重复知盲:刺激呈现时间及作业对反应时的影响

本研究用汉字材料及反应时的数据来探讨重复知盲现象及有关机制。在实验一中,被试必须判断快速连续呈现的两个字究竟是否包含两个或是只有一个动物字。结果显示在７０毫秒时,有重复知盲现象（重复动物字组比非重复动物字组的反应时为长）;在１００毫秒时则无;另外,在２００毫秒时则有重复启动现象产生（重复动物字组比非重复动物字组的反应时为短）。实验二采用同样的材料及呈现方法,但被试只需要判断以７０毫秒呈现之实验材料中的第二个字是否动物字。结果发现类似重复启动的现象,这些结果显示,呈现时间与作业是决定重复刺激究竟造成知盲或启动效应的重要因素。本文另外还讨论本研究的方法与结果对了解重复刺激心理加工的可能贡献。     

注意定势对基于空间位置的返回抑制的影响

将研究注意定势的比例控制范式与基于空间位置的返回抑制范式相结合。系统地探讨了与空间位置相关的注意定势对基于空间位置的返回抑制的影响。结果表明。在20％和50％有效条件下均出现了显著的返回抑制。但由于注意定势的作用。20％有效条件下的返回抑制量要明显高于50％有效条件;而在80％有效条件下．没有出现返回抑制。并且外显地形成相关注意定势的被试显示出显著的返回抑制的反转。而没有外显地形成相关注意定势的被试则显示出了返回抑制效应。这表明,内源性的注意定势对返回抑制的质和量都有重要影响。适当的注意定势可以在任意方向上改变返回抑制。     

Context-specific adjustment of cognitive control: Transfer of adaptive control sets

Cognitive control protects processing of relevant information from interference by irrelevant information. The level of this processing selectivity can be flexibly adjusted to different control demands (e.g., frequency of conflict) associated with a certain context, leading to the formation of specific context–control associations. In the present study we investigated the robustness and transferability of the acquired context–control demands to new situations. In three experiments, we used a version of the context-specific proportion congruence (CSPC) paradigm, in which each context (e.g., location) is associated with a specific conflict frequency, determining high and low control demands. In a learning phase, associations between context and control demands were established. In a subsequent transfer block, stimulus–response mappings, whole task sets, or context–control demands changed. Results showed an impressive robustness of context–control associations, as context-specific adjustments of control from the learning phase were virtually unaffected by new stimuli and tasks in the transfer block. Only a change of the context–control demand eliminated the context-specific adjustment of control. These findings suggest that context–control associations that have proven to be adaptive in the past are continuously applied despite major changes in the task structure as long as the context–control associations remain the same.     

fMR-adaptation and the bilingual brain

fMR-Adaptation, where a pair of identical stimuli elicits a smaller neural response than a pair of dissimilar stimuli has been extensively used to study object identification and classification as well as memory. Thus far this technique has found limited application in evaluating brain areas sensitive to meaning, language and control of language production. These studies are reviewed together with suggestions as to how varying inter-stimulus repetition lag, dimension of interest and evaluating inter-individual differences may shed new light on how different languages are acquired and represented in the brain.     

The repetition-break plot structure: a cognitive influence on selection in the marketplace of ideas

Using research into learning from sequences of examples, we generate predictions about what cultural products become widely distributed in the social marketplace of ideas. We investigate what we term the Repetition-Break plot structure: the use of repetition among obviously similar items to establish a pattern, and then a final contrasting item that breaks with the pattern to generate surprise. Two corpus studies show that this structure arises in about a third of folktales and story jokes. An experiment shows that jokes with this structure are more interesting than those without the initial repetition. Thus, we document evidence for how a cognitive factor influences the cultural products that are selected in the marketplace of ideas.     

An ERP study of inhibition of non-target languages in trilingual word production

The present study examined the locus where inhibition of non-target languages is exerted during trilingual word production by analyzing the cue-locked and stimulus-locked ERPs respectively in the n-2 language repetition paradigm. During the experiment, Uighur–Chinese–English trilinguals overtly named Arabic digits in one of their three languages according to a visually presented cue while their behavioral and electrophysiological responses were recorded. The behavioral data revealed insignificant n-2 repetition costs. Cue-locked ERPs revealed also only tiny or marginally significant n-2 repetition effects over some midline electrodes. The stimulus-locked ERP data showed a more negative ERP component elicited by the n-2 repetition trials than the n-2 non-repetition trials around 250 ms after stimulus onset, but no significant difference in this ERP effect between different languages was found. The results indicate that inhibition of non-target languages occurs at the lemma selection phase rather than the language task schemas phase during trilingual language production.     

