On the flexibility of letter position coding during lexical processing: the case of Thai

In Indo-European languages, letter position coding is particularly noisy in middle positions (e.g., judge and jugde look very similar), but not in the initial letter position (e.g., judge vs. ujdge). Here we focus on a language (Thai) which, potentially, may be more flexible with respect to letter position coding than Indo-European languages: (i) Thai is an alphabetic language which is written without spaces between words (i.e., there is a degree of ambiguity in relation to which word a given letter belongs to) and (ii) some of the vowels are misaligned (e.g., [see text] ε:bn/ is pronounced as /bε:n/), whereas others are not (e.g., [see text]/a:p/ is pronounced as /a:p/). We conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment with 3-4 letter Thai words (with vs. without an initial misaligned vowel) in which the prime was: (i) identical to the target, (ii) a nonword generated by transposing the two initial letters of the target, or (iii) a replacement-letter control nonword. Results showed a significant masked transposed-letter priming effect in the initial letter positions, which was similar in size for words with and without an initial misaligned vowel. These findings reflect that: (i) letter position coding in Thai is very flexible and (ii) the nature of the obtained priming effects is orthographic rather than phonological.     

不同程度考试焦虑个体对威胁性刺激注意机制的差异

本研究采用线索提示实验范式,旨在考察考试焦虑个体对与考试有关和与考试无关刺激在注意机制上的差异。研究选取被试149名,分别采用TAS,STAI-T以及BDI量表进行高、低考试焦虑被试的筛选。问卷结果显示,TAS与STAI-T、BDI均有较高的正相关。行为实验结果显示,高、低考试焦虑个体对与考试相关的刺激在注意卷入上不存在显著差异,但是与低考试焦虑个体相比,高考试焦虑个体对与考试相关的刺激上出现了注意脱离困难。     

The effects of interletter spacing in visual-word recognition

Despite the importance of determining the effects of interletter spacing on visual-word recognition, this issue has often been neglected in the literature. The goal of the present study is to shed some light on this topic. The rationale is that a thin increase in interletter spacing, as in c a s i n o, may reduce lateral interference among internal letters without destroying a word's integrity and/or allow a more precise encoding of a word's letter positions. Here we examined whether identification times for word stimuli in a lexical decision task were faster when the target word had a slightly wider than default interletter spacing value relative to the default settings (e.g., c a s i n o vs. casino). In Experiment 1, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word-frequency, whereas in Experiment 2, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word length. Results showed that responses to words using a thin increase in interletter spacing were faster than the responses to words using the default settings—regardless of word-frequency and word length. Thus, interletter spacing plays an important role at modulating the identification of visually presented words.     

Effect of ingroup membership on organizational meta-representation

The present study considers the importance of analyzing what very powerful or influential people think about their employees. We assumed that belonging to a specific category has a differential effect on the perception of others' thoughts in the organization ("meta-representation"). Therefore, experts in organization and human resources from diverse organizations and institutions assessed seven dimensions which structure the organizational image (context, structure, organizational processes, working climate, culture, satisfaction and efficacy). The results showed that belonging to a group (managers or leaders, academicians, consultants, technicians or employees' representatives) modulated the meta-representation, as the experts' opinion about what they think that the employees consider important was related to their group. This was specifically the case for the managers' and leaders' representations, which differed from the other groups and especially from that of the technicians and employees' representatives. The implications of the present findings are discussed.     

How Benefit Information and Demographics Influence Employee Recruiting in Mexico

Purpose  

To examine the impact of benefit information in recruitment advertisements on job pursuit intentions.     

On Minimizing Guessing Effects on Multiple‐Choice Items: Superiority of a two solutions and three distractors item format to a one solution and five distractors item format

Multiple‐choice response formats are troublesome, as an item is often scored as solved simply because the examinee may be lucky at guessing the correct option. Instead of pertinent Item Response Theory models, which take guessing effects into account, this paper considers a psycho‐technological approach to re‐conceptualizing multiple‐choice response formats. The free‐response format is compared with two different multiple‐choice formats: a traditional format with a single correct response option and five distractors (‘1 of 6’), and another with five response options, three of them being distractors and two of them being correct (‘2 of 5’). For the latter format, an item is scored as mastered only if both correct response options and none of the distractors are marked. After the exclusion of a few items, the Rasch model analyses revealed appropriate fit for 188 items altogether. The resulting item‐difficulty parameters were used for comparison. The multiple‐choice format ‘1 of 6’ differs significantly from the multiple‐choice format ‘2 of 5’, while the latter does not differ significantly from the free‐response format. The lower difficulty of items ‘1 of 6’ suggests guessing effects.     

道教的宫观文化及其现代化——兼论道教宫观文化旅游

一、道教宫观的内涵和外延道教的宫观是道教神圣宗教理念的屋化空间,集中反映了道教的神学思维和理念;它随着道教的发展而日臻完善。可以这样说,宫观是道教的重要构成元素之一,也是道教文化的最重要载体之一。     

The search for an input-coding scheme: Transposed-letter priming in Arabic

Two key issues for models of visual word recognition are the specification of an input-coding scheme and whether these input-coding schemes vary across orthographies. Here, we report two masked-priming lexical decision experiments that examined whether the ordering of the root letters plays a key role in producing transposed-letter effects in Arabic—a language characterized by non-concatenative morphology. In Experiment 1, letter transpositions involved two letters from the root, whereas in Experiment 2, letter transpositions involved one letter from the root and one letter from the word pattern. Results showed a reliable transposedletter priming effect when the ordering of the letters of the root was kept intact (Experiment 2), but not when two root letters were transposed (Experiment 1). These findings support the view that the order of the root letters is allowed only a minimum degree of perceptual noise to avoid the negative impact of activating the “wrong” root family.     

A new device to present textured stimuli to touch with simultaneous EEG recording

The study of touch has recently grown, due mainly to the extensive use of several types of actuators that stimulate several subsystems of touch. There is a widespread interest in applying these mechanisms to the study of the neurophysiological correlates of tactual perception. In this article, we present a new device (the tactile spinning wheel [TSW]) for delivering textured surfaces to the finger pad. The TSW allows one to control several parameters of the stimulation (angular speed, texture, etc.) and, connected to an EEG recording system, makes it possible to study neural electrophysiological events. The device consists of a rotating platform on which the tactile stimuli are fixed, a system that synchronizes stimuli onset with the EEG system, and an electronic interface that controls the platform. We present the technical details of the TSW, its calibration, and some experimental results we have obtained with this device.