All together now: when dissociations between knowledge and action disappear

Why do people sometimes seem to know things but fail to act appropriately on the basis of this knowledge? Such dissociations between knowledge and action often occur in infants and children, and in adults following brain damage. These dissociations have supported inferences about the organization of cognitive processes (e.g., separable knowledge and action systems) and their development (e.g., knowledge systems develop before action systems). The current study tested the basis for knowledge-action dissociations in a card-sorting task in which children typically correctly answer questions about sorting rules while sorting cards incorrectly. When questions and sorting measures were more closely equated for the amount of conflict that needed to be resolved for a correct response, children showed no systematic dissociation between knowledge and action. The results challenge standard interpretations of knowledge-action dissociations and support an alternative account based on graded knowledge representations.     

Female Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) mated with males that harassed them are unlikely to lay fertilized eggs

Results of previous studies of courtship and mating in Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) suggest that females avoid conspecific males because, while courting and mating, males engage in behaviors that are potentially injurious to females. However, prior experiments provided no direct evidence that females avoided harassing males. Here the authors show that a female quail choosing between a previous sex partner and an unfamiliar male avoids the former if he engaged in relatively many potentially injurious acts while courting and mating, (Experiments 1 and 2) and that males behaving aggressively toward mates are less likely than are gentler males to fertilize the females' eggs (Experiment 3). Male sexual harassment appears to be a tactic both aversive to female quail and relatively ineffective in fertilizing them.     

Psychological concepts useful in the building of political foundations between nations: Track II diplomacy

There are two phases in the process of negotiating for peace with antagonistic national groups. The leader (or leaders) of one such group will not negotiate with his opposite number until political foundations to support such negotiation are laid down, and obstacles to peace identified and dealt with; at least some measure of success is anticipated by both sides. Accordingly, the first phase requires the building of bridges between those representing opposing nations. The activities in this preliminary phase are sometimes called Track II diplomacy; they differ from those of official or Track I diplomacy. I suggest two kinds of concepts that may be useful in Track II diplomacy, and present them in the hope of initiating further discussion, and exploration of metapsychological underpinnings of each concept. As Mitscherlich (1971) suggested, the psychology of international politics may be better understood if psychoanalysts are willing to engage in interdisciplinary work with others engaged in such endeavors.     

学生提问与语文阅读理解能力的关系研究

随机选取北京市某中学初一-高二学生169名,以问卷法研究了他们对文章的提问能力与其阅读理解能力的关系,结果发现:(1)学生提问频次变化范围较广,不同水平提问数量存在显著的差异;(2)从分水平的角度来看,被试个体提问最高频次和总频次,由多到少都呈现出第二、第三、第一水平的顺序;(3)学生第三水平提问总数对第二水平阅读理解能力有显著预测作用;(4)学生第三水平提问总数对第三水平阅读理解能力有一定的显著预测作用。     

How to make the word-length effect disappear in letter-by-letter dyslexia: implications for an account of the disorder

The diagnosis of letter-by-letter (LBL) dyslexia is based on the observation of a substantial and monotonic increase of word naming latencies as the number of letters in the stimulus increases. This pattern of performance is typically interpreted as indicating that word recognition in LBL dyslexia depends on the sequential identification of individual letters. We show, in 7 LBL patients, that the word-length effect can be eliminated if words of different lengths are matched on the sum of the confusability (visual similarity between a letter and the remainder of the alphabet) of their constituent letters. Additional experiments demonstrate that this result is mediated by parallel letter processing and not by any compensatory serial processing strategy. These findings indicate that parallel processing contributes significantly to explicit word recognition in LBL dyslexia and that a letter-processing impairment is fundamental in causing the disorder.     

Dispositional resistance to change: measurement equivalence and the link to personal values across 17 nations

The concept of dispositional resistance to change has been introduced in a series of exploratory and confirmatory analyses through which the validity of the Resistance to Change (RTC) Scale has been established (S. Oreg, 2003). However, the vast majority of participants with whom the scale was validated were from the United States. The purpose of the present work was to examine the meaningfulness of the construct and the validity of the scale across nations. Measurement equivalence analyses of data from 17 countries, representing 13 languages and 4 continents, confirmed the cross-national validity of the scale. Equivalent patterns of relationships between personal values and RTC across samples extend the nomological net of the construct and provide further evidence that dispositional resistance to change holds equivalent meanings across nations.     

