认知科学的一些最新进展

今天我要谈的是这几年来认知心理学的一些新进展。我1983年在北大讲演的时候谈到认知心理学的一些情况,这个讲演后来被整理出一本书,即《人类的认知》。因此,我想谈谈在那之后有了哪些新的发展,主要是近一个阶段认知科学、认知心理学的新情况。我     

Reproducibility and variability of the cost functions reconstructed from experimental recordings in multifinger prehension

The study examines whether the cost functions reconstructed from experimental recordings are reproducible over time. Participants repeated the trials on three days. By following Analytical Inverse Optimization procedures, the cost functions of finger forces were reconstructed for each day. The cost functions were found to be reproducible over time: application of a cost function C(i) to the data of Day j (i≠j) resulted in smaller deviations from the experimental observations than using other commonly used cost functions. Other findings are: (a) the 2nd order coefficients of the cost function showed negative linear relations with finger force magnitudes; (b) the finger forces were distributed on a 2-dimensional plane in the 4-dimensional finger force space for all subjects and all testing sessions; (c) the data agreed well with the principle of superposition, i.e. the action of object prehension can be decoupled into the control of rotational equilibrium and slipping prevention.     

后形而上学的伦理学及其超越?

哈贝马斯的后形而上学理论为探讨道德问题提供了一个思想框架。这个思想框架也可以扩展、运用到伦理问题领域。哈贝马斯在尊重个体自治和合理性论证的前提下,也为后形而上学的伦理问题指出了方向:批判性地吸收形而上学和宗教的真实内容,为探讨什么是好生活、好社会的问题提供帮助。但如同榜样人物对他人的示范和影响一样,形而上学和宗教的内容的被吸收、翻译或显现,也依赖于主观的、偶然的经验因素。这样,为了坚持后形而上学的伦理学思想,我们可以放弃哈贝马斯的认知建构论的真理观。     

熊彼特之刺——1989年后波兰地方自治的出现及其发展

导言从政治哲学的观点看,地方政府层次的法治问题不可避免地与地方权力机关的合法化、以及他们(地方权力机关)与其所代表的政治社群的关系联系在一起。本文的考察建立在以下经验的和理论的基础上。     

Dividing lines at the word boundary position helps reading in Chinese

Unlike in English, the Chinese printing and writing systems usually do not respect a word boundary when they split lines; thus, characters belonging to a word can be on two different lines. In this study, we examined whether dividing a word across two lines interferes with Chinese reading and found that reading times were shorter when characters belonging to a word were on a single line rather than on adjacent lines. Eye movement data indicated that gaze durations in a region around the word boundary were longer and fixations were closer to the beginnings and ends of the lines when words were split across lines. These results suggest that words are processed as a whole in Chinese reading, so that word boundaries should be respected when deciding how to split lines in the Chinese writing system. They also suggest that the length of return sweeps in reading can be cognitively guided.     

The effectiveness of test-enhanced learning depends on trait test anxiety and working-memory capacity

Despite being viewed as a better way to enhance learning than repeated study, it has not been clear whether repeated testing is equally effective for students with a wide range of cognitive abilities. The current study examined whether test-enhanced learning would be equally beneficial to participants with varied working-memory capacity (WMC) and trait test anxiety (TA). Chinese-English bilingual undergraduates in Hong Kong were recruited as participants. They acquired Swahili-English word pairs (half via repeated study and half via repeated testing) and performed a delayed cued-recall test for all pairs about one week after the acquisition phase. Their WMC and TA were estimated by Unsworth, Heitz, Schrock, and Engle's (2005) operation-span task and the Chinese version of Spielberger's (1980) Test Anxiety Inventory, respectively. We replicated the typical testing effect: Participants performed better for pairs in the repeated-testing condition than those in the repeated-study condition. Regression analyses showed that, (a) relative to other participants, those with lower WMC and higher TA made more intralist intrusion errors (i.e., recalling a wrong English translation to a Swahili word cue) during the acquisition phase, and (b) the testing effect was negatively correlated with TA for participants with lower WMC, but was not correlated with TA for participants with higher WMC. This demonstrates a boundary condition for the use of test-enhanced learning. Implications of these findings for theories of the testing effect (e.g., Pyc & Rawson's, 2010, mediator-effectiveness hypothesis) and their application in classroom settings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

An analysis of the changing doctor-patient relationship in China

As China is undergoing marketization and privatization, the doctor-patient relationship (DPR) is changing, posing numerous social problems such as a trust crisis. In this article, the authors look at the characteristics of the DPR, and then present an historical account of the changing features of the Chinese DPR. In the final section, they explain how Chinese traditional culture is important for rebuilding the DPR in reform-era China and make suggestions for its health care reform.     

A time-varying effect model for intensive longitudinal data

Understanding temporal change in human behavior and psychological processes is a central issue in the behavioral sciences. With technological advances, intensive longitudinal data (ILD) are increasingly generated by studies of human behavior that repeatedly administer assessments over time. ILD offer unique opportunities to describe temporal behavioral changes in detail and identify related environmental and psychosocial antecedents and consequences. Traditional analytical approaches impose strong parametric assumptions about the nature of change in the relationship between time-varying covariates and outcomes of interest. This article introduces time-varying effect models (TVEMs) that explicitly model changes in the association between ILD covariates and ILD outcomes over time in a flexible manner. In this article, we describe unique research questions that the TVEM addresses, outline the model-estimation procedure, share a SAS macro for implementing the model, demonstrate model utility with a simulated example, and illustrate model applications in ILD collected as part of a smoking-cessation study to explore the relationship between smoking urges and self-efficacy during the course of the pre- and postcessation period.     

The effects of print exposure on sentence processing and memory in older adults: Evidence for efficiency and reserve

The present study was an examination of how exposure to print affects sentence processing and memory in older readers. A sample of older adults (N = 139; Mean age = 72) completed a battery of cognitive and linguistic tests and read a series of sentences for recall. Word-by-word reading times were recorded and generalized linear mixed effects models were used to estimate components representing attentional allocation to word-level and textbase-level processes. Older adults with higher levels of print exposure showed greater efficiency in word-level processing and in the immediate instantiation of new concepts, but allocated more time to semantic integration at clause boundaries. While lower levels of working memory were associated with smaller wrap-up effects, individuals with higher levels of print exposure showed a reduced effect of working memory on sentence wrap-up. Importantly, print exposure was not only positively associated with sentence memory, but was also found to buffer the effects of working memory on sentence recall. These findings suggest that the increased efficiency of component reading processes that come with life-long habits of literacy buffer the effects of working memory decline on comprehension and contribute to maintaining skilled reading among older adults.     

奎因、怀曼与布里丹:本体论约定的三种方法

本文对本体论约定(ontological commitment)问题的三种根本不同方法进行了比较。认为尽管它们具有表面上的相似性,但中世纪晚期的唯名论哲学家布里丹(约1300-1361)的方法,是比以迈农和奎因为代表的其他两种被普遍认同的现代方法更具吸引力的第三种选择。本文同时指出,只有基于其关于真与逻辑有效性的语义观念的截然不同的前现代方法,布里丹的方法才是可能的。