“Smart inhibition”: electrophysiological evidence for the suppression of conflict-generating task rules during task switching

A major challenge for task switching is maintaining a balance between high task readiness and effectively ignoring irrelevant task rules. This calls for finely tuned inhibition that targets only the source of interference without adversely influencing other task-related representations. The authors show that irrelevant task rules generating response conflict are inhibited, causing their inefficient execution on the next trial (indicating the presence of competitor rule suppression[CRS];Meiran, Hsieh, & Dimov, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 36, 992–1002, 2010). To determine whether CRS influences task rules, rather than target stimuli or responses, the authors focused on the processing of the task cue before the target stimulus was presented and before the response could be chosen. As was predicted, CRS was found in the event-related potentials in two time windows during task cue processing. It was also found in three time windows after target presentation. Source localization analyses suggest the involvement of the right dorsal prefrontal cortex in all five time windows.     

学述钩沉与残篇稽考——现代西方的前苏格拉底哲学家文献整理与考释

本文介绍西方19世纪末以来对前苏格拉底思想家文献的搜集、整理、编辑以及研究的现状.第尔斯通过对自亚里士多德开始直至中世纪希腊语文献的梳理,提出了撰述前苏格拉底思想家的学述传统,钩沉学述文献并编撰了前苏格拉底思想家残篇的标准版本.20世纪以来西方学界在此基础上使用现代语言深入、细致地对前苏格拉底思想家整体以及学派、人物的残篇文献详加考证、注疏、阐释,产生了许多成果,并对第尔斯建立学述传统的方法及其成果做出了批判性的发展,古典学与哲学史史料、哲学问题等多领域合作形成了前苏格拉底哲学家的文献整理成果.     

班级环境与青少年抑郁的关系：核心自我评价的中介与调节作用

通过整群抽样的方法抽取了1404名中学生,对其施测核心自我评价量表,我的班级问卷和抑郁问卷,应用无约束结构方程模型技术和结构方程中介效应检验技术,分别考察了核心自我评价在班级环境与抑郁关系间的调节与中介作用。结果表明：（1）核心自我评价对班级环境中的师生关系、同学关系、竞争三者和抑郁之间的关系起着调节作用,但结构模型的拟合指数不佳;（2）核心自我评价在班级环境与青少年抑郁间起着中介作用,其中核心自我评价在竞争与抑郁间关系起着完全中介作用。     

心算加工中tie effect的加工机制

tie effect主要表现为tie比nontie更快更准确解决,以及tie/nontie与问题大小的交互作用,较大题目的tie比nontie具有更明显的反应时优势,tie的问题大小效应比nontie要小的多。有关tie effect加工机制的解释主要有基于编码的理论和基于结果通达的理论。目前的研究主要通过操作问题呈现方式以及报告加工策略的方法分别考察编码方式及加工策略的影响,今后研究应开拓新的研究范式以加深对其加工机制的认识。     

学业优秀者和学业不良者的倒摄抑制比较 ——从结构化和非结构化角度

以汉字为实验材料,以学业优秀者和学业不良者为被试,探讨学习材料的结构化和非结构化性质对倒摄抑制产生的影响,以及两类学生学习两类材料时的倒摄抑制差异。并通过指导语,逐步揭示结构化材料中的规则,迫使被试采用有效的学习策略,来观察倒摄抑制的变化情况。结果表明:一、与非结构化材料相比,学习结构化材料表现出更好的记忆绩效,但未发现两者对倒摄抑制的不同影响;二、和学优者相比,学业不良者的记忆绩效较差,倒摄抑制值也较大;三、对材料规则的提示会促进学业不良学生的记忆绩效,降低倒摄抑制,但对学习优秀者的影响不大;四、一些汉字识别特征影响倒摄抑制,如当干扰项和目标项构形相同时,会降低倒摄抑制。     

Salience of physical appearance characteristics among young women in Thailand

Our aim in the present study was to identify key components of physical appearance among young Thai women. Free listings, focus groups and pile sorting were used. One-hundred twenty young women generated 78 unique physical appearance characteristics. Ninety-four nursing students validated these characteristics in focus groups and then sorted them into piles that reflected separate domains of physical appearance and labeled them. Salience analysis revealed that facial appearance (e.g., bright facial skin, high nose bridge, big eyes) was the most important domain, followed by body weight and shape, skin color and texture, hair (color, texture, length), and ‘other’ physical appearance (e.g., slender neck, slim fingers). This is the first study to identify aspects of physical appearance that are most salient to young Thai women and that may differ from women in other cultural contexts. These findings could be used to develop culturally grounded measures of physical appearance in Thai women.     

Investigating the role of response in spatial context learning

Recent research has shown that simple motor actions, such as pointing or grasping, can modulate the way we perceive and attend to our visual environment. Here we examine the role of action in spatial context learning. Previous studies using keyboard responses have revealed that people are faster locating a target on repeated visual search displays ("contextual cueing"). However, this learning appears to depend on the task and response requirements. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a T-target among L-distractors and responded either by pressing a key or by touching the screen. Comparable contextual cueing was found in both response modes. Moreover, learning transferred between keyboard and touch screen responses. Experiment 2 showed that learning occurred even for repeated displays that required no response, and this learning was as strong as learning for displays that required a response. Learning on no-response trials cannot be accounted for by oculomotor responses, as learning was observed when eye movements were discouraged (Experiment 3). We suggest that spatial context learning is abstracted from motor actions.     

Discriminating between the effects of valence and salience in the Implicit Association Test

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most widely used indirect measure of attitudes in social psychology. It has been suggested that artefacts such as salience asymmetries and familiarity can influence performance on the IAT. Chang and Mitchell (2009) proposed that the ease with which IAT stimuli are classified (classification fluency) is the common mechanism underlying both of these factors. In the current study, we investigated the effect of classification fluency on the IAT and trialled a measure-the split IAT-for dissociating between the effects of valence and salience in the IAT. Across six experiments, we examined the relationship between target classification fluency and salience asymmetries in the IAT. In the standard IAT, the more fluently classified target category was, all else being equal, compatible with pleasant attributes over unpleasant attributes. Furthermore, the more fluently classified target category was more easily classified with the more salient attribute category in the split IAT, independent of evaluative associations. This suggests that the more fluently classified category is also the more salient target category.     

The role of timing in the attentional boost effect

Images that are presented with targets of an unrelated detection task are better remembered than images that are presented with distractors (the attentional boost effect). The likelihood that any of three mechanisms, attentional cuing, prediction-based reinforcement learning, and perceptual grouping, underlies this effect depends in part on how it is modulated by the relative timing of the target and image. Three experiments demonstrated that targets and images must overlap in time for the enhancement to occur; targets that appear 100 ms before or 100 ms after the image without temporally overlapping with it do not enhance memory of the image. However, targets and images need not be synchronized. A fourth experiment showed that temporal overlap of the image and target is not sufficient, as detecting targets did not enhance the processing of task-irrelevant images. These experiments challenge several simple accounts of the attentional boost effect based on attentional cuing, reinforcement learning, and perceptual grouping.