5～9岁儿童在不同复杂性任务上类比推理的发展特点

采用经典的A:B:C:D范式,设计两类难度不同的图片任务,依据关系-表征复杂性模型从等级复杂性和水平复杂性角度分析任务难度.在此基础上,选取5～9岁115名儿童探讨两类任务上类比推理的特点和发展趋势.表明:(1)儿童类比推理呈现多样化特点,主要有:充分意义上掌握了类比推理、部分完成了类比推理、位置关系类比推理、不能类比推理和不确定情况类比推理,其中部分完成了类比推理是复杂任务上所特有的.(2)简单、复杂两类任务上,随着年龄增长,5-9岁儿童充分意义上掌握类比推理的人次比例不断上升,不能类比推理的人次比例不断下降.此外,复杂任务上,随年龄增长,部分完成类比任务的人次比例降低.结果表明,在简单任务上,前运算阶段儿童已具备了类比推理能力;但在复杂任务上,儿童到了具体运算阶段才具备类比推理能力.     

不同科学创造力个体干扰抑制机制的比较*

选取《科学创造力量表》筛选出高、低科学创造力个体各20名,通过完成经典Stroop色字干扰抑制任务,探讨高、低科学创造力的个体抑制机制的差异。结果发现:在Stroop色字任务上,无论是高科学创造力组还是低科学创造力组,都出现了Stroop干扰效应,但低科学创造力组的Stroop效应更明显;高科学创造力组在字色不一致条件下的错误率显著低于低科学创造力组,但是两组被试在Stroop任务反应时上差异不显著。本研究结果提示高科学创造力个体的认知抑制能力强于低科学创造力个体。     

成败反馈对大学生核心自我评价的影响：任务重要性、外向性的调节作用

该研究以247名大学生为被试,采用2（反馈类型：成功、失败）×2（任务重要性：重要任务、不重要任务）×2（外向性：内向、外向）组间设计探讨成败反馈对大学生核心自我评价的影响,以及任务重要性和外向性在其中的调节作用。结果表明：（1）反馈类型、任务重要性和外向性对核心自我评价变化的主效应及三者的交互作用效应均显著。（2）成败反馈与任务重要性对核心自我评价变化存在显著的交互作用;简单效应分析表明,在失败反馈条件下,执行重要任务被试核心自我评价的下降幅度显著大于执行不重要任务被试核心自我评价的下降幅度。（3）成败反馈与外向性对核心自我评价变化存在显著的交互作用;简单效应分析显示,在失败反馈条件下,外向被试核心自我评价的下降幅度显著小于内向被试。（4）在失败反馈条件下,任务重要性和外向性对核心自我评价的变化存在交互作用。     

模糊决策的认知神经机制

模糊决策是特殊、复杂的风险决策, 还是一种独立的决策类型, 是当前认知神经科学争论的热点问题。一系列的fMRI研究分别得出了不同结论, 但大多数证据支持模糊决策和风险决策之间存在分离, 模糊决策有其独特的决策机制; 模糊决策的认知神经机制也是一个亟待解决的问题。因此本研究拟应用事件相关电位技术、生物反馈技术和基因技术, 采用IGT和GDT任务范式, 通过网络成瘾人群和正常人群的对比研究, 去探索模糊决策和风险决策之间的分离; 应用事件相关电位技术和磁共振技术, 采用IGT范式和选瓶任务范式, 研究模糊决策的认知神经机制; 并从临床角度进一步验证上述结果。该项目的开展, 有助于拓广模糊决策的研究领域和视野, 对理解人类在模糊情境下的决策机制以及模糊决策和风险决策之间的关系, 具有重要的理论意义; 对临床上成瘾人群、脑损伤患者的认知诊断和治疗以及现实中企业和个人的决策, 具有重要的参考价值。     

The role of strategies in deciding advantageously in ambiguous and risky situations

In decision situations of everyday life, the potential positive or negative consequences of a decision are often specified and the associated probabilities are known or they are principally calculable ("decisions under risk"). On the basis of correlations reported in patient studies, it has been recently proposed that decisions under risk involve strategic components, i.e. calculation of the risk, as well as emotional processes, i.e. processing feedback from previous decisions. However, the potential impact of calculative strategies on decision-making under risk has not been investigated systematically, so far. In the current study, we examined 42 healthy subjects (21 females) with the Game of Dice Task measuring decisions under risk, and a questionnaire assessing strategy application in items comparable to the choices in the Game of Dice Task. In addition, the subjects performed the Iowa Gambling Task, examining decision-making under ambiguity, and a neuropsychological test battery focusing on executive functions. Results indicate that deciding advantageously in a decision-making task with explicit and stable rules is linked to applying calculative strategies. In contrast, individuals who decide intuitively prefer risky or disadvantageous choices in the Game of Dice Task. Applying calculative strategies was correlated with executive functions but not with performance on the Iowa Gambling Task. The results support the view that calculative processes and strategies may improve decision-making under explicit risk conditions.     