Comparisons between forms of amnesia: some deficits are unique to Korsakoff's syndrome

Certain features of abnormal memory, which have figured prominently in theoretical treatments of the amnesic syndrome, were assessed in patients with Korsakoff's syndrome, in Case N.A., and in patients receiving electroconvulsive therapy. Patients with Korsakoff's syndrome differed from the other patients by (a) failing to exhibit release from proactive interference, and (b) being disproportionately impaired in the ability to make judgments about the temporal order of recent events. These deficits appear to be related to frontal lobe damage and are superimposed on a more basic memory disorder. Theories of amnesia should be founded on the basic memory disorder and not on deficits such as these, which have no obligatory relationship to amnesia. Dissociations between aspects of memory, revealed by the study of amnesia, can also shed light on the organization of memory in the brain.     

幼儿认知灵活性的发展及其与言语能力的关系

认知灵活性是人类智力的一个重要特征,言语能力也是人类的一个关键能力,无论是个体灵活地使用语言,或者是语言在促进个体认知灵活性发展中的作用,都是不容低估的重要问题,但关于两者关系的研究却极其少见。以认知灵活性研究中经典的演绎范式DCCS任务和经典的归纳范式FIM、FIST任务为基础,从认知灵活性中对言语能力的探究、言语测验中包含的认知灵活性、以及两者共同的基础———表征能力等三个方面来阐明认知灵活性和言语发展之间的关系,最后表明了认知灵活性和言语能力之间的显著关系。     

Metaphors do not use associations between concepts,they are used to create them

Does the interpretability and aptness of a metaphor depend on prior existing associative relations between the metaphor topic and vehicle? Lexical decision latencies for pairs of words drawn from apt, comprehensible metaphors were no faster than latencies for randomly paired words. In contrast, lexical decision latencies for associatively related word pairs were faster than latencies for randomly paired words. These data suggest that good metaphors do not use preexisting associations to achieve their effects. Instead, we argue tht people use metaphors to create new relations between concepts. Implications for a theory of metaphor comprehension are discussed.     

No Association between Music Ability and Hand Preference in Children

Hand preference was studied in 2 groups of children—children with musical ability and children without musical ability—to examine whether particular markers that may connect with handedness patterns, such as bias away from dextrality or mixed-handedness, stabilize during childhood and are associated with musical ability. Children were administered the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory to determine levels of right, left, and mixed handedness. Results demonstrated no differences in hand preference between both cohorts of children, suggesting the relative independence of musical ability and handedness. However, the inclusion of handedness as a motor marker for musical ability in children in conjunction with other preexisting neurocognitive factors cannot be entirely discounted.     

The Perplexing Conclusion: The Essential Difference between Natural and Artificial Intelligence is Human Beings' Ability to Deceive

As opposed to the computer, the human being can intentionally mislead in many different ways, can behave chaotically, and whenever he has the motivation can choose also by improvisation, non-consequent misleading, and spontaneous manners of reasoning and articulation. Human perception and the elaboration of the experience are existentially interest-related, and distorted if found necessary. The arbitrariness is unlimited; human beings can initiate and produce absurd combinations, contextual failures and deceptive expressions, and do so also by intonation and body-language. These are the sources of social behaviour, of literature, arts, jurisprudence, politics, etc., all representing systems of meaning constructed by human beings, present in their 'Lebenswelt'. Human beings are flexible, sensible of emotions and well-trained to code and decode hidden fallacies, to produce wild associations, capricious-temporary conclusions, tasks that the rigid computer cannot fulfil. They can choose incorrect and dysfunctional answers; the exactness of their reasoning can be logically invalid. The computer has only inner horizons; human beings have also outer ones, in which they are able to produce multidimensional relationships. They are not truth-conditioned.
The reduction of organic human thinking to the computer's mechanisms can end up in humankind's dehumanisation.     

