How orthographic transparency affects morphological processing in young readers with and without reading disability

This study investigates how orthographic modifications to the stems of complex words affect morphological processing in proficient young Spanish readers and children with reading deficits. In a definition task all children, irrespective of their reading skill, were worse at defining derived words that had an orthographic alteration of the base stem than words with no orthographic alteration. In a go/no‐go lexical decision task, an interaction between base frequency and orthographic alteration was found: base frequency affected derived words with no orthographic alteration more than words with alterations, irrespective of reading skill. Overall, results show that all children benefit from a high frequency base, skilled children outperform children with reading deficits and morphological processing is affected by orthographic alterations similarly in proficient and impaired readers.     

结构对称性汉字视觉识别特点的实验研究

用命名作业通过二个实验考察了结构对称性汉字的视觉识别特点,结果表明,汉字识别具有显著的结构对称性效应,识别结构对称性汉字的加工明显快于非对称性汉字,对称性效应与字频效应,笔画效应具有显著的交互作用,进一步的简单效应的分析表明,这种结构对称性效应在低频字中起作用,而在高频字中不起显著作用;在多笔画字中起作用,而在少毛画字中不起显著作用,这表明,对称性汉字中的具有冗余信息的格式塔部件促进地识别汉字的加     

汉字识别中形音义激活时间进程的研究（Ⅱ）

两个实验分别采用基于语义的和基于语音的启动范畴判断作业,在不同的SOA条件下,考察低频汉字形、音、义信息激活的相对时间进程。实验结果表明,低频汉字字形的激活在先,字音和字义的激活同时进行。低频汉字形、音、义激活的这种顺序不受基于语义还是基于语音的实验任务的影响,但实验任务影响了低频汉字字音、字义激活出现时间的早晚。     

预期性、词频和笔画数对中文词汇识别影响的眼动研究

本研究采用眼动追踪技术,通过对预期性和词频、预期性和笔画数在词汇识别过程中是否存在交互作用进行考察,以探讨预期性效应对词汇识别产生影响的加工阶段。结果显示,预期性和词频、预期性和笔画数之间均不存在交互作用。由此表明,预期性、词频和笔画数均独立地对中文文本阅读中的词汇识别产生显著的影响,该结果符合E-Z读者模型的研究假设。     

两种呈现速度下整字及声旁命名

问题与方法：探讨在快、慢速两种速度呈现条件下,声旁的组字频率和使用频率在整字和部件识别中的作用。结果表明,命名整字时在两种呈现条件下声旁的两类频率都表现在易化作用;命名声旁则依赖于加工时间：快速呈现刺激时声旁组字频率有抑制作用,慢速呈现刺激时声旁使用频率有易化作用。声旁命名任务中,速示条件下其组字频率作用突出,非束示条件下其使用频率更突出。呈现速度在声旁命名时与声旁两类频率有交互作用,但在数字命名时没有。     

高、低频汉字形音义激活的时间进程

采用基于字形的启动范畴判断任务,通过变化SOA和不同的启动类型,考察高、低频汉字形音义激活的相对时间进程。结果表明,高频汉字形音义激活的时间顺序为字形—字义—字音;低频汉字字形的激活在先,字音、字义的激活时间未能分开。这说明汉字的书面使用频率是影响汉字形、音、义激活时间进程的重要因素。本研究进一步支持了汉字形—音、形—义连接强度受汉字使用频率影响的观点。     

汉字加工的基本单元:来自笔画数效应和部件数效应的证据

用命名作业和真假字判断作业考察了笔画数和部件数对汉字加工的影响,发现,当部件数保持恒定时,笔画数少的汉字较笔画数多的汉字加工快,这种笔画数效应和字频之间不存在交互作用;当笔画数被控制时,部件数效应也存在,但和字频有交互作用,表现在低频少部件汉字的加工要快于低频多部件汉字的加工,而高频汉字中的部件数效应不显著。实验还发现独体字（只有一个部件）的加工和合体字（部件数大于等于二）的加工有差异。作者认为,汉字的加工要经过笔画、部件和整字三个层次,其中单位部件的笔画数和部件数影响着汉字加工时间     

Why Bayesian Psychologists Should Change the Way They Use the Bayes Factor

The discussion following Bem’s (2011 Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 407–425. doi: 10.1037/a0021524[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) psi research highlights that applications of the Bayes factor in psychological research are not without problems. The first problem is the omission to translate subjective prior knowledge into subjective prior distributions. In the words of Savage (1961 Savage, L. J. (1961). The foundations of statistical inference reconsidered. In J. Neyman, (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, Volume 1: Contributions to the Theory of Statistics, pp. 575–586. BerkeleyCA: University of California. [Google Scholar]): “they make the Bayesian omelet without breaking the Bayesian egg.” The second problem occurs if the Bayesian egg is not broken: the omission to choose default prior distributions such that the ensuing inferences are well calibrated. The third problem is the adherence to inadequate rules for the interpretation of the size of the Bayes factor. The current paper will elaborate these problems and show how to avoid them using the basic hypotheses and statistical model used in the first experiment described in Bem (2011 Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 407–425. doi: 10.1037/a0021524[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). It will be argued that a thorough investigation of these problems in the context of more encompassing hypotheses and statistical models is called for if Bayesian psychologists want to add a well-founded Bayes factor to the tool kit of psychological researchers.     

Effects of muscle fatigue on the usability of a myoelectric human-computer interface

Electromyography-based human-computer interface development is an active field of research. However, knowledge on the effects of muscle fatigue for specific devices is limited. We have developed a novel myoelectric human-computer interface in which subjects continuously navigate a cursor to targets by manipulating a single surface electromyography (sEMG) signal. Two-dimensional control is achieved through simultaneous adjustments of power in two frequency bands through a series of dynamic low-level muscle contractions. Here, we investigate the potential effects of muscle fatigue during the use of our interface. In the first session, eight subjects completed 300 cursor-to-target trials without breaks; four using a wrist muscle and four using a head muscle. The wrist subjects returned for a second session in which a static fatiguing exercise took place at regular intervals in-between cursor-to-target trials. In the first session we observed no declines in performance as a function of use, even after the long period of use. In the second session, we observed clear changes in cursor trajectories, paired with a target-specific decrease in hit rates.     

Written threat: Electrophysiological evidence for an attention bias to affective words in social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with heightened sensitivity to threat cues, typically represented by emotional facial expressions. To examine if this bias can be transferred to a general hypersensitivity or whether it is specific to disorder relevant cues, we investigated electrophysiological correlates of emotional word processing (alpha activity and event-related potentials) in 20 healthy participants and 20 participants with SAD. The experimental task was a silent reading of neutral, positive, physically threatening and socially threatening words (the latter were abusive swear words) while responding to a randomly presented dot. Subsequently, all participants were asked to recall as many words as possible during an unexpected recall test. Participants with SAD showed blunted sensory processing followed by a rapid processing of emotional words during early stages (early posterior negativity – EPN). At later stages, all participants showed enhanced processing of negative (physically and socially threatening) compared to neutral and positive words (N400). Moreover, at later processing stages alpha activity was increased specifically for negative words in participants with SAD but not in healthy controls. Recall of emotional words for all subjects was best for socially threatening words, followed by negative and positive words irrespective of social anxiety. The present findings indicate that SAD is associated with abnormalities in emotional word processing characterised by early hypervigilance to emotional cues followed by cognitive avoidance at later processing stages. Most importantly, the specificity of these attentional biases seems to change as a function of time with a general emotional bias at early and a more specific bias at later processing stages.