity to grammatical differences. The results are not consistent with a deficit account of Black subjects' performance or with an explanation based on different dialect systems. Rather, it appears that Black and White children may differ only in their willingness to utilize specific response systems and may possess equal comprehension abilities in both dialect systems.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2007
Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intu... more Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intuitive ontological expectation of domain-specifi c natural kinds, are remembered as well as or better than intuitive concepts with no violations of ontological expectations, and much better than maximally counterintuitive concepts with more than one violation of ontological violations (Barrett and Nyhoff , 2001;. It is also well established that concepts rated as high in imagery, (e.g., apple) are recalled better than concepts that are low in imagery (e.g., justice; see . We conducted three studies to test whether imagery levels aff ected recall rates of intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, and maximally counterintuitive concepts. In study 1, we obtained imagery level ratings for 48 three-word items. In study 2, we used the ratings obtained in study 1 in a 2 × 3 recall task in which imagery (high vs. low) was manipulated along with counterintutiveness (intuitive vs. minimally counterintuitive vs. maximally counterintuitive). High imagery items were recalled signifi cantly better than low imagery items for intuitive and maximally counterintuitive items but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Study 3, replicated the fi ndings from study 2 in a 2 × 2 study using a larger number of intuitive and minimally counterintuitive items. In both studies, High imagery items were recalled signifi cantly better than low imagery items for intuitive but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Th us, minimally counterintuitive concepts appear insulated from imagery eff ects on recall.
Journal of Child Language, 1977
Discourse Processes, 1983
The psycholinguistic properties of American Sign Language (ASL) have been the focus of a good dea... more The psycholinguistic properties of American Sign Language (ASL) have been the focus of a good deal of recent research. The unique characteristics of this language lead to a large number of issues which can be resolved empirically. Thus, it has been shown that ASL signs are retained in short-term memory in an encoded form based upon linguistically significant structural features (Bellugi, Klima, & Siple, 1975; Poizner, Bellugi, & Tweney, 1981). Furthermore, such features have been shown to be implicated in the production of ...
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2009
So once we follow Otter and eschew dominant themes and much pre-existing historiography, what is ... more So once we follow Otter and eschew dominant themes and much pre-existing historiography, what is left? Otter wants to stay clear of such overarching concepts, and only because 'the historian must be prepared to make generalizations'(p. 255) does he cautiously offer us alternatives. The most important of these is the theme of the 'oligoptic', a term that he borrows from Bruno Latour, referring to a 'multiplicity of connected spaces'(p. 73). The oligoptic, according to Otter, is the better description of Victorian visual culture. The ' ...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2004
Abstract Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) ignores an important aspect of the h... more Abstract Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) ignores an important aspect of the history of the concept: the determinism of Jonathan Edwards (1754) and the later response to this determinism by William James and others. We argue that Edwards's formulation, and James's resolution of the resulting dilemma, are superior to Wegner's.
Cognitive psychological and social psychological studies of scientific thinking are covered in 15... more Cognitive psychological and social psychological studies of scientific thinking are covered in 15 chapters by 19 contributors, including David Gooding, Nancy Nersessian, Kevin Dunbar, and others.
An illustrated inventory of all of the preparations of gold and other metals made by Faraday in 1... more An illustrated inventory of all of the preparations of gold and other metals made by Faraday in 1856. Hundreds of specimens are included.
Discourse Processes, Jul 1, 1983
The psycholinguistic properties of American Sign Language (ASL) have been the focus of a good dea... more The psycholinguistic properties of American Sign Language (ASL) have been the focus of a good deal of recent research. The unique characteristics of this language lead to a large number of issues which can be resolved empirically. Thus, it has been shown that ASL signs are retained in short-term memory in an encoded form based upon linguistically significant structural features (Bellugi, Klima, & Siple, 1975; Poizner, Bellugi, & Tweney, 1981). Furthermore, such features have been shown to be implicated in the production of ...
