自我参照加工的近空间距离增强效应：来自行为与ERPs的证据

研究采用学习-再认范式考察空间距离如何影响自我参照加工。首先通过事件相关电位技术探索不同空间距离怎样影响自我参照加工的过程, 再结合再认测试验证影响的稳定性。结果显示：(1)学习阶段, 近空间距离在晚期认知加工阶段对自我参照加工具有明显的增强作用, 并且在再认测试中得到了验证; (2)研究结果同样也发现了学习阶段近空间距离对他人参照加工的增强作用, 但未在再认测试中得到验证。本研究证实了近空间距离能够促进自我参照更加精细化加工, 拓展了对自我参照加工的认识和自我的了解。     

Processing Unpointed Hebrew: What Can We Learn from Determining the Identicalness of Monosyllabic and Bisyllabic Nouns

The aim of this study was to determine whether Hebrew readers reference phonological information for the silent processing of unpointed Hebrew nouns. A research paradigm in which participants were required to perform consecutive same/different judgments regarding the identicalness of members of stimulus pairs was used for answering this question. Twenty-eight students (mean grade 4.9) participated in the study. The nouns used in preparing the word stimulus pairs were comprised of various amounts of syllabic information (monosyllabic versus bisyllabic) and differed in the degree this information was represented by their letter graphemes. The main findings suggest that the processing of the identicalness of unpointed Hebrew words may not involve the referencing of their phonological information.     

内源性注意和外源性注意条件下SOA变化对数字距离效应的影响

采用内源性注意和外源性注意实验范式,材料为小数(1～4)和大数(6～9)的阿拉伯数字,以判断数字是否大于5为任务,考察内源性和外源性线索不同注意条件下SOA对数字距离效应的影响。结果发现:(1)内源性线索条件下,随着SOAs增加,大小数的距离效应逐渐增大,当SOA为900ms时,大小数的距离效应最明显;(2)外源性线索条件下,当SOA为300ms时,大小数的距离效应最显著,随着SOAs增加,大小数的距离效应逐渐减小。     

Mapping numerical magnitudes onto symbols: the numerical distance effect and individual differences in children's mathematics achievement

Although it is often assumed that abilities that reflect basic numerical understanding, such as numerical comparison, are related to children’s mathematical abilities, this relationship has not been tested rigorously. In addition, the extent to which symbolic and nonsymbolic number processing play differential roles in this relationship is not yet understood. To address these questions, we collected mathematics achievement measures from 6- to 8-year-olds as well as reaction times from a numerical comparison task. Using the reaction times, we calculated the size of the numerical distance effect exhibited by each child. In a correlational analysis, we found that the individual differences in the distance effect were related to mathematics achievement but not to reading achievement. This relationship was found to be specific to symbolic numerical comparison. Implications for the role of basic numerical competency and the role of accessing numerical magnitude information from Arabic numerals for the development of mathematical skills and their impairment are discussed.     

Number comparison and number ordering as predictors of arithmetic performance in adults: Exploring the link between the two skills,and investigating the question of domain-specificity

Recent evidence has highlighted the important role that number-ordering skills play in arithmetic abilities, both in children and adults. In the current study, we demonstrated that number comparison and ordering skills were both significantly related to arithmetic performance in adults, and the effect size was greater in the case of ordering skills. Additionally, we found that the effect of number comparison skills on arithmetic performance was mediated by number-ordering skills. Moreover, performance on comparison and ordering tasks involving the months of the year was also strongly correlated with arithmetic skills, and participants displayed similar (canonical or reverse) distance effects on the comparison and ordering tasks involving months as when the tasks included numbers. This suggests that the processes responsible for the link between comparison and ordering skills and arithmetic performance are not specific to the domain of numbers. Finally, a factor analysis indicated that performance on comparison and ordering tasks loaded on a factor that included performance on a number line task and self-reported spatial thinking styles. These results substantially extend previous research on the role of order processing abilities in mental arithmetic.     

