Grammatical aspect and event recognition in children’s online sentence comprehension

This study investigated whether or not the temporal information encoded in aspectual morphemes can be used immediately by young children to facilitate event recognition during online sentence comprehension. We focused on the contrast between two grammatical aspectual morphemes in Mandarin Chinese, the perfective morpheme –le and the (imperfective) durative morpheme –zhe. The perfective morpheme –le is often used to indicate that an event has been completed, whereas the durative morpheme –zhe indicates that an event is still in progress or continuing. We were interested to see whether young children are able to use the temporal reference encoded in the two aspectual morphemes (i.e., completed versus ongoing) as rapidly as adults to facilitate event recognition during online sentence comprehension. Using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm, we tested 34 Mandarin-speaking adults and 99 Mandarin-speaking children (35 three-year-olds, 32 four-year-olds and 32 five-year-olds). On each trial, participants were presented with spoken sentences containing either of the two aspectual morphemes while viewing a visual image containing two pictures, one representing a completed event and one representing an ongoing event. Participants’ eye movements were recorded from the onset of the spoken sentences. The results show that both the adults and the three age groups of children exhibited a facilitatory effect trigged by the aspectual morpheme: hearing the perfective morpheme –le triggered more eye movements to the completed event area, whereas hearing the durative morpheme –zhe triggered more eye movements to the ongoing event area. This effect occurred immediately after the onset of the aspectual morpheme, both for the adults and the three groups of children. This is evidence that young children are able to use the temporal information encoded in aspectual morphemes as rapidly as adults to facilitate event recognition. Children’s eye movement patterns reflect a rapid mapping of grammatical aspect onto the temporal structures of events depicted in the visual scene.     

Age-related changes in trunk neuromuscular activation patterns during a controlled functional transfer task include amplitude and temporal synergies

While healthy aging is associated with physiological changes that can impair control of trunk motion, few studies examine how spinal muscle responses change with increasing age. This study examined whether older (over 65 years) compared to younger (20–45 years) adults had higher overall amplitude and altered temporal recruitment patterns of trunk musculature when performing a functional transfer task. Surface electromyograms from twelve bilateral trunk muscle (24) sites were analyzed using principal component analysis, extracting amplitude and temporal features (PCs) from electromyographic waveforms. Two PCs explained 96% of the waveform variance. Three factor ANOVA models tested main effects (group, muscle and reach) and interactions for PC scores. Significant (p < .0125) group interactions were found for all PC scores. Post hoc analysis revealed that relative to younger adults, older adults recruited higher agonist and antagonistic activity, demonstrated continuous activation levels in specific muscle sites despite changing external moments, and had altered temporal synergies within abdominal and back musculature. In summary both older and younger adults recruit highly organized activation patterns in response to changing external moments. Differences in temporal trunk musculature recruitment patterns suggest that older adults experience different dynamic spinal stiffness and loading compared to younger adults during a functional lifting task.     

Memory for between‐list and within‐list information in amnesic patients with temporal lobe and diencephalic lesions

Patients with medial temporal lobe damage and diencephalic damage were compared on two tests of verbal temporal order memory: between‐list discrimination and within‐list discrimination. Both patient groups were impaired relative to a group of healthy control participants. In addition, despite comparable levels of item recognition, the diencephalic group was impaired relative to the medial temporal lobe group on both within‐list and between‐list discrimination. Temporal order memory for between‐list information showed a significant correlation with a composite measure of recognition memory, and the results are discussed in terms of the patients' reliance on familiarity and distance‐based processes to make temporal order judgments.     

Eavesdropping on character: Assessing everyday moral behaviors

Despite decades of interest in moral character, comparatively little is known about moral behavior in everyday life. This paper reports a novel method for assessing everyday moral behaviors using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)—a digital audio-recorder that intermittently samples snippets of ambient sounds from people’s environments—and examines the stability of these moral behaviors. In three samples (combined N = 186), participants wore an EAR over one or two weekends. Audio files were coded for everyday moral behaviors (e.g., showing sympathy, gratitude) and morally-neutral comparison language behaviors (e.g., use of prepositions, articles). Results indicate that stable individual differences in moral behavior can be systematically observed in daily life, and that their stability is comparable to the stability of neutral language behaviors.     

