篇章阅读理解中句子边界对整体连贯性的影响

通过四个实验考察句子边界对整体连贯性的影响。实验运用不一致程序(inconsistent paradigm)进行。实验一结果发现,当目标行1(target line)不是一个完整句子时,被试阅读完目标行2(post-target line)后才会意识到目标行1中的不一致。实验二结果发现,当目标行1是一个完整句子时,被试阅读完目标行1后就可立刻意识到其中的不一致,但探测词的反应时在两种条件下则并没有明显差异。这两个实验的结果表明,句子边界作为一种信号,提示读者在阅读下一句子前要完成当前句子的整合加工。实验三结果发现,目标行1以一个无关词(如然后)结束时,被试阅读完目标行1后也可立刻注意到其中的不一致,这表明句号对背景信息的整合不是必需的。实验四考察了分号的作用,结果显示:被试阅读完目标行1后并没有意识到其中的冲突。根据本研究的结果,可以推测句号在理解过程中起着重要影响,而其它句子边界(如:分号)的作用则并不明显。     

Taking credit for success: The phenomenology of control in a goal-directed task

We studied how people determine when they are in control of objects. In a computer task, participants moved a virtual boat towards a goal using a joystick to investigate how subjective control is shaped by (1) correspondence between motor actions and the visual consequences of those actions, and (2) attainment of higher-level goals. In Experiment 1, random discrepancies from joystick input (noise) decreased judgments of control (JoCs), but discrepancies that brought the boat closer to the goal and increased success (the autopilot) increased JoCs. In Experiment 2, participants raced to the goal against a computer-controlled rival boat while varying levels of noise interfered with each boat. Participants reached the goal more often and rated their own control higher when the computer rival had good control. Subjective control over moving objects depends partly on consistency between motor actions and their effects, but is also modulated by perceived success and competition.     

When goals collide: Monitoring the goals of multiple characters

Most story plots contain multiple characters who are independent, interact, and often have conflicting goals. One would expect that narrative understanding would require monitoring of the goals, concerns, and situations of multiple agents. There is considerable evidence that understanders monitor the primary protagonist's goal plans (e.g., Suh & Trabasso, 1993). However, there is relatively little research on the extent to which understanders monitor the goals of multiple agents. We investigated the impact of characters' roles and prominence on the extent to which understanders monitor the goal plans of multiple characters in a feature length film. In Experiment 1, participants made situation change judgments, and in Experiment 2, they verbally described scenes. Both types of judgments indicated that viewers monitor the goals and plans of multiple agents but do so to a greater extent for characters more prominent to the plotline.     

Six-and-a-half-month-old children positively attribute goals to human action and to humanoid-robot motion

Recent infant studies indicate that goal attribution (understanding of goal-directed action) is present very early in infancy. We examined whether 6.5-month-olds attribute goals to agents and whether infants change the interpretation of goal-directed action according to the kind of agent. We conducted three experiments using the visual habituation paradigm. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether 6.5-month-olds attribute goals to human action. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether 6.5-month-olds attribute goals to humanoid-robot motion. In Experiment 3, we tested whether infants attribute goals to a moving box. The agent used in Experiment 3 had no human-like appearance. The results of the three experiments show that infants positively attribute goals to both human action (Experiment 1) and humanoid motion (Experiment 2) but not to a moving box (Experiment 3). These results suggest that 6.5-month-olds tend to interpret certain actions in terms of goals, their reasoning about these actions is based on a sophisticated teleological representation, and that human-like appearance of agents may influence this teleological reasoning in early infancy.     

Preschoolers distribute scarce resources according to the moral valence of recipients' previous actions

Children aged 3 years and 4? years old watched a puppet, struggling to achieve goals, who was helped by a 2nd puppet and violently hindered by a 3rd. The children then distributed wooden biscuits between the helper and hinderer. In Experiment 1, when distributing a small odd number of biscuits, 4?-year-olds (N = 16) almost always gave more to the helper. Children verbally justified their unequal distributions by reference to the helper's prosocial behavior or the hinderer's antisocial behavior. In Experiment 2, when biscuits were more plentiful, 4?-year-olds (N = 16) usually gave equal numbers to helper and hinderer, indicating that 4?-year-olds usually preferred not to distribute unequally unless forced to by resource scarcity. Three-year-olds (N = 16 in Experiment 1, N = 20 in Experiment 3) gave more biscuits equally often to the helper and to the hinderer. In many cases, this was because they were confused as to the identities and actions of the puppets, possibly because they were shocked by the hinderer's actions. Two fundamental moral behaviors are therefore demonstrated in young preschoolers: indirect reciprocity of morally valenced acts and a preference for equality when distributing resources, although the cognitive bases for these behaviors remain unclear. These results join other recent studies in demonstrating that the seeds of complex moral understanding and behavior are found early in development.     

