99 MULTIPLE MEANING WORDS FOR PRIMARY STUDENTS AND WAYS TO TEACH THEM

The cumulative first grade word lists from three widely‐used basal series were combined and alphabetized through the use of a computer program. Of the 255 words common to all three lists, 228 (almost 90%) had multiple meanings. From these a basic list of 99 multiple meaning words was selected by applying three criteria: (a) all or most definitions of the word could be related to primary grade children's experiences; (b) the word was used as more than one part of speech; and (c) the word had four or more different definitions. Activities to develop children's knowledge of the multiple meanings of words are suggested through the use of pictures and objects, picture dictionaires and concept books, semantic mapping, and sentence context.     

Word Schemas: Expectations About the Form and Meaning of New Words

This study explores students' word schemas, that is, their knowledge not just of specific words, but also about words in general that can be applied when they encounter new words. Students in 7th and 10th grade and college undergraduates were asked to rate the plausibility of made-up definitions for nonsense words. Some of the definitions, although nonexistent or extremely rare, represented plausible meanings. Other definitions, however, were constructed to violate hypothesized expectations about possible meanings of English words. Students at all grade levels were found to distinguish plausible from less plausible meanings. College undergraduates also displayed sensitivity to part of speech distinctions in a subset of the items for which the range of possible meanings was hypothesized to be different for nouns and verbs. Results show that word schemas are applied in evaluating hypotheses about possible meanings of new words and that skilled adult readers are sensitive to subtle regularities in the English lexicon.     

The pragmatics of defining religion in a multi-cultural world

Few seem to have difficulty in distinguishing between religious and secular institutions, yet there is widespread disagreement regarding what “religion” actually means. Indeed, some go so far as to question whether there is anything at all distinctive about religions. Hence, formulating a definition of “religion” that can command wide assent has proven to be an extremely difficult task. In this article, I consider the most prominent of the many rival definitions that have been proposed, the majority falling within three basic types: intellectual, affective and functional definitions. I conclude that there are pragmatic reasons for favouring the formerly popular view that essentialist definitions of “religions” are inadequate, and that religions should be construed, instead, as possessing a number of “family resemblances.” In so arguing, I provide a response to the view that there is nothing distinctive about religions, as well as to the recent claim that religions do not exist.     

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: do experimenter-presented interlopers have any effect?

When a person is in a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state, they will sometimes recall a word that is similar in sound to the word they are attempting to retrieve. Woodworth (1929) argued that these interloper words both cause and sustain TOT states, whereas Brown and McNeill (1966) suggested that they are part of the process that leads to TOT resolution. Jones and Langford (1987) and Jones (1989) explicitly presented interloper words along with definitions of words that subjects were asked to recall. They reported that interlopers that were phonologically related to the target word increased the incidence of TOTs and concluded that this supported Woodworth's position. In three experiments, we adopted the interloper paradigm, but also included a control group who heard the definitions without interloper words. In Experiment 1, the definitions that Jones used with phonological interlopers created more TOTs even when no interlopers were presented. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we matched definitions for the number of TOTs they produced in the absence of interlopers. Under these circumstances we found no effect of interloper words at all. We conclude that there is no evidence from this paradigm to support the idea that interloper words are involved in either the causation or resolution of TOTs.     

Conjunction in the Language of Emotions

Abstract

Oatley and Johnson-Laird (1987) have proposed a cognitive theory of emotion. According to this theory, there are five basic emotions. A major prediction of the theory is that it should permit satisfactory definitions for all the emotion words in a language, and this was essayed for the English language by Johnson-Laird and Oatley (1989). The theory proposes that only one emotional state can be operative at a time, and therefore words referring to mixed emotions were defined by Johnson-Laird and Oatley as disjunctions of basic emotions. Two experiments are reported which com pared these disjunctive definitions with conjunctive definitions (i.e. definitions inconsistent with the theory). For a number of words, conjunctive definitions tended to be preferred. This tendency was increased when the disjunctions and conjunctions were made more explicit. This finding sug gests that Oatley and Johnson-Laird's theory should be modified so as to embrace the conjunction of emotion. That is, it should allow that two or more emotions can be exnerienced in parallel.     

