人类活动中的时间认知

时间不象光那样是一种刺激。它只是我们通过对相对持续和不断改变的体验而得到的认识。时间心理学是对时间信息的处理,这种处理的动机,是由于需要理解我们周围世界的变化,我们自己的变化,以及使我们适应变化着的环境。 心理学家首先把对时间的直接估计与物理学家所测定的久暂相比较。在所有研究中,心理学家都发现,用计时器量出的时间与我们估计的时间是不一致的。在有些情况     

“晚明”的近代性与明代学术思想的新趋向——试论作为中国近代哲学开端的阳明学

“晚明”是中国历史上的一个特定时期，在这个时期，中国社会发生了许多前所未有的变化，在一定意义上，我们可以将这些变化概括为中国“近代性”的发生。如何理解这些变化，特别是如何理解这些变化与现时代的关系，实际上正是我们身处的这个时代获得某种自我意识的来源。阳明学在一定意义上正是这个时代的产物，它一方面是这个时代的精神表达，另...     

偏好变化的一个量化模型

偏好是哲学、博弈论、决策论和效益理论等学科的核心概念,偏好及其逻辑性质在行为哲学和理性选择理论中尤其占有十分重要的地位。偏好的概念使得我们对世界的看法变得多姿多彩,它驱使着我们在尘世的种种行为选择。然而,偏好不是静止不变的,建议、命令、以及其他的信息不断改变着我们的偏好。近年来,逻辑学家们开始对偏好的改变进行深入的研究。到目前为止,关于偏好变化的模型主要有以下两种：第一、采取AGM理论研究偏好变化,给出变化的逻辑公设。第二、采用新近发展起来的动态认知逻辑的方法,对偏好的具体变化机制进行研究,给出动态偏好逻辑系统。无论是上面提到的哪种方法,都是采用定性的视角,即,偏好被表示成一个序关系。与此相反,本文采取量化的视角来研究偏好,利用偏好赋值函数给出偏好的量化语义。就逻辑语言而言,我们给出一个包括命题常元的新语言。这个语言既简练又富于表达力。基于这样的量化语义,处理偏好变化的方法就与以往的方法有所不同。根据经典的乘积更新的机制,我们提出了新的加法规则和一个参数化规则,来刻画偏好赋值的细微变化之处。同时,我们给出一个动态认知赋值逻辑,并证明其完全性。此外,我们还考虑道义逻辑最近的一些研究成果,表明本文给出的模型同样适用于道义的情境。特别是,这个新的模型能够解决困扰人们已久的义务冲突问题。最后,针对赋值偏好模型,我们定义了适用于它“赋值互模拟”。而且,我们还进一步给出了一个新的互模拟概念“距离互模拟”以结束本文。     

“不变”与“必变”

罗马书十二章第二节中说:“只要心意更新而变化,叫你们察验何为神的善良、纯全、可喜悦的旨意。”这里告诉我们神的旨意是不变的,而我们要察验神的旨意则必须心意更新而变化。 在加强神学思想建设的过程中,有一些教牧同工有顾虑,怕碰了基本信仰。在此我们必须弄清楚两个问题:什     

修身与修心

<正>一、心外求法迷失生命价值修治身心成就智慧人生《诸法集要经》云:"一切有为相,皆归生住灭。"一部车、一台电脑,乃至我们的房子,用久了就会坏,就需要修理。也就是说,世界上任何一种存在形式,都有生、住、灭无常变化的特点。人是由身心两部分组成的,从少年到青年,从壮年到老年,人的色身在不断变化,内心也在不断变化。人都有痛苦和快乐的感受,所有人都希望得到快乐,祛除痛苦。那么,怎样让我们在变化的过程中越来     

“衣食足知荣辱”与“饱暖思淫欲”

“衣食足知荣辱”与“饱暖思淫欲”张钰改革开放,给我们国家的经济带来了勃勃生机,同时,也给我们民族传统的思想观念以极大的冲击。人们的价值观念在发生着变化,人们的道德观念也在发生着变化。一些人对道德修养与道德教育的重要性产生了动摇。有的人认为,“衣食足知...     

同一性

人随着岁月流逝而变老,有些树按时落叶凋零,冰块随着春回大地而消融,木头焚烧而化为炭烬。世界似乎永在运动,变化不息。然而,尽管我们看到这些变化,但我们仍要说,这个成年人就是我们过去认识的那个小孩;这就是上个月凋落枯叶的那棵树;这一滩水的“原料”就是在那儿融化的那块冰。人们从哲学上思考变化的本质,思考辨认或者说重新辨认某个事物或某个人的问题,结果带来了一系列问题,我们统称为“同一性问题”。最简单地说来,可以认为这个问题就是试图正确地解释世界的某些特点,它们既说明了世界的同一,又说明了它的差异和变化。用现代术语来说,这个问题是     

中国现代化过程中教会的任务(一九九一年十一月八日在德国巴德扎罗举行的德国教会中国委员会扩大会议上的发言)