Young children can extend motion verbs to point-light displays

In the first study using point-light displays (lights corresponding to the joints of the human body) to examine children's understanding of verbs, 3-year-olds were tested to see if they could perceive familiar actions that corresponded to motion verbs (e.g., walking). Experiment 1 showed that children could extend familiar motion verbs (e.g., walking and dancing) to videotaped point-light actions shown in the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. Children watched the action that matched the requested verb significantly more than they watched the action that did not match the verb. In Experiment 2, the findings of Experiment 1 were validated by having children spontaneously produce verbs for these actions. The use of point-light displays may illuminate the factors that contribute to verb learning.     

How readers experience characters’ decisions

When people read narratives, they have ample opportunities to encode mental preferences about characters’ decisions. In our present project, we examined how readers’ preferences for characters’ decisions structure their experiences of story outcomes. In Experiment 1, participants read brief stories and explicitly rated which of two potential decisions they thought the characters should make. The actual decision that each character made was either preferred or nonpreferred by readers. By the end of each story, readers learned whether there was a positive or negative outcome to these decisions. Decisions and outcomes either matched (e.g., a preferred decision followed by a positive outcome) or did not match (e.g., a nonpreferred decision followed by a negative outcome). Participants took longer to read outcome sentences when there was a mismatch. In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding with a task that allowed more natural reading. These results provide converging evidence that readers encode responses to characters’ decisions and that these responses affect the time course with which they assimilate story outcomes.     

Hemispheric processing of anaphoric inferences: the activation of multiple antecedents

This research investigates the hemispheric processing of anaphors when readers activate multiple antecedents. Participants read texts promoting an anaphoric inference and performed a lexical decision task to inference-related target words that were consistent (Experiment 1) or inconsistent (Experiment 2) with the text. These targets were preceded by constrained or less constraining text and were presented to participants' right visual field-left hemisphere or to their left visual field-right hemisphere. In Experiment 1, both hemispheres showed facilitation for consistent antecedents and the right hemisphere showed an advantage over the left hemisphere in processing antecedents when preceded by less constrained text. In Experiment 2, the left hemisphere only showed negative facilitation for inconsistent antecedents. When readers comprehend text with multiple antecedents: both hemispheres process consistent information, the left hemisphere inhibits inconsistent information, and the right hemisphere processes less constrained information.     

Children's Use of Social Cues When Learning Conventions

In a series of two experiments, we examined 5-year-old children's motivations for learning new conventional actions. Children watched two teachers open a novel container; the teachers differed in the nonfunctional, conventional actions they used in the process. In Experiment 1, one teacher spoke with a native accent and the other spoke with a nonnative accent. Children showed a preference for following the native-accented teacher, and this preference was interpreted as a motivation to match an in-group member. In Experiment 2, the speech accent of the teacher was crossed with explicit expressions of (un)certainty by the teachers. In this case, children preferred the more certain teacher, even when the certain teacher spoke with a nonnative speech accent. This preference was taken as demonstrating a utilitarian motivation that led to choosing the teacher most likely to have useful information. Taken together, these results suggest that by 5 years of age, children are motivated by both utilitarian and in-group considerations when selecting between sources of information; however, when forced to select between the two motivations, utilitarian concerns take precedent.     

Pre-event discussion and recall of a novel event: how are children best prepared?

We investigated the conditions under which information 1 day before a novel event influenced 6-year-olds' recall 2 weeks later. In Experiment 1A, four preparation conditions included either the event goals, goals with narration of the event actions and objects, photographs of the objects with goals and narration, or photographs with narration and child verbalization of the actions and objects. Compared with an irrelevant preparation control condition, goals with narration reduced errors, but correct recall was increased only when photographs were included. Child verbalization together with goals, narration, and photographs increased correct recall relative to goals with narration. In Experiment 1B, neither photographs nor preparation alone improved recall relative to the control condition. Experiment 2 found no further advantage of increasing children's participation in the preparation via questions. Overall, the impact of preevent information on memory is influenced by the nature of the information and the child's participation in the preparation.     

