双语跨语言的句法启动

本文介绍了跨语言句法启动的图片描述法、补句法和句子回忆法三种研究方法;总结了跨语言句法启动研究关注的主要问题,包括：词序的一致性对跨语言句法启动的影响、词汇因素在跨语言句法启动中的作用、语言内和语言间句法启动的比较以及跨语言句法启动产生的机制等。同时也指出,在双语词序一致性,第二语言的熟练程度,双语语言学特性的差异性是否或者如何影响跨语言的句法启动等方面仍需进一步的研究     

儿童数字估计的表征模式与发展

探讨中国儿童数字估计的表征模式与发展趋势。包括两个实验,均采用数字线估计任务,实验一以92名幼儿园、一年级及二年级儿童为被试,考察其在0~100范围的数字估计,结果显示,幼儿园儿童在数字估计更多地采用对数表征,而一二年级的儿童在数字估计中更多地采用线性表征;实验二以86名一、三、五年级儿童为被试,考察其在0~1000范围的数字估计,结果显示,一年级儿童有一半采用对数表征,另一半采用线性表征,而三五年级儿童大多采用线性表征。中国儿童的数字估计表现出与美国儿童相同的发展模式,都是由不精确的对数表征逐步向精确的线性表征发展;人的数表征有多种形式,即使在同一年龄阶段,也会因任务难度的不同而选择不同的表征模式。中国儿童精确数字估计能力的出现要早于美国儿童。     

The KEY to the ROCK: Near-homophony in nonnative visual word recognition

To test the hypothesis that native language (L1) phonology can affect the lexical representations of nonnative words, a visual semantic-relatedness decision task in English was given to native speakers and nonnative speakers whose L1 was Japanese or Arabic. In the critical conditions, the word pair contained a homophone or near-homophone of a semantically associated word, where a near-homophone was defined as a phonological neighbor involving a contrast absent in the speaker’s L1 (e.g., ROCK-LOCK for native speakers of Japanese). In all participant groups, homophones elicited more false positive errors and slower processing than spelling controls. In the Japanese and Arabic groups, near-homophones also induced relatively more false positives and slower processing. The results show that, even when auditory perception is not involved, recognition of nonnative words and, by implication, their lexical representations are affected by the L1 phonology.     

A Spirituality of the Desert for Education: The Call of Justice Beyond the Individual or Community

This paper argues for an alternative notion of spirituality for education, based on Theo de Boer’s idea of a spirituality of the desert. Rather than depicting an inner, additional region named the spiritual, spirituality here is thought of as a discourse that depicts the everyday world in a particular way. In dialogue with David Purpel’s analysis, the paper argues for a notion of spirituality that is located in an ongoing oscillation between ‘the individual’ and ‘the community.’ This oscillation turns out to be the call of justice. This analysis helps understand classroom dynamics differently, providing a place of critique for current practices.

Jerry Fodor on non-conceptual content

Proponents of non-conceptual content have recruited it for various philosophical jobs. Some epistemologists have suggested that it may play the role of “the given” that Sellars is supposed to have exorcised from philosophy. Some philosophers of mind (e.g., Dretske) have suggested that it plays an important role in the project of naturalizing semantics as a kind of halfway between merely information bearing and possessing conceptual content. Here I will focus on a recent proposal by Jerry Fodor. In a recent paper he characterizes non-conceptual content in a particular way and argues that it is plausible that it plays an explanatory role in accounting for certain auditory and visual phenomena. So he thinks that there is reason to believe that there is non-conceptual content. On the other hand, Fodor thinks that non-conceptual content has a limited role. It occurs only in the very early stages of perceptual processing prior to conscious awareness. My paper is examines Fodor’s characterization of non-conceptual content and his claims for its explanatory importance. I also discuss if Fodor has made a case for limiting non-conceptual content to non-conscious, sub-personal mental states. This paper has grown out of comments I made on Fodor’s paper “Revenge of the Given,” delivered at The Steven Humphrey Excellence in Philosophy Conference: “Content and Concepts: A Conference on the Philosophy of Mind” at the University of California, Santa Barbara, February 14, 2004. Thanks to Jerry Fodor for useful feedback, and to Barry Loewer for discussing with me the ideas that went into this paper.     

