义符启动范式下义符的语义和语法激活的时间进程

采用义符启动范式,探讨义符的语义、语法信息的激活进程。结果表明,就义符总体而言,义符的语义激活从启动早期一直持续到启动晚期,义符的语法信息未见有激活。然而,对不成字义符和成字义符分析发现,不成字义符和成字义符的语义、语法激活存在着差异。不成字义符的语义激活只在启动中期出现,语法信息则未见有激活;成字义符的语义信息一直处于激活状态,并且在启动晚期,语法信息也得到了激活。义符的语义、语法信息的激活进程和顺序是由义符的功能决定的。     

What Can Experiments Reveal About the Origins of Music?

ABSTRACT— The origins of music have intrigued scholars for thousands of years. In this article I discuss the role of experiments in discussions of these issues. I argue that potentially useful kinds of evidence are those that address the innateness and the specificity of different components of musical behavior. At present there is some evidence for innate influences on music, but little evidence for capacities that are clearly specific to music. Although future experiments could potentially alter this picture, there is currently little unambiguous support for the notion that music is an adaptation.     

生命性信息在语言加工中的作用

生命性的范畴化从多个方面影响了语言的加工.名词的生命性信息不仅影响了句法形态标记和句法位置等句法线索的使用,而且在题元角色的分配中发挥一定的作用.较早的研究主要采用反应时和眼动技术,发现生命性信息促进了歧义句和句法复杂句的加工.近年来,随着认知神经科学技术的发展,研究者进一步探讨了生命性信息在题元角色分配中的神经机制.对于生命性作用机制的深入研究,促使新的语言加工模型的出现,这些模型对语言加工中句法和语义的关系,进行了越来越详尽的阐释.未来该领域的研究应重点关注生命性的即时性加工、题元角色分配中生命性信息与句法信息的交互作用以及汉语和其他语言的跨语言比较研究等,以进一步揭示语言加工的认知机制.     

Does syntax play a role in Theory of Mind development before the age of 3 years?

Language plays an important role in Theory of Mind development. Specifically, longitudinal and training studies indicate that the acquisition of complement syntax has an effect on three- to five-year-old children’s mastery of the concept of false belief. There is evidence for both a beginning explicit understanding of the mind and mastery of complement syntax in children before their third birthday. In the present study, we investigated longitudinally whether an early sensitivity to complement syntax is related to early development of Theory of Mind abilities in a sample of N = 159 German-speaking 27- to 36-month-old children. Children’s sensitivity to formal properties of complement syntax at 33 months was associated with their perspective-taking skills and their metacognition of own ignorance three months later. This relation remained significant when controlling for the effects of general language abilities. Furthermore, children’s sensitivity to complement syntax was concurrently related to their early false belief understanding. These findings support the view that complement syntax shares representational demands with an understanding of epistemic states and that language begins to support the acquisition of epistemic concepts earlier than was previously thought.     

Implicit and explicit evaluations of a mass media physical activity campaign: Does everything get better?

The purpose of this research was to evaluate a population level mass media campaign using implicit (i.e., automatic) and explicit (i.e., non-automatic) measures of evaluations and to determine if discrepant or summed evaluations were associated with endorsing campaign objectives: that physical activity can improve relationship-related, mind-related, or body-related outcomes. Participants (N = 1600) completed an online survey which included a single-category implicit association task that measured more automatic or implicit evaluative responses of images from the campaign. The survey also included questions assessing prompted awareness of the campaign, explicitly measured evaluations of the advertisements, and evaluations of whether participating in physical activity makes one’s relationships, mind, or body better. Results showed participants who rated the advertisements as more appealing exhibited more positive implicit evaluations of the campaign. Evaluating the ads as offensive was negatively related to explicit evaluations of whether physical activity makes relationships, mind, or body better; past behaviour and sum and discrepancy scores were positively related to endorsing relationship, mind, and body outcomes. By including implicit evaluation of a playful and creative campaign designed to influence perceptions of what physical activity can make better, this research highlighted that campaign creators should carefully consider what to include. Discrepant evaluations may indicate benefits that could be highlighted because evaluation of them is more amenable to change. Based on current findings, one possible focus of such campaigns may be the relationship-related benefits of PA.     

An ERP investigation of binding and coreference

This study examines the nature of violations in processing one class of binding construction, namely those involving reflexives and their antecedents. When arguments of verbs appear at the point where a syntactic violation is detected, a centroparietal positivity occurs, peaking at 600 ms after the presentation of the stimulus (P600), as is consistent with other types of syntactic anomalies. However, nonarguments in similar sentences fail to elicit the same response. For example, the reflexive in "John's brothers like himself" is in an argument position and elicits the P600 when compared to its grammatical counterpart. The nonargument, participating in the same type of mismatch, "John's brothers like Bill and himself," does not elicit the same positivity. This provides evidence that there are two processes involved in parsing this binding construction, one syntactic and another as yet unidentified, perhaps involving meaning or pragmatics.     

Adolescents' comprehension of televised sexual innuendos

This study assessed various determinants of adolescents' comprehension of televised sexual innuendos. Eighteen males and 18 females at each of three ages (12, 14, and 16 years) were asked to interpret a series of 24 TV excerpts, each of which contained either a sexual innuendo or a nonsexual filler joke. Based on adult ratings, the innuendos were systematically varied by the topic alluded to (intercourse, physical/sexual attributes, socially discouraged practices, and nonsexual) and the level of explicitness (high vs. low). Age of viewer and topic referenced significantly influenced the comprehension scores. Fourteen- and sixteen-year-olds yielded higher scores than twelve-year-olds. Innuendos referencing discouraged sexual practices were most adequately explained and those referencing intercourse were least adequately explained.     

Infant responses of ocular fixation to moving visual stimuli

Infants of 1, 2, and 3 months of age were presented with two checkerboard patterns, one stationary and the other moving in a horizontal oscillatory motion at one of eight rates. An observer who could see only the infant's head and eyes recorded, for each 30-sec trial, (a) the position of first fixation, (b) position of fixation at the end of each 5-sec interval, and (c) a final forced-choice judgment of the position of the moving stimulus. Results showed reliable differences in ocular behavior as a function of rate of stimulus motion for all three groups of infants.     

Effects of gaze, touch, and use of name on evaluation of “Engaged” couples

Videotapes were made of actors playing the role of engaged couples in an ostensible interview with a research psychologist. Couples either gazed at each other or did not gaze, used each other's name five times or not at all, and touched each other or did not touch. The videotaped interviews were shown to groups of introductory psychology students for ratings on ten polar adjective scales. Gaze proved to be the most important variable, with gazing couples rated significantly more positively than non-gazing couples on all dimensions. Touching couples were rated more favorably than non-touching couples and name using couples received less favorable ratings than non-name using couples. Results of the study were related to equilibrium theory and discussed within the framework of other research relating nonverbal variables to interpersonal attraction.     

Semantic feature representations for normal and aphasic language

Aphasic and non-neurological patients grouped nouns on the basis of similarity of meaning. These word groupings served as input matrices for hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling analyses. The emergent structures suggest that, while the normal adult has a number of levels upon which to organize his lexicon, the adult aphasic's lexicon can be characterized as a set of partial entries that are tied to affective and situational data. The results also suggest that semantic feature representations derived from similarity-of-meaning judgments are of relevance in the study of factors which influence actual language performance.