语义分类任务中部件位置在汉字识别中的作用

采用Go/NoGo语义分类任务, 在贴近自然语言理解的任务模式下探讨了部件位置的加工时程问题。实验操纵了部件位置频率, 并进一步区分了造成部件相对位置频率发生变化的两种来源, 一是操纵部件整体频率(包含某部件的所有汉字集合)的变化, 保持特殊位置上的部件频率(某部件出现在特定位置上的汉字集合)不变; 二是操纵特殊位置上的部件频率的变化, 保持整体部件频率不变。结果表明, 无论是变化整体部件频率还是变化特殊位置上的部件频率, 两者都引发了P200和N400的变化, 且所引发的P200在峰潜时(peak latency)上差异不显著。此外, 两种操作都没有引发N/P150的变化。因此本研究在贴近自然语言理解的任务中进一步肯定了部件位置在汉字阅读中的作用, 既可以影响汉字亚词汇水平的字形加工, 也可以影响汉字的语义提取。     

Pitch discrimination without awareness in congenital amusia: Evidence from event-related potentials

Congenital amusia is a lifelong disorder characterized by a difficulty in perceiving and producing music despite normal intelligence and hearing. Behavioral data have indicated that it originates from a deficit in fine-grained pitch discrimination, and is expressed by the absence of a P3b event-related brain response for pitch differences smaller than a semitone and a bigger N2b–P3b brain response for large pitch differences as compared to controls. However, it is still unclear why the amusic brain overreacts to large pitch changes. Furthermore, another electrophysiological study indicates that the amusic brain can respond to changes in melodies as small as a quarter-tone, without awareness, by exhibiting a normal mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response. Here, we re-examine the event-related N2b–P3b components with the aim to clarify the cause of the larger amplitude observed by Peretz, Brattico, and Tervaniemi (2005), by experimentally matching the number of deviants presented to the controls according to the number of deviants detected by amusics. We also re-examine the MMN component as well as the N1 in an acoustical context to investigate further the pitch discrimination deficit underlying congenital amusia. In two separate conditions, namely ignore and attend, we measured the MMN, the N1, the N2b and the P3b to tones that deviated by an eight of a tone (25 cents) or whole tone (200 cents) from a repeated standard tone. The results show a normal MMN, a seemingly normal N1, a normal P3b for the 200 cents pitch deviance, and no P3b for the small 25 cents pitch differences in amusics. These results indicate that the amusic brain responds to small pitch differences at a pre-attentive level of perception, but is unable to detect consciously those same pitch deviances at a later attentive level. The results are consistent with previous MRI and fMRI studies indicating that the auditory cortex of amusic individuals is functioning normally.     

Emotional face prediction in rejection sensitive individuals: Evidence from event-related potentials

Human beings live in an uncertain world, but they continuously generate top-down predictions about emotional face information of other people around them. Although the prediction processing has repeatedly been investigated in the literature of prediction, little is known about the impact of rejection sensitive (RS) on individuals’ emotional face prediction. To this end, high and low RS participants were asked to perform an identification task of emotional faces in which target faces were shown in either an angry or happy expression while their brain responses were recorded using an event-related potential (ERP) technique. The behavioral results suggested an effect of emotional face prediction. For the P100 component, low RS participants showed longer P100 peak latencies in the left than right hemisphere when they viewed predictable emotional faces. In addition, low RS participants showed larger N170 mean amplitudes for angry compared to happy faces when they perceived unpredictable faces, but not when these faces were predictable. This presumably reflected a sensibility to angry faces in the unpredictable trails. Interestingly, high RS participants did not demonstrate such a N170 difference, suggesting that high RS participants showed a reduced sensitivity to unpredictable angry faces. Furthermore, angry faces triggered increased LPP mean amplitudes compared to happy faces, which was consistent with the results of other ERP studies examining the processing of emotional faces. Finally, we observed significant negative correlations between behavioral and ERP prediction effect, indicating one consistency between the behavioral and electrophysiological data.     

The role of functional information for infant categorization

This report examines whether knowledge about function influences the formation of artifact categories in 11-12- month old infants. Using an object-examination task, a set of artificial stimuli was presented that could either be grouped according to overall similarity or according to similarity in one functionally relevant part. Experiment 1 revealed that infants categorized the objects according to overall similarity but not part similarity under control conditions. Experiment 2 showed that after having seen the experimenter demonstrating the functional use of the critical part, infants later categorized the stimuli according to part similarity. When the same actions were performed without producing any effect, infants failed to categorize according to the critical part. This set of findings suggests that 11-12-month old infants use functional information as a cue to categorization.     

