2 . “I like pigs,” Winston Churchill supposedly once said. “Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” Whether Churchill’s contemporary George Orwell also liked pigs is less clear. But he, too, surely saw something in them that was lacking in many domestic (驯养的) animals, for it was they who ended up running the show in his novel, Animal Farm. Pigs, then, are intelligent social creatures.

And, like all animals, they sometimes fight. Some pigs tend to be attackers; others tend to be victims. Who is what depends largely on weight. Among pigs, pounds mean power. The attacker might bite, kick or push the victim. Most conflicts end in seconds, but some last a minute or two.

In most animal species fights would be like that. However, many of the conflicts among pigs Dr Norscia, a biologist, observed had interested parties beyond the fighters. He therefore wanted to understand the role of these bystanders in solving conflicts—and what this says about pigs’ cognitive (认知的) abilities.

Since there was usually not enough time for a bystander pig to become involved in the heat of a conflict, though this did occur, Dr Norscia looked at what happened in the three minutes immediately following a fight. Sometimes, he found, the fighters reconciled with each other on their own. The more distantly related the fighters were, the more frequently this happened. Dr Norscia guessed that relations between close relatives are more secure to start with, so rebuilding friendly relations rapidly is less necessary for them.

On other occasions, however, a third pig stepped in. Sometimes this bystander interacted with the attacker, which reduced the number of attacks coming after. Sometimes, the bystander interacted with the victim. This appeared to calm the victim down, for it reduced anxiety-related behavior.

Social intelligence need not, though, be entirely selfless. Pigs are more likely to step in after a conflict if they are closely related to either the attacker or the victim. This is probably an example of kin selection (亲属选择), which favors the development of behavior.

3 . In the fall of 2008, I was looking to leave my current job in a doctor’s office to explore something more ________. So I started investigating the new world of travel nursing. With a bit of ________, I was connected to Carlyn.

At this time, I am working on all areas of my life...... in the ________of becoming a stronger, more confident person, and ________more about who I am. Without amazing, enthusiastic and supportive Carlyn, I wouldn’t be where I am today. For the past 2 years, Carlyn and I stayed in ________through email, facebook, and a periodic phone call, becoming friends…. I had a whole view of all the things she was ________in her life and it inspired me much.

I was anxious to ________Carlyn face-to-face for the first time. But, as soon as she ________in front of my house, it was like we had done it a million times before. This “my friends” is the ________ of the human connection that she talks about. It takes two people from ________to friends!

Now as fate would have it, Carlyn has ________my world. So now, I hope to repay her ________for all that she has helped me ________. I am fortunate to be part of a friendship that is a by-product of her ________. She continues to inspire me and I hope to learn and meet more through her _________.

During the summer before Patty entered fifth grade, she decided to try a new sport. Swim training was nearly over and Patty was the fastest swimmer in her age group. She had always been the best. The neighborhood was offering a one-week tennis training course. Patty and her friend Darla got permission from their parents to join.

On Saturday morning, Darla’s mom took the girls to a store and bought them each a good, used tennis racket. “If you girls stick to tennis, then we’ll talk about a new racket. These will do for now.” The girls were excited about their new purchases. On Monday morning, at 7:00 a.m., Patty’s mom woke her up. “It’s time for tennis!” Patty covered her face. “Mom, it’s too early!” She made great effort to get out of bed and down to the breakfast table. Patty finished breakfast and ran to Darla’s house, then they walked to the court.

Mrs. Cane, the tennis coach, lined everyone up and started with the basics. After that, Mrs. Cane tirelessly taught them to practice their forehand and backhand. By the end of the week, Patty had made impressive progress. Mrs. Cane commented that Patty had lots of potential. Darla, on the other hand, was struggling. The other teenagers were having a tough time of it, too. Patty was the only one who seemed to get somewhere.

Since then, Darla had always been out in the August heat, practicing her serves or hitting the ball. Patty wasn’t really interested. She felt she was such a “natural” for tennis that she really didn’t need to practice. By the end of the summer, Darla began to get the hang of it. She joined a neighborhood junior tennis team. There would be matches every Thursday. Patty wanted to join as well, but she didn’t want to miss her favorite TV show. She told herself that she would join it when she got some free time. If Darla had fun, she would join the team in the spring.

The week before school started, Mrs. Cane held another training course.

Patty couldn’t stop thinking of her poor performance on the way home.

5 . When the company OpenAI developed its new artificial intelligence (AI) program, ChatGPT, in late 2022, educators began to worry. ChatGPT could create text that seemed like a human wrote it. How could teachers discover whether students were using language created by an AI chatbot to cheat on a writing task?

As a linguist who studies the effects of technology on how people read, write and think, I believe there are other more pressing concerns besides cheating. These include whether AI, more generally, threatens student writing skills, the value of writing as a process, and the importance of regarding writing as a tool for thinking.

As part of my research on the effects of AI on human writing, I surveyed young adults in the U.S. about some issues related to those effects. One participant said that at some point if you depend on predictive text, you’re going to lose your spelling abilities. Enter “Was Rom” into a Google search and you’re given a list of choices like “Was Rome built in a day”. Type “ple” into a text message and you’re offered “please” and “plenty”. These tools complete our sentences automatically, giving us little chance to think about our spelling, and continuously asking us to follow their suggestions.

Evan Selinger, a philosopher, worried that predictive texting reduces the power of writing as a form of mental activity and personal expression. “By encouraging us not to think too deeply about our words, predictive technology may change how we deal with each other,” Selinger wrote. “We give others more algorithms (算法) and less of ourselves. Automation can stop us thinking and the resulting text didn’t feel like mine anymore.”

I asked ChatGPT whether it was a threat to humans’ motivation to write. The bot responded: “There will always be a demand for creative, original content that requires the unique viewpoint of a human writer.” It continued: “Writing serves many purposes beyond just the creation of content, such as self-expression, communication, and personal growth, which can continue to encourage people to write even if certain types of writing can be automated.”

I was glad to find the program had seemingly admitted its limitations.

A child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulder against a high board-fence and swayed the other to and fro, while kicking carelessly at the gravel.

Sunshine beat upon the cobbles (鹅卵石), and a lazy summer wind raised yellow dust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks moved with indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing.

After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent air down the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck. Occasionally he trod upon the end of it and stumbled.

He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each other. The dog hesitated for a moment, but presently he made some little advances with his tail. The child put out his hand and called him. In an apologetic manner, the dog came close, and the two had an interchange of friendly pattings and waggles. The dog became more enthusiastic with each moment of the interview, until with his gleeful caperings he threatened to overturn the child. Whereupon the child lifted his hand and struck the dog with a blow upon the head.

This thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog, and wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child’s feet. When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition (警告) in childish sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in a peculiar (奇怪的) manner. At the same time, with his ears and his eyes, he offered a small prayer to the child.

He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly, that the child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly, to keep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement (惩罚) in the most serious way, and no doubt considered that he had committed some grave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance in every way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child and petitioned him, and offered more prayers.

At last the child grew weary of this amusement and turned toward home. The dog was praying at the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyes upon the retreating form.

Presently he struggled to his feet and started after the child. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had found. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

10 . Visual Symbols and the Blind

From several recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space. But pictures are more than literal representations.

This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle(Fig. 1). I was surprised. Lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration.

When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever interpretation appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel’s spokes(把柄)as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. Majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines—or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So I decided to test whether various lines of motion were liable ways of showing movement or if they were merely specific marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.

To search out these answers, I created raised—line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dotted and extended beyond the perimeter of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: shaky, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.

All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was shaky; and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that the spokes extending beyond the wheel’s perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dotted spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly.

In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was the favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.