幼儿汉语口语感知特点及神经机制

口语感知是当前心理语言学的研究热点, 然而以往研究大多以婴儿和成人为被试, 缺乏对幼儿口语感知的研究。此外, 现有口语感知模型主要是基于非声调语言研究建立起来的, 对汉语并不完全适用。汉语是一种声调语言, 在语音构成上不同于非声调语言。本项目将立足于汉语口语特点, 以3~5岁幼儿为研究对象, 考察幼儿汉语口语感知特点及神经机制。综合使用眼动方法、ERP方法和LORETA源定位技术探讨以下问题：(1)幼儿在前注意阶段和注意阶段的听觉语音辨别特点; (2)幼儿汉语口语词汇识别过程中音段信息和超音段信息的作用; (3)幼儿汉语口语感知的神经机制。本项目研究结果将揭示幼儿汉语口语感知特点, 为完善现有的口语感知模型提供新的实验证据。     

Predicting school performance of preschool children from parent reports

Parents of 391 preschool children ages 49 to 64 months completed a brief developmental inventory as part of a preschool screening program operated by an urban school district. The 28-item developmental inventory assessed adaptive behavior and language development. In addition, preschool children were administered the Minneapolis Preschool Screening Instrument. Teacher ratings of kindergarten performance the following year provided criterion data to validate the screening measures. Correlations with the overall teacher rating [the mean of nine ratings] were .40 for the adaptive behavior scale and .57 for the language scale. Validity figures for the developmental inventory were significantly higher for low SES than for high SES children, for older children [57 to 64 months] than for younger children [49 to 56 months], and for firstborn children than for younger siblings. No effects were found by sex. While a positive relationship between parent reports of developmental functioning and early school performance was clearly established, validity levels did not justify use of parent information as a sole source of preschool screening information.This research was supported in part by a grant from the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped.     

Overt and covert parental conflict and adolescent problems: observed marital interaction in clinic and nonclinic families.

When adolescents behave in socially unacceptable ways, overt interparental conflict is widely held to be the cause. Empirical studies, however, have been inconsistent in supporting this assumption. Some researchers therefore have speculated that covert conflict also plays a role. In the current observational study, evidence was found that both overt parental conflict and some forms of covert conflict play roles. During problem-solving family discussions, parents of adolescents whom they had brought into an outpatient clinic for treatment overtly disagreed with each other significantly more often than did parents with adolescents who did not require treatment. Families of clinic adolescents also exhibited significantly more silence during their discussions, and mothers spent significantly less time talking than did their nonclinic counterparts. The implications that both the overt and covert conflict may have for adolescent behavior are discussed.     

The influence of parent conflict style on children

Families constantly manage tension between autonomy from and connection to family members (T. C. Sabourin, 2003). Family conflict is an important maintenance behavior where this tension often plays out. Specifically, we hypothesized that the negotiation of family conflict between parents and children will be an important factor in the willingness of a young adult child to identify with family. Using a sample of young adults from 2 U.S. locations, regression analysis indicated that conflict styles mediated the association between family communication patterns and shared family identity. Specifically, the level of conformity orientation within the family emerged as moderator of the pattern of mediation. Additionally, findings suggested the avoiding conflict style may be particularly detrimental to shared family identity.     

Relapse and risk perception among members of a smoking cessation clinic

Assessed perceptions of the health risks associated with smoking in comparison with not smoking among members of smoking cessation clinics. We measured these perceptions at three different time periods during the clinic, and then again at a 6-month follow-up. Results indicated that members who were abstinent at the follow-up had lowered their perceptions of the likelihood of contracting smoking-related illnesses (e.g., emphysema) if they were not smoking. In contrast, those who had relapsed lowered their perceptions of the health risks associated with smoking, but not their perceptions of nonsmoking disease vulnerability. The implications of these changes in risk perception for therapy involvement are discussed.     

Dynamic visual perception of dyslexic children

This study describes the capacity of children to detect fast changes of a small visual pattern. Three visual detection tasks for a group of normally reading (N = 140) and another group of dyslexic children (N = 366) in the age range of 7 to 16 years have been used. All three tasks require the detection of the fast changing orientation of a small pattern before it disappears. In one task, stationary fixation was required, because the orientation changes took place always at the same location. In the saccade condition, the pattern was displaced suddenly to one or the other side and a saccade was required to detect the orientation. In a third condition, a distractor was presented at one side shortly before the oriented pattern appeared at the opposite side. In this case, an antisaccade with respect to the distractor was required. In all three conditions, the dyslexic group as a whole performed significantly below the level of the control group. The performance improved with age in both groups. The differences between the test and control group were largest in the distractor condition. When compared with eye-movement performance in an antisaccade task, a parallel development of the performance of both tasks was observed in both groups. The study shows that a certain percentage of dyslexic children has difficulties in the perception of fast changing stimuli, a task presumably challenging the magnocellular system.     

