Harmonic structure as a determinant of melodic organization

Musicians and nonmusicians indicated whether a two-note probe following a tonally structured melody occurred in the melody. The critical probes were taken from one of three locations in the melody: the two notes (1) ending the first phrase, (2) straddling the phrase boundary, and (3) beginning the second phrase. As predicted, the probe that straddled the phrase boundary was more difficult to recognize than either of the within-phrase probes. These findings suggest that knowledge of harmonic structure influences perceptual organization of melodies in ways analogous to the influence of clause relations on the perceptual organization of sentences. They also provide evidence that training plays an important role in refining listeners’ sensitivity to harmonic variables.     

汉字的视觉识别过程:对形码和音码作用的考察

本实验应用启动条件下的词汇判断法,探讨了字形和语音在汉字视觉识别过程中的作用。实验发现,当启动词中的某个成分字和目标字形状相似时,被试对目标字的反应速度显著加快,表明特征分析是汉字识别的必经阶段;启动词中的多音字不但会促进被试对和其适当读音相近的目标字的反应,而且会促进被试对和其不适当读音相近的目标字的反应。这就明,在到达心理词典之前,熟悉的中文字词的语音特征已经得到了自动的激活。     

胼胝体分步全切病人左右侧命名的不对称

以一位第一次进行胼胝体前部切开,第二次作后部切开的胼胝体全切断患者为被试,在第二次手术前后进行了Ⅰ。左右单侧操作检查,和Ⅱ。两半球之间感觉信息传递两类神经心理学实验。结果提示:后部切断前,左右侧操作没有明显的差异。同时,视觉和触觉的感觉信息的传递基本正常。在后部切断后,命名作业呈右视野和右手优势,图形临摹左手似乎较好,这时视觉和触党的感觉信息的传递发生了障碍。左视野和左手命名高于随机水平,讨论了这一结果与右脑语言的关系。方位比较等多个实验提供了支持两半球协同活动理论的证据。     

冲突视阈下类别信息与个体信息知觉负载的认知控制效应

个体根据知觉选择、反应偏向以及实时更新的情境信息调节自身状态,以适应性地促进对当前知觉信息的灵活编码,这一过程即为印象形成的认知控制。采用词语判断任务与侧抑制任务的变式将他人信息(类别信息vs.个体信息)分成高、低知觉负载两种水平,考察了冲突视阈下认知控制策略对他人印象形成的调控作用及知觉负载的效应。结果发现:(1)知觉负载影响他人印象形成的认知控制策略。(2)当类别信息与个体信息存在知觉冲突且个体的知觉负载较高时,受到反应性控制的作用,他人印象形成易出现冲突适应偏向; 当个体的知觉负载较低时,他人印象形成易受主动性控制的作用,从而产生冲突抑制偏向。这些结果表明,当个体形成他人印象时,其认知控制策略因受知觉负载影响而呈现分阶段加工特征。     

Medical Students’ Creation of Original Poetry,Comics, and Masks to Explore Professional Identity Formation

Introduction. This study examines differences in students’ perceived value of three artmaking modalities (poetry, comics, masks) and whether the resulting creative projects offer similar or different insights into medical students’ professional identity formation. Methods. Mixed-methods design using a student survey, student narrative comments and qualitative analysis of students’ original work. Results. Poetry and comics stimulated insight, but masks were more enjoyable and stress-reducing. All three art modalities expressed tension between personal and professional identities. Discussion. Regardless of type of artmaking, students express concern about encroachments of training on personal identity but hoped that personal and professional selves could be integrated.

     

Processing overlap-dependent distractor dilution rather than perceptual target load determines attentional selectivity

The perceptual load theory of attentional selection argues that the degree to which distractors interfere with target processing is determined by the “perceptual load” (or discrimination difficulty) of target processing: when perceptual load is low, distractors interfere to a greater extent than when it is high. A well-known exception is load-independent interference effects from face distractors during processing of name targets. This finding was reconciled with load theory by proposing distinct processing resources for faces versus names. In the present study, we revisit this effect to test (a) whether increasing the processing overlap (perceptual, lexical, conceptual) between potential targets and distractors would reinstate the classic load effect, and (b) whether this data pattern could be better explained by load theory or by a rival account that argues that distractor dilution rather than target load determines the degree of distractor interference. Over four experiments, we first replicate the original finding and then show that load effects grow with increasing processing overlap between potential targets and distractors. However, by adding dilution conditions, we also show that these processing overlap dependent modulations of distractor interference can be explained by the distractor dilution perspective but not by perceptual load theory. Thus, our findings support a processing overlap dilution account of attentional selection.     

