How people familiarize themselves with complex ecological concepts—anchoring of social representations of invasive non‐native species

New terms and frameworks are constantly being incorporated into scientific and public discourses on the management of natural resources and the environment. The idea of invasive non‐native plant and animal species, i.e. of species that enter a new range and spread prolifically, is currently becoming part of the public discourse in Scotland. This constitutes a valuable opportunity to study how people engage with new scientific concepts. We analysed focus group and personal interview data to examine how participants (including the general public, conservation volunteers and scientists) familiarized themselves with the ecological concept of invasive non‐native species. Our analysis draws on the idea of anchoring in the formation of social representations, complemented by concepts from cognitive linguistics and conceptual blending, and defines anchoring as a process of information transfer from source to target domains. Our findings suggest that social representations of invasive non‐native species were constituted to a large degree by perceptions of species' detrimental impacts and the human role in and responsibility for the introduction process. By contrast, the non‐nativeness of a species was not relevant for participants from the general public and conservation volunteers. Three types of anchoring could be distinguished in our participants' discussions that differed with regard to the relations between source and target domain. Whereas participants from the general public and conservation volunteers used all three types of anchoring, scientists did not. The identification of different anchoring types also helped to explain incongruencies in the scientific discourse on invasive non‐native species, and has implications for public information campaigns. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning to use novel objects: a training study on the acquisition of novel action representations

Many studies have suggested that the motor system is organized in a hierarchical fashion, around the prototypical end location associated with using objects. However, most studies supporting the hierarchical view have used well-known actions and objects that are highly over-learned. Accordingly, at present it is unclear if the hierarchical principle applies to learning the use of novel objects as well. In the present study we found that when learning to use a novel object subjects acquired an action representation of the end location associated with using the object, as evidenced by slower responses in an action observation task, when the object was presented at an incorrect end location. By showing the importance of knowledge about end locations when learning to use a novel object, the present study suggests that end locations are a fundamental organizing feature of the human motor system.     

A re-examination of the algebraic properties of the AHP as a ratio-scaling technique

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) ratio-scaling approach is re-examined in view of the recent developments in mathematical psychology based on the so-called separable representations. The study highlights the distortions in the estimates based on the maximum eigenvalue method used in the AHP distinguishing the contributions due to random noises from the effects due to the nonlinearity of the subjective weighting function of separable representations. The analysis is based on the second order expansion of the Perron eigenvector and Perron eigenvalue in reciprocally symmetric matrices with perturbations. The asymptotic distributions of the Perron eigenvector and Perron eigenvalue are derived and related to the eigenvalue-based index of cardinal consistency used in the AHP. The results show the limits of using the latter index as a rule to assess the quality of the estimates of a ratio scale. The AHP method to estimate the ratio scales is compared with the classical ratio magnitude approach used in psychophysics.     

Hope in Africa? Social representations of world history and the future in six African countries

Data on social representations of world history have been collected everywhere in the world except sub-Saharan Africa. Two studies using open-ended data involving university students from six African countries fill this gap. In Study 1, nominations from Cape Verde and Mozambique for the most important events in world history in the past 1000 years were dominated by war and politics, recency effects, and Western-centrism tempered by African sociocentrism on colonization and independence. The first three findings replicated previous research conducted in other parts of the world, but the last pattern contrasted sharply with European data. Study 2 employed a novel method asking participants how they would begin the narration of world history, and then to describe a major transition to the present. Participants most frequently wrote about the evolution of humanity out of Africa, followed by war and then colonization as a beginning, and then replicated previous findings with war, colonization, and technology as major transitions to the present. Finally, when asked about how they foresaw the future, many participants expressed hope for peace and cooperation, especially those facing more risk of collective violence (Burundi and Congo). A colonial/liberation narrative was more predominant in the data from former Portuguese colonies (Angola, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau) than from former Belgian colonies (Burundi and Congo).     

