内隐学习“三高”特征的实验研究

本研究在社会认知的人物特征识别范畴内,探讨在高强度练习和准确反馈条件下,内隐学习的高选择力、高潜力以及高密度贮存三大特征。实验采用一种测量内隐和外显学习的新方法,要求被试学会把像片按其组合特征分类。这些特征包括人物姿势的正侧面(显著维度特征),人物容貌的美丑(非显著维度特征)。结果表明:(1)非显著特征的学习,内隐被试表现出更大且显著的底层规则的迁移,比外显被试具有更高的选择力。(2)内隐被试表现出高潜力的内隐知识。(3)信息论处理揭示了内隐知识传递和贮存的高密性和高效性。     

Call for new measures suitable for intensive longitudinal studies: Ideas and suggestions

The intensive longitudinal studies (ILS) has recently gained prominence as one of the most developing and promising approaches in psychological research. It is suitable for studying intraindividual dynamics, since it collects many repeated measurements for multiple persons. However many existing psychometric scales that are suitable for cross-sectional studies cannot be used successfully in ILS. That is why it would be advisable to develop them. This article presents potential solutions and future directions that may be helpful in developing such tools. It focuses on and discusses three issues: (1) appropriate tool length, so that the person completing them multiple times does not feel too tired; (2) parallel forms of questionnaires to reduce the problem of remembering previous answers; (3) complementary types of measure, that would allow approaching certain characteristics in slightly different ways.     

Surface features can deeply affect artificial grammar learning

Three experiments explored the extent to which surface features explain discrimination between grammatical and non-grammatical strings in artificial grammar learning (AGL). Experiment 1 replicated Knowlton and Squire’s (1996) paradigm using either letter strings as in the original study, or an analogous set of color strings to further explore if learning was affected by type of stimuli. Learning arose only with letter strings, but the results were mostly due to the discrimination of non-grammatical strings containing highly salient illegal features. Experiments 2 and 3 tested a new grammar devised to control for those features. Experiment 2 showed reduced grammar learning effects, and again only for letter materials. Experiment 3 explored the effect of additional practice with letter stimuli, and found increased learning only in the spaced practice condition, though additional practice also produced more explicit knowledge. These findings call for further research on the boundary conditions of learning in AGL paradigms.     

The evolving sense of agency: Context recency and quality modulate the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes

Humans acquire a sense of agency through their interactions with the world and their sensory consequences. Previous studies have highlighted stable agency-related phenomena like intentional binding, which depend on both prospective, context-dependent and retrospective, outcome-dependent processes. In the current study, we investigated the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes underlying the adaptation of an ongoing sense of agency. The results showed that prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window of up to 20 prior events was independent of the nature of the ongoing event. By contrast, the characteristics of the ongoing event retrospectively influenced prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window narrower than 6 prior events. These findings characterize the interaction between prospective and retrospective mechanisms as a fundamental process to continuously update the sense of agency through sensorimotor learning. High psychosis-like experience traits weakened this interaction, suggesting that reduced adaption to the context contributes to altered self-experience.     

Implicit learning of semantic preferences of English words by Chinese learners

The aim of the present study was to explore whether Chinese learners could implicitly learn the semantic preferences of novel English words. In training, participants learned four novel verbs and were exposed to a set of verb-noun phrases that included these new words. What the participants were not told was that the use of the verbs depended on the concreteness of the nouns (i.e., the semantic preference rule). In testing, participants were required to choose between two possible verbs (one of which violated the semantic preference rule) for nouns that never occurred in training. The results showed that participants acquired unconscious knowledge of semantic preferences under incidental learning conditions, as measured by verbal reports and structural knowledge attributions. Our results provide further evidence for implicit learning of semantic preferences, suggesting that implicit learning is an important mechanism in the acquisition of L2 collocations.     

Sense of agency: Sensorimotor signals and social context are differentially weighed at implicit and explicit levels

Sense of agency (SoA) describes the experience of being the author of an action. Cue integration approaches divide SoA into an implicit level, mostly relying on prospective sensorimotor signals, and an explicit level, resulting from an integration of sensorimotor and contextual cues based on their reliability. Integration mechanisms at each level and the contribution of implicit to explicit SoA remain underspecified. In a task of movements with visual outcomes, we tested the effect of social context (contextual cue) and sensory prediction congruency (retrospective sensorimotor cue) over implicit (intentional binding) and explicit (verbal judgments) SoA. Our results suggest that prospective sensorimotor cues determine implicit SoA. At the explicit level, retrospective sensorimotor cues and contextual cues are partly integrated in an additive way, but contextual cues can also act as a heuristic if sensorimotor cues are highly unreliable. We also found no significant association between implicit and explicit SoA.     

Mortality and World Hunger

Why does world hunger hold an inferior place on the contemporary moral agenda? Proposed answer: because it is a political, not a moral problem. It is not a moral problem, because morality needs two conditions fulfilled: that those be in some way close to the agent unto whom that agent is doing something that is to be morally assessed; and that the relevant good or bad states or events can be clearly credited to some particular agent or agents. Neither condition is fulfilled in the case of world hunger. This explains morality's failure to come to grips with it. Yet, while lacking morality's endorsement, the abolition of world hunger may still be a political goal.     

Informal versus formal mathematics

We discuss Kunen’s algorithmic implementation of a proof for the Paris–Harrington theorem, and the author’s and da Costa’s proposed “exotic” formulation for the P = NP hypothesis. Out of those two examples we ponder the relation between mathematics within an axiomatic framework, and intuitive or informal mathematics. The author is Visiting Researcher at IEA/USP, Professor of Communications, Emeritus, at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, and a full member of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy.     

Implicit–Explicit Relations

ABSTRACT— Mental process and mental experience are not the same thing. The former is the operation of the mind; the latter is the subjective life that emerges from that operation. In social evaluation, implicit and explicit attitudes express this distinction. Although it is clear that they are not the same, how they differ is not. Across content domains, implicit and explicit attitude measures show substantial variability in the strength of correspondence, ranging from near zero to strongly positive. Variation in controllability, intentionality, awareness, or efficiency is thought to differentiate implicit and explicit attitudes. Dual-process theories and empirical evidence for moderating influences of implicit–explicit attitude relations provide a framework for comprehending relations between the operation and the experience of the mind.