Every Finitely Reducible Logic has the Finite Model Property with Respect to the Class of ♦-Formulae

In this paper a unified framework for dealing with a broad family of propositional multimodal logics is developed. The key tools for presentation of the logics are the notions of closure relation operation and monotonous relation operation. The two classes of logics: FiRe-logics (finitely reducible logics) and LaFiRe-logics (FiRe-logics with local agreement of accessibility relations) are introduced within the proposed framework. Further classes of logics can be handled indirectly by means of suitable translations. It is shown that the logics from these classes have the finite model property with respect to the class of -formulae, i.e. each -formula has a -model iff it has a finite -model. Roughly speaking, a -formula is logically equivalent to a formula in negative normal form without occurrences of modal operators with necessity force. In the proof we introduce a substantial modification of Claudio Cerrato's filtration technique that has been originally designed for graded modal logics. The main core of the proof consists in building adequate restrictions of models while preserving the semantics of the operators used to build terms indexing the modal operators.     

The Ability of Face Viewpoint Transformation Remains Immature at Age of 12: Evidence from Recognition of Faces with Different Familiarity in Children

Children are immature in face recognition, particularly in face configural decoding. This study examines the developmental difference of face recognition in another mechanism: viewpoint transformation processing. Adults and sixth‐grade children were instructed to match a series of one‐tone black face silhouettes to their corresponding front‐view faces. This task involves sophisticated calculation in pictorial information, precise viewpoint transformation, and most probably a 3‐D face representation. The results showed that although the performances were well above chance level in the recognition of familiar faces, for children, they were at chance level in the recognition of unfamiliar faces. The results indicate that children, at least to the age of about 12 years, are still immature in the processing of face viewpoint transformation compared to adults.     

Be aware of the rifle but do not forget the stench: differential effects of fear and disgust on lexical processing and memory

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of discrete emotions in lexical processing and memory, focusing on disgust and fear. We compared neutral words to disgust-related words and fear-related words in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT), and in Experiment 3 an affective categorisation task. These tasks were followed by an unexpected memory task. The results of the LDT experiments showed slower reaction times for both types of negative words with respect to neutral words, plus a higher percentage of errors, this being more consistent for fear-related words (Experiments 1 and 2) than for disgust-related words (Experiment 2). Furthermore, only disgusting words exhibited a higher recall accuracy than neutral words in the memory task. Moreover, the advantage in memory for disgusting words disappeared when participants carried out an affective categorisation task during encoding (Experiment 3), suggesting that the superiority in memory for disgusting words observed in Experiments 1 and 2 could be due to greater elaborative processing. Taken together, these findings point to the relevance of discrete emotions in explaining the effects of the emotional content on lexical processing and memory.     

The Bursts and Lulls of Multimodal Interaction: Temporal Distributions of Behavior Reveal Differences Between Verbal and Non‐Verbal Communication

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, 2012 ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of specific communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog.     

Human–Computer Interaction in Face Matching

Automatic facial recognition is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in security contexts such as passport control. Currently, Automated Border Crossing (ABC) systems in the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) require supervision from a human operator who validates correct identity judgments and overrules incorrect decisions. As the accuracy of this human–computer interaction remains unknown, this research investigated how human validation is impacted by a priori face‐matching decisions such as those made by automated face recognition software. Observers matched pairs of faces that were already labeled onscreen as depicting the same identity or two different identities. The majority of these labels provided information that was consistent with the stimuli presented, but some were also inconsistent or provided “unresolved” information. Across three experiments, accuracy consistently deteriorated on trials that were inconsistently labeled, indicating that observers’ face‐matching decisions are biased by external information such as that provided by ABCs.     

语义信息在大小数量表征中的作用

本研究采用注意瞬脱实验范式探讨了语义信息在数量表征中的作用。结果发现：（1）在双任务方式中,字母辨认任务对大数（5及以上）的辨认产生干扰,但不影响小数（4及以下）的辨认绩效;（2）数量表征在视野上出现差异性,表现为在小数辨认时,左侧视野呈现绩效高于右侧;大数辨认正好相反,即右侧视野呈现高于左侧。结果表明,语义信息在表征小数和大数中的作用不同：小数的表征无需语言参与;而大数则更多地涉及语义信息,可能需语音回路中无声复述机制的参与。     

