文本阅读中空间距离的心理表征

采用学习探测模式和回指解决相结合的研究范式,探讨情境模型中空间距离的心理表征问题。实验1分离几何距离和类别距离,探讨类别距离对回指解决的影响。结果表明,在控制几何距离的条件下,读者采用由房间数目体现的类别距离信息建构情境模型;实验2进一步探讨几何距离的作用,结果发现,类别距离信息相同的条件下,读者在情境模型中表征几何距离信息。研究表明,类别距离和几何距离分别对空间情境模型的回指解决产生独立影响     

The construction of spatial situation models during reading

Psycholinguistic research faces a major challenge in describing the mental representations readers construct from a text. It is now widely accepted that readers end with a representation of the situation described in the text. However, it is unclear whether this representation allows the activation of elements in accordance with their situation proximity. To answer this question, two experiments were conducted. Participants read texts, sentence by sentence, which gave them instructions about how to arrange items in a layout; they then performed a recognition task. By manipulating the spatial proximity between prime and probe items, this task allowed the measurement of a spatial priming effect. In the first experiment, a larger priming effect was observed for closer items on the spatial layout. The second experiment replicated these findings and showed that the priming effects are better explained by categorical distance than by Euclidean distance.     

视觉表象操作加工的眼动实验研究

本研究通过视觉表象旋转和扫描的眼动实验探讨表象的心理表征方式。实验一结果表明,眼动指标具有与反应时相类似的旋转角度效应。实验二结果显示,表象扫描的反应时和眼动指标都具有与知觉扫描加工一样的距离效应。由此可以认为,表象眼动与知觉眼动模式具有相似性;表象具有相对独立的心理表征方式并有其特殊的加工过程;表象的心理表征可以是形象表征,而非一定是抽象的命题或符号表征     

Selecting one among many referents in spatial situation models

Five experiments related anaphor resolution to a classic memory variable, namely, interference created by multiple uses of a given object-concept, and by spatial distance of the referent from the reader's focus of attention. Participants memorized a diagram of a building with rooms containing objects, and then read narratives describing characters' activities there. Reading was self-paced word by word. Accessibility was measured by readers' time to understand anaphoric sentences containing a definite noun phrase referring to an object in its room. Spatial distance between the object and the current focus of attention increased reading times for names of the object, the room, and sentence wrap-up. Multiple examples of a target-object increased its reading time only if they were scattered across different rooms. An associative model of memory retrieval during text comprehension was used to interpret the complex pattern of results.     

Mental rotation is not easily cognitively penetrable

When participants take part in mental imagery experiments, are they using their “tacit knowledge” of perception to mimic what they believe should occur in the corresponding perceptual task? Two experiments were conducted to examine whether such an account can be applied to mental imagery in general. These experiments both examined tasks that required participants to “mentally rotate” stimuli. In Experiment 1, instructions led participants to believe that they could reorient shapes in one step or avoid reorienting the shapes altogether. Regardless of instruction type, response times increased linearly with increasing rotation angles. In Experiment 2, participants first observed novel objects rotating at different speeds, and then performed a mental rotation task with those objects. The speed of perceptually demonstrated rotation did not affect the speed of mental rotation. We argue that tacit knowledge cannot explain mental imagery results in general, and that in particular the mental rotation effect reflects the nature of the underlying internal representation and processes that transform it, rather than participants’ pre-existing knowledge.     

Visual mental imagery influences attentional guidance in a visual-search task

Visual mental imagery resembles visual working memory (VWM). Because both visual mental imagery and VWM involve the representation and manipulation of visual information, it was hypothesized that they would exert similar effects on visual attention. Several previous studies have demonstrated that working-memory representations guide attention toward a memory-matching task-irrelevant stimulus during visual-search tasks. Therefore, mental imagery may also guide attention toward imagery-matching stimuli. In the present study, five experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of visual mental imagery on visual attention during a visual-search task. Participants were instructed to visualize a color or an object clearly associated with a specific color, after which they were asked to detect a colored target in the visual-search task. Reaction times for target detection were shorter when the color of the target matched the imagined color, and when the color of the target was similar to that strongly associated with the imagined object, than when the color of the target did not match that of the mental representation. This effect was not observed when participants were not instructed to imagine a color. These results suggest that similar to VWM, visual mental imagery guides attention toward imagery-matching stimuli.     