Learning of letter names follows similar principles across languages: Evidence from Hebrew

Letter names play an important role in early literacy. Previous studies of letter name learning have examined the Latin alphabet. The current study tested learners of Hebrew, comparing their patterns of performance and types of errors with those of English learners. We analyzed letter-naming data from 645 Israeli children who had not begun formal reading instruction: a younger group (mean age 5 years 2 months) and an older group (mean age 6 years 2 months). Children's errors often involved letters with similar shapes or letters adjacent to one another in the alphabet. Most Hebrew letter names are not very similar to one another phonologically, and there were fewer phonologically based confusions than in English. We found both general frequency effects and frequency effects that reflected the letters in individual children's names. On average, girls knew more letter names than did boys. The results suggest that letter name learning follows similar principles across languages.     

The perception of (naked only) bodies and faceless heads relies on holistic processing: Evidence from the inversion effect

Faces and bodies are more difficult to perceive when presented inverted than when presented upright (i.e., stimulus inversion effect), an effect that has been attributed to the disruption of holistic processing. The features that can trigger holistic processing in faces and bodies, however, still remain elusive. In this study, using a sequential matching task, we tested whether stimulus inversion affects various categories of visual stimuli: faces, faceless heads, faceless heads in body context, headless bodies naked, whole bodies naked, headless bodies clothed, and whole bodies clothed. Both accuracy and inversion efficiency score results show inversion effects for all categories but for clothed bodies (with and without heads). In addition, the magnitude of the inversion effect for face, naked body, and faceless heads was similar. Our findings demonstrate that the perception of faces, faceless heads, and naked bodies relies on holistic processing. Clothed bodies (with and without heads), on the other side, may trigger clothes-sensitive rather than body-sensitive perceptual mechanisms.     

The role of rational and experiential processing in influencing the framing effect

Research on individual differences and the framing effect has focused primarily on how variability in rational processing influences choice. However, we propose that measuring only rational processing presents an incomplete picture of how participants are responding to framed options, as orthogonal individual differences in experiential processing might be relevant. In two studies, we utilize the Rational Experiential Inventory, which captures individual differences in rational and experiential processing, to investigate how both processing types influence decisions. Our results show that differences in experiential processing, but not rational processing, moderated the effect of frame on choice. We suggest that future research should more closely examine the influence of experiential processing on making decisions, to gain a broader understanding of the conditions that contribute to the framing effect.     

Choosing words at the study phase: The self‐choice effect on memory from the viewpoint of connective processing1

Abstract: The self‐choice effect, that is the superior memory performance observed when participants are allowed to choose the item at the study phase than when they are not (lack of choice), has been explained by the encoding‐strategy hypothesis ( Takahashi, 1997 ). This hypothesis distinguishes between organizational processing, which focuses upon the relationship between chosen items, and item‐speci?c processing, which itself focuses on the elements that make the chosen item distinctive. The encoding‐strategy hypothesis predicts that the ability for the successive recall of chosen items can be affected by organized list (Experiment 1). The results of our experiments ran counter to the prediction and were interpreted by a new concept called connective processing, which would emphasize the relationship of paired items. Connective processing was examined through orienting tasks (Experiment 2). The results were more suitably interpreted by connective than organizational processing.     

数字空间表征的在线建构：来自干扰情境中数字SNARC效应的证据

尽管已有研究发现数字以空间方式表征在人类记忆系统, 但是人脑如何完成数字的空间表征尚存争议。本研究两个实验在不同比例的数字字母(实验1)和不同比例的数字汉字(实验2)混合情境中考察了数字空间表征特点及其机制, 对上述争议进行了深入研究。结果发现：(1)当数字字母比例为“1 : 1”时, 数字加工中不出现SNARC效应。当数字字母比例为“1 : 6”和“6 : 1”时, 数字加工中均出现SNARC效应。即数字字母比例与数字SNARC效应之间呈倒“U”型关系。(2)数字汉字混合情境中数字汉字比例与数字SNARC效应之间同样呈倒“U”型关系。结果说明：(1)干扰刺激与数字混合呈现会影响数字SNARC效应。(2)干扰刺激加工对数字SNARC效应的影响受到数字与干扰刺激比例的调节, 且具有跨干扰材料的稳定性。研究结果意味着数字的空间表征是人类通过统计学习在线建构的, 支持了工作记忆理论。     

Conceptual and non-conceptual repetition priming in category exemplar generation: Evidence from bilinguals

One measure of conceptual implicit memory is repetition priming in the generation of exemplars from a semantic category, but does such priming transfer across languages? That is, do the overlapping conceptual representations for translation equivalents provide a sufficient basis for such priming? In Experiment 1 (N=96) participants carried out a deep encoding task, and priming between languages was statistically reliable, but attenuated, relative to within-language priming. Experiment 2 (N=96) replicated the findings of Experiment 1 and assessed the contributions of conceptual and non-conceptual processes using a levels-of-processing manipulation. Words that underwent shallow encoding exhibited within-language, but not between-language, priming. Priming in shallow conditions cannot therefore be explained by incidental activation of the concept. Instead, part of the within-language priming effect, even under deep-encoding conditions, is due to increased availability of language-specific lemmas or phonological word forms.     

