Testing the cognitive relevance of a geometric model on a word association task: A comparison of humans, ACOM, and LSA

The general aim of this study is to validate the cognitive relevance of the geometric model used in the semantic atlases (SA). With this goal in mind, we compare the results obtained by the automatic contexonym organizing model (ACOM)—an SA-derived model for word sense representation based on contextual links—with human subjects’ responses on a word association task. We begin by positioning the geometric paradigm with respect to the hierarchical paradigm (WordNet) and the vector paradigm (latent semantic analysis [LSA] and the hyperspace analogue to language model). Then we compare ACOM’s responses with Hirsh and Tree’s (2001) word association norms based on the responses of two groups of subjects. The results showed that words associated by 50% or more of the Hirsh and Tree subjects were also proposed by ACOM (e.g., 71% of the words in the norms were also given by ACOM). Finally, we compare ACOM and LSA on the basis of the same association norms. The results indicate better performance for the geometric model.     

组织中的政治技能及相关研究

政治技能是个体在工作中影响他人以实现组织目标的能力,对个体的工作绩效和某些工作态度、缓解工作中压力带来的紧张感等具有一定的作用。个体的洞察力、控制、亲和力、主动影响及发展经验被视为政治技能的影响因素,通过实践练习、替代学习等方法可实现政治技能的培训和开发。在未来的研究中,对政治技能概念的理解、测量多源性等方面的问题还需要进一步的探讨     

社会价值取向与反馈对动态社会两难决策的影响：以水资源两难决策为例

以水资源两难情景为实验任务,探讨了社会价值取向与反馈在社会两难决策中的作用.结果表明: (1)社会价值取向在决策者的两难决策行为中起着非常重要的作用.合作型个体比非合作型个体显著地表现出更多的合作行为.个体的社会价值取向可以作为预测两难决策行为的一个重要因素: (2)不同的反馈类型对具有不同社会价值取向的决策者的决策行为影响不同.非合作型个体受反馈信息影响比较明显,而合作型个体则不易受他人的决策信息影响.     

Exercise motivation in university community members: a behavioural intervention

The purpose of this study was to examine how exercise level, exercise motives, and barriers changed from the baseline phase to the follow-up phase after a behavioural and cognitive intervention aimed at increasing exercise. Seventy-five members of our university community (43 subjects in the control group and 32 in the experimental group), all of whom received cognitive feedback, agreed to complete the baseline phase. Only the experimental group received behavioural feedback and a free-access gym ticket with personal training in order to facilitate their adherence to exercise. The results suggest that a combination of behavioural and psychological techniques is an efficient strategy for increasing exercise level. In addition, the results showed that extrinsic motivation predominates the early stages of change-of-exercise behaviour, and that intrinsic motivation is important for progression towards maintenance. Subjects who decreased their exercise level increased their extrinsic exercise motivation and subjects who increased their exercise level decreased the barriers related to intrinsic motivation. These findings indicate that, in order to facilitate exercise adherence, feedback about motives for undertaking exercise is needed, combined with advice about how to improve physical condition. This combination could help eliminate certain barriers that hinder engaging in an active and healthy life-style.     

Purchase and Consumption Habits: Not Necessarily What You Intend

Purchase and consumption behaviors in daily life often are repetitive and performed in customary places, leading consumers to develop habits. When habits have formed, environmental cues can activate the practiced responses in the absence of conscious decision making. This research tested these ideas using a longitudinal design. We predicted that regardless of their explicit intentions, consumers would repeat habits to purchase fast food, watch TV news, and take the bus. The results yielded the anticipated pattern in which participants repeated habitual behaviors even if they reported intentions to do otherwise. Intentions only guided behavior in the absence of strong habits. This study ruled out a number of artifactual accounts for these findings including that they arise from the level of abstraction at which intentions are identified, the certainty with which participants held intentions, a restriction of range in the measures, and the strategy participants used to estimate frequency of past performance.     

