在不同注意定向条件下是否出现返回抑制的知觉优先

返回控制中的知觉优先是指相对于非线索化位置,线索化位置的刺激被优先知觉到的现象。研究采用时序判断方法对不同注意定向下返回抑制的知觉优先现象进行了两个实验。实验１采用连续线索化的安排,发现当注意从线索化位置移开后知觉优先仍然存在;实验２采用同时呈现双线索的安排发现知觉优先也存在。     

时距知觉的心理学研究

本文回顾了近五十年来时距知觉的实验研究,对不同的理论模型、实验范式、实验方法以及主要时距判断规律作了较全面的评述,并进一步探讨了时距知觉研究未来的发展。     

Irrational action and irrational belief

Many philosophers agree with Socrates that it is not possible to perform an akratic action consciously and freely. They take this view because they assimilate the internal irrationality of such a performance to the internal irrationality of drawing a theoretical conclusion which contadicts one's premisses. This article develops some arguments against that assimilation. The extreme cost of theoretical self-contradiction is forming the belief both that something is so and that it is not so. This is impossible for anyone who understands what he is doing, and the impossibility can be explained: nothing could conceivably make such a conjunction of beliefs true. But the conjunction of a value-judgement judgment and an action that gets against it is different. Although it too is internally irrational, there is no property like truth which the value-judgement and his action ought both to possess, but cannot both possess. This article proposes a different model for akratic action, which might serve as a basis for disagreement with Socrates' view of it.     

College students' responding to and rating of contingency relations: The role of temporal contiguity

Two experiments investigated the role of temporal contiguity in college students' responding to and rating of contingency relations during operant conditioning. Schedules were devised that determined when but not whether appetitive or aversive events would occur. Subjects' reports concerning the schedules were obtained by means of a 200-point rating scale, anchored by the phrases “prevents the light from occurring” (−100) and “causes the light to occur” (+100). When tapping a telegraph key advanced the time of point gain, responding was maintained or increased and subjects gave positive ratings. When tapping a telegraph key advanced the time of point loss, subjects also gave positive ratings, but responding now decreased. When key tapping delayed the time of point gain, responding decreased and subjects gave negative ratings. When key tapping delayed the time of point loss, subjects also gave negative ratings, but responding now increased. These findings implicate response-outcome contiguity as an important contributor to causal perception and to reinforcement and punishment effects. Other accounts—such as those stressing the local probabilistic relation between response and outcome or the molar correlation between response rate and outcome rate—were seen to be less preferred interpretations of these and other results.     

Deficient implicit phonological representations in children with dyslexia

This study tested the segmentation hypothesis of dyslexia by measuring implicit phonological representations in reading-disabled 11- to 13-year-olds. Implicit measures included lexical gating, priming, and syllable similarity tasks designed to reduce metalinguistic demands. Children with dyslexia performed consistently worse than CA and RA controls when more segmental representations were required across all three tasks. Implicit phonological representations were correlated with measures of speech perception, phoneme awareness, and phonological short-term memory, but not rapid automatized naming, and accounted for unique variance in predicting reading ability. Results provide strong support for less mature implicit phonological representations in children with dyslexia.     

Multidimensional shape similarity in the development of visual object classification

The current work examined age differences in the classification of novel object images that vary in continuous dimensions of structural shape. The structural dimensions employed are two that share a privileged status in the visual analysis and representation of objects: the shape of discrete prominent parts and the attachment positions of those parts. Experiment 1 involved a triad classification task in which participants at each of three different ages (5 years, 8 years, and adult) classified object images from two distinct stimulus sets. Across both sets, the youngest children demonstrated a systematic bias toward the shape of discrete parts during their judgments. With increasing age, participants increasingly came to select both the shape and the position of parts when classifying the images. The findings from Experiment 2 indicate that the local shape bias observed in young children's classifications is not merely a consequence of a discrimination advantage for that dimension. Results are discussed in relation to corresponding age-related changes in other functional contexts of visual processing.     

The nature of learned categorical perception effects: a psychophysical approach

Categorical perception is often cited as a striking example of cognitive influences on perception. However, some evidence suggests the term is a misnomer, with effects based on cognitive not perceptual processing. Here, using a psychophysical approach, we provide evidence consistent with a learned categorical perception effect that is dependent on analysis within the visual processing stream. An improvement in participants' discrimination between grating patterns that they had learned to place in different categories was 'tuned' around the orientation of the patterns experienced during category learning. Thus, here, categorical perception may result from attentionally modulated perceptual learning about diagnostic category features, based upon orientation-selective stages of analysis. This argues strongly that category learning can alter our perception of the world.     

Three-month-olds' visual preference for faces and its underlying visual processing mechanisms

This study was aimed at investigating the face preference phenomenon and its underlying mechanisms at 3 months of age. Using an eye-tracker apparatus, Experiment 1 demonstrated that 3-month-olds prefer natural face images to unnatural ones, replicating and extending previous evidence obtained with schematic facelike stimuli. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the general mechanisms that induce face preference in newborns could not explain the same phenomenon at 3 months of age, when infants are attracted by perceptual cues more specific to faces. This suggests that signs of a process of cognitive specialization are already present in 3-month-olds' visual behavior toward faces.     

Effects of dialect on merger perception: ERP and behavioral correlates

Native speakers of a language are often unable to consciously perceive, and have altered neural responses to, phonemic contrasts not present in their language. This study examined whether speakers of dialects of the same language with different phoneme inventories also show measurably different neural responses to contrasts not present in their dialect. Speakers with (n=11) and without (n=11) an American English I/E (pin/pen) vowel merger in speech production were asked to discriminate perceptually between minimal pairs of words that contrasted in the critical vowel merger and minimal pairs of control words while their event-related potential (ERPs) were recorded. Compared with unmerged dialect speakers, merged dialect speakers were less able to make behavioral discriminations and exhibited a reduced late positive ERP component (LPC) effect to incongruent merger vowel stimuli. These results indicate that between dialects of a single language, the behavioral response differences may reflect neural differences related to conscious phonological decision processes.