On Modal Logics Characterized by Models with Relative Accessibility Relations: Part II

This work is divided in two papers (Part I and Part II). In Part I, we introduced the class of Rare-logics for which the set of terms indexing the modal operators are hierarchized in two levels: the set of Boolean terms and the set of terms built upon the set of Boolean terms. By investigating different algebraic properties satisfied by the models of the Rare-logics, reductions for decidability were established by faithfully translating the Rare-logics into more standard modal logics (some of them contain the universal modal operator).In Part II, we push forward the results from Part I. For Rare-logics with nominals (present at the level of formulae and at the level of modal expressions), we show that the constructions from Part I can be extended although it is technically more involved. We also characterize a class of standard modal logics for which the universal modal operator can be eliminated as far as satifiability is concerned. Although the previous results have a semantic flavour, we are also able to define proof systems for Rare-logics from existing proof systems for the corresponding standard modal logics. Last, but not least, decidability results for Rare-logics are established uniformly, in particular for information logics derived from rough set theory.Since this paper is the continuation of Part I, we do not recall here the definitions of Part I although we refer to them.     

The Semantics of Time and Space: A Thematic Analysis

Three empirical studies and one analysis of pre-existing data were performed to determine the everyday meanings of time, a major component of phenomenological analyses of human experience. To this end, participants in Studies 1 and 2 sorted time related words into groups having similar meanings, with these groups then evaluated by hierarchical clustering procedures. Results of Studies 1 and 2 produced similar clustering patterns suggesting it was possible to define the everyday meanings of time in terms of experiences of change and continuity, linear organization, tempo, and boundaries. Results of Study 3 indicated little or no effect on clustering patterns of time words when space words also were included in the set of items to be sorted. Concerns about the size and representativeness of the words used as stimuli in Studies 1, 2 and 3 led to an analysis of over 2,000 words falling under the general heading of Time in Roget’s Thesaurus. Results of this analysis revealed that clusters comparable to those obtained in the other three studies also appeared in these data. These results were discussed in terms of their implications for the way in which “invisible” concepts such as time are thought about and used, particularly as related to figurative expression.     

Fundamental Issues in Defining Consultation

Understanding and articulating one's definition of consultation is essential for successful consultation to occur. Early definitions presented the consultant primarily as a one-an-one content expert. Today there are many definitions ranging from the original one-on-one content expert to system-wide operations. Several different definitions are reviewed and presented for consideration, The main issues that surround the operational definitions of consultation are also included. The final conclusion is that consultants define consultation depending on their work setting, educational backgrounds, goals, and conceptual models.     

On defining “mental disorder”: Purposes and conditions of adequacy

All definitions of mental disorder are backed up by arguments that rely on general criteria (e.g., that a definition should be consistent with ordinary language). These desiderata are rarely explicitly stated, and there has been no systematic discussion of how different definitions should be assessed. To arrive at a well-founded list of desiderata, we need to know the purpose of a definition. I argue that this purpose must be practical; it should, for example, help us determine who is entitled to publicly funded health care. I then propose eight conditions of adequacy that can be used to assess competing definitions (e.g., the ordinary language condition, the coherence condition, and the condition of normative adequacy). These conditions pull in different directions, however, and we must decide which are most important. I also suggest that there is no single definition that can help us deal with all the relevant practical issues.     

Essence and definition by abstraction

We may define words or concepts, and we may also, as Aristotle and others have thought, define the things for which words stand and of which concepts are concepts. Definitions of words or concepts may be explicit or implicit, and may seek to report preexisting synonymies, as Quine put it, but they may instead be wholly or partly stipulative. Definition by abstraction, of which Hume’s principle is a much discussed example, seek to define a term-forming operator, such as the number operator, by fixing the truth-conditions of identity-statements featuring terms formed by means of that operator. Such definitions are a species of implicit definition. They are typically at least partly stipulative. Definitions of things, or real definitions, are, by contrast, typically conceived as true or false statements about the nature or essence of their definienda, and so not stipulative. There thus appears to be an obvious and head-on clash between taking Hume’s principle as an implicit and at least partly stipultative definition of the number operator and taking it as a real definition, stating the nature or essence of cardinal numbers. This paper argues that this apparent tension can be resolved, and that resolving it sheds light on part of the epistemology or essence and necessity, showing how some of our knowledge of essence and necessity can be a priori.

