The Evolution of Theory of Mind in the Human Evolution

Despite almost half a century of research for theory of mind, its evolutionary origin is largely unknown. This paper proposes that the evolutionary origin of theory of mind starts from the beginning of the human evolution to form hominins through bipedalism and the mixed habitat. The feet of the early hominins were still adapted for grasping trees rather than walking for long distances and running fast on the ground. The early hominins lived in the mixed habitat of grassy woodland with patches of denser forest, and freshwater springs. The difficulty of walking in the mixed habitat leads to division of labor for the home specialist group (small children, old people, and mothers with small children, and pregnant women) in the safe forest area and the exploration specialist group (young people without the care of small children) in the dangerous open area. The different tasks, attitudes, and mentalities in different specialist groups produce theory of mind as the ability to attribute different mental states to different specialist groups. (Uniformity of mind instead of theory of mind is for generalists without division of labor). The early Homo species with the open habitat developed theory of mind for hunter specialist group and gatherer specialist group. The middle Homo species with complex stone tools developed theory of mind for the cooperative specialist groups in the large production of complex stone tools. The late Homo species with complex social interaction developed theory of mind for mind reading to enhance cooperation and to detect cheaters in complex social interaction. For religion, the unusually harsh Upper Paleolithic Period developed theory of mind for imaginary specialists in terms of supernatural power, guidance, and comfort. Therefore, the three general types of theory of mind are for specialists in division of labor, mind reading in complex social interaction, and imaginary specialists in imaginary division of labor under harsh conditions. Self-awareness in the mirror self-recognition test is also explained.

Analyzing the Integrated Teaching of Theory and Practice in Communication Technology Based on the Cognitive Process

This study analyzes the cognitive characteristics of students in communication courses in military colleges and the impact of integrated teaching of theory and practice on students’cognitive process as well as proposes the information processing model of students’cognitive process in the integrated teaching of theory and practice.Combining the cognitive characteristics of the students from Communication Technology,on the one hand,this study analyzes the five factors that affect the teaching effect of integrating theory and practice;on the other hand,it proposes improvement measures for the integration of theory and practice from the structure of the teaching content,teaching organization and management,modern education technology,and the ability of teachers.

Observation on Theory-practice Teaching Mode of of Taxation Practice in Higher Vocational Colleges

Integrated teaching mode of theory and practice not only can integrate the theoretical knowledge and practical jobs, combine the theory teaching and practical teaching, but also can motivate learning interest of students and cultivate the professional skill of vocational students. Therefore, based on analyzing the advantages of integrated teaching mode of theory and practice, the paper observes the integrated teaching method of theory and practice and observes the problems.

Research on the Reform of“Traditional Chinese Medicine Nursing”Teaching Based on the Concept of Outcome-Based Education

Continuously evolving teaching concepts and the adoption of diverse teaching methods have led to outcome-oriented education becoming a fundamental focus of teaching reform in colleges and universities.In this article,the“Traditional Chinese Medicine Nursing”course is used as an example to discuss the reform of education based on the concept of outcome-based education,with the purpose of improving students'learning outcomes and practical skills.

Belief Revision by Sets of Sentences

The aim of this paper is to extend the system of belief revision developed by Alchourron, Gardenfors and Makinson (AGM) to a more general framework.This extension enables a treatment of revision not only by single sentences but also by any sets of sentences, especially by infinite sets. The extended revision and contraction operators will be called general ones, respectively. A group of postulates for each operator is provided in such a way that it coincides with AGM's in the limit case. A notion of the nice-ordering partition is introduced to characterize the general contraction operation. A comp ut ation- orient ed ap-proach is provided for belief revision operations.

Appraisal of the Production-Oriented Approach： An Introduction

The production-oriented approach （POA） has been developed over a decade. It is driven by the need to improve English classroom instruction for university students in China （Wen, 2016）. It is also motivated by the aspiration to enhance the quality of foreign language education in other similar pedagogical contexts outside China. A volume of research has been done by Wen Qiufang and her research team, to formulate the theory of POA and to test its effectiveness in classroom pedagogy （e.g. Wen, 2016, 2015; Yang, 2015; Zhang, 2015）. At the moment, the POA is still at an early stage of theory building and almost all empirical research is done in the Chinese context. In order to improve the quality of this theory and to make it intelligible to the international academic community, a one-day symposium was held in Beijing Foreign Studies University on May 15, 2017. The symposium was entitled ＇The first international forum on innovative foreign language education in China： Appraisal of the POA＇. In the forum, leading experts in applied linguistics were invited to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the POA and the directions for its future development. The symposium was the first attempt for the POA research team to discuss its latest work with international scholars. This Viewpoint section collects the responses of four experts who participated in the symposium, listed in alphabetical order. The collection of articles covers three topics related to the POA： its pedagogical application, its use for teacher training, and its research. Alister Cumming is Professor Emeritus and the former Head of the Centre for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies, University of Toronto, Canada. His article focuses primarily on POA research as an exemplary case of design-based research. Rod Ellis is Research Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia. He discusses POA in terms of pedagogy, teacher training and research, with both critiques and constructive suggestions. Paul Kei Matsuda is Professor of English and Director of Second Language Writing at Arizona State University, the writed states. He responds to POA from the perspective of an expert researcher and teacher of L2 writing. Charlene Polio is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Linguistics ＆ Germanic, Slavic, Asian ＆ African Languages atMichigan State University, the writed states. She conceptualises POA as a useful method to address some issues in pre-service teacher development. Overall, the articles in this section are insightful and reader-friendly. They are not only useful for the development of POA in particular, but may also be valuable to a broad range of researchers as they touch upon pertaining issues, as well as emerging topics, in the field of applied linguistics. We therefore find it necessary to make them accessible to a wide readership.

Friedrich Ackermann’s scientific research program

We sketch Friedrich Ackermann’s research program following the concept of Imre Lakatos,with some historical key developments in the theory and application of aerotriangulation and image matching.The research program,with its core being statistical estimation theory,has decisively influenced photogrammetry since the 60s,is still fully alive,and a challenge for today’s methods of image interpretation.We describe(1)Lakatos’concept of a scientific research program,with its negative and positive heuristics and(2)Ackermann’s research program,clearly made explicit in his PhD,with its mathematical model,the ability to predict theoretical precision and reliability,the potential of analyzing rigorous and approximate method,and the role of testing.The development of aerotriangulation,later augmented by image matching techniques,is closely connected to Ackermann’s successful attempts to integrate basic research and practical applications.