高校多媒体教学环境下的教-学-学习绩效关系的建模与分析

本文是在先前建立的多媒体教学环境下教师授课、学生学习和学习绩效的3个因素结构模型基础上,采用路径建模技术,建立了多媒体教学环境下教一学一学习绩效关系模型。基于对该路径模型的分析,获得如下结论：（1）多媒体教学中影响因素的主导作用是沿着学习者认知加工过程中的信息流而展开的;（2）对于学生在课堂中的信息加工,影响最大的因素是教师授课时对学生的能力培养,影响为其次的因素是教师的授课技术;（3）课件的良好界面信息设计对学生的知识掌握起重要作用;（4）诸如授课速度过快、信息量过大等多媒体教学中的易现问题会增加学生的外在认知负荷而降低学习效果;（5）在多媒体教学中,教师与学生都要注意学生学习风格来更好地进行教学或学习。     

Speed of emotional information processing and emotional intelligence

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between the speed of emotional information processing and emotional intelligence (EI). To evaluate individual differences in the speed of emotional information processing, a recognition memory task consisted of two subtests similar in design but differing in the emotionality of the stimuli. The first subtest required judgment about whether an emotional facial expression in the test face was identical to one of the four emotional expressions of the same individual previously presented. The second subtest required deciding whether the test face with a neutral emotional expression was identical to one of the four neutral faces of different individuals previously presented. Mean response latencies were calculated for “Yes” and “No” responses. All latencies were correlated with other measures of processing speed such as discrimination time and time of figure recognition. However, the emotional expression recognition subtest was hypothesized to require the processing of emotional information in addition to that of facial identity. Latencies in this subtest were longer than those in the face recognition subtest. To obtain a measure of the additional processing that was called for by the emotionality of the stimuli, a subtraction method and regression analysis were employed. In both cases, measures calculated for “No” responses were related to ability EI, as assessed via a self‐report questionnaire. According to structural equation modeling, there was a moderately negative association between latent EI and the latency of “No” responses in the subtest with emotional stimuli. These relationships were not observed for “Yes” responses in the same subtest or for responses in the subtest with neutral face stimuli. Although the differences between “Yes” and “No” responses in their associations with EI require further investigation, the results suggest that, in general, individuals with higher EI are also more efficient in the processing of emotional information.     

The Effect of Social and Situational Factors on the Intended Response to Aggression Among Adolescents

ABSTRACT

In this study, I explored intended response to aggression among adolescents. I drew hypotheses from social identity theory, cost/benefit considerations, and social information processing model. I asked 217 Jewish and Muslim male adolescents in this study to assess their intended use of aggression in 12 hypothetical conflict situations (vignettes), in which I manipulated the opponent's religion, gender, acquaintance, and severity of aggression. I mainly found that male adolescents respond to aggression by same-religion opponents more moderately than to cross-religion aggression; their response is more moderate to cross-gender aggression than to same-gender aggression; response is more moderate to the aggression of familiar opponents than to that of unfamiliar ones; and response is less severe toward moderate than toward severe aggression.     

The "Perceptual Wedge Hypothesis" as the basis for bilingual babies' phonetic processing advantage: new insights from fNIRS brain imaging

In a neuroimaging study focusing on young bilinguals, we explored the brains of bilingual and monolingual babies across two age groups (younger 4-6 months, older 10-12 months), using fNIRS in a new event-related design, as babies processed linguistic phonetic (Native English, Non-Native Hindi) and nonlinguistic Tone stimuli. We found that phonetic processing in bilingual and monolingual babies is accomplished with the same language-specific brain areas classically observed in adults, including the left superior temporal gyrus (associated with phonetic processing) and the left inferior frontal cortex (associated with the search and retrieval of information about meanings, and syntactic and phonological patterning), with intriguing developmental timing differences: left superior temporal gyrus activation was observed early and remained stably active over time, while left inferior frontal cortex showed greater increase in neural activation in older babies notably at the precise age when babies’ enter the universal first-word milestone, thus revealing a first-time focalbrain correlate that may mediate a universal behavioral milestone in early human language acquisition. A difference was observed in the older bilingual babies’ resilient neural and behavioral sensitivity to Non-Native phonetic contrasts at a time when monolingual babies can no longer make such discriminations. We advance the “Perceptual Wedge Hypothesis” as one possible explanation for how exposure to greater than one language may alter neural and language processing in ways that we suggest are advantageous to language users. The brains of bilinguals and multilinguals may provide the most powerful window into the full neural “extent and variability” that our human species’ language processing brain areas could potentially achieve.