     

Hume’s definitions of ‘Cause’: Without idealizations,within the bounds of science

Interpreters have found it exceedingly difficult to understand how Hume could be right in claiming that his two definitions of ‘cause’ are essentially the same. As J. A. Robinson points out, the definitions do not even seem to be extensionally equivalent. Don Garrett offers an influential solution to this interpretative problem, one that attributes to Hume the reliance on an ideal observer. I argue that the theoretical need for an ideal observer stems from an idealized concept of definition, which many interpreters, including Garrett, attribute to Hume. I argue that this idealized concept of definition indeed demands an unlimited or infinite ideal observer. But there is substantial textual evidence indicating that Hume disallows the employment of idealizations in general in the sciences. Thus Hume would reject the idealized concept of definition and its corresponding ideal observer. I then put forward an expert-relative reading of Hume’s definitions of ‘cause’, which also renders both definitions extensionally equivalent. On the expert-relative reading, the meaning of ‘cause’ changes with better observations and experiments, but it also allows Humean definitions to play important roles within our normative practices. Finally, I consider and reject Henry Allison’s argument that idealized definitions and their corresponding infinite minds are necessary for expert reflection on the limitations of current science.     

Discretionary task interleaving: heuristics for time allocation in cognitive foraging

When participants allocated time across 2 tasks (in which they generated as many words as possible from a fixed set of letters), they made frequent switches. This allowed them to allocate more time to the more productive task (i.e., the set of letters from which more words could be generated) even though times between the last word and the switch decision ("giving-up times") were higher in the less productive task. These findings were reliable across 2 experiments using Scrabble tasks and 1 experiment using word-search puzzles. Switch decisions appeared relatively unaffected by the ease of the competing task or by explicit information about tasks' potential gain. The authors propose that switch decisions reflected a dual orientation to the experimental tasks. First, there was a sensitivity to continuous rate of return--an information-foraging orientation that produced a tendency to switch in keeping with R. F. Green's (1984) rule and a tendency to stay longer in more rewarding tasks. Second, there was a tendency to switch tasks after subgoal completion. A model combining these tendencies predicted all the reliable effects in the experimental data.     

粗糙集和神经网络在心理测量中的应用

探讨当因素分析和多元回归方法的使用条件未得到满足时,是否可采用粗糙集方法进行观察变量的精简,以及是否可采用神经网络方法进行预测效度检验。理论分析了粗糙集和神经网络在心理测量中应用的可能性,并运用粗糙集对于人事干部胜任力评估数据进行分析,比较了7种离散化方法和2种约简算法构成的14种组合,发现当采用Manual方法进行离散化、遗传算法进行约简时,能够很好地对观测变量进行精简;运用概率神经网络能够比等级回归方法更好地进行预测效度检验。研究结果表明对于处理心理测量中的非等距变量,粗糙集和神经网络是非常有用的方法     

The many faces of working memory and short-term storage

The topic of working memory (WM) is ubiquitous in research on cognitive psychology and on individual differences. According to one definition, it is a small amount of information kept in a temporary state of heightened accessibility; it is used in most types of communication and problem solving. Short-term storage has been defined as the passive (i.e., non-attention-based, nonstrategic) component of WM or, alternatively, as a passive store separate from an attention-based WM. Here I note that much confusion has been created by the use by various investigators of many, subtly different definitions of WM and short-term storage. The definitions are sometimes made explicit and sometimes implied. As I explain, the different definitions may have stemmed from the use of a wide variety of techniques to explore WM, along with differences in theoretical orientation. By delineating nine previously used definitions of WM and explaining how additional ones may emerge from combinations of these nine, I hope to improve scientific discourse on WM. The potential advantages of clarity about definitions of WM and short-term storage are illustrated with respect to several ongoing research controversies.     