The power and sensitivity of four core driver workload measures for benchmarking the distraction potential of new driver vehicle interfaces

This study evaluated the power and sensitivity of several core driver workload measures in order to better understand their use as a component of future driver distraction potential evaluation procedures of the in-vehicle human machine interface (HMI). Driving is a task that requires visual, manual and cognitive resources to perform. Secondary tasks, such as mobile phone use and interaction with in-built navigation, which load onto any of these three processing resources increase driver workload and can lead to impaired driving. Because workload and distraction potential are interrelated, a comprehensive method to assess driver workload that produces valid and predictive results is needed to advance the science of distraction potential evaluation. It is also needed to incorporate into New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) testing regimes. Workload measures of cognitive (DRT [Detection Response Task] Reaction Time), visual (DRT Miss Rate), subjective (NASA-TLX [driver workload questionnaire]), and temporal demand (Task Interaction Time) were collected as participants drove one of 40 vehicles while completing a variety of secondary tasks with varying interaction requirements. Of the evaluated measures, variance and power analyses demonstrated that Task Interaction Time is the most sensitive in detecting differences in driver workload between different in-vehicle HMIs, followed by DRT Miss Rate, NASA-TLX and finally DRT Reaction Time. There were relatively weak correlations between each of the four measures. These results suggest that Task Interaction Time, coupled with a reliable visual demand metric such as DRT Miss Rate, eye glance coding, or visual occlusion, more efficiently detect differences in driver workload between different HMIs compared to DRT Reaction Time and the NASA-TLX questionnaire. These results can be used to improve the understanding of the utility of each of these core driver workload measures in assessing driver distraction potential.     

The phenomenology and temporal distributions of autobiographical memories elicited with emotional and neutral cue words

In this study we examined whether the temporal distribution of autobiographical memory changes when different types of cue words are used to elicit the memories, and how the type of cue word affects the phenomenal characteristics of the memories. A total of 76 participants, ranging in age from 21 to 69 years, were presented with 22 cue words (emotional, emotion-provoking, and neutral). They were asked to recall a personal event and to complete the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire (Rubin, Schrauf, & Greenberg, 2003, 2004) for each cue word. Results showed that the phenomenological properties of autobiographical memories which were cued with emotional and emotion-provoking words were rated higher than those of memories which were cued with neutral words, and that the peak in the temporal distributions of the autobiographical memories that were cued with emotional or emotion-provoking words were located later than the peak of the distribution of the memories that were cued with neutral words.     

数字加工任务影响时距知觉的数字效应

本研究采用复制时距和数字加工双任务,探讨数字大小影响时距知觉的机制。实验首先呈现不同时距的圆点,然后让被试按键复制圆点呈现的时距,与此同时,对屏幕上出现的数字进行命名(实验1)、奇偶数判断(实验2)、大小判断(实验3)。实验结果发现对数字进行奇偶数判断时,数字大小对时距知觉没有影响;进行数字命名和大小判断任务时,数字大小对时距知觉都产生了影响,并且时距不同,数字大小对时距知觉的影响也不同。该结果表明时距知觉的数字效应与数字加工任务和时距长短有关,呈现出动态变化的过程。     

Illusions of integration are subjectively impenetrable: Phenomenological experience of Lag 1 percepts during dual-target RSVP

We investigated the relationship between different kinds of target reports in a rapid serial visual presentation task, and their associated perceptual experience. Participants reported the identity of two targets embedded in a stream of stimuli and their associated subjective visibility. In our task, target stimuli could be combined together to form more complex ones, thus allowing participants to report temporally integrated percepts. We found that integrated percepts were associated with high subjective visibility scores, whereas reports in which the order of targets was reversed led to a poorer perceptual experience. We also found a reciprocal relationship between the chance of the second target not being reported correctly and the perceptual experience associated with the first one. Principally, our results indicate that integrated percepts are experienced as a unique, clear perceptual event, whereas order reversals are experienced as confused, similar to cases in which an entirely wrong response was given.     

Three-component commitment and turnover: An examination of temporal aspects

SEM (N = 182) was employed to examine implied temporal aspects of three-component commitment theory as they relate to turnover. Consistent with expectations, affective commitment predicted subsequent turnover in an immediate and relatively short interval of 4 months, but failed to do in a much longer but outlying interval of 5–12 months. Side bet commitment failed to predict turnover in the short, immediate interval, but did so robustly over the longer albeit more distant interval. Normative commitment predicted turnover in neither the near term nor outmonths. Turnover rates for employees with low affective commitment were much higher than those with high affective commitment in the first quarter of a 1-year monitoring period, but subsequent turnover rates were roughly the same for the two groups. In contrast, turnover for employees with low side bet commitment was only slightly higher than the high side bet group in the first quarter, but over the remainder of the year cumulative turnover for the low side bet group exceeded that for the high side bet group by increasingly large margins. These results are consistent with theory suggesting that decrements in affective commitment (1) often occur suddenly and just prior to employees' leaving and (2) reflect general disaffection and an impetus to leave that is already exists at the point of attitude measurement. Results comport with theory describing side bet commitment as (1) an appraisal of leaving costs that, in the aggregate, are unlikely to change suddenly and (2) a relatively stable attitude that serves primarily to prevent turnover should some independent motivation to leave arise.