The Representation of Left-Right Orientation: A Dissociation Between Imagery and Perceptual Recognition

Eight experiments were conducted to determine whether visual mental imagery preserves left-right orientation in conditions where recognition memory apparently does not. Such a dissociation would suggest that information in memory preserves left-right orientation, but the process that matches input to such representations does not respect this distinction. In the experiments reported here, participants were asked to use one of two methods to indicate which way Abraham Lincoln faces on a US penny: Either they selected the correct profile from two sketches, or they formed a mental image and then specified the direction. If participants had just viewed pennies and were asked to visualize a particular one, they performed far better than chance; in contrast, if imagery was discouraged, they performed poorly when recognizing the profiles perceptually. However, unless actively discouraged from doing so, most participants reported spontaneously visualizing pennies prior to perceptual recognition if they had recently seen pennies.     

Effect of Training on Sensory Room and Cart Usage

In this study, the authors assess the effectiveness of education on the consistency of use of sensory rooms within a large mental health facility. Eleven staff and thirty-six clients received additional multimodal education in sensory strategies, the use of the sensory rooms on their assigned units, and the link between the rooms and clients' personal crisis intervention plans. Staff knowledge and room usage rates were analyzed pre- and post-training. The authors found statistically significant increases in staff knowledge post-training and increases in the use of the sensory rooms by study participants. The results support the effectiveness of training which uses hands-on, population-specific strategies.     

Bilateral Transfer as a Function of Mental Imagery

Three experiments are reported which investigate the role of mental imagery in the bilateral transfer from right to left hand of rotary pursuit skill. In Experiment 1 both mental imagery and physical rehearsal showed significant positive transfer relative to a control condition. However, work decrement may have accumulated and transferred in the physical rehearsal group thereby depressing this group’s left-hand performance. Experiment 2 was conducted under conditions designed to allow work decrement to dissipate prior to transfer to the contralateral limb. The data still showed no difference between physical re-hearsal and mental imagery. One interpretation of these data is that work decrement was present under both the physical rehearsal and mental imagery manipulations in Experiment 1. The data from Experiment 3 confirmed this interpretation as well as replicated the positive transfer effects found for mental imagery in Experiments 1 and 2. The data are discussed in terms of central versus peripheral explanatory mechanisms.     

Bilateral transfer as a function of mental imagery

Three experiments are reported which investigate the role of mental imagery in the bilateral transfer from right to Ie ft hand of rotary pursuit skill. In Experiment 1 both mental imagery and physical rehearsal showed significant positive transfer relative to a control condition. However, work decrement may have accumulated and transferred in the physical rehearsal group thereby depressing this group's left-hand performance. Experiment 2 was conducted under conditions designed to allow work decrement to dissipate prior to transfer to the contralateral limb. The data still showed no difference between physical rehearsal and mental imagery. One interpretation of these data is that work decrement was present under both the physical rehearsal and mental imagery manipulations in Experiment 1. The data from Experiment 3 confirmed this interpretation as well as replicated the positive transfer effects found for mental imagery in Experiments 1 and 2. The data are discussed in terms of central versus peripheral explanatory mechanisms.     

Speech imagery is not always faster than visual imagery

One approach to the study of mental imagery is to examine the performance characteristics of different forms of mental imagery when used in various tasks. To demonstrate the utility of this functional approach, the use of speech and visual imagery processes in the serial mental rehearsal of common verbal sequences le.g., letters of the alphabet and familiar object arrays (objects found in familiar rooms) was examined in the present experiments. Rehearsal rates and self-reporte were consistent with the hypothesis that mental rehearsal efficiency is a function of the compatibility of characteristics of the rehearsal materials and rehearsal mode. While verbal sequences were rehearsed faster under speech than under visual imagery conditions, object arrays were rehearsed as fast under visual as under speech imagery conditions. In addition, evidence was found that covert verbal rehearsal is faster than overt verbal rehearsal under some circumstances.     

视觉表象扫描中的视角大小效应

采用视觉表象的几何距离扫描任务,通过两个实验首次揭示了视觉表象扫描中的视角大小效应。实验一采用3 (视角：2.7°,5.5°和8.2°) × 3 (扫描距离：0.0cm、0.4cm和0.8cm) 组内实验设计,探讨了视角大小这种表象前加工因素是否影响心理扫描的问题;实验二采用8 (视角：2.7°,4.1°,5.5°,6.9°,8.2°,9.6°,12.3°和17.1°) × 2 (扫描距离：0.4cm和0.8cm) 组内实验设计,探讨了视角大小如何影响心理扫描加工过程的问题。结果表明：（1）在视觉表象扫描中,扫描时间会受到表象对应刺激的视角大小影响,即使扫描的几何距离相等,不同视角大小条件下的扫描时间仍存在显著差异;（2）在4°到10°这个视角范围内心理扫描的时间显著短于这个范围之外的扫描时间,6.5°左右是视觉表象扫描的最佳视角。视角大小效应有别于心理扫描的大小效应和距离效应,为Kosslyn的表象计算理论增加了新的内容,具有重要的理论意义。同时它对仪表、图形设计以及棋牌游戏等工作和生活实践具有一定的应用价值     