我和陈泽民教授非常荣幸地代表中国基督教协会参加本次会议,并会见来自德国和其它欧洲国家的天主教和新教友人。在过去的许多年中,你们用祷告托住中国的教会,还通过各种途径给予中国基督徒和中国人民大力支持,我们谨向你们致以真挚的谢意。同时,我们感谢你们筹办了本次会议,使得我们在面对现代化的前景和问题之际,有美好的机会在此分享各国的经验。应邀参加本次会议,我们将思考“在变化的中国和变化的欧洲中,我们的教会在神学上所遭遇的共同挑战”。我的发言旨在从中国的角度来思想中国基督教会和现代化问题。     

瓦托夫斯基的历史认识论与科学的理性

美国波士顿大学教授M·W·瓦托夫斯基提出了一种称为“历史认识论”的认识论观点。历史认识论认为,不仅是我们认识的对象是历史地变化的,而且认识模式本身也是历史地变化的。也就是说,我们的认识模式的变化与我们的社会实践和历史实践的形式有关;这些认识模式是:(1)在实践本身的形式内发展,作为这种实践本身的结构成分和调节成分,作为自觉的、有认识的人类活动而发展;(2)在法则、方法和理论的形式中,作为这     

信徒眼中的好牧人

综观中国教会目前状况,尽管我们已经取得了骄人的成就,尽管我们服事教会多年,甚至几十年,然而教会身处高速发展变化的社会中,我们这些蒙神选召的工人,深深感到自己的不足,因此需要求主来引导我们如何在新时代中做个好牧人,才能承担上帝所托付的福音使命.     

Model change and reliability in scientific inference

One persistent challenge in scientific practice is that the structure of the world can be unstable: changes in the broader context can alter which model of a phenomenon is preferred, all without any overt signal. Scientific discovery becomes much harder when we have a moving target, and the resulting incorrect understandings of relationships in the world can have significant real-world and practical consequences. In this paper, we argue that it is common (in certain sciences) to have changes of context that lead to changes in the relationships under study, but that standard normative accounts of scientific inquiry have assumed away this problem. At the same time, we show that inference and discovery methods can “protect” themselves in various ways against this possibility by using methods with the novel methodological virtue of “diligence.” Unfortunately, this desirable virtue provably is incompatible with other desirable methodological virtues that are central to reliable inquiry. No scientific method can provide every virtue that we might want.     

The personal life of the behavior analyst

The human species faces crises of critical proportions. Excessive population, global warming, and the anticipated descent from peak fossil-fuel extraction promise to change our future in far-reaching ways. Operant conditioning prepares the individual for a world similar to the selecting past, but our world is changing more rapidly than our adaptation. As individuals, we cannot make substantial changes in the world at large because we do not control enough reinforcers, but we can turn to the sources of our personal behavior and manipulate them. We will need help. Better organized social networks and the self-management techniques they support can promote immediate changes in consumption at home, work, and moving about in our personal worlds. Surprisingly, consuming less can lead to more satisfying and happier lives, but a better understanding of reinforcement contingencies is necessary. We can recover the strengthening effects of personal daily accomplishments that are eroded when conditioned generalized reinforcers intervene. When we get our own personal lives in order we can reduce our carbon footprints, restore the connections between our behavior and its strengthening effects, and become models worthy of imitation.     

Attentional selection of complex objects: Joint effects of surface uniformity and part structure

What object properties warrant selection by object-based attention? Previous research has suggested that surface uniformity is required for object-based attentional selection (Watson &; Kramer, 1999), yet nonuniform objects are encountered frequently. In the present experiments, we investigated the interplay between surface uniformity and part boundaries and their effect on object-based attention. Specifically, we asked if attention can select nonuniform objects whose surface changes occur at part boundaries. Although uniformly colored objects did exhibit object-based effects, we only observed an object-based effect for multicolored objects when surface changes occurred at part boundaries. These findings suggest that attention can only select nonuniform objects when the surface change occurs at a part boundary.     

Induced processing biases have causal effects on anxiety

After briefly describing the nature of emotional processing biases associated with vulnerability to anxiety, and a model of how they may be produced, we review new data on the experimental induction of attentional and interpretative biases. We show that these biases can be readily induced in the laboratory, in the absence of mood changes. However, induced biases exert effects on the processing of new information and cause congruent changes in state anxiety when they influence how emotionally significant information is encoded. We can therefore conclude that biases have causal effects on vulnerability to anxiety via their influence on how significant events are processed. Finally, we discuss how our model might account for the acquisition of processing bias and for when they can influence anxiety.     

Towards a mathematical model of within-session operant responding

Operant response rate changes within the course of a typical free-operant experimental session. These changes are orderly, and reliably demonstrated with subjects from different species, responding under different experimental conditions. Killeen (1995) postulated that the response rate changes are a function of the interplay between arousal and satiation and offered a mathematical model for this hypothesis. Here we analyze Killeen's model, demonstrating that, although solid in its principles, it presents some flaws in its implementation. Then, based on the same principles, we build and test a new model of within-session motivation dynamics. We also demonstrate that, by representing arousal as a variable that ranges between 0 and 1, we can obtain a surprisingly simple model of free-operant response rate.     