词语型类别属性归纳中分类与属性推理过程的时间特征

先前的研究中没有清晰分离类别属性归纳任务中分类过程与属性推理过程的ERP特征。本研究采用了事件相关电位技术(ERPs), 通过在词语型类别属性归纳任务的结论呈现阶段分开呈现结论类别和结论属性, 探讨了类别属性归纳中分类过程和属性推理过程的ERP特征。实验结果显示：在结论类别呈现阶段, 结论无关类别比结论关联类别诱发了更大的N400, 表明N400与类别属性归纳中的语义分类过程密切相关。在结论属性呈现阶段, 无论是在类别关联还是在类别无关条件下, 不一致属性比一致属性均诱发了更大的前部N2成分, 反映了属性知觉上的失匹配或规则的违背。随后, 在300~400 ms的时间窗口发现, 一致属性比不一致属性在前部脑区诱发了更大的类似于P3a的正偏转, 反映了对一致属性的更多关注。同时, 实验还发现, 当结论类别与前提类别关联时, 在300~400 ms的时间窗口, 一致属性比不一致属性在后部脑区也诱发了更大的类似于P3b的正偏转, 反映了推理预期的满意程度; 随后, 在400~600 ms的时间窗口, 不一致属性比一致属性在后部脑区诱发了更大的正偏转, 这与推理规则的违反相关。     

Atypical shape bias and categorization in autism: Evidence from children and computational simulations

The shape bias, a preference for mapping new word labels onto the shape rather than the color or texture of referents, has been postulated as a word‐learning mechanism. Previous research has shown deficits in the shape bias in children with autism even though they acquire sizeable lexicons. While previous explanations have suggested the atypical use of color for label extension in individuals with autism, we hypothesize an atypical mapping of novel labels to novel objects, regardless of the physical properties of the objects. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate this phenomenon in some individuals with autism, but the novelty of objects only partially explains their lack of shape bias. In a second experiment, we present a computational model that provides a developmental account of the shape bias in typically developing children and in those with autism. This model is based on theories of neurological dysfunctions in autism, and it integrates theoretical and empirical findings in the literature of categorization, word learning, and the shape bias. The model replicates the pattern of results of our first experiment and shows how individuals with autism are more likely to categorize experimental objects together on the basis of their novelty. It also provides insights into possible mechanisms by which children with autism learn new words, and why their word referents may be idiosyncratic. Our model highlights a developmental approach to autism that emphasizes deficient representations of categories underlying an impaired shape bias.     

The role of animacy in the real time comprehension of Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from auditory event-related brain potentials

Two auditory ERP studies examined the role of animacy in sentence comprehension in Mandarin Chinese by comparing active and passive sentences in simple verb-final (Experiment 1) and relative clause constructions (Experiment 2). In addition to the voice manipulation (which modulated the assignment of actor and undergoer roles to the arguments), both arguments were either animate or inanimate. This allowed us to examine the interplay of animacy with thematic interpretation. In Experiment 1, we observed no effect of animacy at NP1, but N400 effects for inanimate actor arguments in second position. This result mirrors previous findings in German, thus suggesting that an initial undergoer universally leads to the prediction of an ideal (animate) actor. We also observed an N400 effect for passive sentences with an inanimate initial (undergoer) argument. We attribute this effect to a language-specific property of the passive construction in Chinese, namely that the first argument is negatively affected by the event described (i.e. bears an experiencer role). Experiment 2 showed that both of these effects can also be observed in sentence constructions of another type, in which the critical information sources become available in a different order. These findings provide the first demonstration that the N400 is not only sensitive to general (universal) aspects of thematic processing (i.e. "who is acting on whom") but also to the interaction between thematic interpretation and language-specific pragmatic principles.     