Updating mental models in predictive reasoning

Abstract

A mental model account for predictive judgement is proposed. According to this view, solving a predictive task involves the foundation ad updating of a mental he work as the relevant data are provided. The final model state determines the subject's predictive outcome. Two experiments examine the temporal course of reasoning in novices (Experiment 1) and experts (Experiment 2). Each task provided in succession a quantitative source (e.g. “Last year, of the vehidts that stopped at the cafe, 80% were cars and 20% were trucks”), a diagnostic source (e.g. “This vehide is mksy”) and a categorical choice (e.g. “What kind of vehicle was it?”). Two factors were manipulated: The order of sources aimed at analysing the contextual dependence of the updating processes, and the between-sources congruence (congruent or incongruent) in order to explore the integrative processes in model building. The pattern of the sources reading times, the choice times and the categorical choices suggested that: (1) the processing of a source depends on the previous one, (2) subjects try to integrste both sources into a single mental framework, and (3) experts and novices have a similar performance, although experts give more importance to the quantitative source in the diagnostic-quantitative order. These results are better accounted for by the mental model framework than both the heuristic and the formal view of prediction.     

Sex-related differences and visual-spatial mental imagery as factors affecting symbolic motor skill acquisition

The ability of males and females to use visual-spatial imagery as a facilitator of symbolic motor skill acquisition was investigated. Subjects, ordered by gender into control and mental imagery groups, performed 15 trials on a mirrored drawing task. The results indicated that, although both male and female mental imagery groups performed the task more skillfully than the control groups, the male mental imagery group scores over the early stages of performance were better as compared to the female mental imagery group scores. This difference was eradicated during the latter stages of performance. The findings, in addition to supporting the positive effects of mental imagery, lend support to the hypothesis that sex-related differences in selected visual-spatial tasks may be amendable through training followed by practice.     

Hiding and searching strategies of adult humans in a virtual and a real-space room

Adults searched for or cached three objects in nine hiding locations in a virtual room or a real-space room. In both rooms, the locations selected by participants differed systematically between searching and hiding. Specifically, participants moved farther from origin and dispersed their choices more when hiding objects than when searching for hidden objects. In addition, in both virtual and real-space rooms, prior experience in the hiding task increased the distance participants traveled from origin and the dispersion of their choices during searching. Furthermore, gender differences appeared in the virtual room but not in the real-space room. Specifically, during hiding females travelled farther from origin than males and during searching they dispersed their choices more than males. Overall, the results suggest that strategies used by adult humans for searching and caching are consistent with those seen in non-human animals and children.     

The perceptual determinants of person construal: reopening the social-cognitive toolbox

Guided by a heuristic account of social-cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that basic perceptual processes may also contribute to people's propensity to view others in a category-based manner. This possibility was explored in 3 experiments in which the authors investigated the ease with which perceivers can extract categorical and identity-based knowledge from faces under both optimal and suboptimal (i.e., inverted faces, blurred faces, rapidly presented faces) processing conditions. The results confirmed that categorical knowledge is extracted from faces more efficiently than identity-related knowledge, a finding that underscores the importance of perceptual operations in the generation of categorical thinking.     

Mental comparisons involving abstract attributes

Adult subjects in two experiments were presented pairs of stimuli that differed in varying degree on an abstract semantic attribute, and were required to choose the one with the higher value on the given dimension. Subjects in Experiment 1 chose the more pleasant member of a pair of pictures, concrete nouns, or abstract nouns. Those in Experiment 2, presented a pair of pictures or concrete nouns, chose the one whose referent had the higher monetary value. Theoretical interest centered on the effects of semantic distance, stimulus mode, and individual differences in imagery and verbal ability on choice time. In both experiments, response times (1) decreased with increases in semantic distance, (2) were faster for pictures than words (and for concrete than abstract words in Experiment 1), and (3) were faster for high- than for lowimagery participants. The results are completely consistent with a dual-coding (image vs. verbal) interpretation: Pleasantness and value, though conceptually abstract, are attributes of things rather than words, and they are accordingly represented in and processed by a system specialized for dealing with nonverbal information.     

Using Mental Imagery to Enhance the Effectiveness of Implementation Intentions

Past research shows that forming implementation intentions increases the probability of carrying out goals. The present research proposes that mental imagery can strengthen the effects of implementation intentions on goal achievement. Participants were assigned a mundane goal and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: implementation intentions only or implementation intentions plus mental imagery. Results support the hypothesis that using mental imagery when forming implementation intentions leads to higher rates of goal achievement.