Social interaction facilitates word learning in preverbal infants: Word–object mapping and word segmentation

In natural settings, infants learn spoken language with the aid of a caregiver who explicitly provides social signals. Although previous studies have demonstrated that young infants are sensitive to these signals that facilitate language development, the impact of real-life interactions on early word segmentation and word–object mapping remains elusive. We tested whether infants aged 5–6 months and 9–10 months could segment a word from continuous speech and acquire a word–object relation in an ecologically valid setting. In Experiment 1, infants were exposed to a live tutor, while in Experiment 2, another group of infants were exposed to a televised tutor. Results indicate that both younger and older infants were capable of segmenting a word and learning a word–object association only when the stimuli were derived from a live tutor in a natural manner, suggesting that real-life interaction enhances the learning of spoken words in preverbal infants.     

三维图形的客体和空间工作记忆存储机制

采用单探测变化检测范式,通过两个实验探讨了三维双特征图形在视空间工作记忆中的存储方式。实验一的记忆材料为由颜色和形状两种基本特征组成的三维图形,实验二的材料为由基本特征和细节特征组成的三维图形。被试为60名大学本科生（实验1、2各30名,年龄在19~24岁之间,平均21.25岁和21.71岁）。两个实验的结果均显示：特征交换变化条件下的记忆成绩与单一特征变化条件下最小的平均检测正确率无显著差异。这表明,由两种异质特征组成的三维图形在视觉客体和视觉空间工作记忆中均能以整合的单元进行存储。     

The oedipal wound in two stories by Kafka: The Metamorphosis and A Country Doctor

Kafka read Freud and was interested in psychoanalysis but believed there was no ‘cure’ for what was essentially the problem of living. As always with creative artists, the writer is his own psychoanalyst, and the actual process of writing is his means of self-revelation. The aim of this paper is to consider, in relation to two stories (The Metamorphosis and A Country Doctor), Kafka’s use of this background oedipal conflict with his father or received values (the ‘law’) as a springboard for the type of wound that results in creative writing. The wound for him became a kind of personal myth, and was also associated with other painful stimuli, including his tuberculosis and his troubled love affairs, but above all with his identity as a writer. The writing process and the ‘faith-value’ it demands is an underlying metaphor behind these narratives of Kafka’s ‘dream-like inner life’. There are parallels here with Bion’s psychoanalytic philosophy of ‘suffering’ and ‘psyche-lodgement’.     

How left inferior frontal cortex participates in syntactic processing: Evidence from aphasia

We report on three experiments that provide a real-time processing perspective on the poor comprehension of Broca’s aphasic patients for non-canonically structured sentences. In the first experiment we presented sentences (via a Cross Modal Lexical Priming (CMLP) paradigm) to Broca’s patients at a normal rate of speech. Unlike the pattern found with unimpaired control participants, we observed a general slowing of lexical activation and a concomitant delay in the formation of syntactic dependencies involving “moved” constituents and empty elements. Our second experiment presented these same sentences at a slower rate of speech. In this circumstance, Broca’s patients formed syntactic dependencies as soon as they were structurally licensed (again, a different pattern from that demonstrated by the unimpaired control group). The third experiment used a sentence-picture matching paradigm to chart Broca’s comprehension for non-canonically structured sentences (presented at both normal and slow rates). Here we observed significantly better scores in the slow rate condition. We discuss these findings in terms of the functional commitment of the left anterior cortical region implicated in Broca’s aphasia and conclude that this region is crucially involved in the formation of syntactically-governed dependency relations, not because it supports knowledge of syntactic dependencies, but rather because it supports the real-time implementation of these specific representations by sustaining, at the least, a lexical activation rise-time parameter.     

