Marginally perceptible outcome feedback, motor learning and implicit processes

Participants struck 500 golf balls to a concealed target. Outcome feedback was presented at the subjective or objective threshold of awareness of each participant or at a supraliminal threshold. Participants who received fully perceptible (supraliminal) feedback learned to strike the ball onto the target, as did participants who received feedback that was only marginally perceptible (subjective threshold). Participants who received feedback that was not perceptible (objective threshold) showed no learning. Upon transfer to a condition in which the target was unconcealed, performance increased in both the subjective and the objective threshold condition, but decreased in the supraliminal condition. In all three conditions, participants reported minimal declarative knowledge of their movements, suggesting that deliberate hypothesis testing about how best to move in order to perform the motor task successfully was disrupted by the impoverished disposition of the visual outcome feedback. It was concluded that sub-optimally perceptible visual feedback evokes implicit processes.     

Impaired embodiment and intersubjectivity

This paper considers the importance of the body for self-esteem, communication, and emotional expression and experience, through the reflections of those who live with various neurological impairments of movement and sensation; sensory deafferentation, spinal cord injury and Möbius Syndrome (the congenital absence of facial expression). People with severe sensory loss, who require conscious attention and visual feedback for movement, describe the imperative to use the same strategies to reacquire gesture, to appear normal and have embodied expression. Those paralysed after spinal cord injury struggle to have others see them as people rather than as people in wheelchairs and have been active in the disability movement, distinguishing between their medical impairment and the social induced disability others project onto them. Lastly those with Möbius reveal the importance of the face for emotional expression and communication and indeed for emotional experience itself. All these examples explore the crucial role of the body as agent for social and personal expression and self-esteem.     

中国传统儒家责任心理思想探究

与西方个人主义文化背景下建构的责任心理观不同,传统儒家以“天人合契”思想为主旨,强调在关系伦理的价值体系中探求责任心理的现实定位,从而形成了一种以朴素的血缘亲情为基础,以“孝悌”为核心,外推“礼义”以至人类社会与自然的责任心理观。它视“民胞物与”的仁爱精神、“敬德保民”的王道信念、“心忧天下”的忧患意识为核心内容,主张以个人为起点,经由“诚”“敬”的主观修养、“知行合一”的力行实践,并辅以外在刑罚约戒,达致“克己让人”的为他责任人格。责任心理思想是传统儒家学说“上本天道、下理人情”,融贯道德理想于人伦日用的中心环节     

Spider monkey ranging patterns in Mexican subtropical forest: do travel routes reflect planning?

Although it is well known that frugivorous spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi yucatanensis) occupy large home ranges, travelling long distances to reach highly productive resources, little is known of how they move between feeding sites. A 11 month study of spider monkey ranging patterns was carried out at the Otochma’ax Yetel Kooh reserve, Yucatán, Mexico. We followed single individuals for as long as possible each day and recorded the routes travelled with the help of a GPS (Global Positioning System) device; the 11 independently moving individuals of a group were targeted as focal subjects. Travel paths were composed of highly linear segments, each typically ending at a place where some resource was exploited. Linearity of segments did not differ between individuals, and most of the highly linear paths that led to food resources were much longer than the estimate visibility in the woodland canopy. Monkeys do not generally continue in the same ranging direction after exploiting a resource: travel paths are likely to deviate at the site of resource exploitation rather than between such sites. However, during the harshest months of the year consecutive route segments were more likely to retain the same direction of overall movement. Together, these findings suggest that while moving between feeding sites, spider monkeys use spatial memory to guide travel, and even plan more than one resource site in advance. This contribution is part of the special issue “A Socioecological Perspective on Primate Cognition” (Cunningham and Janson 2007).     

Sometimes One is More Than Two: When Collaboration Inhibits Knowledge Construction

In this paper I suggest that to better understand knowledge construction in science, and the role of social processes and collaboration in it, it is useful to distinguish between “elaborative knowledge” and “emergent knowledge.” Elaborative knowledge is constructed for solving clearly defined problems in established theoretical frameworks, and emergent knowledge refers to the knowledge constructed to reach a hierarchically higher and more complex level of scientific understanding. There are also two types of collaboration. On the one hand there is “dialogical collaboration” in which team members contribute to reaching the common clearly defined objective so that a team as a whole becomes qualitatively more complex than its members alone. On the other hand there is “unidirectional collaboration” where the result of collaboration is determined by one person, should be distinguished. There is evidence from multiple perspectives indicating that “elaborative knowledge” can be developed in both kinds of collaboration and sometimes ‘dialogical collaboration” is necessary for knowledge construction. However, for building “emergent knowledge,” it is argued, only individual or “unidirectional collaboration” is productive, and “dialogical collaboration” can hinder or even prevent the construction of this kind of knowledge.

