Perceptual experience shapes our ability to categorize faces by national origin: A new other-race effect

People are better at recognizing own-race than other-race faces. This other-race effect has been argued to be the result of perceptual expertise, whereby face-specific perceptual mechanisms are tuned through experience. We designed new tasks to determine whether other-race effects extend to categorizing faces by national origin. We began by selecting sets of face stimuli for these tasks that are typical in appearance for each of six nations (three Caucasian, three Asian) according to people from those nations (Study 1). Caucasian and Asian participants then categorized these faces by national origin (Study 2). Own-race faces were categorized more accurately than other-race faces. In contrast, Asian American participants, with more extensive other-race experience than the first Asian group, categorized other-race faces better than own-race faces, demonstrating a reversal of the other-race effect. Therefore, other-race effects extend to the ability to categorize faces by national origin, but only if participants have greater perceptual experience with own-race, than other-race faces. Study 3 ruled out non-perceptual accounts by showing that Caucasian and Asian faces were sorted more accurately by own-race than other-race participants, even in a sorting task without any explicit labelling required. Together, our results demonstrate a new other-race effect in sensitivity to national origin of faces that is linked to perceptual expertise.     

Understanding the Association Between Spirituality,Religiosity, and Feelings of Happiness and Sadness Among HIV-Positive Indian Adults: Examining Stress-Related Growth as a Mediator

This study examined the role of stress-related growth as a mediator of the associations between spirituality, religiosity, and feelings of happiness and sadness in a sample of 178 HIV-positive Indian adults. Results indicated that spirituality, but not religiosity, was associated with feelings of happiness and sadness. Subsequent mediation analyses indicated that stress-related growth fully mediated the relationships involving spirituality and feelings of happiness and sadness. Overall, our findings point to the importance of facilitating greater spiritual development among HIV-positive Indians, as well as promoting strategies that help them develop and apply stress-related growth coping methods in their lives.     

Chess knowledge predicts chess memory even after controlling for chess experience: Evidence for the role of high-level processes

The expertise effect in memory for chess positions is one of the most robust effects in cognitive psychology. One explanation of this effect is that chess recall is based on the recognition of familiar patterns and that experts have learned more and larger patterns. Template theory and its instantiation as a computational model are based on this explanation. An alternative explanation is that the expertise effect is due, in part, to stronger players having better and more conceptual knowledge, with this knowledge facilitating memory performance. Our literature review supports the latter view. In our experiment, a sample of 79 chess players were given a test of memory for chess positions, a test of declarative chess knowledge, a test of fluid intelligence, and a questionnaire concerning the amount of time they had played nontournament chess and the amount of time they had studied chess. We determined the numbers of tournament games the players had played from chess databases. Chess knowledge correlated .67 with chess memory and accounted for 16% of the variance after controlling for chess experience. Fluid intelligence accounted for an additional 13% of the variance. These results support the conclusion that both high-level conceptual processing and low-level recognition of familiar patterns play important roles in memory for chess positions.     

Tracing children's vocabulary development from preschool through the school‐age years: an 8‐year longitudinal study

In this 8‐year longitudinal study, we traced the vocabulary growth of Chinese children, explored potential precursors of vocabulary knowledge, and investigated how vocabulary growth predicted future reading skills. Two hundred and sixty‐four (264) native Chinese children from Beijing were measured on a variety of reading and language tasks over 8 years. Between the ages of 4 to 10 years, they were administered tasks of vocabulary and related cognitive skills. At age 11, comprehensive reading skills, including character recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension were examined. Individual differences in vocabulary developmental profiles were estimated using the intercept‐slope cluster method. Vocabulary development was then examined in relation to later reading outcomes. Three subgroups of lexical growth were classified, namely high‐high (with a large initial vocabulary size and a fast growth rate), low‐high (with a small initial vocabulary size and a fast growth rate) and low‐low (with a small initial vocabulary size and a slow growth rate) groups. Low‐high and low‐low groups were distinguishable mostly through phonological skills, morphological skills and other reading‐related cognitive skills. Childhood vocabulary development (using intercept and slope) explained subsequent reading skills. Findings suggest that language‐related and reading‐related cognitive skills differ among groups with different developmental trajectories of vocabulary, and the initial size and growth rate of vocabulary may be two predictors for later reading development.     

