Segmenting dynamic human action via statistical structure

Human social, cognitive, and linguistic functioning depends on skills for rapidly processing action. Identifying distinct acts within the dynamic motion flow is one basic component of action processing; for example, skill at segmenting action is foundational to action categorization, verb learning, and comprehension of novel action sequences. Yet little is currently known about mechanisms that may subserve action segmentation. The present research documents that adults can register statistical regularities providing clues to action segmentation. This finding provides new evidence that structural knowledge gained by mechanisms such as statistical learning can play a role in action segmentation, and highlights a striking parallel between processing of action and processing in other domains, such as language.     

Fine-grained sensitivity to statistical information in adult word learning

A language learner trying to acquire a new word must often sift through many potential relations between particular words and their possible meanings. In principle, statistical information about the distribution of those mappings could serve as one important source of data, but little is known about whether learners can in fact track multiple word-referent mappings, and, if they do, the precision with which they can represent those statistics. To test this, two experiments contrasted a pair of possibilities: that learners encode the fine-grained statistics of mappings in the input - both high- and low-frequency mappings - or, alternatively, that only high frequency mappings are represented. Participants were briefly trained on novel word-novel object pairs combined with varying frequencies: some objects were paired with one word, other objects with multiple words with differing frequencies (ranging from 10% to 80%). Results showed that participants were exquisitely sensitive to very small statistical differences in mappings. The second experiment showed that word learners' representation of low frequency mappings is modulated as a function of the variability in the environment. Implications for Mutual Exclusivity and Bayesian accounts of word learning are discussed.     

The value of RCT evidence depends on the quality of statistical analysis

The authors examined statistical practices in 193 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of psychological therapies published in prominent psychology and psychiatry journals during 1999-2003. Statistical significance tests were used in 99% of RCTs, 84% discussed clinical significance, but only 46% considered-even minimally-statistical power, 31% interpreted effect size and only 2% interpreted confidence intervals. In a second study, 42 respondents to an email survey of the authors of RCTs analyzed in the first study indicated they consider it very important to know the magnitude and clinical importance of the effect, in addition to whether a treatment effect exists. The present authors conclude that published RCTs focus on statistical significance tests ("Is there an effect or difference?"), and neglect other important questions: "How large is the effect?" and "Is the effect clinically important?" They advocate improved statistical reporting of RCTs especially by reporting and interpreting clinical significance, effect sizes and confidence intervals.     

Learning non-local dependencies

This paper addresses the nature of the temporary storage buffer used in implicit or statistical learning. Kuhn and Dienes [Kuhn, G., and Dienes, Z. (2005). Implicit learning of nonlocal musical rules: implicitly learning more than chunks. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 31(6) 1417-1432] showed that people could implicitly learn a musical rule that was solely based on non-local dependencies. These results seriously challenge models of implicit learning that assume knowledge merely takes the form of linking adjacent elements (chunking). We compare two models that use a buffer to allow learning of long distance dependencies, the Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) and the memory buffer model. We argue that these models - as models of the mind - should not be evaluated simply by fitting them to human data but by determining the characteristic behaviour of each model. Simulations showed for the first time that the SRN could rapidly learn non-local dependencies. However, the characteristic performance of the memory buffer model rather than SRN more closely matched how people came to like different musical structures. We conclude that the SRN is more powerful than previous demonstrations have shown, but it's flexible learned buffer does not explain people's implicit learning (at least, the affective learning of musical structures) as well as fixed memory buffer models do.     

Labels can override perceptual categories in early infancy

An extensive body of research claims that labels facilitate categorisation, highlight the commonalities between objects and act as invitations to form categories for young infants before their first birthday. While this may indeed be a reasonable claim, we argue that it is not justified by the experiments described in the research. We report on a series of experiments that demonstrate that labels can play a causal role in category formation during infancy. Ten-month-old infants were taught to group computer-displayed, novel cartoon drawings into two categories under tightly controlled experimental conditions. Infants were given the opportunity to learn the two categories under four conditions: Without any labels, with two labels that correlated with category membership, with two labels assigned randomly to objects, and with one label assigned to all objects. Category formation was assessed identically in all conditions using a novelty preference procedure conducted in the absence of any labels. The labelling condition had a decisive impact on the way infants formed categories: When two labels correlated with the visual category information, infants learned two categories, just as if there had been no labels presented. However, uncorrelated labels completely disrupted the formation of any categories. Finally, consistent use of a single label across objects led infants to learn one broad category that included all the objects. These findings demonstrate that even before infants start to produce their first words, the labels they hear can override the manner in which they categorise objects.     