Measuring the Ability to Express Sexual Thoughts

Ratings were obtained from 30 male college students as to the sexual stimulus relevance of a number of pictures from magazines, each depicting a man and a woman. Then a different group of 72 male students were asked to tell stories about the situations depicted in pictures representing 4 levels of rated sexual stimulus relevance. Half were given ambiguous instructions, while the other half were instructed to tell sexy stories. In general, sexier pictures elicited sexier stories, the effect being more marked with ambiguous instructions. Sexy instructions led to sexier stories except at the highest level of stimulus relevance. The results were interpreted within the framework of an abilities conception of personality.     

Color Vision in Relation to Artistic Ability

The present experiment tests Hobbes' superiority theory of humor in relation to identification classes (a replacement for the construct of reference group)—i.e., a vicarious superiority theory of humor is examined. Joke content concerns Canadian-American relations. Ss were selected so as to be either pro-Canadian Canadians or pro-American Americans. Consistent with prediction (p < .01) each of the two groups tended to find that permutation of jokes funnier in which its positive identification class was victorious and its negative the butt than was the opposite permutation in which the negative identification class was victorious and the positive the butt.     

力理论进行评述.心理旋转能力的发展性及其

1 引言心理旋转作为人类空间认知的一种基本操作、空间能力的一个基本方面,与其它基本空间能力之间有着较高的相关,对个体的某些方面的成长及未来成就有较好的预测效度.国外学者对此已作过许多研究,但就国内而言,此方面的研究却鲜有报道.本研究试图对心理旋转能力的发展性及其与智力的相关作一初步研究.     

Self-esteem reactions to social interactions: evidence for sociometer mechanisms across days, people, and nations

People have a fundamental need to belong that motivates them to seek out social interactions with close others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Leary and Baumeister's (2000) sociometer theory (SMT) poses that people who succeed in satisfying this need have higher self-esteem (SE). This prediction was tested across three hierarchical levels: intraindividual, interindividual, and international. Indicators of social interaction quantity, quality, and the interaction between quality and quantity were collected for relationships with friends, family members, and romantic partners. On the intraindividual level, relationship quality and the interaction between quantity and quality emerged as significant predictors of daily fluctuations in SE. Cross-lagged analyses indicated that this association is at least partly due to the effect of social inclusion on changes in SE. On an interindividual level, people who generally reported higher quality relationships also had higher levels of trait SE. On an international level, countries whose inhabitants regularly interact with friends were characterized by higher nationwide SE levels than countries without such practices, even when happiness, individualism, gross domestic product, and neuroticism were controlled.     

Rats are sensitive to ambiguity

In the present study, we investigated response decisions made under conditions of incomplete information in rats. In Experiment 1, rats were trained on either a positive patterning (PP; A-, B-, AB+) or a negative patterning (NP; A+, B+, AB-) instrumental lever-press discrimination. Subjects that had learned an NP discrimination responded less to Cue A when Cue B was covered at test. The cover did not, however, affect test responses to Cue A in the PP condition. In Experiment 2, rats received concurrent training on both PP and NP discriminations. After concurrent training, responses to Cue A were different with B covered versus uncovered for both NP and PP discriminations. We discuss possible accounts for why exposure to a nonlinearly soluble discrimination (NP) may have affected sensitivity to cue ambiguity produced by the cover. These results have interesting implications for representational processes engaged in problem solving.     

Intuitions are inclinations to believe

Advocates of the use of intuitions in philosophy argue that they are treated as evidence because they are evidential. Their opponents agree that they are treated as evidence, but argue that they should not be so used, since they are the wrong kinds of things. In contrast to both, we argue that, despite appearances, intuitions are not treated as evidence in philosophy whether or not they should be. Our positive account is that intuitions are a subclass of inclinations to believe. Our thesis explains why intuitions play a role in persuasion and inquiry, without conceding that they are evidential. The account also makes predictions about the structure of intuitions that are confirmed by independent arguments.