记叙文阅读中时间心理表征的建构：动态观还是静态观

探讨读者在文本阅读中如何通过一系列展开事件的描述建构心理表征。实验一探讨在中间事件持续时间长／短条件下对首尾呼应句阅读时间和对探测词反应时间的影响;结果表明,读者对第一事件信息的获得受中间事件的持续时间长短的影响。实验二探讨当信息储存在长时工作记忆中时能否得出与实验一相一致的结果。结果发现,读者对第一事件信息的获得不受中间事件的持续时间长短的影响。实验三考察当用明确的时间副词来表明持续时间的长短时,连续性的事件是否还存在着时间距离效应。实验结果与实验二的相一致。整个研究结果表明,时间心理表征的建构是动态观还是静态观,主要取决于是否存在时间距离效应。     

熟练维-汉双语者第二语言的概念表征的特征

以母语为维吾尔语,第二语言为汉语的的维吾尔族大学生为被试,使用语言内和语言间启动条件下的真假字判断任务,通过3个实验探讨了熟练的维汉双语者的第二语言的语义表征的特点,即他们的第二语言的语义表征是共同存储的还是独立存储的。结果发现,实验1语言内启动条件下,即启动刺激（维语）和目标刺激（维语）之间具有语义联想关系时,产生了显著的启动效应。实验2（启动刺激为维语,目标刺激为汉语）和实验3（启动刺激为汉语,目标刺激为维语）的跨语言启动条件下,都产生了显著的启动效应,说明被试的第二语言的语义表征是共同存储的。这些结果表明：被试的第二语言的概念表征是同第一语言的概念表征共同存储的,支持了共同存储理论。     

不同概率表征的贝叶斯推理试题形式结构的同质性研究

研究从先验概率、概率表征、推理任务等方面探讨了经典贝叶斯推理研究中存在的不足,试图在＂知识和试题双重模型＂框架下,探索现实和标准贝叶斯试题的形式结构的同质性,结果表明：1）自然频次表征比百分比表征的贝叶斯推算题正确率高,这是因为试题的形式结构不同,与概率表征无关;2）贝叶斯判断题与贝叶斯推算题的试题形式结构存在显著差异;3）贝叶斯推算题中,概率词表征与其它两种表征的试题形式结构存在显著差异,其实质是贝叶斯判断。     

Activating event knowledge

An increasing number of results in sentence and discourse processing demonstrate that comprehension relies on rich pragmatic knowledge about real-world events, and that incoming words incrementally activate such knowledge. If so, then even outside of any larger context, nouns should activate knowledge of the generalized events that they denote or typically play a role in. We used short stimulus onset asynchrony priming to demonstrate that (1) event nouns prime people (sale-shopper) and objects (trip-luggage) commonly found at those events; (2) location nouns prime people/animals (hospital-doctor) and objects (barn-hay) commonly found at those locations; and (3) instrument nouns prime things on which those instruments are commonly used (key-door), but not the types of people who tend to use them (hose-gardener). The priming effects are not due to normative word association. On our account, facilitation results from event knowledge relating primes and targets. This has much in common with computational models like LSA or BEAGLE in which one word primes another if they frequently occur in similar contexts. LSA predicts priming for all six experiments, whereas BEAGLE correctly predicted that priming should not occur for the instrument-people relation but should occur for the other five. We conclude that event-based relations are encoded in semantic memory and computed as part of word meaning, and have a strong influence on language comprehension.     

On the language specificity of basic number processing: transcoding in a language with inversion and its relation to working memory capacity

Transcoding Arabic numbers from and into verbal number words is one of the most basic number processing tasks commonly used to index the verbal representation of numbers. The inversion property, which is an important feature of some number word systems (e.g., German einundzwanzig [one and twenty]), might represent a major difficulty in transcoding and a challenge to current transcoding models. The mastery of inversion, and of transcoding in general, might be related to nonnumerical factors such as working memory resources given that different elements and their sequence need to be memorized and manipulated. In this study, transcoding skills and different working memory components in Austrian (German-speaking) 7-year-olds were assessed. We observed that inversion poses a major problem in transcoding for German-speaking children. In addition, different components of working memory skills were differentially correlated with particular transcoding error types. We discuss how current transcoding models could account for these results and how they might need to be adapted to accommodate inversion properties and their relation to different working memory components.