Seeing what they read and hearing what they say: Readers’ representation of the story characters’ world

Do readers “see” the words that story characters read and “hear” the words that they hear? Just as priming effects are reduced when stimuli are presented cross-modally on two different occasions, we found reduced transfer effects when story characters were described as experiencing stimuli cross-modally. In Experiment 1, a repeated phrase was described as being part of a spoken message in both Story A and Story B, and transfer effects were found. In Experiment 2, in contrast, when the phrase was described as a written note in one story and a spoken message in the other, reading-time results indicated that readers did not retrieve the meaning of the repeated phrase. The results are consistent with findings indicating that visual imagery simulates visual processing and that auditory imagery simulates auditory processing. We conclude that readers mentally simulate the perceptual details involved in story characters’ linguistic exchanges.     

Executive processing in learning-disabled readers

Three experiments determine whether memory difficulties experienced by learning-disabled readers may be attributable, in part, to executive processing. In Experiment 1, learning-disabled readers, matched to skilled readers on chronological age and reading-comprehension ability, were compared on the Concurrent Digit Span measure presented under high (6-digit) and low (3-digit) memory-load conditions as they concurrently sorted cards into verbal or nonverbal categories. Experiment 2 utilized the same task as Experiment 1, except that learning-disabled (LD) readers of low and average working-memory capacity were compared with skilled readers of average and high working-memory capacity. Both experiments clearly showed that LD readers' performance is depressed under high memory-load conditions. Experiment 2 also indicated that overall performance of non-learning-disabled (NLD) readers was predictable from LD readers, suggesting that ability-group differences are related to global processing efficiency rather than to isolated verbal and nonverbal systems. In Experiment 3, LD and NLD readers were compared on their ability to recall central and secondary information from base and elaborative sentences tasks under high- and low-effort encoding conditions. LD readers had significantly poorer secondary recall during high-effort encoding conditions when compared to skilled readers. Taken together, the results are discussed within a framework that views individual differences in reading comprehension as reflecting, in part, executive processing (i.e., resource monitoring) activities.     

Readers’ use of source information in text comprehension

In two experiments, we examined the role of discrepancy on readers’ text processing of and memory for the sources of brief news reports. Each story included two assertions that were attributed to different sources. We manipulated whether the second assertion was either discrepant or consistent with the first assertion. On the basis of the discrepancy-induced source comprehension (D-ISC) assumption, we predicted that discrepant stories would promote deeper processing and better memory for the sources conveying the messages, as compared to consistent stories. As predicted, readers mentioned more sources in summaries of discrepant stories, recalled more sources, made more fixations, and displayed longer gaze times in source areas when reading discrepant than when reading consistent stories. In Experiment 2, we found enhanced memory for source–content links for discrepant stories even when intersentential connectors were absent, and regardless of the reading goals. Discussion was focused on discrepancies as one mechanism by which readers are prompted to encode source–content links more deeply, as a method of integrating disparate pieces of information into a coherent mental representation of a text.     

Big Picture,Bad Outcomes: When Visual Perspectives Harm Health Goal Pursuit

People often fail to achieve health goals, which compromises their well‐being. Prior research suggests that seeing events through an observer's eyes (i.e., adopting a third‐person perspective) should facilitate goal pursuit. However, we find that third‐person perspectives discourage goal‐consistent intentions and behavior for health goals when goal centrality is low (i.e., the goal is peripheral to one's self‐concept). In Experiment 1, people who adopted a third‐person perspective chose more sugary foods if they considered a healthy eating goal to be more peripheral to the self. Experiment 2 examines why a third‐person perspective can hinder goal pursuit; it encourages a breakdown in implemental thinking which, in turn, increases negative self‐conscious emotions. While high goal centrality buffers people from negative effects on goal intentions, low centrality does not. Experiment 3 demonstrates that this effect is robust when goal centrality is manipulated. We recommend that consumers pursuing health goals (and individuals who support them) exercise caution when employing perspective‐based strategies, as they may backfire for people at greatest risk of goal abandonment.     

