亲缘利他的不对称性：进化视角的分析

内含适应性理论是进化生物学和进化心理学中最重要的理论之一。该理论假设, 个体的亲属是其适应性的载体, 但亲属们的价值有所不同。大量研究发现, 亲属的利他行为表现出不对称性, 即遗传相关系数相同的亲属表现出不同的利他倾向。如祖父母对孙辈的投资中, 外祖母往往投入最多, 外祖父和祖母次之, 祖父投入最少。研究者用内含适应性理论来解释这种亲缘利他差异, 进而提出了“父亲身份不确定性”等具体的进化假设。未来研究中, 国内研究者应在正确理解内含适应性理论的基础上, 更多关注亲缘利他的不对称性, 采用多种数据采集方法和统一的评定指标。     

Altruism predicts mating success in humans

In order for non‐kin altruism to evolve, altruists must receive fitness benefits for their actions that outweigh the costs. Several researchers have suggested that altruism is a costly signal of desirable qualities, such that it could have evolved by sexual selection. In two studies, we show that altruism is broadly linked with mating success. In Study 1, participants who scored higher on a self‐report altruism measure reported they were more desirable to the opposite sex, as well as reported having more sex partners, more casual sex partners, and having sex more often within relationships. Sex moderated some of these relationships, such that altruism mattered more for men's number of lifetime and casual sex partners. In Study 2, participants who were willing to donate potential monetary winnings (in a modified dictator dilemma) reported having more lifetime sex partners, more casual sex partners, and more sex partners over the past year. Men who were willing to donate also reported having more lifetime dating partners. Furthermore, these patterns persisted, even when controlling for narcissism, Big Five personality traits, and socially desirable responding. These results suggest that altruists have higher mating success than non‐altruists and support the hypothesis that altruism is a sexually selected costly signal of difficult‐to‐observe qualities.     

The Mid-Career Award

Working memory is an extremely influential concept within experimental psychology, with, at the time of writing, over 90 papers with this term in their title published in this journal alone since 2000. One reason for this interest is that measures of working memory tend to be strong correlates of important indices of real-world function. In addition, at first sight working memory appears to be a relatively simple concept to understand. However, despite this apparent simplicity, explaining working memory performance is not straightforward. In this paper I address this challenge, with a particular focus on the development of working memory performance in children; both children developing typically and those experiencing atypical development. I specifically highlight the multiple constraints on working memory performance, and how these constraints inter-relate. I then consider the broader theoretical implications of each of these constraints for current accounts of working memory and its development.     

Short-term memory for temporal intervals: Contrasting explanations of the choose-short effect in pigeons

To better understand short-term memory for temporal intervals, we re-examined the choose-short effect. In Experiment 1, to contrast the predictions of two models of this effect, the subjective shortening and the coding models, pigeons were exposed to a delayed matching-to-sample task with three sample durations (2, 6 and 18 s) and retention intervals ranging from 0 to 20 s. Consistent with the coding model, the results suggested a sudden forgetting of memories for duration. In Experiment 2, to test the confusion hypothesis, the characteristics of the ITI and the retention interval differed. Contrary to the confusion hypothesis, a choose-short effect was obtained. In both experiments, a test with only two of the three comparison keys was performed. The results suggest three effects that may be controlling the birds’ responses: stimulus generalization when no retention interval is present; an increase in random responding at longer retention intervals; and, similarly, an increase in preference for the “short-sample” key at longer retention intervals.     

Can fluid intelligence be reduced to ‘simple’ short-term storage?

Much is written regarding the associations between human intelligence and cognition. However, it is unusual to find comprehensive studies. Here twenty four measures tapping eight cognitive abilities and skills are considered for assessing a sample of one hundred and eighty five young adults. The simultaneous relationships among fluid, crystallized, and spatial intelligence, along with short-term memory, working memory capacity, executive updating, attention, and processing speed are analyzed using a latent-variable approach. The key findings show that (a) short-term storage, working memory, and updating are hardly distinguishable, and (b) fluid intelligence is near-perfectly correlated with these three cognitive functions. It is concluded that this nuclear intelligence component can be largely identified with basic and general short-term storage processes, namely, encoding, maintenance, and retrieval.     