On differentiating embarrassment from shame

Four experiments were conducted to demonstrate that embarrassment and shame are distinct emotions that result from violations of different types of internalized standards. Embarrassment results from violating one's particular persona; shame results from violating a shared, objective ideal. Subjects vividly imagined themselves in situations and indicated their emotional reactions. In Experiment I, we demonstrate that people differentiate between embarrassment and shame systematically (F(1,27) = 74.4, p < 0.001). In Experiments 2 and 3, we demonstrate that embarrassment results from violating a persona (n = 34, p < 0.001; n = 23, p < 0.001), and shame results from violating an objective ideal (n = 34, p < 0.001; n = 23, p < 0.001). In Experiment 4, we demonstrate that it is the type of standard that is violated (n = 30, p < 0.001), not whether or not the violation was intentional, that determines whether one experiences embarrassment or shame. We argue that both shame and embarrassment play an important role in maintaining personal identity.     

Obstacle perception by congenitally blind children

The ability to perceive objects from a distance and navigate without vision depends principally on auditory information. Two experiments were conducted in order to assess this ability in congenitally blind children aged 4 to 12 years who had negligible amounts of visual experience or formal mobility training. In Experiment 1, children walked along a sidewalk toward a target location to get some candy. A box was placed along the path on some trials, and the children were instructed to avoid the box if it was present. The children spent more time in the region just in front of the box than in the region just behind it, indicating that they perceived the box and acted so as to navigate around it. In Experiment 2, children attempted to discriminate whether a nearby disk was on their left or on their right. The children performed at above-chance levels, again indicating distal perception of objects. The results of both experiments suggest that blind children with little or no visual experience or formal training utilize nonvisual information, presumably auditory, to perceive objects. The specific nature of this auditory information requires further investigation, but these findings imply that the underlying perceptual ability does not require experience in spatial vision or deliberate training and intervention.     

Anger and time perception in children

The present study investigated age-related variations in judgments of the duration of angry facial expressions compared with neutral facial expressions. Children aged 3, 5, and 8 years were tested on a temporal bisection task using angry and neutral female faces. Results revealed that, in all age groups, children judged the duration of angry faces to be longer than that of neutral faces. Findings are discussed in the framework of internal clock models and the adaptive function of emotion.     

Size-distance perception in preschool children.

Children between three and six years of age matched the “apparent” and “real” size of familiar and unfamiliar objects 3, 6, or 9 feet away. Prior to the experimental sessions, the children were divided into two groups: (a) those who could distinguish the phenomenal from the real sizes of the arcs in the Jastrow illusion (the “Realists”) and (b) those who could not (the “Phenomenalists”). The results suggest that all children perceived size constancy up to distances of 9 feet solely on the basis of visual information.     

Obstacle perception by ongenitally blind children

The ability to perceive objects from a distance and navigate without vision depends principally on auditory information. Two experiments were conducted in order to assess this ability in congenitally blind children aged 4 to 12 years who had negligible amounts of visual experience or formal mobility training. In Experiment 1, children walked along a sidewalk toward a target location to get some candy. A box was placed along the path on some trials, and the children were instructed to avoid the box if it was present. The children spent more time in the region just in front of the box than in the region just behind it, indicating that they perceived the box and acted so as to navigate around it. In Experiment 2, children attempted to discriminate whether a nearby disk was on their left or on their right. The children performed at above-chance levels, again indicating distal perception of objects. The results of both experiments suggest that blind children with little or no visual experience or formal training utilize nonvisual information, presumably auditory, to perceive objects. The specific nature of this auditory information requires further investigation, but these findings imply that the underlying perceptual ability does not require experience in spatial vision or deliberate training and intervention.     

Mind perception of God in Japanese children

There is a theoretical debate regarding whether children represent God with reference to a human. Most previous studies have assessed this issue focusing on knowledge/omniscience in western children. This study used a theoretical framework characterising mental capacities in terms of motivational/emotional (experience) and cognitive (agency) mental capacities and tested whether Japanese children discriminated between God, a human, a baby and an invisible agent according to these capacities. Three‐ to 6‐year‐old children were asked about the experience and agency of the agents. The results revealed that children discriminated God from a human in terms of mental capacities including experience and agency in 3‐year‐old children. On the other hand, 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children, but not 3‐year‐old children, discriminated a human from a baby and an invisible person. The results suggest that the Japanese children's representations of God differed from their representation of a human during preschool years.     

The perception of stop consonants by children

Kindergarten and second-grade children's perception of voicing distinctions among the stop consonants was investigated by assessing their ability to identify and discriminate a series of synthetic speech stimuli varying in voice onset time (VOT). Perception of these sounds was found to be nearly categorical. No differences between the two age groups in either identification or discrimination performance were found; furthermore, the children's performance was comparable to adult performance in other studies using these stimuli. When considered in the context of data on the perception of VOT by infants as well as adults, the results suggest that the differential discriminability of stimuli along the VOT continuum has a biological basis.