The effect of polysemy on lexical decision time: Now you see it,now you don’t

Gernsbacher (1984) found that number of word meanings (polysemy) did not influence lexical decision time when it was operationalized as number of dictionary definitions. This finding supports her contention that subjects do not store all possible dictionary meanings for words in memory. The present experiments extended Gernsbacher's research by determining whether more psychologically valid measures of polysemy affect lexical decision time. Three metrics were used to represent the meanings that subjects actually access from memory (accessible polysemy): (1) the first meanings subjects think of when asked to define stimulus words, (2) all the meanings subjects generate for words, and (3) the average number of meanings subjects generate. The results showed that the second and third metrics of polysemy influenced lexical decision time, whereas the first metric (representing mostly the access to dominant meanings for words) only approached significance.     

Sound-symbolism: A Piece in the Puzzle of Word Learning

Sound-symbolism is the idea that the relationship between word sounds and word meaning is not arbitrary for all words, but rather that there are subsets of words in the world’s languages for which sounds and their symbols have some degree of correspondence. The present research investigates sound-symbolism as a possible route to the learning of an unknown word’s meaning. Three studies compared the guesses that adult participants made regarding the potential meanings of sound-symbolic and non-sound symbolic obsolete words. In each study, participants were able to generate better definitions for sound-symbolic words when compared to non-sound symbolic words. Participants were also more likely to recognize the meanings of sound symbolic words. The superior performance on sound-symbolic words held even when definitions generated on the basis of sound association were eliminated. It is concluded that sound symbolism is a word property that influences word learning.     

Some effects of epistemological structure on memory

Graph theoretical models of the epistemological structure imposed upon a set of mathematical concepts by Ss’ definitions of them were constructed. Three graphical characteristics of the models were manipulated in a series of experiments to assess their effects on recall. Experiment I showed that recall and confidence of recall were highest for concept pairs connected by short paths, next highest for those connected by long paths, and lowest for those not connected by paths. Experiment II replicated the result of Experiment I that recall and confidence of recall were greater for concept pairs connected by paths than for those not connected by paths and revealed no differences in recall between concept pairs connected by many paths and those connected by a few paths. Experiment III found no differences in recall of abstract and concrete concepts, The abstractness of a concept was quantified by the mean path length from the concept to primitive (undefined) concepts. The approach of building a model of each S’s epistemological structure was supported by the finding that, while a given. S’s definitions of the concepts remained relatively constant, there were considerable differences in definitions of the concepts between Ss.     

Hierarchical Multinomial Processing Tree Models: A Latent-Trait Approach

Multinomial processing tree models are widely used in many areas of psychology. A hierarchical extension of the model class is proposed, using a multivariate normal distribution of person-level parameters with the mean and covariance matrix to be estimated from the data. The hierarchical model allows one to take variability between persons into account and to assess parameter correlations. The model is estimated using Bayesian methods with weakly informative hyperprior distribution and a Gibbs sampler based on two steps of data augmentation. Estimation, model checks, and hypotheses tests are discussed. The new method is illustrated using a real data set, and its performance is evaluated in a simulation study.     

我国近十年来心理学研究中HLM方法的应用述评

以2002-2011年中国期刊网收录的50例应用多层线性模型(HLM)的心理学期刊论文为研究对象,从样本描述、模型发展与规范、数据准备、估计方法与假设检验4个角度进行文献计量和内容分析,对我国心理学研究中HLM方法的使用现状进行评估。结果表明,HLM方法主要用于管理、发展和教育心理学,绝大多数应用都是两层模型且层2样本量较大。HLM方法在广泛应用的同时仍存在忽略前提假设检验、分析过程中的重要信息和结果报告不完整等问题,随后提供了4条建议。     

Functional structure in sentences: A performance analysis

Two experiments are reported which attempt to define the groupings of component words within sentences which subjects have committed to memory. The structural groupings are indexed by judgement latencies for pairs of words and these serve as the input matrix for a hierarchical clustering (HC) analysis. It is concluded that when subjects make judgements concerning the forward order of pairs of words, the latencies imply the presence of a hierarchical organization. Although the tree structures obtained do not follow in any detail the surface structures of the sentence types in either experiment, nonetheless when constituent analysis indicates no difference it is accompanied by identical performance structures, and when a surface distinction is called for, an appropriate difference is found in the tree diagrams produced by cluster analysis. Deep structure differences involving the rearrangement of component words are not found in the hierarchical structure subjects imposed. The pausing patterns followed by subjects when reading the sentences are shown to relate to the structural diagrams generated by the HC analysis.