Mind control? Creating illusory intentions through a phony brain–computer interface

Can one be fooled into believing that one intended an action that one in fact did not intend? Past experimental paradigms have demonstrated that participants, when provided with false perceptual feedback about their actions, can be fooled into misperceiving the nature of their intended motor act. However, because veridical proprioceptive/perceptual feedback limits the extent to which participants can be fooled, few studies have been able to answer our question and induce the illusion to intend. In a novel paradigm addressing this question, participants were instructed to move a line on the computer screen by use of a phony brain–computer interface. Line movements were actually controlled by computer program. Demonstrating the illusion to intend, participants reported more intentions to move the line when it moved frequently than when it moved infrequently. Consistent with ideomotor theory, the finding illuminates the intimate liaisons among ideomotor processing, the sense of agency, and action production.     

汉语词汇产生中词汇选择和音韵编码之间的交互作用

采取图画－词汇干扰实验范式,探索汉语单音节词汇产生中词汇选择和音韵编码之间的交互作用。实验一探测目标图画语义相关项的语音激活,观察到了非目标项的语音激活。实验二探测目标图画语义相关项的字形激活,未发现非目标项的字形激活。在改进实验条件的基础上,实验三验证实验一和二,并探测目标图画字形相关项的语音激活以及语音相关项的字形激活,结果未探测到语义相关项的字形或语音激活、语音相关项的字形激活,只发现了字形相关项的语音激活。实验一至三的结果表明汉语词汇产生中存在目标字字形相关项的语音激活,但不存在从音韵编码阶段至词汇选择阶段的激活反馈。综合上述结果,从是否存在多重的字形或语音激活,以及是否存在从音韵编码至词汇选择的反馈两个方面进行了讨论。研究结果倾向于支持词汇产生中层叠式理论的观点     

Relevance of Context-bound loci to Topical Potential in the Argumentation Stage

In relation to the task of making an expedient selection from the available loci within the topical potential that strategic manoeuvring envisages for the argumentation stage, this paper proposes a version of topics, which is both inspired to the traditional doctrine of topics and consistent with the theoretical framing and the methodological tenets that are proper of modern semantics and current theory of argumentation. The argumentative relevance of communication context in its institutionalised and interpersonal components is brought to light. Three main aspects are focussed on: the strong synergy of the topical and the endoxical components in argument construction, the use of topics in analysis and evaluation of arguments and the heuristic function of topics in the production process. I express to Peter Houtlosser, Corina Andone, Sara Greco Morasso and Andrea Rocci my profound gratitude for their precious suggestions and cordial criticisms.     

The Principle of Production and a Critique of Metaphysics： From the Perspective of Theory of Baudrillard

In this article, I discuss Baudrillard＇s critique of metaphysics based on his work The Mirror of Production, in which he stresses the principle of production--i.e., dichotomy and derivation. In the development of classical German philosophy, the principle of production was speculatively established, first as Descartes＇ cogito, then as Fichte＇s Tathandlung, and finally as Hegel＇s labor, and grew to be a major principle of modem metaphysics. At the article＇s conclusion, the meaning of Symbolic Exchange--Baudrillard＇s utopian condition lying beyond the principle of production--will be discussed.     

Word form encoding in Chinese word naming and word typing

The process of word form encoding was investigated in primed word naming and word typing with Chinese monosyllabic words. The target words shared or did not share the onset consonants with the prime words. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was 100 ms or 300 ms. Typing required the participants to enter the phonetic letters of the target word, which correspond roughly to the onset and the rhyme of the word’s syllable. Regardless of SOAs, response times were shorter in the related condition than in the unrelated condition (an onset priming effect) for word typing, but were similar for word naming. The results suggest that naming and typing in Chinese may involve somewhat different word form encoding processes (syllable driven in naming, but segment driven in typing) even though both tasks require accessing the phonological codes. It appears, then, that the kind of outputs a production system is designed to produce can flexibly and adaptively alter the way the system is organized and operates.     

Do Lemmas Speak German? A Verb Position Effect in German Structural Priming

Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb‐structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position (encoded by tense and aspect), and verb overlap. Abstract structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross‐linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages.     

言语产生老化中的抑制损伤:来自不同任务的证据

通过3个实验,探讨干扰抑制在言语产生老化中的作用。实验1采用经典Stroop任务,发现老年人在高水平的、自动的语义激活时产生了更大的抑制困难。实验2操纵潜在竞争词的语义激活水平,发现在潜在竞争词处于低水平的语义激活时,老年人的抑制能力与年轻人相当;在潜在竞争词处于高水平的语义激活时,老年人表现出抑制能力的劣势。实验3采用造句任务,发现老年人在抑制角色冲突时存在着较大的困难,老年人在顺序不一致的条件下的造句成绩显著差于年轻人。整个研究表明,老年人在言语产生中的抑制能力差于年轻人,但抑制老化效应受潜在干扰刺激的激活水平影响。     

How scenes containing visual errors affect speech fluency in young and older adults

We compared young and older adults’ speech during an error detection task, with some pictures containing visual errors and anomalies and other pictures error-free. We analyzed three disfluency types: mid-phrase speech fillers (e.g., It’s a little, um, girl), repetitions (e.g., He’s trying to catch the- the birds), and repairs (e.g., She- you can see her legs). Older adults produced more mid-phrase fillers than young adults only when describing pictures containing errors. These often reflect word retrieval problems and represent clear disruptions to fluency, so this interaction indicates that the need to form and maintain representations of novel information can specifically compromise older adults’ speech fluency. Overall, older adults produced more repetitions and repairs than young adults, regardless of picture type, indicating general age-related increases in these disfluencies. The obtained patterns are discussed in the context of the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis and other approaches to age-related changes in speech fluency.     

Production of Stress Retraction by Left- and Right-Hemisphere-Damaged Patients

An acoustic-perceptual investigation of a phonological phenomenon in which stress is retracted in double-stressed words (e.g., thirTEEN vs THIRteen MEN) was undertaken to identify the locus of functional impairments in speech prosody. Subjects included left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) and right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) patients and nonneurological controls. They were instructed to read sentences containing double-stressed target words in the presence of a clause boundary or its absence. Whereas all three groups of subjects were capable of manipulating the acoustic parameters that signal a shift in stress, there were some differences between the performance of the patient groups and that of the normal controls. Further, stress production deficits were more severe in LHD aphasic patients than in RHD patients. LHD speakers exhibited deficits in the control of both temporal and F0 cues. Their F0 disturbance appears to be secondary to a primary deficit in temporal control at the phase or sentence level, as an increased number of continuation rises found for the LHD patients seemed to arise from lengthy pauses within sentences. Findings are highlighted to address the nature of breakdown in speech prosody and the competing views of prosodic lateralization.