Interrogatory Theology

Abstract : Theological engagement with young people—and indeed with people of all ages—benefits when it attends to the practice of asking questions. The understanding of theological statements requires an appreciation of the questions behind them. In addition, questions are not merely instruments for getting to the answers. Good questions themselves generate insight. Questioning works best in an atmosphere of trust and freedom. This article develops these points by narrating experiences of theological engagement with young people.     

Lexical categories at the edge of the word

Language acquisition may be one of the most difficult tasks that children face during development. They have to segment words from fluent speech, figure out the meanings of these words, and discover the syntactic constraints for joining them together into meaningful sentences. Over the past couple of decades, computational modeling has emerged as a new paradigm for gaining insights into the mechanisms by which children may accomplish these feats. Unfortunately, many of these models assume a computational complexity and linguistic knowledge likely to be beyond the abilities of developing young children. This article shows that, using simple statistical procedures, significant correlations exist between the beginnings and endings of a word and its lexical category in English, Dutch, French, and Japanese. Therefore, phonetic information can contribute to individuating higher level structural properties of these languages. This article also presents a simple 2-layer connectionist model that, once trained with an initial small sample of words labeled for lexical category, can infer the lexical category of a large proportion of novel words using only word-edge phonological information, namely the first and last phoneme of a word. The results suggest that simple procedures combined with phonetic information perceptually available to children provide solid scaffolding for emerging lexical categories in language development.     

基于DINA模型的Q矩阵修正方法

本研究开发了一种基于DINA模型的认知诊断测验Q矩阵修正方法—— g 法, 为侦查并修正Q矩阵中的错误提供方法学支持, 从而为保证Q矩阵的合理性提供基础, 并为进一步提高认知诊断的准确率服务。本文采用Monte Carlo模拟及与国外同类研究相比较的方法进行, 研究发现：(1)不论在何种作答失误概率(5%, 10%, 15%)情况下, 当s,g临界值为0.2, 0.25或0.3时, 本研究提出的g 法均能有效地修正错误Q矩阵; 同时, 当Q矩阵无错误时, g 法对该Q矩阵未做任何修改。表明g 法对Q矩阵是否存在错误具有较强的识别能力及修正能力。(2)与国外同类研究相比, 本研究提出的g 法具有较理想的修正率, 且与de la Torre (2008)提出d法的修正效果相当。但相比较而言, g 法较d 法更为简单。(3) g 法不仅能有效地修正错误的Q矩阵, 而且还可以进一步提高认知诊断的正确率, 尤其是对模式判准率(PMR), 诊断正确率的最高增幅高达40%, 大大改善了认知诊断的准确率。     

情绪调节策略对日常生活事件与情绪体验关系影响的多层分析

运用经验抽样法对154名大学生的日常情绪体验、生活事件进行为期14天的追踪调查,通过多层线性模型（HLM）探讨日常生活事件与情绪体验的关系及情绪调节策略对二者关系的影响。结果表明：大学生积极情绪体验多于消极情绪体验。在个体内和个体间水平,消极事件都对积极情绪有显著的负向预测作用,对消极情绪有显著的正向预测作用;积极事件对积极情绪有显著的正向预测作用。积极事件对消极情绪的负向预测作用只在个体间水平显著。表达抑制这种情绪调节策略能够增强消极生活事件与消极情绪体验的关系。     

Socio-culturally induced distress among migrant labourers in India: a qualitative inquiry

The present study has explored the experiences of distress among Indian migrant labourers with the help of qualitative method. The data were collected using a semi-structured interview schedule where 40 unskilled migrant labourers, 20 males and 20 females participated in the study. The obtained data were analysed using constructivist grounded theory. Findings have given an insight of the dialects (idioms of distress) used by migrants to express their distress. Further, findings divulged that the essence of the migrant labourers’ distress is largely rooted in their culturally defined roles, prevailing socio-cultural norms, apathy of legal and structural system to address their needs and to protect their rights in the host culture (place of migration). The findings draw our attention to design health intervention programmes for migrant and immigrant communities, in India as well as across the world, that amalgamate the elements of collectivistic culture in order to ensure the complete social, psychological, and physical wellbeing of above said communities.