Superstitious,magical, and paranormal beliefs: An integrative model

Lack of conceptual clarity has hampered theory formation and research on superstitious, magical, and paranormal beliefs. This study offers a conceptual framework where these concepts are differentiated from other unfounded beliefs and defined identically as a confusion of core knowledge about physical, psychological, and biological phenomena. When testing this definition with questionnaire items (N = 239), the results showed that superstitious individuals accepted more violations of core ontological distinctions than skeptics did and that ontological confusions discriminated believers from skeptics better than intuitive thinking, analytical thinking, or emotional instability. The findings justify the present conceptualization of superstitious, magical, and paranormal beliefs, and offer new theoretical propositions for the familiar everyday beliefs that are yet scientifically so poorly understood.     

关系-表征复杂性模型的检验

目前有关问题难度的观点多是不全面的,在综合前人研究的基础上提出了关系-表征复杂性模型。在该模型里,区分了问题难度和问题解决难度两个概念,二者的本质分别是关系复杂性和表征复杂性;关系复杂性包括水平复杂性和等级复杂性,表征复杂性相应地包括表征广度和表征深度。以172名小学高年级学生为被试,以长方形面积问题方面的三种测验收集的数据对该模型的内部和外部效度进行了检验,结果表明它能够有效解释问题（解决）难度,区分优、中、差三类学生所能达到的表征复杂性。这说明该模型有理论价值     

A Dissociation between Symbolic Number Knowledge and Analogue Magnitude Information

Semantic understanding of numbers and related concepts can be dissociated from rote knowledge of arithmetic facts. However, distinctions among different kinds of semantic representations related to numbers have not been fully explored. Working with numbers and arithmetic requires representing semantic information that is both analogue (e.g., the approximate magnitude of a number) and symbolic (e.g., what / means). In this article, the authors describe a patient (MC) who exhibits a dissociation between tasks that require symbolic number knowledge (e.g., knowledge of arithmetic symbols including numbers, knowledge of concepts related to numbers such as rounding) and tasks that require an analogue magnitude representation (e.g., comparing size or frequency). MC is impaired on a variety of tasks that require symbolic number knowledge, but her ability to represent and process analogue magnitude information is intact. Her deficit in symbolic number knowledge extends to a variety of concepts related to numbers (e.g., decimal points, Roman numerals, what a quartet is) but not to any other semantic categories that we have tested. These findings suggest that symbolic number knowledge is a functionally independent component of the number processing system, that it is category specific, and that it is anatomically and functionally distinct from magnitude representations.     

Science, Values and the Human Dimensions

The presented paper substantiates the principle that values are an immanent component of science and any rational cognitive activity. This principle belongs to the European cultural tradition starting from the book of Genesis of the Old Testament, the values of certainty in the antique Greek philosophy and Francis Bacon's coincidence of knowledge and power. Values in science form complicated structures inconnection with different types of knowledge including “the knowledge that”, empirical evidence, various types of generalizations or rules, methods, directions, algorithms, “the knowledge how”, “the knowledge why” or other types of knowledge. Since the assignments of different types of values are the products of a decision-making, it is useful to distinguish many types of decision-making, especially semantic decision-making, information decision-making and decision-making with distinctly pragmatic dimensions. The values assignable to scientific activities and their results also include their social recognition, respect and prestige granted to knowledge and bearers of knowledge by society and social groups or communities. Knowledge generation and the rational and justified application of the achieved and acceptable impacts are also connected with decision-making procedures, values and criteria of social acceptance. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

刺激强度与个体差异对心理生理测谎的影响

探讨不同说谎经验的被试在完成不同刺激强度的任务时,其生理反应和说谎分数的变化。结果表明,在测谎过程中,任务刺激强度不仅影响测试结果的有效性,而且与被试的生理反应和说谎分数成正相关;不同类型被试的说谎分数没有显著差异,测谎应对任何人群都普遍有效。