This study was aimed at revealing which cognitive processes are lateralized in visual categorizations of "humans" by pigeons. To this end, pigeons were trained to categorize pictures of humans and then tested binocularly or monocularly (left or right eye) on the learned categorization and for transfer to novel exemplars (Experiment 1). Subsequent…

Recent years have seen a growing interest in intelligent game-based learning environments featuring virtual agents. A key challenge posed by incorporating virtual agents in game-based learning environments is dynamically determining the dialogue moves they should make in order to best support students' problem solving. This paper presents a…

Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) is used frequently as a treatment for problem behavior. Previous studies on treatment integrity failures during DRA suggest that the intervention is robust, but research has not yet investigated the effects of different types of integrity failures. We examined the effects of two types of…

Automated decision-making is becoming increasingly common in the public sector. As a result, political institutions recommend the presence of humans in these decision-making processes as a safeguard against potentially erroneous or biased algorithmic decisions. However, the scientific literature on human-in-the-loop performance is not conclusive…

To introduce students to an application of chemical engineering directly related to human health, we developed an experiment for the unit operations laboratory at Georgia Tech examining diffusion across cadaver skin in the context of transdermal drug delivery. In this laboratory module, students prepare mouse skin samples, set up diffusion cells…

Understanding human environmental health is difficult for high school students, as is the process of scientific investigation. This module provides a framework to address both concerns through an inquiry-based approach using a hypothesis-driven set of experiments that draws upon a real-life concern, environmental exposures to lead (Pb2+). Students…

Self-control can be defined as the choice of a larger, more delayed reinforcer over a smaller, less delayed reinforcer, and impulsiveness as the opposite. Previous research suggests that exposure to visual food cues affects adult humans' self-control. Previous research also suggests that food deprivation decreases adult humans' self-control. The…

In this paper, we present the design and the results of a comparative study that evaluated the success of a transfer of an online-teaching resource between two universities, one in Germany and one in the USA. The teaching resource is an online physics lab that has been used in the physics education of medical students in Germany since 2003. The…

In this paper, we present a laboratory activity in computed tomography (CT) primarily composed of a photogate and a rotary motion sensor that can be assembled quickly and partially automates data collection and analysis. We use an enclosure made with a light filter that is largely opaque in the visible spectrum but mostly transparent to the near…

The uncanny valley--the unnerving nature of humanlike robots--is an intriguing idea, but both its existence and its underlying cause are debated. We propose that humanlike robots are not only unnerving, but are so because their appearance prompts attributions of mind. In particular, we suggest that machines become unnerving when people ascribe to…

Motivated by the urgent need to investigate the possibilities for re-positioning the human translator and his/her educator in the machine translation (MT) age, this article explores the dynamics of the human-machine dance in the translation classroom. The article discusses the results of a collaborative learning experiment which was conducted in…

Much of Stewart Hulse's career was spent analyzing how animals can extract patterned information from sequences of stimuli. Yet an additional form of information contained in a sequence may be the number of times different elements occurred. Experiments that required numerical discrimination between different stimulus items presented in sequence…

Beaconing is a process in which the distance between a visual landmark and current position is reduced in order to return to a location. In contrast, dead reckoning is a process in which vestibular, kinesthetic and/or optic flow cues are utilized to update speed of movement, elapsed time of movement, and direction of movement to return to a…

Human languages vary in many ways but also show striking cross-linguistic universals. Why do these universals exist? Recent theoretical results demonstrate that Bayesian learners transmitting language to each other through iterated learning will converge on a distribution of languages that depends only on their prior biases about language and the…

A single-subject design was used in 2 experiments about the effects of percentage payback (winnings in proportion to total amount bet) on gambling on a slot-machine simulation in 8 adult humans. In Experiment 1, percentage payback was varied across a wide range of values, and participants were exposed extensively to percentage-payback conditions.…