Priming prepositional phrase attachment: Evidence from eye-tracking and event-related potentials

Three syntactic-priming experiments investigated the effect of structurally similar or dissimilar prime sentences on the processing of target sentences, using eye tracking (Experiment 1) and event-related potentials (ERPs) (Experiments 2 and 3) All three experiments tested readers' response to sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity. The ambiguity occurred because a prepositional phrase modifier (PP-modifier) could attach either to a preceding verb or to a preceding noun. Previous experiments have established that (a) noun-modifying expressions are harder to process than verb-modifying expressions (when test sentences are presented in isolation); and (b) for other kinds of sentences, processing a structurally similar prime sentence can facilitate processing a target sentence. The experiments reported here were designed to determine whether a structurally similar prime could facilitate processing of noun-attached modifiers and whether such facilitation reflected syntactic-structure-building or semantic processes. These findings have implications for accounts of structural priming during online comprehension and for accounts of syntactic representation and processing in comprehension.     

The role of naming in stimulus categorization by preschool children

The purpose of the current study was to assess whether children would categorize pictures when taught the relevant listener and speaker behaviors separately. A category-sort test was used to assess emergent conditional relations. Category-sort trials consisted of looking at (Test 1) or tacting/labeling (Test 2) a sample stimulus and selecting the appropriate comparison stimuli. In Experiment 1, 4 children (3-5 years) were taught to tact pictures of six U.S. state maps as either north or south. An assessment was conducted to determine whether they would (1) correctly categorize or sort when presented with a visual sample and (2) select the correct stimuli when hearing their category names (listener behavior). Two of the children categorized the pictures during Posttest 1 after the initial (pairwise) tact training. The other 2 categorized after receiving additional tact training with all pictures presented together. However, one of them categorized only during Posttest 2. In Experiment 2, 4 children (3-5 years) were taught to select pictures when hearing their category names. An assessment was conducted to determine whether they would (1) correctly categorize or sort and (2) tact the stimuli (speaker behavior). One child categorized the pictures during Posttest 1, and two during Posttest 2. The other child required additional training with all pictures grouped together. When participants failed to categorize, they also failed to tact the pictures accurately. Taken together, results from Experiments 1 and 2 show that both speaker and listener behavior play an important role in stimulus categorization.     

The role of social categorization and identity threat in the perception of migrants

This paper investigates how the categorization of migrant workers shapes their reception. In an experiment with Northern Irish Protestants we manipulated the representation of Poland to make the Catholicism of Polish migrants either more, or less, salient. Furthermore, judgements of Polish migrants were obtained under conditions designed to encourage participants to believe that sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland was either resolved, or still a strong feature of the present social landscape. Overall, results showed that when Poland's Catholicism was salient, participants were less welcoming of Polish migrants. Furthermore, this effect was mediated by increases in the level of symbolic threat participants believed the migrants posed to participants' (Protestant) community identity. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional modulation of attention affects time perception: Evidence from event-related potentials

Emotional effects on human time perception are generally attributed to arousal speeding up or slowing down the internal clock. The aim of the present study is to investigate the less frequently considered role of attention as an alternative mediator of these effects with the help of event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants produced short intervals (0.9, 1.5, 2.7, and 3.3 s) while viewing high arousal images with pleasant and unpleasant contents in comparison to neutral images. Behavioral results revealed that durations were overproduced for the 0.9 s interval whereas, for 2.7 and 3.3 s intervals, underproduction was observed. The effect of affective valence was present for the shorter durations and decreased as the target intervals became longer. More specifically, the durations for unpleasant images were less overproduced in the 0.9 s intervals, and for the 1.5 s trials, durations for unpleasant images were slightly underproduced, compared to pleasant images, which were overproduced. The analysis of different ERP components suggests possible attention processes related to the timing of affective images in addition to changes in pacemaker speed. Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) was larger for positive than for negative images, indicating valence-specific differences in activation of early attention mechanisms. Within the early P1 and the Late Positive Potential (LPP) components, both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli exhibited equal affective modulation. Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) remained independent of both timing performance and affective modulation. This pattern suggests that both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli enhanced arousal and captured attention, but the latter effect was more pronounced for pleasant stimuli. The valence-specificity of affective attention revealed by ERPs combined with behavioral timing results suggests that attention processes indeed contribute to emotion-induced temporal distortions, especially for longer target intervals.     