Short-term sentence recall: evidence for the contribution of acoustic-sensory information

To demonstrate that short-term sentence recall is based on conceptual and lexico-semantic information, Potter and Lombardi [J. Memory Lang. 29 (1990) 633] conducted a series of experiments using the intrusion paradigm, which combines short-term sentence recall and lexical priming. In the present paper, we employed the intrusion paradigm to demonstrate that acoustic-sensory information is involved in sentence regeneration as well. For this purpose, we presented sentences visually for silent reading (conceptual and phonological information) and reading aloud (conceptual, phonological, and--in addition--acoustic-sensory information). We demonstrated that less intrusions appeared in the reading aloud condition. This effect supports the assumption that, if available, acoustic-sensory information contributes to the regeneration process.     

性别比与童年经济状况对女性长短期择偶偏好的影响：“暖男”需求变化的进化分析

基于进化领域的生命史理论,采用两种实验启动的途径探讨性别比、童年经济状况和女性长短期择偶偏好间的关系。结果表明：女性在长期择偶中更为重视男性的“好爸爸”和“好资源”,在短期择偶中更为重视男性的“好基因”;性别比在女性长期择偶的“好爸爸”偏好上具有显著主效应,在“女多男少”情境下女性对“好爸爸”的偏好水平会较“男多女少”时明显提高;性别比和童年经济状况在女性长期择偶“好爸爸”偏好上的交互效应显著：童年贫穷女性在“女多”情境下会明显提高对长期择偶“好爸爸”的偏好水平,童年富裕女性在性别失衡情境下对长期“好爸爸”的偏好保持相对稳定。     

君子不夺人所好？择偶动机启动下的男性择偶复制

考察择偶动机启动下男女的择偶复制发生情况,及目标面孔吸引力对男性择偶复制的调节作用。结果：(1)女性易发生择偶复制;(2)男性的择偶复制会受择偶动机启动的影响,但这种影响仅限于目标面孔吸引力处于中、低水平时。结论：男性在特定情景中可发生择偶复制,这是更为复杂的、经多种信息评估的结果。     

Amorçage syntaxique de structures syntaxiques complexes chez des enfants de maternelle en français oral

Several studies have revealed syntactic priming effects in 3- and 4-year-old children. However, the eventual role of syntactic priming in the learning of complex syntactic structures has rarely been investigated. The current paper investigated in young children the effect of being exposed to complex syntaxic structures employed by adults. In this perspective, we used a syntactic priming paradigm with kindergarten children. It aimed at studying whether children would in turn spontaneously produce more complex syntactic structures, compared to another condition with no prior exposure to such complex sentences. We determined the cognitive and linguistic factors susceptible to explain inter-individual differences in syntactic priming. The finding suggests that syntactic priming procedure can to be used to train young children to produce complex syntactic structures. Lexical knowledge and short-term phonological memory could explain inter-individual differences in the use of these complex syntactic structures. These results are discussed at the theoretical level, but also in terms of possible educational implications.     

Differential short-term memorisation for vocal and instrumental rhythms

This study explores differential processing of vocal and instrumental rhythms in short-term memory with three decision (same/different judgments) and one reproduction experiment. In the first experiment, memory performance declined for delayed versus immediate recall, with accuracy for the two rhythms being affected differently: Musicians performed better than non-musicians on clapstick but not on vocal rhythms, and musicians were better on vocal rhythms in the same than in the different condition. Results for the second experiment showed that concurrent sub-vocal articulation and finger-tapping differentially affected the two rhythms and same/different decisions, but produced no evidence for articulatory loop involvement in delayed decision tasks. In a third experiment, which tested rhythm reproduction, concurrent sub-vocal articulation decreased memory performance, with a stronger deleterious effect on the reproduction of vocal than of clapstick rhythms. This suggests that the articulatory loop may only be involved in delayed reproduction not in decision tasks. The fourth experiment tested whether differences between filled and empty rhythms (continuous vs. discontinuous sounds) can explain the different memorisation of vocal and clapstick rhythms. Though significant differences were found for empty and filled instrumental rhythms, the differences between vocal and clapstick can only be explained by considering additional voice specific features.