The pseudodiagnosticity task has been used as an example of the tendency on the part of participa... more The pseudodiagnosticity task has been used as an example of the tendency on the part of participants to incorrectly assess Bayesian constraints in assessing data, and as a failure to consider alternative hypotheses in a probabilistic inference task. In the task, participants are given one value, the anchor value, corresponding to P(D1|H) and may choose one other value, either P(D1|¬!H),
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2006
Recent research has shown a memory advantage for minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts, over ... more Recent research has shown a memory advantage for minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts, over concepts that are either intuitive (INT) or maximally counterintuitive (MXCI), although the general result is heavily affected by context. Items from one such study were given to subjects who were asked to create novel stories using at least three concepts from a list containing all three types. Results indicated a preference for using MCI items (as in the recall studies), and further disclosed two styles of usage, an accommodative style and an assimilative style. The results extend recent memory research and suggest extensions to recent theories intended to explain the prevalence of counterintuitive religious concepts.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2007
Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intu... more Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intuitive ontological expectation of domain-specifi c natural kinds, are remembered as well as or better than intuitive concepts with no violations of ontological expectations, and much better than maximally counterintuitive concepts with more than one violation of ontological violations (Barrett and Nyhoff , 2001;. It is also well established that concepts rated as high in imagery, (e.g., apple) are recalled better than concepts that are low in imagery (e.g., justice; see . We conducted three studies to test whether imagery levels aff ected recall rates of intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, and maximally counterintuitive concepts. In study 1, we obtained imagery level ratings for 48 three-word items. In study 2, we used the ratings obtained in study 1 in a 2 × 3 recall task in which imagery (high vs. low) was manipulated along with counterintutiveness (intuitive vs. minimally counterintuitive vs. maximally counterintuitive). High imagery items were recalled signifi cantly better than low imagery items for intuitive and maximally counterintuitive items but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Study 3, replicated the fi ndings from study 2 in a 2 × 2 study using a larger number of intuitive and minimally counterintuitive items. In both studies, High imagery items were recalled signifi cantly better than low imagery items for intuitive but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Th us, minimally counterintuitive concepts appear insulated from imagery eff ects on recall.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2006
Abstract: Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, an... more Abstract: Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, and have been used to explain the retention and transmission of such beliefs. To resolve some inconsistencies in the literature concerning counterintuitiveness, we conducted ...
Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2008
Why do men find young women more attractive than older women? Why do women find high status men m... more Why do men find young women more attractive than older women? Why do women find high status men more attractive? The answer from recent evolutionary psychologists is that younger women are more likely to be fertile and healthy, and their progeny are more likely to survive. Thus, natural selection, acting primarily on our Pleistocene huntergatherer forebears, has led men's preferences to be driven by genetic makeup to optimize the chances of their genes being preserved. Women's preferences, by contrast, have been ...
Science & Education, 2008
Abstract This special issue reports a project in which the replication of historically meaningful... more Abstract This special issue reports a project in which the replication of historically meaningful studies was carried out by graduate students in a history of psychology course. In this introduction, I outline the nature of the project and its rationale, and briefly sketch the results. The subsequent five papers represent scholarly presentations of five selected replications written by students in the course. These are followed by a commentary on the project by an educational psychologist.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1989
Abstract While Brunswik's conception of ecological validity has been widely discussed, h... more Abstract While Brunswik's conception of ecological validity has been widely discussed, his conception of ecological unreliability, or error in the data on which inferences or predictions are based, has been largely ignored. Further, when psychologists discuss error in continuous data, that error has, perhaps because of the impact of classical psychometric theory, been thought of as Gaussian, and labeled measurement error. The present paper reports a two-cue MCPL experiment in which there are multiple observations of each cue ...
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1979
Black English and Standard English grammatical sentences were presented to 122 Black and White se... more Black English and Standard English grammatical sentences were presented to 122 Black and White second graders in a modified cloze task. Both race and social class differences were sampled from within a single primary school, and both Black and White experimenters were utilized. No effects due to social class were found. Black subjects did better on Black English sentences than White subjects and showed fewer errors in the direction of Standard English syntax. An analysis of hit rates and false alarm rates suggested that Black subjects were more likely to emit Black English responses than White subjects but that both groups possessed equivalent sensitivity to grammatical differences. The results are not consistent with a deficit account of Black subjects' performance or with an explanation based on different dialect systems. Rather, it appears that Black and White children may differ only in their willingness to utilize specific response systems and may possess equal comprehension abilities in both dialect systems.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2007
Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intu... more Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intuitive ontological expectation of domain-specifi c natural kinds, are remembered as well as or better than intuitive concepts with no violations of ontological expectations, and much better than maximally counterintuitive concepts with more than one violation of ontological violations (Barrett and Nyhoff , 2001;. It is also well established that concepts rated as high in imagery, (e.g., apple) are recalled better than concepts that are low in imagery (e.g., justice; see . We conducted three studies to test whether imagery levels aff ected recall rates of intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, and maximally counterintuitive concepts. In study 1, we obtained imagery level ratings for 48 three-word items. In study 2, we used the ratings obtained in study 1 in a 2 × 3 recall task in which imagery (high vs. low) was manipulated along with counterintutiveness (intuitive vs. minimally counterintuitive vs. maximally counterintuitive). High imagery items were recalled signifi cantly better than low imagery items for intuitive and maximally counterintuitive items but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Study 3, replicated the fi ndings from study 2 in a 2 × 2 study using a larger number of intuitive and minimally counterintuitive items. In both studies, High imagery items were recalled signifi cantly better than low imagery items for intuitive but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Th us, minimally counterintuitive concepts appear insulated from imagery eff ects on recall.