The nature of regularity and irregularity: evidence from Hebrew nominal inflection

Most evidence for the role of regular inflection as a default operation comes from languages that confound the morphological properties of regular and irregular forms with their phonological characteristics. For instance, regular plurals tend to faithfully preserve the base's phonology (e.g., rat-rats), whereas irregular nouns tend to alter it (e.g., mouse-mice). The distinction between regular and irregular inflection may thus be an epiphenomenon of phonological faithfulness. In Hebrew noun inflection, however, morphological regularity and phonological faithfulness can be distinguished: Nouns whose stems change in the plural may take either a regular or an irregular suffix, and nouns whose stems are preserved in the plural may take either a regular or an irregular suffix. We use this dissociation to examine two hallmarks of default inflection: its lack of dependence on analogies from similar regular nouns, and its application to nonroots such as names. We show that these hallmarks of regularity may be found whether or not the plural form preserves the stem faithfully: People apply the regular suffix to novel nouns that do not resemble existing nouns and to names that sound like irregular nouns, regardless of whether the stem is ordinarily preserved in the plural of that family of nouns. Moreover, when they pluralize names (e.g., the Barak-Barakim), they do not apply the stem changes that are found in their homophonous nouns (e.g., barak-brakim lightning), replicating an effect found in English and German. These findings show that the distinction between regular and irregular phenomena cannot be reduced to differences in the kinds of phonological changes associated with those phenomena in English. Instead, regularity and irregularity must be distinguished in terms of the kinds of mental computations that effect them: symbolic operations versus memorized idiosyncrasies. A corollary is that complex words are not generally dichotomizable as regular or irregular different aspects of a word may be regular or irregular depending on whether they violate the rule for that aspect and hence must be stored in memory.     

Roots, stems, and the universality of lexical representations: evidence from Hebrew

Is the structure of lexical representations universal, or do languages vary in the fundamental ways in which they represent lexical information? Here, we consider a touchstone case: whether Semitic languages require a special morpheme, the consonantal root. In so doing, we explore a well-known constraint on the location of identical consonants that has often been used as motivation for root representations in Semitic languages: Identical consonants frequently occur at the end of putative roots (e.g., skk), but rarely occur in their beginning (e.g., ssk). Although this restriction has traditionally been stated over roots, an alternative account could be stated over stems, a representational entity that is found more widely across the world's languages. To test this possibility, we investigate the acceptability of a single set of roots, manifesting identity initially, finally or not at all (e.g., ssk versus skk versus rmk) across two nominal paradigms: CéCeC (a paradigm in which identical consonants are rare) and CiCúC (a paradigm in which identical consonants are frequent). If Semitic lexical representations consist of roots only, then similar restrictions on consonant co-occurrence should be observed in the two paradigms. Conversely, if speakers store stems, then the restriction on consonant co-occurrence might be modulated by the properties of the nominal paradigm (be it by means of statistical properties or their grammatical sources). Findings from rating and lexical decision experiments with both visual and auditory stimuli support the stem hypothesis: compared to controls (e.g., rmk), forms with identical consonants (e.g., ssk, skk) are less acceptable in the CéCeC than in the CiCúC paradigm. Although our results do not falsify root-based accounts, they strongly raise the possibility that stems could account for the observed restriction on consonantal identity. As such, our results raise fresh challenge to the notion that different languages require distinct sets of representational resources.     

Individual differences in (non-visual) processing style predict the face inversion effect

Recent research suggests that individuals with relatively weak global precedence (i.e., a smaller propensity to view visual stimuli in a configural manner) show a reduced face inversion effect (FIE). Coupled with such findings, a number of recent studies have demonstrated links between an advantage for feature-based processing and the presentation of traits associated with autism among the general population. The present study sought to bridge these findings by investigating whether a relationship exists between the possession of autism-associated traits (i.e., as indicated by individuals'"autism quotient" [(AQ) and the size of the FIE. Participants completed an on-line study in which the AQ was measured prior to a standard face recognition task where half of the faces were inverted at test. The results confirmed that higher AQ levels were predictive of smaller FIEs. Implications for a common underlying factor relating to processing orientation are discussed.     

