Interpreting dissociations between regular and irregular past-tense morphology: Evidence from event-related potentials

Neuropsychological dissociations between regular and irregular English past-tense morphology have been reported using a lexical decision task in which past-tense primes immediately precede present-tense targets. We present N400 event-related potential data from healthy participants using the same design. Both regular and irregular past-tense forms primed corresponding present-tense forms, but with a longer duration for irregular verbs. Phonological control conditions suggested that differences in formal overlap between prime and target contribute to, but do not account for, this difference, suggesting a link between irregular morphology and semantics. Further analysis dividing the irregular verbs into two categories (weak irregular and strong) revealed that priming for strong verbs was reliably stronger than that for weak irregular and regular verbs, which were statistically indistinguishable from one another. We argue that, although we observe a regular-irregular dissociation, the nature of this dissociation is more consistent with single- than with dual-system models of inflectional morphology.     

Automatic measurement of propositional idea density from part-of-speech tagging

The Computerized Propositional Idea Density Rater (CPIDR, pronounced "spider") is a computer program that determines the propositional idea density (P-density) of an English text automatically on the basis of part-of-speech tags. The key idea is that propositions correspond roughly to verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. After tagging the parts of speech using MontyLingua (Liu, 2004), CPIDR applies numerous rules to adjust the count, such as combining auxiliary verbs with the main verb. A "speech mode" is provided in which CPIDR rejects repetitions and a wider range of fillers. CPIDR is a user-friendly Windows .NET application distributed as open-source freeware under GPL. Tested against human raters, it agrees with the consensus of two human raters better than the team of five raters agree with each other [r(80) = .97 vs. r(10) = .82, respectively].     

理解伊斯兰的四大误区

伊斯兰对美国人和美国社会不存在任何威胁,普通美国人对穆斯林的恐惧感来自他们自己对伊斯兰的无知和误解。人们对伊斯兰的错误认识可以归纳为四大误区。第一,世界上的穆斯林不是一种刻板的模式,并非所有的穆斯林都是阿拉伯人。伊斯兰是世界性的宗教,凡是信仰伊斯兰的人都是穆斯林,所以穆斯林世界包容了全人类的各种文明。在现在的十二亿穆斯林人口中,阿拉伯人只占其中的18%,那么,十亿以上的穆斯林不是阿拉伯人,分布在亚洲和非洲以及世界各地。他们各有自己的民族语言和文化,多数都不会说阿拉伯语,比如世界上人口最多的穆斯林国家是印度尼西…     

虔诚为根 诚信为本——一个穆斯林经商者的思索与参悟

作为一个穆斯林的经商者,我们一定不要忘记自己的根本所在,要紧握真主的绳索,坚定自己的信仰——“万物非主,唯有真主”;“信仰存在于希望和敬畏之间。”只有坚定这个信仰,我们的民族才有望更加兴旺发达。《古兰经》明确指出:“谁遵循正道,谁自受其益;谁误入迷途,谁自受其害。”(17∶15)“认主独一”的信念是我们寻求今后两世成功、幸福的保证,也是纯洁我们灵性的唯一途径《。古兰经》说:“真主不欲使你们烦难,但他欲使你们清洁,并完成他所赐予你们的恩典,以使你们感谢。”(5∶6)我们每个人必须确立正信,只有在正信的指导下,我们的人生方向…     

分析哲学和向黑格尔的回归

本文以黑格尔哲学的回归为主线,通过研究分析哲学对黑格尔哲学、对唯心主义所为何物认识的不足,以及实用主义者和分析哲学的代表人物对黑格尔哲学的吸收和借鉴,说明了分析哲学在其发展的过程中由排斥到借鉴黑格尔哲学,说明了黑格尔哲学依然是可以给予我们真知灼见的哲学,同时表达了作者对于一个真理王国的渴求。作者认为唯心主义概念是一个不清晰的、值得反思的概念。作者关于知识是历史的和社会的观点分析,也是很有见地的。     

A longitudinal twin study of the genetic and environmental etiology of maternal hostile-reactive behavior during infancy and toddlerhood

Children's negative characteristics are thought to be a factor in evoking hostile parenting responses. This can result in genotype/environment correlations (rGE) in which children's heritable traits influence the parenting they experience. We did genetic analyses on 292 mothers' self-reported hostile-reactive behaviors toward each of their twins at 5, 18 and 30 months. Finding heritability for a parenting behavior analyzed as a child phenotype is evidence of rGE correlation. The heritability of maternal behavior was modest (29% at 5 months, 0% at 18 months, and 25% at 30 months) and longitudinal analyses indicated that genetic factors at 5 and 30 months were uncorrelated. Common environment factors, probably reflecting characteristics of the mothers, were the main source of variance at the three ages and were highly correlated through time. We concluded that children's heritable characteristics evoked maternal negative response at specific times, but were not responsible for the stability of maternal hostility from infancy to toddlerhood.     

Participant loss due to "fussiness" in infant visual paradigms: a review of the last 20 years

One hundred and one published articles that used visual habituation or violation-of-expectation techniques with infants of 12 months or younger were surveyed. Information was compiled on the number of infants who failed to complete experimental procedures due to "fussiness" or other factors. Also noted for each experiment was whether or not infants as a group demonstrated differential responding to the test display. On average 13.7% (range 0-62%) of infants failed to complete these visual procedures as a result of fussiness. There was no correlation between experimental outcome and infant attrition due to fussiness or to any other factor. We thus found no evidence to suggest that differential exclusion rates systematically influence experimental outcomes. However, we urge researchers to provide operational definitions of "fussiness."     

Sensitivity to triadic attention between 6 weeks and 3 months of age

In Study 1, 6-week- and 3-month-old infants gazed more to an adult when she alternated attention between an object and the infant versus when attention was directed only to the object. In Study 2, 6-week-olds did not discriminate between triadic situations with face-to-face interaction controlled.     

Global VOR gain adaptation during near fixation to foveal targets

Long-term rotational vestibulo-ocular (VOR) adaptation occurs during systematic dysmetria between visual and vestibular afferents, adjusting eye-rotation angular velocity to re-establish retinal stability of the visual field. Due to translational motion of the eyes during head rotation, VOR gain is higher when fixating near objects. The current study measures VOR in humans before and after 6 min of exposure to a foveal near-target during sinusoidal whole-body rotation at 0.45 Hz. All of six participants showed post-exposure increases in open-loop VOR gain after fixating near targets, demonstrating a mean modulation increase of open-loop VOR gain from 0.86 before adaptation to 1.2 after adaptation. We discuss a number of theoretical and applied implications.     

Exaggerated leftward bias in the mental number line of patients with schizophrenia

Several visuo-motor tasks can be used to demonstrate biases towards left hemispace in schizophrenic patients, suggesting a minor right hemineglect. Recent studies in neglect patients used a new number bisection task to highlight a lateralized defect in their visuo-spatial representation of numbers. To test a possible lateralized representational deficit in schizophrenia, we used the number bisection task in 11 schizophrenic patients compared to 11 healthy controls. Participants were required to orally indicate the central number of an interval orally presented. Whereas healthy subjects showed no significant bias, schizophrenic patients presented a significant leftward bias. Therefore, these results suggest an impairment in higher order representations of the number space in patients with schizophrenia, an impairment that is qualitatively similar to the deficit described in neglect patients.