Categorizing moving objects into film genres: The effect of animacy attribution,emotional response,and the deviation from non-fiction

The reported study follows the footsteps of Heider, and Simmel (1944) [Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. American Journal of Psychology, 57, 243–249] and Michotte (1946/1963) [Michotte, A. (1963). The perception of causality (T.R. Miles & E. Miles, Trans.). London: Methuen (Original work published 1946)] who demonstrated the role of object movement in attributions of life-likeness to figures. It goes one step further in studying the categorization of film scenes as to genre as a function of object movements.In an animated film scene portraying a chase, movements of the chasing object were systematically varied as to parameters: velocity, efficiency, fluency, detail, and deformation.The object movements were categorized by viewers into genres: non-fiction, comedy, drama, and action. Besides this categorization, viewers rated their animacy attribution and emotional response. Results showed that non-expert viewers were consistent in categorizing the genres according to object movement parameters. The size of its deviation from the unmanipulated movement scene determined the assignment of any target scene to one of the fiction genres: small and moderate deviations resulted in categorization as drama and action, and large deviations as comedy. The results suggest that genre classification is achieved by, at least, three distinct cognitive processes: (a) animacy attribution, which influences the fiction versus non-fiction classification; (b) emotional responses, which influences the classification of a specific fiction genre; and (c) the amount of deviation from reality, at least with regard to movements.     

Aspectual asymmetries in the mental representation of events: Role of lexical and grammatical aspect

Temporal information is important in the construction of situation models, and many languages make use of perfective and imperfective aspect markers to distinguish between completed situations (e.g., He made a cake) and ongoing situations (e.g., He is making a cake). Previous studies in which the effect of grammatical aspect has been examined have shown that perfective sentences are often processed more quickly than imperfective ones (e.g., Chan, Yap, Shirai, & Matthews, 2004; Madden & Zwaan, 2003; Yap et al., 2004; Yap et al., 2006). However, these studies used only accomplishment verbs (i.e., verbs with an inherent endpoint, such as bake a cake). The present study on the processing of Cantonese includes activity verbs (i.e., durative verbs with no inherent endpoint, such as play the piano), and the results indicate a strong interaction between lexical aspect (i.e., verb type) and grammatical aspect. That is, perfective sentences were processed more quickly with accomplishment verbs, consistent with previous findings, but imperfective sentences were processed more quickly with activity verbs. We suggest that these different aspectual asymmetries emerge as a result of the inherent associations between accomplishment verbs and the bounded features of perfective aspect and between activity verbs and the unbounded features of imperfective aspect. The sentence stimuli from this study may be downloaded from mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Verbal Fluency,Semantics, Context and Symptom Complexes in Schizophrenia

Lexical-semantic access and retrieval was examined in 15 adults diagnosed with schizophrenia and matched controls. This study extends the literature through the inclusion of multiple examinations of lexical-semantic production within the same patient group and through correlating performance on these tasks with various positive and negative clinical symptoms. On tasks of verbal fluency, meaning generation, sentence production using contextual information and confrontation naming, participants with schizophrenia made significantly more semantic errors on naming tasks; produced fewer meanings for homophones; produced fewer items on semantic, phonological, cued and switching fluency tasks; and produced more errors on sentence production tasks when compared to healthy controls. Significant correlations were also observed between ratings of psychomotor poverty and measures of semantic production and mental inflexibility. This study has provided additional evidence for deficits in lexical-semantic retrieval which are not due to underlying semantic store degradation, do not involve phonological based retrieval, and at the level of sentence generation appear to vary as a function of the contextual constraints provided.