The ameliorating effect of oroxylin A on scopolamine-induced memory impairment in mice

Oroxylin A is a flavonoid and was originally isolated from the root of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi., one of the most important medicinal herbs in traditional Chinese medicine. The aim of this study was to investigate the ameliorating effects of oroxylin A on memory impairment using the passive avoidance test, the Y-maze test, and the Morris water maze test in mice. Drug-induced amnesia was induced by administering scopolamine (1 mg/kg, i.p.) or diazepam (1 mg/kg, i.p.). Oroxylin A (5 mg/kg) significantly reversed cognitive impairments in mice by passive avoidance and the Y-maze testing (P<.05). Oroxylin A also improved escape latencies in training trials and increased swimming times and distances within the target zone of the Morris water maze (P<.05). Moreover, the ameliorating effects of oroxylin A were antagonized by both muscimol and diazepam (0.25 mg/kg, i.p., respectively), which are GABA(A) receptor agonists. Furthermore, oroxylin A (100 microM) was found to inhibit GABA-induced inward Cl(-) current in a single cortical neuron. These results suggest that oroxylin A may be useful for the treatment of cognitive impairments induced by cholinergic dysfunction via the GABAergic nervous system.     

攻击性儿童的P300事件相关电位研究

运用听觉P300任务对攻击性儿童(17人,其中16名男孩,1名女孩)与对照组的正常儿童( 人数与性别分布同攻击组)的事件相关电位(ERP)进行比较,发现攻击性儿童P30 0的潜伏期较长,波幅尤其是额部波幅较小,表明攻击性个体存在认知加工缺陷,特别是选择性注意与调控机能缺陷.研究结果同时表明P300可以作为鉴别攻击性个体的一个可靠指标.     

We are the opposite of you! Mirroring of national,regional and ethnic stereotypes

The content of stereotypes can be shaped by multiple mechanisms, one of them possibly being the “mirroring effect.” Mirroring describes a phenomenon whereby people rate their ingroup characteristics as opposite to characteristics typical of a relevant outgroup. The aim of our study was to explore mirroring in three intergroup contexts—in national, regional, and ethnic stereotypes. In Study 1, 2,241 participants rated national ingroup stereotype and outgroup stereotypes of five Central European countries. In Study 2, 741 Czech participants rated regional ingroup and outgroup stereotypes of people living in two distinct parts of the Czech Republic. In Study 3, 463 majority and Hungarian minority participants in Slovakia rated ethnic ingroup and outgroup stereotypes. The results showed a clear presence of mirroring in all three contexts.     

Two-Way Regularized Fuzzy Clustering of Multiple Correspondence Analysis

Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) is a useful tool for investigating the interrelationships among dummy-coded categorical variables. MCA has been combined with clustering methods to examine whether there exist heterogeneous subclusters of a population, which exhibit cluster-level heterogeneity. These combined approaches aim to classify either observations only (one-way clustering of MCA) or both observations and variable categories (two-way clustering of MCA). The latter approach is favored because its solutions are easier to interpret by providing explicitly which subgroup of observations is associated with which subset of variable categories. Nonetheless, the two-way approach has been built on hard classification that assumes observations and/or variable categories to belong to only one cluster. To relax this assumption, we propose two-way fuzzy clustering of MCA. Specifically, we combine MCA with fuzzy k-means simultaneously to classify a subgroup of observations and a subset of variable categories into a common cluster, while allowing both observations and variable categories to belong partially to multiple clusters. Importantly, we adopt regularized fuzzy k-means, thereby enabling us to decide the degree of fuzziness in cluster memberships automatically. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach through the analysis of simulated and real data, in comparison with existing two-way clustering approaches.     

Detailed analysis of the male copulatory motor pattern in mammals: hormonal bases

Data obtained, using a polygraphic technique, on the characteristics of the motor and genital copulatory responses of male rabbits, rats, mice, hamsters, and guinea pigs are reviewed. This methodology provided detailed information, not accessible to other analyses, on the frequency and dynamic organization of copulatory pelvic thrusting trains of the species studied. This comparative analysis showed that: (1) The male rat may display two types of ejaculatory responses, differing in the dynamic organization of the pelvic thrusting train, and in the duration of the intravaginal thrusting period preceding ejaculation. (2) In the guinea pigs and small rodents, but not in rabbits, pelvic thrusting at ejaculatory responses persists during intromission, and a period of fast intravaginal thrusting is associated with ejaculation. (3) The motor copulatory pattern of the rabbit, but not of the rat, hamster, or guinea pig, is affected by castration and hormone treatment, suggesting that, in rabbits, androgen acts both on motivation and on the spinal neural systems related to copulation.