The contextually controlled, feature-mediated classification of symbols

The classification of names of people or objects based on the features acquired by the names and the sorting instructions provided is a commonplace occurrence. For example, given the names Renoir, Pollock, James and Voltaire the average adult would be able to classify them differentially based on the instruction to classify them based on vocation or nationality. In general, such a repertoire reflects the reclassification of symbols (i.e, the names of individuals) in terms of contextual cues (instructions to sort by vocation or nationality) and the features acquired by the symbols (the specific nationalities and vocations). The present experiment studied this phenomenon with the use of arbitrary stimuli that did not have clear preexperimental associations. Two of 4 participants classified the symbols into different equivalence classes based on the prevailing contextual cues and the features that had been acquired by the symbols. Using an ABA reversal design we then demonstrated that 1 participant classified the symbols in accordance with the contextual cues and acquired features when present, but not in the absence of the contextual cues. A 3rd participant showed symbol classification that differed from that predicted by the procedures, and the 4th classified the symbols based on one set of features but not on context. These data describe one set of conditions that could account for the establishment of complex classification repertoires that occur in natural settings.     

Identifying rotated letter-like symbols

Previous research has shown that the identification of rotated alphanumeric symbols seems to be performed via the extraction of critical features encoded invariant to the symbol’s orientation. The present research argued that the use of such feature extraction processes might be a function of, first, a subject’s familiarity with the symbols, and second, the number of symbols from which a presented symbol is sampled. Earlier research has used highly over learned alphanumerics, in sets of six symbols; this practice is argued here as being seemingly conducive to feature extraction. In two experiments, the generality of a feature extraction interpretation, in contrast to one of mental rotation, was tested by having subjects previously trained to relative high- vs. low-familiarity criteria identify novel symbols in conditions in which a presented symbol was 1 of either 5 or 20 possibilities. Identification response times were found to be constant across all nonstandard orientations of presented symbols, irrespective of symbol familiarity or symbol set size. The findings support the generalization of a feature extraction interpretation to varying numbers of novel symbols of varying familiarity.     

4～5岁儿童对书面数符号的表征和理解能力的发展

本研究对61名中班儿童的书面数符号表征和理解能力进行了跟踪调查。一年中三次个别面试的结果表明,约40％的4岁儿童已能运用1—10的书面数符号表征数量。至中班末期,大多数5岁儿童能够较熟练地运用至少1一17的书面数符号来表征数量,尽管其中有人在两位数的表征和数字的正确写法上有困难。儿童的书面数符号表征与他们的基数概念发展水平密切相关。大学附属幼儿园4—5岁儿童的书面数符号表征能力好于为工人家庭服务的幼儿园儿童的能力。     

Evidence for immune etiology in clozapine-induced thrombocytopenia of 40 months' duration: a case report

Platelet dysfunction and thrombocytopenia rarely occur during clozapine therapy, but constitute an important source of morbidity and mortality if they are not detected and therapy is discontinued. The manufacturer recommends discontinuing clozapine when the platelet count falls below 100,000/muL and resuming therapy when the count returns to within normal range (150,000-450,000/muL). If thrombocytopenia recurs, clozapine should be permanently discontinued. The authors report a rare case of long-term thrombocytopenia persisting 40 months postclozapine treatment. In addition, increased in vitro platelet [14C]serotonin release was observed in the presence of the drug, suggesting an immune-related cause for the thrombocytopenia.     

从竹简看所谓数字卦问题

关于所谓数字卦的说法,从1978年张政烺先生提出后,逐渐成为一种公认的说法。然而从竹简发现来看,数字卦说法是错误的。组成这些所谓数字卦的符号,并不是数字。对竹简易卦符号的研究,应注意区别经文与实占,经文只用卦画,而实占则可能用到记四象的符号。     

Rediscovering the ritual technology of the placebo effect in analytical psychology

