Judgments of grammaticality of sentences violating the principle of full interpretation: a further exploration

54 Japanese speakers judged isolated simple bitransitive sentences involving an unnecessary extra argument in addition to three legitimate arguments. Two variables were manipulated, with one variable concerning the role the extra argument assumed in a sentence, subjective, dative, or objective and the other concerning the relation it bore with the legitimate argument. The sentences with the extra arguments were judged to be an average grammaticality of about 3 on a 7-point scale. This score, although still lower than that obtained for sentences involving only the legitimate arguments, suggests that speakers' judgments are not fully consistent with the judgments expected if they might possess and demonstrate the knowledge of the principle of Full Interpretation.     

Speakers' knowledge of word meanings: stable and perfect?

This study explored whether the actual state of speakers' knowledge of word meanings is as stable and perfect as Chomsky has claimed. 73 speakers of Japanese (11 men and 62 women, M age=20.6 yr.) each engaged in two tasks, one of defining the meanings of function words and content words and the other of creating a short sentence involving one of these words. Some speakers did a meaning-definition task first and then a sentence-creation task, while others did these tasks in reverse order. Use-dependent definition as an index of insufficient knowledge of word meanings was examined. Findings showed this type of definition occurred more often for the function words than for the content words and that it also occurred more often when the speakers performed the sentence-creation task before the meaning-definition task. The findings suggest that the actual state of speakers' knowledge of word meanings is not as stable nor as perfect as Chomsky has claimed.     

Response preparation and stimulus-response congruence to fractionating reaction time of upper and lower limbs

We measured the fractionating reaction time for upper and lower limbs of 18 young men, using an electromyogram to clarify the interaction of response preparation and stimulus-response congruence on premotor and motor time. The reaction time was divided into two periods with respect to the onset of the electromyogram, premotor and motor components. Manipulating the probability of the Go versus NoGo signals varied three different amounts of response preparation. Prior to the imperative stimulus, precue information about the position of a stimulus was presented. In the stimulus-response congruent task, subjects were required to release a key on the same side of the body using either an upper or lower limb in response to an imperative Go stimulus. In the stimulus-response incongruent task, subjects were required to act in a reverse manner. Subjects were not supposed to respond to the NoGo stimulus. The premotor time of the upper and lower limb responses was affected by the respective effects of response preparation and stimulus-response congruence. The motor time of the upper and lower limb responses increased as the probability of the Go signal decreased but not in relation to stimulus-response congruence. These results suggest that response preparation affects not only information processing time but also peripheral motor activity due to motor programming, and that the stimulus-response congruence effect on motor time disappears when information about the position of the imperative stimulus is precued.     

广松版《德意志意识形态》在《资本论》形成史上的意义

《德意志意识形态》是马克思恩格斯阐发唯物史观的重要文本。这种历史观主要体现在共同体论、对比论、原始积累理论,这三者在逻辑上是相互联系的。然而涩谷版和陶伯特版都完全无视了的这种关联,割断了这三者之间的内在联系,因而,在编辑原则上都是不合理的。而广松版则把这三者有机统一在一起,真正呈现了马克思历史唯物主义的真实内涵,这恰恰证明了广松版的编辑原则的合理性。另一方面,在广松看来,马克思哲学的发展在本质上就是从异化理论到物象化理论的范式转化,而《德意志意识形态》恰恰就为这种物象化理论奠定了基础。从这种意义上来讲,《德意志意识形态》在马克思的《资本论》形成史上具有的决定性意义。     

Erratum: Computer‐based teaching of Kanji construction and writing in a student with developmental disabilities. By Hiroshi Sugasawara and Jun‐ichi Yamamoto

The above article (DOI: 10.1002/bin.271 ) was published online in Early View on 3 December 2008. A printing error was subsequently identified in the article. Page 1: Incorrect author affiliation. ‘Keio Advanced Research Center (KARC)’ should be ‘Department of Psychology’     

Priming effects on musical chord identification: Facilitation or disruption?