Spatial term apprehension with a reference object’s rotation in three-dimensional space

It has been reported that the overall shapes of spatial categorical patterns of projective spatial terms such as above and below are not influenced by the rotation of a reference object on a two-dimensional (2D) upright plane. However, is this also true in three-dimensional (3D) space? This study shows the dynamic aspects of the apprehension of projective spatial terms in 3D space by detailing how the rotation of a reference object with an inherent front influences the apprehension of projective spatial terms on a level plane by mapping their spatial categorical patterns. The experiment was designed to examine how spatial categorical patterns on a level plane changed with the rotation of a reference object with an inherent front in 3D computer graphics space. We manipulated the rotation of a reference object with an inherent front at three levels (0°, 90°, and 180° rotations) and examined how such manipulation changed the overall spatial categorical patterns of four basic Japanese projective spatial terms: mae, ushiro, hidari, and migi (similar to in front of, behind, to the left of, and to the right of in English, respectively). The results show that spatial term apprehension was affected by the rotation of the reference object in 3D space. In particular, rotation influenced the mae–ushiro and hidari–migi systems differently. The results also imply that our understanding of projective spatial terms on a level plane in 3D space is affected dynamically by visual information from 3D cues.     

不同数学水平儿童的数量估计:图形排列方式的影响

采用参照蔡方之等(2004)所设计的图形材料,考察了不同图形排列方式对不同数学学业水平小学生数量估计的影响。35名三年级被试参加了本实验,其中优生20人,差生15人。行为数据和口头报告分析结果显示:(1)优生是更合理的数量估计者。优生数量估计的绝对误差百分比明显小于差生。(2)图形排列方式对数量估计产生了显著影响。不同图形排列方式可能会造成规则-随机数量错觉和均匀-不均匀数量错觉,从而使均匀及规则图形被高估幅度更大。     

靶刺激变换对情景知觉过程中注视控制的影响

研究考察了情景浏览过程中靶刺激变换对注视控制的影响,运用了眼动记录技术。实验采用2(靶刺激位置:左、右)×2(变换方式:增加靶刺激、删除靶刺激)的重复测量设计。结果发现:(1)靶刺激变换方式对靶刺激所属兴趣区首次注视启动时间存在显著性影响,并对靶刺激所属兴趣区的前3次注视持续时间产生影响;(2)靶刺激位置属性对兴趣区首次注视启动时间、前3次注视持续时间均不存在显著影响。结果表明,与靶刺激增加相比,靶刺激的删除更易引起被试的优先注意,而且会抑制首次注视过程中的信息提取。     

A review of Lacan's seminar on anxiety1

The seminar on anxiety marks a turning point in the development of Lacan's thought from several perspectives. First, Lacan implicitly abandons his theory that the unconscious is structured like a language. He also abandons the endeavour to identify Freud's theory with his own. He develops some original new ideas about anxiety, some of which are of great interest, such as the connection between castration anxiety and narcissism; others, such as his denial of the existence of separation anxiety, are absurd. Lacan's main point of divergence from Freud, his rejection of the inner world, also emerges clearly in this seminar.     

选择性注意与视觉空间工作记忆的交互作用

传统上只是从单方面讨论了选择性注意与视觉空间工作记忆之间的关系,即认为注意选择有限信息以进入工作记忆。近期的一些研究发现,视觉空间工作记忆的内容影响选择性注意的分配,注意选择工作记忆中保持的空间或物体表征,选择性注意对于正确保持空间或物体信息是必需的认知调节。文章最后指出,关于选择性注意与视觉空间工作记忆交互作用的研究为将来进一步揭示基于空间与基于物体的注意选择之间的交互作用关系提供了一个很好的途径。     

The role of comparison in preschoolers’ novel object categorization

We examined the role of the comparison process and shared names on preschoolers’ categorization of novel objects. In our studies, 4-year-olds were presented with novel object sets consisting of either one or two standards and two test objects: a shape match and a texture match. When children were presented with one standard, they extended the category based on shape regardless of whether the objects were named. When children were presented with two standards that shared the same texture and the objects were named with the same noun, they extended the category based on texture. The opportunity to compare two standards, in the absence of shared names, led to an attenuation of the effect of shape. These findings demonstrate that comparison plays a critical role in the categorization of novel objects and that shared names enhance this process.