心理距离对基线比例忽略的影响

基线比例忽略是指在不确定情境中, 个体进行判断和决策时不能充分利用或者忽略基线比例的现象。本研究通过系列情境实验探索了三种不同维度的心理距离, 即时间距离、空间距离和社会距离对基线比例忽略的影响。结果发现, 三种心理距离均能够对基线比例忽略产生影响：当时间距离、空间距离和社会距离较近时, 个体更容易表现出基线比例忽略现象; 而当时间距离、空间距离和社会距离较远时, 个体的基线比例忽略倾向减弱。     

Impaired configural body processing in anorexia nervosa: Evidence from the body inversion effect

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) suffer from severe disturbances of body perception. It is unclear, however, whether such disturbances are linked to specific alterations in the processing of body configurations with respect to the local processing of body part details. Here, we compared a consecutive sample of 12 AN patients with a group of 12 age‐, gender‐ and education‐matched controls using an inversion effect paradigm requiring the visual discrimination of upright and inverted pictures of whole bodies, faces and objects. The AN patients presented selective deficits in the discrimination of upright body stimuli, which requires configural processing. Conversely, patients and controls showed comparable abilities in the discrimination of inverted bodies, which involves only detail‐based processing, and in the discrimination of both upright and inverted faces and objects. Importantly, the body inversion effect negatively correlated with the persistence scores at the Temperament and Character Inventory, which evaluates increased tendency to convert a signal of punishment into a signal of reinforcement. These results suggest that the deficits of configural processing in AN patients may be associated with their obsessive worries about body appearance and to the excessive attention to details that characterizes their general perceptual style.     

时间赋义对数字空间表征的影响：来自数字线估计任务的证据

数字线估计任务的大量研究以纯数字为研究对象而忽视了赋义数字。本研究以Siegler等的数字线估计任务为原型,探讨在对数字时间赋义条件下小学二、四和六年级儿童的数字表征形式是否发生变化。结果表明,小学二年级是0-1000范围内数字表征从对数形式转换为线性形式的转折点,对数字赋予时间含义后,三个年级均出现了赋义效应。在线性模型和对数模型中时间赋义的作用相反,时间赋义表现出抑线升对（抑制线性模型提升对数模型解释力）的效果。     

Transfer-appropriate processing in the testing effect

The testing effect is the finding that taking a review test enhances performance on a final test relative to restudying the material. The present experiment investigated transfer-appropriate processing in the testing effect using semantic and orthographic cues to evoke conceptual and data-driven processing, respectively. After a study phase, subjects either restudied the material or took a cued-recall test consisting of half semantic and half orthographic cues in which the correct response was given as feedback. A final, cued-recall test consisted of the identical cue, or a new cue that was of the same type or different type of cue (semantic/orthographic or orthographic/semantic) as that used for that target in the review test. Testing enhanced memory in all conditions. When the review cues and final-test cues were identical, final recall was higher for semantic than orthographic cues. Consistent with test-based transfer-appropriate processing, memory performance improved as the review and final cues became more similar. These results suggest that the testing effect could potentially be caused by the episodic retrieval processes in a final memory test overlapping more with the episodic retrieval processes in a review test than with the encoding operations performed during restudy.     

不同加工深度非符号数量信息的SNARC效应：眼动证据

通过两项眼动实验考察了个体在水平和垂直方向上对点阵数量进行较浅(浏览)和较深(数字比较)程度加工时的数量空间表征联系。结果显示：点阵在水平方向上出现了SNARC效应, 且SNARC效应的大小不受加工深浅的影响, 而在垂直方向上没有出现SNARC效应。表明(1)点阵数量SNARC效应的稳定性不如阿拉伯数字; (2)方向对点阵SNARC效应的影响更大, 加工程度的影响则不明显。结合加工程度、空间方向和点阵数量的自身特征等对研究发现进行了讨论, 认为数字的空间表征在多个因素的共同影响下可能呈现出多样性。