规则多边图形的离散度、图基边数及显示条件的交互作用研究

用实验方法研究规则多边图形的离散度、图形基边数、显示条件及三因素的交互作用对图形信号认知绩效的影响。实验的自变量有：（１）图形的离散度参数;（２）图形的基边数;（３）图形的显示条件。因变量是各图形信号的平均反应时。实验的刺激材料是２５个不同离散度、不同基边数的规则多边图形。刺激材料的呈现与被试的反应记录都由计算机控制。结果表明：（１）离散度对图形信号认知绩效的影响十分显著,离散度适中及偏小的图形信号认知绩效较高;（２）图形基边数对认知绩效的影响十分显著,认知绩效反比于图形的基边数;（３）显示条件对认知绩效的影响不显著;（４）离散度与基边数的交互作用影响显著,离散度偏大的０．６,０．７图形与离散度偏小及适中的０．３,０．４,０．５图形的认知绩效在基边数大于８后出现明显的分离趋势。     

Individual distributions under ordinal measurement

For ordinal measurement the concept of an individual propensity distribution is developed. For any given individual the mean of this distribution is his true score, for which estimation procedures are discussed. Two measures of individual dispersion are considered and their distributions derived in the null case. These measures are shown to be counterparts at the individual level of Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho. Estimation of the two dispersion measures from sample data is investigated, and the relation of these estimates to the variance of the individual propensity distribution is derived.     

Sound Predicts Meaning: Cross-Modal Associations Between Formant Frequency and Emotional Tone in Stanzas

Research on the relation between sound and meaning in language has reported substantial evidence for implicit associations between articulatory–acoustic characteristics of phonemes and emotions. In the present study, we specifically tested the relation between the acoustic properties of a text and its emotional tone as perceived by readers. To this end, we asked participants to assess the emotional tone of single stanzas extracted from a large variety of poems. The selected stanzas had either an extremely high, a neutral, or an extremely low average formant dispersion. To assess the average formant dispersion per stanza, all words were phonetically transcribed and the distance between the first and second formant per vowel was calculated. Building on a long tradition of research on associations between sound frequency on the one hand and non-acoustic concepts such as size, strength, or happiness on the other hand, we hypothesized that stanzas with an extremely high average formant dispersion would be rated lower on items referring to Potency (dominance) and higher on items referring to Activity (arousal) and Evaluation (emotional valence). The results confirmed our hypotheses for the dimensions of Potency and Evaluation, but not for the dimension of Activity. We conclude that, at least in poetic language, extreme values of acoustic features of vowels are a significant predictor for the emotional tone of a text.