Technology, viewed more generally, is a collection of skills and methods that are used to accomplish an objective of some kind. Modernity has produced many kinds of ever‐expanding new technologies, but it is also evident that technologies can be lost or fall out of use. A cross‐cultural survey of ritual reveals a rather startling observation: that while developed nations often exceed other cultures in terms of material technology, they often pale by comparison in their use of ritual technology. In this essay we will see how ritual is a powerful sort of technology that developed nations have mostly allowed to drift out of regular, vigorous use, despite its numerous psychological and biological effects. This tendency has left one of the rituals we still have – psychotherapy itself – to be bereft of some of the typical tools for concretizing the symbolic in recurrent patterns around the world. Jung himself could be accused of being somewhat anti‐ritual himself, enmeshed as he was in the post‐Protestant, post‐Enlightenment cultural environment that defines the West in many ways 1 . But these under‐utilized elements of ritual technology may be a natural fit for Jungian therapy due to its use of symbols.     

Mental representation of symbols as revealed by vocabulary errors in two bonobos (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan paniscus</Emphasis>)

Error analysis has been used in humans to detect implicit representations and categories in language use. The present study utilizes the same technique to report on mental representations and categories in symbol use from two bonobos (Pan paniscus). These bonobos have been shown in published reports to comprehend English at the level of a two-and-a-half year old child and to use a keyboard with over 200 visuographic symbols (lexigrams). In this study, vocabulary test errors from over 10 years of data revealed auditory, visual, and spatio-temporal generalizations (errors were more likely items that looked like sounded like, or were frequently associated with the sample item in space or in time), as well as hierarchical and conceptual categorizations. These error data, like those of humans, are a result of spontaneous responding rather than specific training and do not solely depend upon the sample mode (e.g. auditory similarity errors are not universally more frequent with an English sample, nor were visual similarity errors universally more frequent with a photograph sample). However, unlike humans, these bonobos do not make errors based on syntactical confusions (e.g. confusing semantically unrelated nouns), suggesting that they may not separate syntactical and semantic information. These data suggest that apes spontaneously create a complex, hierarchical, web of representations when exposed to a symbol system. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Slicing White Bre(a)d: Racial Identities,Recipes, and Italian-American Women

This article focuses on Italian-American women and on how they construct, understand, and maintain their ethnic identity in relation to Whiteness and White privilege. Since language cannot serve as symbol for these women because speaking Italian was often forbidden in their homes, or spoken only between adults in covert communications, they often must cling to other symbols of Italianness in order to preserve their sense of gendered ethnic identities. I argue that one such symbol is food, wherein participants manipulate recipes and use food to navigate and negotiate being both Italian and American, Whiteness, femininity, and social class. Implications for therapy about how we understand our multiple identities in relation to others as part of larger systems of power and privilege are explored.     

Sport activity and personality as elements in preventing cancer and coronary heart disease

Results are reported for 3 groups of healthy male probands, 318 in each group, matched for age and personality type on the Personality-Stress Questionnaire. One group was actively engaged in sports, one had discontinued former sporting activities, and one group had never taken part in regular sports. Follow-up after 13 yr. showed lowest mortality in those actively engaged in sport, highest mortality in those who had given up sport, with those who had never been engaged in sport intermediate. Prophylactic behaviour therapy was shown to reduce mortality of those who had given up sport to a significant extent but not to affect degree of retinal sclerosis.     

5～6岁儿童对书面数符号的表征和理解能力的发展

本研究对54名大班儿童的书面数符号表征和理解能力进行了跟踪调查。一年中三次面试结果表明,约85%的儿童(M=5:10)能运用书面数符号来表征30个以上的物体的数量。至大班末,94%的儿童(M=6:4)能运用书面数符号来表征100个以上物体的数量。大班末儿童对20以内书面加法运算成绩好于20以上书面减法运算,他们在遇到需进位和借数的加减运算时会有困难。6岁儿童在对加减运算式表征中的符号-实物的转换上有困难,儿童书面数符号表征、书面加减运算及对书面加减运算式的表征之间有显著正相关。大学附属幼儿园儿童的书面数符号表征能力在大班上学期好于为一般居民服务的幼儿园儿童,但无显著差异;在大班末期,为一般居民服务的幼儿园儿童的得分反超大学附属幼儿园儿童的得分,但无显著差异。     

Semantics and the computational paradigm in cognitive psychology

There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Stephen Stich, have taken a stronger view, advocating doing away with semantics entirely. This paper argues that a correct account of computation requires us to attribute content to computational processes in order to explain which functions are being computed. This entails that computational psychology must countenance mental representations. Since anti-semantic positions are incompatible with computational psychology thus construed, they ought to be rejected. Lastly, I argue that in an important sense, computers are not formal symbol manipulators.     

