Does language about similarity play a role in fostering similarity comparison in children?

Commenting on perceptual similarities between objects stands out as an important linguistic achievement, one that may pave the way towards noticing and commenting on more abstract relational commonalities between objects. To explore whether having a conventional linguistic system is necessary for children to comment on different types of similarity comparisons, we observed four children who had not been exposed to usable linguistic input - deaf children whose hearing losses prevented them from learning spoken language and whose hearing parents had not exposed them to sign language. These children developed gesture systems that have language-like structure at many different levels. Here we ask whether the deaf children used their gestures to comment on similarity relations and, if so, which types of relations they expressed. We found that all four deaf children were able to use their gestures to express similarity comparisons (point to cat + point to tiger) resembling those conveyed by 40 hearing children in early gesture + speech combinations (cat + point to tiger). However, the two groups diverged at later ages. Hearing children, after acquiring the word like, shifted from primarily expressing global similarity (as in cat/tiger) to primarily expressing single-property similarity (as in crayon is brown like my hair). In contrast, the deaf children, lacking an explicit term for similarity, continued to primarily express global similarity. The findings underscore the robustness of similarity comparisons in human communication, but also highlight the importance of conventional terms for comparison as likely contributors to routinely expressing more focused similarity relations.     

Enhanced latent inhibition in context aversion conditioning

In four experiments, we investigated the effect of giving rats exposure to a distinctive environmental context before a phase of training in which an injection of LiCl was paired with that context. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 were consistent with the possibility that such preexposure served to retard subsequent conditioning to the context (i.e., produced a latent inhibition effect). Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that allowing the rats to consume a novel-flavored solution during preexposure enhanced the latent inhibition effect. The relevance of these findings both for theories of latent inhibition and for the use of preexposure as a clinical intervention for the reduction of conditioned nausea in humans is considered.     

Extensive extinction in multiple contexts eliminates the renewal of conditioned fear in rats

Two studies examined whether nonreinforcement of a stimulus in multiple contexts, instead of a single context, would decrease renewal of conditioned fear in rats (as assessed by conditioned suppression of lever pressing). In Experiment 1, renewal was measured after 36 nonreinforced CS trials delivered during six extinction sessions in a single context or two extinction sessions in each of three different contexts. The number of extinction contexts did not have an effect on renewal. In Experiment 2, groups received either 36 or 144 nonreinforced CS trials during six or twenty-four extinction sessions in a single context or three different contexts. Again, renewal was not influenced by the number of extinction contexts when only 36 trials were given. However, when 144 trials were used, renewal was completely eliminated when extinction was divided between 3 contexts, but was not weakened when the sessions took place in a single context. The results suggest that the use of multiple treatment settings in exposure-based therapies is only likely to reduce relapse if a sufficient number of sessions are provided in each of the treatment settings.     

Gesture and metaphor comprehension: Electrophysiological evidence of cross-modal coordination by audiovisual stimulation

In recent years, studies have suggested that gestures influence comprehension of linguistic expressions, for example, eliciting an N400 component in response to a speech/gesture mismatch. In this paper, we investigate the role of gestural information in the understanding of metaphors. Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants viewed video clips of an actor uttering metaphorical expressions and producing bodily gestures that were congruent or incongruent with the metaphorical meaning of such expressions. This modality of stimuli presentation allows a more ecological approach to meaning integration. When ERPs were calculated using gesture stroke as time-lock event, gesture incongruity with metaphorical expression modulated the amplitude of the N400 and of the late positive complex (LPC). This suggests that gestural and speech information are combined online to make sense of the interlocutor’s linguistic production in an early stage of metaphor comprehension. Our data favor the idea that meaning construction is globally integrative and highly context-sensitive.     

道教伦理思想在和谐社会建设中的价值

道教是惟一的中国土生土长的宗教,它对中国的历史发展起过重要作用。道教伦理思想对当代中国社会主义和谐社会的建设有重要价值。一、道教“天人合一”、“道法自然”的伦理思想,有利于促进人与自然的和谐。二、道教“尊道贵德”、“知足常乐”的伦理思想,有利于促进人物质生活和精神生活的和谐。三、道教“积功累德”、“济世利人”的伦理思想,有利于促进人与人、阶层与阶层之间的和谐。     

Medical ethics in Poland

The work related to medical ethics written by Polish authors are reviewed and some topics concerning teaching and various other activities in this field are presented. The attention is centered on the opinions and attitudes concerning the essence of medical profession and the personal model of the physician, doctor-patient relationship (including duties of the doctor), medical research on humans, abortion and other problems. The role of medico-ethical tradition in Poland is described. Main trends in polish ethical thought in relation to medicine are taken into consideration. General aspects of medical ethics in present-day Poland are tentatively characterized.     

The Impossibility of Local Skepticism

According to global skepticism, we know nothing. According to local skepticism, we know nothing in some particular area or domain of discourse. Unlike their global counterparts, local skeptics think they can contain our invincible ignorance within limited bounds. I argue that they are mistaken. Local skepticism, particularly the kinds that most often get defended, cannot stay local: if there are domains whose truths we cannot know, then there must be claims outside those domains that we cannot know even if they are true. My argument focuses on one popular form of local skepticism, ethical skepticism, but I believe that the argument generalizes to cover other forms as well.

Development of Lexical and Sentence Level Context Effects for Dominant and Subordinate Word Meanings of Homonyms

Nine-ten-and twelve-year-old children (N = 75) read aloud dominant, subordinate or ambiguous bias sentences (N = 120) that ended in a homonym (BALL). After the sentence (1,000 ms), children read aloud targets that were related to the dominant (BAT) or subordinate (DANCE) meaning of the homonym or control targets. Participants were also divided into three reading skill groups based on an independent measure of single word oral reading accuracy. There were three main developmental and reading skill findings. First, 9-year-olds and low skill readers showed lexical level facilitation in accuracy. Second, 9- and 10-year-olds or low and moderate skill readers showed lexical level facilitation in reaction time. Third, 12-year-olds or high skill readers showed sentence level facilitation in reaction time with high skill readers additionally showing sentence level inhibition in reaction time. These results show that lexical level context effects decreased and that sentence level context effects increased with development and skill. These results are discussed in terms of connectionist models of visual word recognition that incorporate distributed attractor principles.     

Influence of consonantal context on the reading of vowels: evidence from children

When college students pronounce nonwords, their vowel pronunciations may be affected not only by the consonant that follows the vowel, the coda, but also by the preceding consonant, the onset. We presented the nonwords used by Treiman and colleagues in their 2003 study to a total of 94 first graders, third graders, fifth graders, and high school students to determine when these context influences emerge. According to some theories of reading development, early decoding is characterized by context-free links from graphemes to phonemes. However, we found that even children reading at the first-grade level (6-year-olds) were influenced to some extent by a vowel's context. The effect of context on vowel pronunciation increased in strength up to around the fifth-grade reading level (8- and 9-year-olds), and sensitivity to coda-to-vowel associations emerged no earlier than did sensitivity to onset-to-vowel associations. A connectionist model of reading reproduced this general pattern of increasing context effects as a function of training.     

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.