How does verb aspect constrain event representations?

We investigated the relative contribution of perfective and imperfective aspectual cues on situation models. In Experiment 1, participants were more likely to choose pictures showing completed events than pictures showing ongoing events when they had read perfective sentences, but chose either picture after reading imperfective sentences. In Experiment 2, only one picture was presented and participants were faster to respond to completed pictures than to ongoing pictures when they had read perfective sentences, but showed no latency differences after reading the imperfective sentences. In Experiment 3, participants were faster to read perfective sentences after having seen completed pictures rather than intermediate pictures, but there was no difference for imperfective sentences. The consistent pattern of results demonstrates that readers construct mental representations of completed events when the perfective aspect is used to describe an event. The lack of effect on imperfective sentences and pictures suggests that each reader represents an in-progress event at varying stages of completion.     

Imitation of Gestures in Children is Goal-directed

The view that the motor program activated during imitation is organized by goals was investigated by asking pre-school children to imitate a set of hand gestures of varying complexity that were made by an experimenter sitting in front of them. In Experiments 1 and 3, children reached for the correct object (one of their own ears or one of two dots on a table) but preferred to use the ipsilateral hand. This ipsilateral preference was not observed when hand movements were made to only one ear (Experiment 2), or when movements were diercted at space rather than physical objects (Experiment 3). The results are consistent with the notion that imitation is guided by goals and provide insights about how these goals are organized.     

Three-month-old infants attribute goals to a non-human agent

The present research examined whether 3-month-old infants, the youngest found so far to engage in goal-related reasoning about human agents, would also act as if they attribute goals to a novel non-human agent, a self-propelled box. In two experiments, the infants seemed to have interpreted the box’s actions as goal-directed after seeing the box approach object A as opposed to object B during familiarization. They thus acted as though they expected the box to maintain this goal and responded with increased attention when the box approached object B during test. In contrast, when object B was absent during familiarization and introduced afterwards, the infants’ responses were consistent with their having recognized that they had no information to predict which of the two objects the box should choose during test and therefore responded similarly when the box approached either object. However, if object B was absent during familiarization and object A was in different positions but the box persistently approached it, thus demonstrating equifinal variations in its actions, the infants again acted as though they attributed to the box a goal directed towards object A and expected the box to maintain this goal even when object B was introduced and hence responded with prolonged looking when the box failed to do so during test. These results are consistent with the notion that (a) infants as young as 3 months appear to attribute goals to both human and non-human agents, and (b) even young infants can use certain behavioral cues, e.g. equifinal variations in agents’ actions, to make inferences about agents’ goals.     

A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling,sound, and reading

Skilled readers generally are assumed to make little or no use of words’ phonological features in visual word identification. Contrary to this assumption, college students’ performance in the present reading experiments showed large effects of stimulus word phonology. In Experiments 1 and 2, these subjects produced larger false positive error rates in a semantic categorization task when they responded to stimulus foils that were homophonic to category exemplars (e.g., ROWS for the category A FLOWER) than when they responded to spelling control foils. Additionally, in Experiment 2, this homophony effect was found under brief-exposure pattern-masking conditions, a result consistent with the possibility that phonology is an early source of constraint in word identification. Subjects did, however, correctly reject most homophone foils in Experiments 1 and 2. Experiment 3 investigated the source of this ability. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that subjects detected homophone impostors, such as ROWS, by verifying target foil spellings against their knowledge of the correct spellings of category exemplars, such as ROSE.     

Investigating the visual span in comparative search: the effects of task difficulty and divided attention

In three experiments, participants' visual span was measured in a comparative visual search task in which they had to detect a local match or mismatch between two displays presented side by side. Experiment 1 manipulated the difficulty of the comparative visual search task by contrasting a mismatch detection task with a substantially more difficult match detection task. In Experiment 2, participants were tested in a single-task condition involving only the visual task and a dual-task condition in which they concurrently performed an auditory task. Finally, in Experiment 3, participants performed two dual-task conditions, which differed in the difficulty of the concurrent auditory task. Both the comparative search task difficulty (Experiment 1) and the divided attention manipulation (Experiments 2 and 3) produced strong effects on visual span size.