情绪性注意瞬脱的认知机制:来自行为与ERP的证据

从过度投入理论与激活反弹理论对瓶颈理论的质疑出发,采用ERP技术检验了情绪性注意瞬脱的加工过程及其神经机制。行为结果显示,以恐惧面孔为T1,中性场景图片为T2,则恐惧面孔T1相对中性面孔T1显著降低了中性T2的识别正确率,进而诱发了情绪性注意瞬脱。ERP结果进一步显示,相较于中性面孔T1,恐惧面孔T1诱发的情绪加工影响了代表中枢加工资源的两阶段P3波幅,使得其始终高于代表标准注意瞬脱的中性面孔T1条件和代表非注意瞬脱的单任务基线条件。以上结果证明,情绪性注意瞬脱形成自情绪性T1加工所诱发的中枢资源过度投入,而非源自中枢资源瓶颈。     

The role of common motor responses in stimulus categorization by preschool children

The purpose of this study was to assess the role of common motor responses as the "speaker" behavior on stimulus class formation, and the emergence of functional classes. Experiment 1 examined whether training one motor response to a set of three stimuli and a second motor response to another set of three stimuli would result in correct category-sort responses for 5 typically developing preschool children. Three of the children passed the categorization tests. Experiment 2 examined whether the classes formed in Experiment 1 were functional classes, and whether participants who did not pass categorization tests in Experiment 1 would do so following common vocal tact training. The 2 participants who failed categorization tests in Experiment 1 passed these tests in Experiment 2, although none of the participants passed the tests for functional classes. The results of the current study did not unequivocally support the naming hypothesis. Future research should therefore evaluate other possible sources of control that aid in stimulus categorization.     

Spatiotemporal pattern of appraising social and emotional relevance: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Social information is particularly relevant for the human species because of its direct link to guiding physiological responses and behavior. Accordingly, extant functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data suggest that social content may form a unique stimulus dimension. It remains largely unknown, however, how neural activity underlying social (versus nonsocial) information processing temporally unfolds, and how such social information appraisal may interact with the processing of other stimulus characteristics, particularly emotional meaning. Here, we presented complex visual scenes differing in both social (vs. nonsocial) and emotional relevance (positive, negative, neutral) intermixed with scrambled versions of these pictures to N = 24 healthy young adults. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to intact pictures were examined for gaining insight to the dynamics of appraisal of both dimensions, implemented within the brain. Our main finding is an early interaction between social and emotional relevance due to enhanced amplitudes of early ERP components to emotionally positive and neutral pictures of social compared to nonsocial content, presumably reflecting rapid allocation of attention and counteracting an overall negativity bias. Importantly, our ERP data show high similarity with previously observed fMRI data using the same stimuli, and source estimations located the ERP effects in overlapping occipitotemporal brain areas. Our novel data suggest that relevance detection may occur already as early as around 100 ms after stimulus onset and may combine relevance checks not only examining intrinsic pleasantness/emotional valence but also social content as a unique, highly relevant stimulus dimension.     

The role of animacy and thematic relationships in processing active English sentences: evidence from event-related potentials

Recent event-related potential studies report a P600 effect to incongruous verbs preceded by semantically associated inanimate noun-phrase (NP) arguments, e.g., "eat" in "At breakfast the eggs would eat...". This P600 effect may reflect the processing cost incurred when semantic-thematic relationships between critical verbs and their preceding NP argument(s) bias towards different interpretations to those dictated by their sentences' syntactic structures. We have termed such violations of alternative thematic roles, 'thematic role violations.' Semantic-thematic relationships are influenced both by semantic associations and by more basic semantic features, such as a noun's animacy. This study determined whether a P600 effect can be evoked by verbs whose thematic structures are violated by their preceding inanimate NP arguments, even in the absence of close semantic-associative relationships with these arguments or their preceding contexts. ERPs were measured to verbs under four conditions: (1) non-violated ("At breakfast the boys would eat..."); (2) preceded by introductory clauses and animate NPs that violated their pragmatic expectations but not their thematic structures ("At breakfast the boys would plant..."); (3) preceded by semantically related contexts but inanimate NPs that violated their thematic structures ("At breakfast the eggs would eat..."); (4) preceded by semantically unrelated contexts and inanimate NPs that also violated their thematic structures ("At breakfast the eggs would plant..."). Pragmatically non-thematic role violated verbs preceded by unrelated contexts and animate NPs evoked robust N400 effects and small P600 effects. Thematically violated verbs preceded by inanimate argument NPs evoked robust P600 effects but no N400 effects, regardless of whether these inanimate arguments or their preceding contexts were semantically related or unrelated to these verbs. These findings suggest that semantic-thematic relations, related to animacy constraints on verbs' arguments, are computed online and can immediately impact verb processing within active, English sentences.     