The present study examined whether priming effects on chord identification are facilitative or disruptive, by employing a control (no‐prime) condition in addition to a related‐prime condition and an unrelated‐prime condition. According to the activation hypothesis, which predicts a facilitative effect of musically related chords, responses are expected to be faster in the related‐prime condition than in the control condition. In contrast, according to the schema hypothesis, which supposes a disruptive effect of musically unrelated chords, responses are expected to be slower in the unrelated‐prime condition than in the control condition. No facilitative effect was found in the related‐prime condition, whereas a marked disruptive effect was found in the unrelated‐prime condition. The disruptive effect was more pronounced in the major‐chord condition than in the minor‐chord condition, and more salient at an interonset interval of 1 s than at 3 s or 7 s. These results are interpreted in terms of the schema hypothesis.     

Effects of angularity of the figures with sharp and round corners on visual evoked potentials

Following a study in which equilateral triangles elicited larger visual evoked potentials (VEPs) than either squares or circles, we examined the effect of single-line angular figures with a sharp or a round corner at angles of 45°, 90°, 135° or 180°. VEPs were recorded monopolarly at four locations on the midline of scalp for 10 subjects, while the figure was tachiscopically presented to the lower visual field. Subtracted waves were obtained between figure and control (blank) conditions. N1 (peak latency 135–142 ms) and P2 (235–237 ms) waves were identifiable. N1 amplitude tended to decrease as a function of angularity, irrespective of orientation (angle pointing up or down). The effect of the sharpness/roundness of the corner was much smaller than that of its angularity. These findings suggest that the greater VEP response with triangles than with squares and circles may be attributable to the acute angularity of triangles. Related cortical processes and VEP components are also discussed.     

A Propensity Score Adjustment for Multiple Group Structural Equation Modeling

In the behavioral and social sciences, quasi-experimental and observational studies are used due to the difficulty achieving a random assignment. However, the estimation of differences between groups in observational studies frequently suffers from bias due to differences in the distributions of covariates. To estimate average treatment effects when the treatment variable is binary, Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983a) proposed adjustment methods for pretreatment variables using the propensity score. However, these studies were interested only in estimating the average causal effect and/or marginal means. In the behavioral and social sciences, a general estimation method is required to estimate parameters in multiple group structural equation modeling where the differences of covariates are adjusted. We show that a Horvitz–Thompson-type estimator, propensity score weighted M estimator (PWME) is consistent, even when we use estimated propensity scores, and the asymptotic variance of the PWME is shown to be less than that with true propensity scores. Furthermore, we show that the asymptotic distribution of the propensity score weighted statistic under a null hypothesis is a weighted sum of independent χ² ₁ variables. We show the method can compare latent variable means with covariates adjusted using propensity scores, which was not feasible by previous methods. We also apply the proposed method for correlated longitudinal binary responses with informative dropout using data from the Longitudinal Study of Aging (LSOA). The results of a simulation study indicate that the proposed estimation method is more robust than the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation method, in that PWME does not require the knowledge of the relationships among dependent variables and covariates.     

Motion parallax driven by head movements: conditions for visual stability, perceived depth, and perceived concomitant motion

Yoking the movement of the stimulus on the screen to the movement of the head, we examined visual stability and depth perception as a function of head-movement velocity and parallax. In experiment 1, for different head velocities, observers adjusted the parallax to find (a) the depth threshold and (b) the concomitant-motion threshold. Between these thresholds, depth was seen with no perceived motion. In experiment 2, for different head velocities, observers adjusted the parallax to produce the same perceived depth. A slower head movement required a greater parallax to produce the same perceived depth as faster head movements. In experiment 3, observers reported the perceived depth for different parallax magnitudes. Perceived depth covaried with smaller parallax without motion perception, but began to decrease with larger parallax and concomitant motion was seen. Only motion was seen with the larger parallax.