Stimulus complexity and prospective timing: clues for a parallel process model of time perception

Whereas many studies have considered the role of attention in prospective timing, fewer have established relations between movement complexity and prospective timing. The present study aims at assessing to what extent motion complexity interferes with prospective timing and at delineating a neuropsychophysical plausible model. We have thus designed a visual paradigm presenting stimuli in sequential pairs (reference comparison interval). Stimuli are motionless or moving according to different complexities, and stimulus complexities are intermixed within each pair. To prevent a possible attention-sharing effect, no concurrent task was required. Our study suggests that movement complexity is a key component of duration perception, and that the relative judgement of durations depends on spatio-temporal features of stimuli. In particular, it shows that movement complexity can bias subjects’ perception and performance, and that subjects detect that comparison intervals are longer than reference before their end. In the discussion, we advocate that the classical internal clock model cannot easily account for our results. Consequently, we propose a model for time perception, based on a parallel processing between comparison interval perception and the reconstruction of the reference duration.     

Expectation-based syntactic comprehension

This paper investigates the role of resource allocation as a source of processing difficulty in human sentence comprehension. The paper proposes a simple information-theoretic characterization of processing difficulty as the work incurred by resource reallocation during parallel, incremental, probabilistic disambiguation in sentence comprehension, and demonstrates its equivalence to the theory of Hale [Hale, J. (2001). A probabilistic Earley parser as a psycholinguistic model. In Proceedings of NAACL (Vol. 2, pp. 159-166)], in which the difficulty of a word is proportional to its surprisal (its negative log-probability) in the context within which it appears. This proposal subsumes and clarifies findings that high-constraint contexts can facilitate lexical processing, and connects these findings to well-known models of parallel constraint-based comprehension. In addition, the theory leads to a number of specific predictions about the role of expectation in syntactic comprehension, including the reversal of locality-based difficulty patterns in syntactically constrained contexts, and conditions under which increased ambiguity facilitates processing. The paper examines a range of established results bearing on these predictions, and shows that they are largely consistent with the surprisal theory.     

Indispensability and group identification as sources of task motivation

Traditional Instrumentality × Value (I × V) models have attributed gains in performance groups to various conditions affecting the instrumentality of group members’ effort for a variety of valued outcomes. Social identity models have challenged this interpretation, suggesting that the instrumentality of effort may be irrelevant when group identification is high. A laboratory study is reported in which both indispensability and group identification are manipulated, and participants’ effort on a physical persistence task is assessed. Contrary to the social identity predictions but consistent with I × V predictions, the indispensability of effort had a positive effect on participants’ effort. Group identification had no direct or moderating effects on effort.     

LÉVY HIERARCHY IN WEAK SET THEORIES

We investigate the interactions of formula complexity in weak set theories with the axioms available there. In particular, we show that swapping bounded and unbounded quantification preserves formula complexity in presence of the axiom of foundation weakened to an arbitrary set base, while it does not if the axiom of foundation is further weakened to a proper class base. More attention is being paid to the necessary axioms employed in the positive results, than to the combinatorial strength of the positive results themselves.     

From universal laws of cognition to specific cognitive models

The remarkable successes of the physical sciences have been built on highly general quantitative laws, which serve as the basis for understanding an enormous variety of specific physical systems. How far is it possible to construct universal principles in the cognitive sciences, in terms of which specific aspects of perception, memory, or decision making might be modelled? Following Shepard (e.g., 1987 ), it is argued that some universal principles may be attainable in cognitive science. Here, 2 examples are proposed: the simplicity principle (which states that the cognitive system prefers patterns that provide simpler explanations of available data); and the scale‐invariance principle, which states that many cognitive phenomena are independent of the scale of relevant underlying physical variables, such as time, space, luminance, or sound pressure. This article illustrates how principles may be combined to explain specific cognitive processes by using these principles to derive SIMPLE, a formal model of memory for serial order ( Brown, Neath, & Chater, 2007 ), and briefly mentions some extensions to models of identification and categorization. This article also considers the scope and limitations of universal laws in cognitive science.