Getting to know you: From view-dependent to view-invariant repetition priming for unfamiliar faces

Recent research suggests that repetition priming (RP) for unfamiliar faces is highly view dependent and is eliminated when the viewpoint of target faces changes between study and test. The current research examined whether increased familiarity with novel faces from a single viewpoint at study would support RP from an alternative viewpoint at test. Participants passively viewed novel face images from a single viewpoint at study (i.e., either front or three-quarters), with half of the images seen once and half seen on five occasions. During a sex classification task at test, participants were faster to respond to face images seen from the same view as that at study than they were to previously unseen distractor faces for both single exposure faces and faces seen on five occasions (i.e., standard RP). When, however, face images at test were shown from a different viewpoint from that at study, RP only occurred for faces viewed on five occasions.     

Coordination Processes of Mental Transformations of Patterns: Practice and Transfer Effects

Regulation and monitoring of successful performance in complex tasks requires decisions regarding which processes to engage in and in what order. Coordination of these activities appears to be a separable aspect of the demands imposed on working memory by cascaded serial processes (Carlson & Lundy, 1992). In the experiments presented here, subjects indicated whether symbolically suggested transformation rules (rotation, reflection) correctly described the difference between two patterns of filledin squares within a 3x3 matrix. Two experiments were carried out with different levels of practice and common transfer tasks. Our aim was to provide evidence for an executive coordinating mechanism on the basis of differential practice and transfer effects. The following results were obtained: (1) Coordination complexity (Mayr & Kliegl, 1993) has a nonadditive effect on transformation time at all levels of practice, suggesting that a substantial deal of time is spent on processes other than executing transformations. (2) Performance on the transfer task indicated that the practised coordination skill was generalised under the conditions of the experiment. Level of practice influenced the transfer pattern, showing more specificity in transfer after extended practice. Taken together, the nonadditive effect as well as the transfer effect suggest that coordination cost reflects separable processing demand. The results constrain the type of interaction between the visual working memory system and the central control component of multicomponent working memory models (Baddeley, 1989).     

Repetition priming within and between languages in semantic classification of concrete and abstract words

Although concrete nouns are generally agreed to have shared core conceptual representations across languages in bilinguals, it has been proposed that abstract nouns have separate representations or share fewer semantic components. Conceptual repetition priming methodology was used to evaluate whether translation equivalents of abstract nouns have shared conceptual representations and compare the degree of conceptual overlap for concrete and abstract nouns. Here 72 Spanish–English bilinguals made concrete–abstract decisions on English and Spanish nouns. Both concrete and abstract nouns elicited substantial between-language priming and these effects were of equivalent size, indicating that translation equivalents of both concrete and abstract nouns have shared conceptual representations and that abstract words do not share fewer components. The between-language priming effects and their attenuation relative to within-language priming indicate that the within-language effect is based on facilitation of both word comprehension and semantic decision processes.     

Optimising retention through multiple study opportunities over days: The benefit of an expanding schedule of repetitions

Few studies have investigated how scheduling repeated studies of the same material over several days influences its subsequent retention. The study-phase retrieval hypothesis predicts that, under these circumstances, expanding intervals between repetitions will promote the greatest likelihood that the participant will be reminded of previous occurrences of the item, thus leading to a benefit for subsequent recall. In the present article, participants studied vocabulary pairs that were repeated according to one of three schedules. In the expanding schedule, pairs were presented on days 1, 2 and 13; in the uniform schedule, on days 1, 7 and 13; and in the contracting schedule, on days 1, 12 and 13. Cued-recall was assessed after a retention interval (RI) of 2, 6 or 13 days. Consistent with predictions, the expanding schedule generally led to better performance than the other schedules. However, further analyses suggested that the benefit of an expanding schedule may be greater when the RI is longer.