Failures to see: attentive blank stares revealed by change blindness

Change blindness illustrates a remarkable limitation in visual processing by demonstrating that substantial changes in a visual scene can go undetected. Because these changes can ultimately be detected using top-down driven search processes, many theories assign a central role to spatial attention in overcoming change blindness. Surprisingly, it has been reported that change blindness can occur during blink-contingent changes even when observers fixate the changing location [O'Regan, J. K., Deubel, H., Clark, J. J., & Rensink, R. A. (2000). Picture changes during blinks: Looking without seeing and seeing without looking. Visual Cognition, 7, 191-212]. However, eye blinks produce a transient disruption of vision that is independent of any associated changes in the retinal image. We determined whether these 'attentive blank stares' could occur in the absence of blink-mediated visual suppression. Using a flicker change-blindness paradigm we confirm that despite direct attentive fixations, obvious scene changes often remain undetected. We conclude that change detection involves object or feature based attentional mechanisms, which can be 'misdirected' despite the allocation of spatial attention to the position of the change.     

Shifting Realities? Changing Concepts of Religion and the Body in Popular Culture and Neopaganism

This article focuses on the analysis of the way in which ideas about religion and the body—in its relationship with technological innovation—are portrayed in some significant science-fiction books and films since the 1980s and on similar ideas in Neopaganism. I aim to show that, while in some cases we can trace a direct influence of popular culture on Neopaganism, it is possible to observe a relation between changes in science-fiction works and changes in Neopaganism: both reflect and express changes in society at large. By examining ideas of the body, technology and religion in Gibson's Neuromancer, David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, the article shows how new ideas can be used in a counter-cultural way or to strengthen existing power structures. The second part of the article considers whether there is a direct relationship between changes in popular culture and changes in Neopaganism or whether we can talk of a convergence of themes; it does this by examining how Neopagans have used and re-shaped ideas found in science fiction and fantasy. Finally, three key changes in Neopaganism are highlighted, changes that correspond to those found in significant popular culture works.     

The resilience of object predictions: Early recognition across viewpoints and exemplars

Recognition of everyday objects can be facilitated by top-down predictions. We have proposed that these predictions are derived from rudimentary image information, or gist, extracted rapidly from the low spatial frequencies (LSFs) (Bar Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 15: 600–609, 2003). Because of the coarse nature of LSF representations, we hypothesized here that such predictions can accommodate changes in viewpoint as well as facilitate the recognition of visually similar objects. In a repetition-priming task, we indeed observed significant facilitation of target recognition that was primed by LSF objects across moderate viewpoint changes, as well as across visually similar exemplars. These results suggest that the LSF representations are specific enough to activate accurate predictions, yet flexible enough to overcome small changes in visual appearance. Such gist representations facilitate object recognition by accommodating changes in visual appearance due to viewing conditions, and help generalize from familiar to novel exemplars.     

空间频率信息对面孔身份与表情识别的影响

已有面孔身份与表情识别研究提示, 高频空间信息可能选择性地与表情识别有关, 而低频空间信息则选择性地与身份识别有关。为验证这一假设, 操纵空间频率设计三个Garner效应测量实验。实验1测量全频条件下身份表情识别之间的Garner效应, 结果显示, 相互间的干扰均显著。实验2测量高频条件下的干扰效应, 发现表情识别的Garner效应不再显著而身份识别的Garner效应无明显变化, 出现分离。实验3测量低频条件下的Garner效应, 结果表明, 表情与身份识别的Garner效应仍显著, 未受高频过滤影响。基于Garner范式, 提出面孔识别的可分离度与难度双指标同时考察的方法, 对实验结果进行了分析, 并由此得出结论, 高频空间信息是面孔身份与表情信息分离的有效尺度。     

Phases of learning: How skill acquisition impacts cognitive processing

This fMRI study examines the changes in participants’ information processing as they repeatedly solve the same mathematical problem. We show that the majority of practice-related speedup is produced by discrete changes in cognitive processing. Because the points at which these changes take place vary from problem to problem, and the underlying information processing steps vary in duration, the existence of such discrete changes can be hard to detect. Using two converging approaches, we establish the existence of three learning phases. When solving a problem in one of these learning phases, participants can go through three cognitive stages: Encoding, Solving, and Responding. Each cognitive stage is associated with a unique brain signature. Using a bottom-up approach combining multi-voxel pattern analysis and hidden semi-Markov modeling, we identify the duration of that stage on any particular trial from participants brain activation patterns. For our top-down approach we developed an ACT-R model of these cognitive stages and simulated how they change over the course of learning. The Solving stage of the first learning phase is long and involves a sequence of arithmetic computations. Participants transition to the second learning phase when they can retrieve the answer, thereby drastically reducing the duration of the Solving stage. With continued practice, participants then transition to the third learning phase when they recognize the problem as a single unit and produce the answer as an automatic response. The duration of this third learning phase is dominated by the Responding stage.