People seek easily interpretable information

Research in psychology and artificial intelligence has sought to ground information-seeking behavior in rational terms, typically assuming that people or agents prefer more informative data over less informative data. While this seems reasonable on its surface, it assumes that informativeness is only a property of the data, rather than a joint property of the data and a (potentially bounded) learner. That is, to the extent that it is hard to draw the right inferences from data that are theoretically “high information,” the data will not actually be highly informative to the learner. Here, we investigate active learning in humans using the code-breaking game Mastermind, which requires deductive reasoning from evidence. We find that people make queries that are less informative than random guesses, challenging standard rational or resource-rational accounts of information-seeking. We then show that people make queries are informative to them assuming they have a bounded capacity to draw inferences. We also find that participants prefer queries that provide easily-interpretable information over queries that provide more information but are less interpretable. Our results suggest that people are aware of their own cognitive limitations and seek information that they can use

Decompose, Deduce, and Dispose: A Memory-Limited Metacognitive Model of Human Problem Solving

Many real-world problems are defined by complex systems of interlocking constraints. How people are able to solve these problems with such limited working memory capacity remains poorly understood. We propose a formal model of human problem-solving that uses metacognitive knowledge of its own memory limits and imperfect reasoning to guide subproblem choice. We compare our model to human gameplay in two experiments using a variant of the classic game Minesweeper. In Experiment 1, we find that participants' accuracy was influenced both by the order of subproblems and their ability to externalize intermediate results, indicative of a memory bottleneck in reasoning. In Experiment 2, we used a mouse-tracking paradigm to assess participants' subproblem choice and time allocation. The model captures key patterns of subproblem ordering, error, and time allocation. Our results point toward memory limits and strategies for navigating those limits— including the careful choice of subproblems and memory-offloading — as central elements of human problem-solving

Calculating probabilities from imagined possibilities: Limitations in 4-year-olds

Adults can calculate probabilities by running simulations and calculating proportions of each outcome. How does this ability develop? We developed a method that lets us bring computational modeling to bear on this question. A study of 40 adults and 31 4-year-olds indicates that unlike adults, many 4-year-olds use a single simulation to estimate probability distributions over simulated possibilities. We also implemented the 3-cups task, an established test of children's sensitivity to possibilities, in a novel format. We replicate existing 3-cups results. Moreover, children who our model categorized as running a single simulation on our novel task show a signature of running a single simulation in the 3-cups task. This signature is not observed in children who were categorized as running multiple simulations. This validates our model and adds to the evidence that about half of 4-year-olds don't evaluate multiple candidates for reality in parallel

The lure of postwar London:networks of people, print and organisations

Partly due to their British colonial education, many writers were lured to the postwar metropolis to find publishers and a wider audience for their work. This chapter discusses the contradictory stances of the publishing industry in the 1950s and 1960s. It traces the interactions between editors, audiences, and other cultural networks that made London an international publishing capital for ʼnew’ Commonwealth authors (as they were then known). It was in London that Amos Tutuola or Wilson Harris were first noticed by Faber and Faber, and Sam Selvon’s A Brighter Sun (1952) or George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin (1953) first appeared. This interest soon waned, however, as issues of race, nation, and identity began to dominate, and sharp divisions were apparent, partially due to the myopia of some publishers and the parochial reception of some critics. The chapter also points forwards to the social and political contexts which provoked the vital growth of smaller and more radical publishing houses such as New Beacon (1966) in the 1970s and 1980s.</p

Forging connections: anthologies, arts collectives, and the politics of inclusion

The changing social and political landscape of twentieth-century Britain catalysed a remarkable rise in collaborative activity by artists and activists of black and Asian heritage. Creative communities began to gather in both local and regional contexts, with the aim of sharing resources and securing an audience. This chapter records some of these many activities, tracing the groups’ genesis, manifest objectives, and key contributions. It argues that anthologising should be understood as a specifically motivated activity. Literary anthologies of poetry and fiction served to showcase the diversity of contemporary writing, while also suggesting its coherence. Drawing on the concept of “strategic essentialism” elucidated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, I show that the anthology acts to ensure the visibility of a group, bannered as a unified and singly-titled selection of texts, while also insisting on the differences within: the heterogeneous multiplicity of black and Asian British experiences and creative practices

'Vernacular Voices: Black British Poetry'

ABSTRACT Black British poetry is the province of experimenting with voice and recording rhythms beyond the iambic pentameter. Not only in performance poetry and through the spoken word, but also on the page, black British poetry constitutes and preserves a sound archive of distinct linguistic varieties. In Slave Song (1984) and Coolie Odyssey (1988), David Dabydeen employs a form of Guyanese Creole in order to linguistically render and thus commemorate the experience of slaves and indentured labourers, respectively, with the earlier collection providing annotated translations into Standard English. James Berry, Louise Bennett, and Valerie Bloom adapt Jamaican Patois to celebrate Jamaican folk culture and at times to represent and record experiences and linguistic interactions in the postcolonial metropolis. Grace Nichols and John Agard use modified forms of Guyanese Creole, with Nichols frequently constructing gendered voices whilst Agard often celebrates linguistic playfulness. The borders between linguistic varieties are by no means absolute or static, as the emergence and marked growth of ‘London Jamaican’ (Mark Sebba) indicates. Asian British writer Daljit Nagra takes liberties with English for different reasons. Rather than having recourse to established Creole languages, and blending them with Standard English, his heteroglot poems frequently emulate ‘Punglish’, the English of migrants whose first language is Punjabi. Whilst it is the language prestige of London Jamaican that has been significantly enhanced since the 1990s, a fact not only confirmed by linguistic research but also by its transethnic uses both in the streets and on the page, Nagra’s substantial success and the mainstream attention he receives also indicate the clout of vernacular voices in poetry. They have the potential to connect with oral traditions and cultural memories, to record linguistic varieties, and to endow ‘street cred’ to authors and texts. In this chapter, these double-voiced poetic languages are also read as signs of resistance against residual monologic ideologies of Englishness. © Book proposal (02/2016): The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing p. 27 of 4

Spatial memory and number perception

A model and experiment for understanding the relationship between visuospatial memory and number psychophysics in humans