Working memory selection and competition between target and distractor representations

A working memory selection task combining directed-forgetting and memory-scanning paradigms was used to test the hypothesis that difficulty in selecting target from distractor items in working memory depends on the competition between target and distractor representations, as is commonly assumed in perceptual selection research. Participants memorized two trigrams and were then cued to select one as the new memory set and forget the other. They later saw a test letter and made judgment as to whether the letter was in the selected trigram, i.e., the new memory set. Selection difficulty was examined by manipulating the type of selection cues and the time the cue could be utilized. While re-presenting the targets in the cue display facilitated selection, re-presenting distractors did not impede selection. The results suggest that working memory selection may depend more on the activation from representations of the target than of the distractor.     

R34D1NG W0RD5 W1TH NUMB3R5

Letter identities and number identities are usually thought to imply different cortical mechanisms. Specifically, the left fusiform gyrus responds more to letters than to digits (T. A. Polk et al., 2002). However, a widely circulated statement on the internet illustrates that it is possible to use numbers (leet digits) as parts of words, 4ND TH3 R35ULT1NG S3NT3NC3 C4N B3 R34D W1TH0UT GR34T 3FF0RT. Two masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted to determine whether leet digits produce (automatic) lexical activation. Results showed that words are identified substantially faster when they are preceded by a masked leet word (M4T3R14L-MATERIAL) than when they are preceded by a control condition with other letters or digits. In addition, there was only a negligible advantage of the identity condition over the related leet condition. This leet-priming effect is not specific to numbers: A prime in which leet digits are replaced by letter-like symbols (M(Delta symbol)T(euro symbol)R!(Delta symbol)L - MATERIAL) facilitates word processing to the same degree as an identity prime. Therefore, the cognitive system regularizes the shape of the leet digits and letter-like symbols embedded in words with very little cost.     

Changes in suicide methods in Quebec between 1987 and 2000: the possible impact of bill C-17 requiring safe storage of firearms

This study presents the changes in the overall and firearm suicide rates for Québec (Canada) before and after Bill C-17, which was implemented to secure safe storage of firearms. It covers 20,009 suicide cases reported to the coroner's office. Interrupted time series analysis is used to compare suicide rates in the two periods. Firearm suicide rates have dropped among males and females, but the downward trends were not significant when compared to those prior to the law. Hanging suicide rates have risen considerably among men and women, but those upward trends did not increase significantly when compared with those preceding the law. The decline in suicide rates involving firearms has not resulted in a parallel decline in overall suicide rates. The analyses suggest that Bill C-17 neither improved the downward trend in firearm suicide, which had already begun before the enactment of the law, nor reduced the upward trend of the overall suicide rate. Correlation analyses between firearm suicide, hanging suicide, and the overall suicide rate suggest that firearm suicide is replaced by hanging suicide among males.     

萨特存在主义的人学:在笛卡尔式视野中

萨特的存在主义是在笛卡尔视角中的世俗存在主义。在此基础上建立起来的人道集笛卡尔传统和存在主义的人道主义理念于一身。人的在世,从提问开始。提问产生虚无和否定,人是对自己采取否定的态度存在,是自为的存在。     

言语中的音高信息声学语音学加工的大脑偏侧化

旨在探讨言语中音高信息自下而上的声学语音学加工的神经机制和大脑偏侧化.发现,被动听和主动判断任务分别激活了颞叶和额叶,激活在颞极、颞上回和额下回眶部表现出明显的右侧优势.结果表明,对言语中音高信息自下而上的声学语音学加工主要是右脑的功能,言语与非言语信号的音高信息可能有相似的加工机制,支持Gandour等提出的理论.     

NoA’s ark: Influence of the number of associates in visual word recognition

The main aim of this study was to explore the extent to which the number of associates of a word (NoA) influences lexical access, in four tasks that focus on different processes of visual word recognition: lexical decision, reading aloud, progressive demasking, and online sentence reading. Results consistently showed that words with a dense associative neighborhood (high-NoA words) were processed faster than words with a sparse neighborhood (low-NoA words), extending previous findings from English lexical decision and categorization experiments. These results are interpreted in terms of the higher degree of semantic richness of high-NoA words as compared with low-NoA words. 2008 Psychonomic Society, Inc. Author Note     

Early vocabulary inventory for Mandarin Chinese

Early vocabulary development is a reliable predictor of children's later language skills. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) has provided a powerful tool to assess earlyvocabulary development in English and other languages. However, there have been no published CDI norms for Mandarin Chinese. Given the importance of large-scale comparative data sets for understanding the early childhood lexicon, we have developed an early vocabulary inventory for Mandarin. In this article, we report our efforts in developing this instrument, and discuss the data collected from 884 Chinese families in Beijing over a period of 12-30 months, based on our instrument. Chinese children's receptive and expressive lexicons as assessed by our inventory match well with those reported for English on the basis of CDI. In particular, our data indicate comprehension-production differences, individual differences in early comprehension and in later production, and different lexical development profiles among infants versus toddlers. We also make the checklists and norms of our inventory available to the research community via the Internet; they may be accessed from the Psychonomic Society's Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, at www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

社会认知神经科学研究的最新进展

社会认知神经科学是一门采用认知神经科学技术研究社会认知现象的交叉学科,目前已经形成认知神经科学与心理生理学的热点研究领域。该文回顾了近年来有关情绪、情绪障碍、自我意识、经济决策、道德等方面的脑机制研究,临床研究和脑成像研究表明,恐惧、厌恶、愤怒、惊讶、快乐、悲伤等基本情绪在表达和识别上具有普遍性与特殊性;孤独症与“男性脑”的特征相关,抗抑郁药百忧解对抑郁症儿童的治疗作用;在自我意识的研究领域,自我概念产生的脑区定位、灵长类的自我意象、精神疾病患者的自我概念变化等研究的热点问题;经济决策的研究最近成为亮点之一,主要包括强互惠合作、风险决策、跨期选择以及品牌决策等方面;在道德的脑机制研究中,重点涉及了道德判断与捐赠行为的神经基础。文章最后展望了社会认知神经科学在我国发展的前景     

不同阅读水平儿童中央执行系统比较研究

本研究通过两部分实验探讨汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童与正常儿童中央执行系统的容量差异和这种差异的性质。通过比较匹配生理年龄的不同阅读水平儿童在自定步速和固定步速的复杂阅读广度测验中的成绩,发现发展性阅读障碍儿童在两种阅读广度测验中都表现出中央执行系统容量的缺陷,这种缺陷既不能用加工效率理论,也不能用资源分配理论来解释,而符合一般容量假设。因此,本研究支持发展性阅读障碍儿童存在实时加工和存储信息的一般容量缺陷。     

Speech perception deficits by Chinese children with phonological dyslexia

Findings concerning the relation between dyslexia and speech perception deficits are inconsistent in the literature. This study examined the relation in Chinese children using a more homogeneous sample—children with phonological dyslexia. Two experimental tasks were administered to a group of Chinese children with phonological dyslexia, a group of age-matched control children, and a group of adults. In addition to a categorical perception task, a selective adaptation task was carried out. The results indicated that Chinese children with phonological dyslexia were less consistent than both the child and adult control groups in identifying stimuli within a given phonetic category. Furthermore, they did not show any significant adaptation effects in the selective adaptation task even when the adapting stimulus was identical to an endpoint stimulus in the test continuum. It seems that children with phonological dyslexia have a general deficiency in representing and processing speech stimuli.