汉语阅读困难儿童认知特征研究

为了解汉语阅读困难者的认知特征,本研究从９６７名５年级１１－１３岁学生中抽取了１１８名被试,将他们分成困难组（包括截点组和低成就组）和对照组,并将其在词语理解等８个认知变量上进行了比较。结果表明,图形记忆与加工能力及对词语和一般信息理解能力的缺损是汉语阅读困难者主要的认知特征。研究还表明,一般信息理解能力发展水平是区分一般阅读落后和特殊阅读落后的一个指标。     

IAT范式下自尊内隐性的再证明

该研究用IAT测量了被试的内隐自尊,并通过操纵被试在不同的认知负荷条件下进行外显自我评价来考察外显自我评价和内隐自尊之间的关系。得到的结论是,在低认知负荷条件下进行外显自我评价时,外显自我评价和内隐自尊没有表现出一致性;在高认知负荷条件下进行外显自我评价时,外显自我评价和内隐自尊表现出一致性。该研究在IAT范式下表明了内隐自尊和外显自尊的分离,内隐自尊具有无意识性和自动化的特点。     

语音型噪音对二语者汉语元音声调感知的影响

在安静、语音型噪音、语音调制型噪音三种背景下测量了汉语母语者、汉语中、高水平的韩语母语者感知汉语元音和声调的正确率。安静背景下,三组人的语音感知类似,而在语音型噪音背景下,汉语母语者的感知正确率显著高于中水平二语者。进一步的检验表明中水平二语者在语音型噪音背景下的感知难度较大是由于其受到的语音型噪音中能量掩蔽的影响比母语被试要大,而其受到的信息掩蔽的干扰和另外两组被试相近。     

Electrolytic lesions of the medial prefrontal cortex do not interfere with long-term memory of extinction of conditioned fear

Lesion studies indicate that rats without the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) have difficulty recalling fear extinction acquired the previous day. Several electrophysiological studies have also supported this observation by demonstrating that extinction-related increases in neuronal activity in the mPFC participate in expression of fear extinction. However, a more recent study has shown that fear extinction can be recalled, in certain circumstances, without mPFC potentiation, suggesting contribution of other circuits. Here, we examined this possibility in rats that were subjected to auditory fear conditioning, extinction training, and extinction retention test 7 d later. Electrolytic lesions were made in the mPFC, the motor cortex (MO), the dorsal septum (SEP), or the mediodorsal thalamus (MD), because of their potential participation in conditioned fear inhibition; combined lesions including the mPFC with the MO, SEP, or MD were also made. The lesions were made either 1 wk before conditioning or 1 d after extinction training. All rats normally extinguished their conditioned freezing behavior during extinction training and did not display any return of this behavior during the retention test. These data reveal that the mPFC is not required for the acquisition, the expression, or the retrieval of extinction memories but do not exclude the possibility that the mPFC normally participates in these processes.     

The roles of semantic similarity and proactive interference in the word length effect

We examined the influence of semantic similarity and proactive interference (PI) on the word length effect (WLE) in immediate serial recall. Word length was manipulated by comparing memory for monosyllabic versus multisyllabic words. PI effects were evaluated by manipulating semantic similarity in the to-be-remembered lists and examining its impact on the WLE’s magnitude across eight-trial blocks. Words were sampled from a single semantic category across the entire block, from a single category within the list, or from different categories. Robust WLEs were observed in single-category blocks and when words were from different categories. However, when all the within-list words were from the same semantic category, the WLE was sharply attenuated. Except for the within-list semantic similarity condition, there was a buildup in PI levels in the form of protrusion errors across trials. However, the magnitude of the WLE did not increase with the PI buildup, suggesting that it was not affected by PI across trials.