Age and culture modulate object processing and object—scene binding in the ventral visual area

Behavioral differences in the visual processing of objects and backgrounds as a function of cultural group are well documented. Recent neuroimaging evidence also points to cultural differences in neural activation patterns. Compared with East Asians, Westerners’ visual processing is more object focused, and they activate neural structures that reflect this bias for objects. In a recent adaptation study, East Asian older adults showed an absence of an object-processing area but normal adaptation for background areas. In the present study, 75 young and old adults (half East Asian and half Western) were tested in an fMR-adaptation study to examine differences in object and background processing as well as object—background binding. We found equivalent background processing in the parahippocampal gyrus in all four groups, diminished binding processes in the hippocampus in elderly East Asians and Westerners, and diminished object processing in elderly versus young adults in the lateral occipital complex. Moreover, elderly East Asians showed significantly less adaptation response in the object areas than did elderly Westerners. These findings demonstrate the malleability of perceptual processes as a result of differences in cohort-specific experiences or in cultural exposure over time.     

企业员工组织支持感与工作满意度、离职意向的关系研究

通过对611名企业员工的调查,探讨组织支持感与工作满意度、离职意向之间的关系。结果表明：组织支持感与工作满意度存在显著的正相关;组织支持感与换岗意向、换职意向存在显著的负相关．但仅对换职意向具有负向预测作用;工作满意度与换岗意向、换职意向存在显著的负相关,并对二者都具有负向预测作用。     

Predictors of timed picture naming in Chinese

We report normative data collected from Mainland Chinese speakers for 232 objects taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). These data include adult ratings of concept familiarity, age of acquisition (AoA), printedword frequency, and word length (in syllables), as well as measures of rated visual complexity, image agreement, and name agreement. We then examined timed picture naming of these objects with native Chinese speakers in Beijing in two experiments using line drawings and colored pictures. In both experiments, the variables name agreement, rated concept familiarity, and AoA made significant independent contributions to naming latency in multiple regression analyses. We observed a correlation ofr=.85 between naming latency with line drawings and colored pictures and a reduced effect of image agreement on naming when colored pictures were presented. We discuss the implications of our findings for the study of lexical processing in Chinese. Normative data for 232 Chinese nouns may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive     

Do “mudsplashes” induce tactile change blindness?

The phenomenon of change blindness (the surprising inability of people to correctly perceive changes between consecutively presented displays), primarily reported in vision, has recently been shown to occur for positional changes presented in tactile displays as well. Here, we studied people’s ability to detect changes in the number of tactile stimuli in successively presented displays composed of one to three stimuli distributed over the body surface. In Experiment 1, a tactile mask consisting of the simultaneous activation of all seven possible tactile stimulators was sometimes presented between the two to-be-discriminated tactile displays. In Experiment 2, a “mudsplash” paradigm was used, with a brief irrelevant tactile distractor presented at the moment of change of the tactile display. Change blindness was demonstrated in both experiments, thus showing that the failure to detect tactile change is not necessarily related to (1) the physical disruption between consecutive events, (2) the effect of masking covering the location of the change, or (3) the erasure or resetting of the information contained within an internal representation of the tactile display. These results are interpreted in terms of a limitation in the number of spatial locations/events that can be consciously accessed at any one time. This limitation appears to constrain change-detection performance, no matter the sensory modality in which the stimuli are presented.     

Multisensory numerosity judgments for visual and tactile stimuli

To date, numerosity judgments have been studied only under conditions of unimodal stimulus presentation. It is therefore unclear whether the same limitations on correctly reporting the number of unimodal visual or tactile stimuli presented in a display might be expected under conditions in which participants have to count stimuli presented simultaneously in two or more different sensory modalities. In Experiment 1, we investigated numerosity judgments using both unimodal and bimodal displays consisting of one to six vibrotactile stimuli (presented over the body surface) and one to six visual stimuli (seen on the body via mirror reflection). Participants had to count the number of stimuli regardless of their modality of presentation. Bimodal numerosity judgments were significantly less accurate than predicted on the basis of an independent modality-specific resources account, thus showing that numerosity judgments might rely on a unitary amodal system instead. The results of a second experiment demonstrated that divided attention costs could not account for the poor performance in the bimodal conditions of Experiment 1. We discuss these results in relation to current theories of cross-modal integration and to the cognitive resources and/or common higher order spatial representations possibly accessed by both visual and tactile stimuli.     

表象对初中一年级学生成语理解影响的实验研究

以初中一年级学生为被试,从小学语文六年制课本中选取高熟悉度、高表象性的成语为实验材料,采用三因素混合设计探讨表象对不同透明度成语理解的影响。研究结果表明:初中一年级学生能据所呈现的成语形成表象,并报告出较高的表象清晰度,但表象清晰度与成语理解成绩之间的相关不显著。高透明度成语比低透明度成语更容易被理解。通过有意表象的学习,成语理解成绩得到了显著的提高,尤其是高透明度成语。     

论文物的使用价值及其源泉

文物不同于现实物品,也不同于一般物品,文物是在时间的推移和空间的变迁中逐渐形成的。文物具有四种使用价值,即自然使用价值、审美使用价值、增值使用价值和信息使用价值,除自然使用价值之外,其余三种使用价值的发展变化都直接与时空条件有关,而与人的劳动、自然力的作用关系并不明确。因此,时空条件是文物使用价值的重要源泉。