Holographic string encoding

In this article, we apply a special case of holographic representations to letter position coding. We translate different well-known schemes into this format, which uses distributed representations and supports constituent structure. We show that in addition to these brain-like characteristics, performances on a standard benchmark of behavioral effects are improved in the holographic format relative to the standard localist one. This notably occurs because of emerging properties in holographic codes, like transposition and edge effects, for which we give formal demonstrations. Finally, we outline the limits of the approach as well as its possible future extensions.     

Beyond rhyme or reason: ERPs reveal task-specific activation of orthography on spoken language

Metaphonological tasks, such as rhyme judgment, have been the primary tool for the investigation of the effects of orthographic knowledge on spoken language. However, it has been recently argued that the orthography effect in rhyme judgment does not reflect the automatic activation of orthographic codes but rather stems from sophisticated response strategies. Such a claim stands in sharp contrast with recent findings using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in lexical and semantic tasks, which were taken to suggest that orthographic information occurs early enough to affect the core process of lexical access. Here, we show that the electrophysiological signature of the orthography effect in rhyme judgment is indeed different from the one obtained in online lexical or semantic tasks. That is, we did not find the orthography effect in the 300-350 ms time window which has previously been shown to process lexical information in the lexico-semantic tasks, but the effect appeared within the 175-250 ms and the 375-750 ms time-windows which we interpreted to reflect segmentation and decisional process, respectively. We conclude that the interactions between phonology and orthography are task-specific. Metaphonological tasks appear of limited use for studying the core processes and interactions that underlie lexical access.     

Social Representations: A Normative and Dynamic Intergroup Approach

This commentary outlines an approach to social representations which emphasizes the normative and dynamic nature of shared knowledge. Social representations both connect and divide people, for example through shared ingroup and outgroup stereotypes derived from antagonistic social representations. Through asymmetrical intergroup communication and influence, in turn, social representations are formed, maintained, and contested. In this dynamic process, powerful majorities attempt to define the meaning of new or otherwise important information as a function of their group norms, while subordinate minorities employ propaganda techniques of social influence to resist majority influence and propose alternative positions.     

When is the gift given? Organ donation,social representations,and an opportunity to register

The gift of life doctrine underpins Australia's approach to organ donation: in legislation, clinical practice, community awareness campaigns, and educational activities. In this paper, we present an approach that situates an understanding of organ donation within a social representation framework as a system of values, ideas, and practices. In cadaveric donation, the final giving‐of‐the‐gift can never be by the donor, leading us to ask where the potential donor's decision to give the gift really lies. We present research from three studies that explored the relationship between what was socially understood about organ donation and the registration of donation intent. Drawing from three socially and culturally diverse populations, we asked people working in a corporate city institution and those attending two football matches in the outer city area to complete a word‐association task and Likert‐scale belief questions about organ donation—followed by an opportunity to register immediately on the Australian Organ Donor Register. Driven by the interdependent themata of life/death and self/other, the gift of life doctrine is inextricably linked with the loss of life emerging as both positive and negative beliefs allowing their relationship to actual registration behaviour to be observed. Our findings suggest that in many instances, the potential donor's genuine desire to give the gift lies in the tension between positive and negative beliefs, manifesting as a consent registration when the positive beliefs about donation prevail and an immediate opportunity to register is available.     

视觉表象个体差异及其神经基础

视觉表象涉及人类一种重要信息表征方式, 与工作记忆和注意相比, 视觉表象研究更为关注其所产生的主观内容, 而这一主观内容的产生存在明显的个体差异。本文从个体差异的角度, 系统介绍了视觉表象个体差异的表现与内在的神经基础及其可能的应用, 并展望了未来的研究方向。本研究将有助于对视觉表象个体差异的认识, 促进视觉表象功能与实质问题研究的进一步开展。     

0―1.5岁婴儿表征能力的研究概述

就0-1.5岁婴儿的知识表征方面,该文主要介绍了国外的一些研究成果,指出婴儿的表征能力由感知表征向意义表征发展.即使很小的婴儿都已经有了相当复杂的表征能力,能初步感知典型的变化,识别不同种类物体的物体,表征事物与事物之间的空间关系、数量关系、因果关系等,对动因有一定的理解,并逐渐形成概念和图示