Pigeons (Columba livia) associate time intervals with symbols in a touch screen task: evidence for ordinality but not summation

The present experiments examined whether pigeons can sum symbols that are associated with various temporal consequences in a touch screen apparatus. Pigeons were trained to discriminate between two visual symbols that were associated with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 s either of delay to 4 s of hopper access (delay group) or duration of hopper access (reward group). In Experiment 1, the pigeons in both groups learned to select the symbol associated with the more favorable outcome, and they successfully transferred this discrimination to novel symbol pairs. However, when tested with 2 pairs of symbols associated with different summed durations, they responded on the basis of a simple response rule rather than the sum of the symbol pair. In Experiment 2, the reward group was presented with four symbols at once and was allowed to successively choose one symbol at a time. All pigeons chose the symbols in order from largest to smallest. This indicates that pigeons formed an ordered representation of symbols associated with different time intervals, even though they did not sum the symbols.     

Reconciling symbolic and dynamic aspects of language: Toward a dynamic psycholinguistics

The present paper examines natural language as a dynamical system. The oft-expressed view of language as “a static system of symbols” is here seen as an element of a larger system that embraces the mutuality of symbols and dynamics. Following along the lines of the theoretical biologist H.H. Pattee, the relation between symbolic and dynamic aspects of language is expressed within a more general framework that deals with the role of information in biological systems. In this framework, symbols are seen as information-bearing entities that emerge under pressures of communicative needs and that serve as concrete constraints on development and communication. In an attempt to identify relevant dynamic aspects of such a system, one has to take into account events that happen on different time scales: evolutionary language change (i.e., a diachronic aspect), processes of communication (language use) and language acquisition. Acknowledging the role of dynamic processes in shaping and sustaining the structures of natural language calls for a change in methodology. In particular, a purely synchronic analysis of a system of symbols as “meaning-containing entities” is not sufficient to obtain answers to certain recurring problems in linguistics and the philosophy of language. A more encompassing research framework may be the one designed specifically for studying informationally based coupled dynamical systems (coordination dynamics) in which processes of self-organization take place over different time scales.     

The development of the first symbolic uses in Mexican children from the pragmatics of object / Desarrollo de los primeros usos simbólicos en niños mexicanos desde la pragmática del objeto

This paper longitudinally studies the emergence and evolution of the first symbolic uses of objects in Mexican children. We observed eight children in triadic interaction with one of their parents and 10 objects in a semi-structured situation at nine, 12, 15 and 18 months old. The children began to use objects symbolically at 12 months, and the duration and frequency increased with age. The highest percentage of the total frequency of symbolic uses, of the four levels identified, was level 1. The frequency of level 4, where two or more symbolic actions occur one after the other, giving rise to ‘symbolic narratives’, increased according to age. These data confirm that knowledge of the rules of canonical uses of objects are the meanings which first symbols base themselves on and that children use the symbolic uses that they are aware of to create ‘symbolic narratives’.     

Hand mental rotation is not systematically altered by actual body position: Laterality judgment versus same–different comparison tasks

It is commonly believed that during mental rotation of body parts, participants tend to imagine their own body part moving toward the stimulus, thus using an egocentric strategy. Several studies have also shown that the mental rotation of hands is affected by the actual hand position, especially if the hand is kept in an awkward position. However, this hand posture effect, as well as the use of an egocentric strategy during mental rotation of body parts, is not systematic. Several experiments have demonstrated that manipulating the stimulus features or the paradigm could induce a shift to visual and allocentric strategies. Here, we studied the effects of hand posture and biomechanical constraints on one-hand mental rotation (laterality judgment task), two-hand mental rotation (same–different judgment task), and mental rotation of one or two alphanumeric symbols (control tasks). Effects of posture and biomechanical constraints were observed solely for the laterality judgment task. Response times in the same–different hand mental rotation items were influenced by the angular disparity between the stimuli. We interpreted our result as evidence of the use of different strategies for each task. Future research should focus on disentangling the exact subprocesses in which an egocentric strategy is used, in order to propose better tests for participants with motor impairments.     