Journal of Child Language, 1977
Discourse Processes, 1983
The psycholinguistic properties of American Sign Language (ASL) have been the focus of a good dea... more The psycholinguistic properties of American Sign Language (ASL) have been the focus of a good deal of recent research. The unique characteristics of this language lead to a large number of issues which can be resolved empirically. Thus, it has been shown that ASL signs are retained in short-term memory in an encoded form based upon linguistically significant structural features (Bellugi, Klima, & Siple, 1975; Poizner, Bellugi, & Tweney, 1981). Furthermore, such features have been shown to be implicated in the production of ...
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2009
So once we follow Otter and eschew dominant themes and much pre-existing historiography, what is ... more So once we follow Otter and eschew dominant themes and much pre-existing historiography, what is left? Otter wants to stay clear of such overarching concepts, and only because 'the historian must be prepared to make generalizations'(p. 255) does he cautiously offer us alternatives. The most important of these is the theme of the 'oligoptic', a term that he borrows from Bruno Latour, referring to a 'multiplicity of connected spaces'(p. 73). The oligoptic, according to Otter, is the better description of Victorian visual culture. The ' ...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2004
Abstract Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) ignores an important aspect of the h... more Abstract Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) ignores an important aspect of the history of the concept: the determinism of Jonathan Edwards (1754) and the later response to this determinism by William James and others. We argue that Edwards's formulation, and James's resolution of the resulting dilemma, are superior to Wegner's.
Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 1997
Several neural networks were developed in Mathematica in order to explore the role of "spiky" neu... more Several neural networks were developed in Mathematica in order to explore the role of "spiky" neurons in neural network memory simulations. Using Mathematica for this task confirmed its value as a powerful tool for neural network development: It exhibited distinct advantages over other environments in programming ease, flexibility of data structures, and the graphical assessment of network performance.
The pseudodiagnosticity task has been used as an example of the tendency on the part of participa... more The pseudodiagnosticity task has been used as an example of the tendency on the part of participants to incorrectly assess Bayesian constraints in assessing data, and as a failure to consider alternative hypotheses in a probabilistic inference task. In the task, participants are given one value, the anchor value, corresponding to P(D1|H) and may choose one other value, either P(D1|¬!H),
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2006
Abstract: Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, an... more Abstract: Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, and have been used to explain the retention and transmission of such beliefs. To resolve some inconsistencies in the literature concerning counterintuitiveness, we conducted ...
Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, and have bee... more Counterintuitive concepts have been identified as major aspects of religious belief, and have been used to explain the retention and transmission of such beliefs. To resolve
some inconsistencies in the literature concerning counterintuitiveness, we conducted three experiments to study the effect of context on recall. Five types of items were used: intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, maximally counterintuitive, minimally counterintuitive with contradictory context, and intuitive with contradictory context. Items were presented
with context or without context and participants were asked to recall them. Maximally counterintuitive concepts were found to have the poorest recall in both immediate and delayed recall conditions and regardless of the presence or absence of context. No significant differences were found in the recall rates of minimally counterintuitive concepts and intuitive concepts, although delayed recall affected minimally counterintuitive
concepts less than intuitive concepts, suggesting the possibility of differential “fitness.”
Presence of contradictory context was found to be able to change minimally counterintuitive
items into the functional equivalents of intuitive items (and vice versa). When relevant
context was present, minimally counterintuitive concepts were recalled significantly
better than intuitive concepts, which is consistent with the findings of Barrett & Nyhof
(2001). For items presented as lists, intuitive items were recalled better, consistent with the findings of Norenzayan & Atran (2004b). Thus, context was the key element affecting recall and the discrepancy among prior studies (and the much earlier studies of Bartlett,