Recognition of natural scenes from global properties: seeing the forest without representing the trees

Human observers are able to rapidly and accurately categorize natural scenes, but the representation mediating this feat is still unknown. Here we propose a framework of rapid scene categorization that does not segment a scene into objects and instead uses a vocabulary of global, ecological properties that describe spatial and functional aspects of scene space (such as navigability or mean depth). In Experiment 1, we obtained ground truth rankings on global properties for use in Experiments 2-4. To what extent do human observers use global property information when rapidly categorizing natural scenes? In Experiment 2, we found that global property resemblance was a strong predictor of both false alarm rates and reaction times in a rapid scene categorization experiment. To what extent is global property information alone a sufficient predictor of rapid natural scene categorization? In Experiment 3, we found that the performance of a classifier representing only these properties is indistinguishable from human performance in a rapid scene categorization task in terms of both accuracy and false alarms. To what extent is this high predictability unique to a global property representation? In Experiment 4, we compared two models that represent scene object information to human categorization performance and found that these models had lower fidelity at representing the patterns of performance than the global property model. These results provide support for the hypothesis that rapid categorization of natural scenes may not be mediated primarily though objects and parts, but also through global properties of structure and affordance.     

Naming and categorization in young children: II. Listener behavior training

Following pretraining with everyday objects, 1- to 4-year-old children received listener training with three pairs of arbitrary stimuli of differing shapes. For each pair, 9 children were trained to select one stimulus in response to the spoken word /zog/ and the other to the spoken word /vek/. Next, in the look-at-sample category match-to-sample test, none categorized the six stimuli correctly when asked to look at the sample before selecting from five comparisons. Seven of these children failed a subsequent test of corresponding speaker behavior (tact test); following tact training, 5 of them passed either a repeat of the look-at-sample category test (2 subjects) or an alternative category test (3 subjects) in which they were required to tact the sample before selecting comparisons. The remaining 2 failed both category tests. Of the 2 who passed the tact test, 1 passed the tact-sample category test; the other failed to complete category testing. Two children were next given a second stimulus set. One passed the look-at-sample category test and the tact test; the other failed both tests but passed the tact-sample category test after tact training. The results show that 1- to 4-year-old children may learn listener behavior without corresponding speaker behavior. The results also show that common listener behavior is not sufficient to establish arbitrary stimulus classes, and they are consistent with the proposition that naming may be necessary for categorization of such stimuli.     

No intrinsic number bias: Evaluating the role of perceptual discriminability in magnitude categorization

Accumulating evidence suggests that there is a spontaneous preference for numerical, compared to non-numerical (e.g., cumulative surface area), information. However, given a paucity of research on the perception of non-numerical magnitudes, it is unclear whether this preference reflects a specific bias towards number, or a general bias towards the more perceptually discriminable dimension (i.e., number). Here, we found that when the number and area of visual dot displays were matched in mathematical ratio, number was more perceptually discriminable than area in both adults and children. Moreover, both adults and children preferentially categorized these ratio-matched stimuli based on number, consistent with previous work. However, when number and area were matched in perceptual discriminability, a different pattern of results emerged. In particular, children preferentially categorized stimuli based on area, suggesting that children's previously observed number bias may be due to a mismatch in the perceptual discriminability of number and area, not an intrinsic salience of number. Interestingly, adults continued to categorize the displays on the basis of number. Altogether, these findings suggest a dominant role for area during childhood, refuting the claim that number is inherently and uniquely salient. Yet they also reveal an increased salience of number that emerges over development. Potential explanations for this developmental shift are discussed.

Research Highlights

• Previous work found that children and adults spontaneously categorized dot array stimuli by number, over other magnitudes (e.g., area), suggesting number is uniquely salient.
• However, here we found that when number and area were matched by ratio, as in prior work, number was significantly more perceptually discriminable than area.
• When number and area were made equally discriminable (‘perceptually-matched’), children, contra adults, spontaneously categorized stimuli by area over number (and other non-numerical magnitudes).
• These findings suggest that area may be uniquely salient early in childhood, with the previously-observed number bias not emerging until later in development.