Cognitive-behavior therapy for discontinuation of SSRI treatment of panic disorder: a case series

In this report we describe the outcome of eight outpatients with panic disorder and agoraphobia who discontinued their treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) in the context of a structured, group program of cognitive-behavior therapy. All patients successfully discontinued their SSRI medication while demonstrating clinical improvement. These results were maintained at 3-month follow-up. This case series suggests that manualized CBT for discontinuation of benzodiazepine treatment for panic disorder may be successfully applied to SSRI discontinuation as well.     

Comments on snake symbolism and mind-body relations

In summary, the symbolic use of an object in part depends on which of its functional-structural qualities is emphasized in a given moment. For example, the snake may take on different symbolic meanings when emphasis is given to its eyes, tongue, fangs, anatomical form, or movement. Its various aspects constitute a complex system of references to unconscious (and conscious) mental and body self-configurations. These references frequently undergo transformations which make use of structurally related symbols. In the present paper, various aspects of the snake symbol were related to one another and to other symbolic transformations, including the elevator and flying. The structural principles underlying these analyses may be found to organize a wide range of phenomena and were here applied to Tausk's "influencing machine."     

The use of family myths as an aid to strategic therapy

The concept of family myth can be used by the therapist to help organize the wealth of information provided by a family in therapy. Rituals, symbols and metaphors can be viewed as structurally related components within the family myth system which enable the therapist to interpret non-literal, analogic communications as a coherent yet primarily symbolic, narrative about the family's shared perceptions of its functioning. The concept of myth is explored in relation to mythology, the family therapy literature, and a case study. Several strategic intervention strategies are proposed which utilize the family's own metaphors, symbols and rituals to re-edit the family myth. Re-editing the myth on a symbolic level should be associated with improved system functioning, including more concrete areas of the family's life.     

Inducing ordinal and cardinal representations of the first five natural numbers

The prediction that the ordinal property of natural number symbols (using these symbols to represent the terms in an ordered progression) is more easily learned than the cardinal property of natural number symbols (using these symbols to represent the manyness of collections) was examined in this experiment. Preschoolers who evidenced no proficiency with either the ordinal or cardinal properties of natural number symbols were trained to acquire these properties via simple feedback. Both properties proved to be trainable. The most important findings were that the ordinal property was much easier to train than the cardinal property, ordinal training effects were more durable across a 1-week interval than cardinal training effects, and ordinal training appeared to transfer better than cardinal training.     

Spontaneous symbol acquisition and communicative use by pygmy chimpanzees (Pan paniscus)

Two pygmy chimpanzees (Pan paniscus) have spontaneously begun to use symbols to communicate with people. In contrast to common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) using the same communicative system, the pygmy chimpanzees did not need explicit training in order to form referential symbol-object associations. Instead, they acquired symbols by observing others use these symbols in daily communications with them. In addition, the pygmy chimpanzees have begun to comprehend spoken English words and can readily identify lexigrams upon hearing the spoken words. By contrast, common chimpanzees who received similar exposure to spoken English are unable to do so. The older pygmy chimpanzee has begun to form requests of the form agent-verb-recipient in which he is neither the agent nor the recipient. By contrast, similarly aged common chimpanzees limited their requests to simple verbs, in which the agent was always presumed to be the addressee and the chimpanzee itself was always the recipient, thus they had no need to indicate a specific agent or recipient. These results suggest that these pygmy chimpanzees exhibit symbolic and auditory perceptual skills that are distinctly different from those of common chimpanzees.