The inconsistent relation between word frequency and free recall performance and the non-monotonic relation found between the two cannot all be explained by current theories. We propose a theoretical framework that can explain all extant results. Based on an ecological psychology analysis of the free recall situation in terms of environmental and informational resources available to the participants, we propose that because participants’ cognitive system has been shaped by their native language, free recall performance is best understood as the end (...) result of relational properties that preexist the experimental situation and of the way the words from the experimental list interact with those. In addition to this, we borrow from predictive coding theory the idea that the brain constantly predicts “what is coming next” so that it is mainly prediction errors that will propagate information forward. Our ecological psychology analysis indicates there will be “prediction errors” because the word frequency distribution in an experimental word list is inevitably different from the particular Zipf’s law distribution of the words in the language that shaped participants’ brains. We further propose the particular distributional discrepancies inherent to a given word list will trigger, as a function of the words that are included in the list, their order, and of the words that are absent from the list, a surprisal signal in the brain, something that is isomorphic to the concept of Bayesian surprise. The precise moment when Bayesian surprise is triggered will determine to what word of the list that Bayesian surprise will be associated with, and the word the Bayesian surprise will be associated with will benefit from it and become more memorable as a direct function of the magnitude of the surprisal. Two experiments are presented that show a proxy of Bayesian surprise explains the free recall performance and that no effect of word frequency is found above and beyond the effect of that proxy variable. We then discuss how our view can account for all data extant in the literature on the effect of word frequency on free recall. (shrink)

This article takes up Lipovetsky‟s discussion on artistic capitalism in L’esthétisation du monde. Vivre à l’âge du capitalisme artiste, to trace its definitions and methodological construction, but also in order to create a critical theory of artistic capitalism, based on the following working-hypothesis: the production of art and the production of self, understood in the sense of a Foucauldian project of the aesthetics of existence, represent correspondent purposes in artistic capitalism. My research will be focused on examining previous attempts of (...) developing such a critical inquiry, claimed by Luc Boltanski, Eve Chiapello, and Luc Ferry. It is my thesis that the failure of a homogeneous critical theory of artistic capitalism is owed to different inconsistent interpretations of contaminating ethics with aesthetics in order to create an ideal of morality and authenticity for the existence of the individual inspired by contemporary techniques of art production, aspects that were conceived by Lipovetsky as parts of the process of the “aestheticization of the world”. (shrink)

Din punct de vedere politic, Ţările Române îşi stabilizează situaţia internă. În plan extern, reuşesc să-şi îmbunătăţească relaţiile cu alte state şi în primul rând, cu cele vecine. În plan intern, domnitorii întreprind măsuri organizatorice inspirate şi utile. De reţinut în acest sens, preocupările constante ale lui Şerban Constantin, Constantin Cantemir şu Constantin Brâncoveanu în privinţa îmbunătăţirii funcţionalităţii şi a modernizării serviciilor secrete. -/- INTELLIGENCE INFO, Vol. 1, Nr. 1, Septembrie 2022, pp. 42-49 ISSN 2821 – 8159, ISSN – (...) L 2821 – 8159. (shrink)