模糊规避的形成机制：基于可评价性假设的视角

模糊规避是指在相同奖赏的情况下,决策者会力图规避从主观上判断具有模糊概率的事件而偏好具有相同精确概率的事件。本研究使用同时评价、单独评价的研究范式从随机事件和自然事件两个领域来探讨模糊规避的形成机制。研究结果表明,当风险事件和模糊事件同时评价时,个体倾向于模糊规避;当风险事件和模糊事件单独评价时,模糊规避会消失。     

词汇歧义消解的脑机制

词汇歧义是语言歧义的一种, 词汇歧义消解受到相对意义频率和语境的影响。半视野研究发现大脑两半球都能在词汇歧义消解过程中根据语境信息选择性地激活歧义词的恰当意义、抑制不恰当意义, 其中左半球的语义选择功能更强; 脑损伤研究发现大脑左、右半球损伤都会导致词汇歧义消解中语义选择障碍, 词汇歧义消解需要大脑两半球的联合作用; 神经成像研究进一步发现额叶与颞叶共同支持词汇歧义消解, 歧义词的恰当意义的选择是由额下回执行的, 语义整合加工是由颞叶负责的。     

同音字族内的听觉通道词频效应与同音字表征的激活

对于同音词家族较大的词汇(例如汉语单音节词), 听觉通道的词汇通达和词汇表征的激活会受同音词汇歧义怎样的影响, 仍不很清楚。本研究采用了两个听觉通道的实验。实验一的听写任务发现在孤立音节的同音字选择上存在歧义的同时还存在同音字族内的高频偏向, 并非随机选择; 实验二的音-字同音判断任务对比同音与不同音条件得到同音促进量, 揭示了孤立音节在激活语音表征时还会引起同音高频字表征的自动激活, 而同音低频字则受到抑制。结果说明存在同音字族内的听觉通道词频效应, 同音的高、中、低频字的表征激活具有不同等性, 导致不穷尽通达, 且同音的最高频字得到更多通达机会。这些发现难以被现有的词汇通达和同音词表征激活模型解释, 文章提出一个能够解释这些听觉通道发现的模型。     

Meaning and Interpretation. I

The paper is an attempt at a logical explication of some crucial notions of current general semantics and pragmatics. A general, axiomatic, formal-logical theory of meaning and interpretation is outlined in this paper.In the theory, accordingto the token-type distinction of Peirce, language is formalised on two levels: first as a language of token-objects (understood as material, empirical, enduring through time-and space objects) and then – as a language of type-objects (understood as abstract objects, as classes of tokens). The basic concepts of the theory, i.e. the notions: meaning, denotation and interpretation of well-formed expressions (wfes) of the language are formalised on the type-level, by utilising some semantic-pragmatic primitive notions introduced on the token-level. The paper is divided into two parts.In Part Ia theoryof meaningand denotation is proposed, and in Part II - its expansion to the theory of meaning and interpretation is presented.The meaninga wfe is defined as an equivalence class of the relation possessing the same manner of using types (cf. Ajdukiewicz [1934], Wittgenstein [1953]). The concept of denotation is defined by means of the relation of referring which holds between wfe-types and objects of reality described by the given language. Presented by Wojciech Buszkowski     

The self-protective and undermining effects of attributional ambiguity

Two experiments assessed the self-protective and undermining effects of attributional ambiguity. Both studies utilized immersive virtual environment technology to achieve otherwise difficult manipulations of stigma. In Experiment 1, White and Latino participants were either stigmatized (represented as Latino) or not (represented as White) and given negative leadership performance feedback. Afterwards, stigmatized participants reported higher well-being and attributed negative feedback more to discrimination than nonstigmatized participants. In Experiment 2, Latinos represented veridically showed self-protective effects after receiving negative leadership feedback. Additionally, this experiment revealed undermining effects of attributional ambiguity such that those participants represented as Latino discounted positive feedback and reported lower well-being. Thus, attributional ambiguity of stigmatized individuals (real or induced) buffered well-being in the face of negative feedback but undermined the well-being effects of positive feedback.     

Interpretive cues and ambiguity in generalized anxiety disorder

The current study investigated whether generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) individuals rely on antecedent information to interpret ambiguity and whether reliance on such preceding cues persists in the absence of potential threat. Twenty-six GAD and 23 nonanxious control college students performed a lexical decision task, using homographs (i.e. words with multiple meanings) as ambiguous primes. In half the trials, a homograph prime that possessed both threat-related, as well as neutral meanings was followed by a target word related to one of these two meanings. In addition, each ambiguous prime was immediately preceded by a series of four antecedent words that were either: (a) associated with the threatening meaning of the prime; (b) associated with the neutral meaning of the prime; or (c) unrelated to either meaning of the homograph, as well as the target. Homographs for which both meanings were neutral in valence comprised the other half of the trials. Effect size statistics suggest that GAD participants utilized the antecedent words to interpret the homograph primes with threat-related meanings, unlike their nonanxious counterparts (p<0.06). When both meanings of the homograph prime were neutral in valence, the GAD group appeared deficient in the use of preceding information to interpret the ambiguous prime.     

Cognitive Moderators of the Longitudinal Association Between Peer Rejection and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms

This longitudinal study examined peer rejection as a predictor of adolescent depressive symptoms during the critical developmental period associated with substantial increases in the prevalence of girls' depression. In a sample of 158 adolescents aged 15-17 years, a peer nomination, sociometric assessment was conducted to examine adolescents' peer status at an initial time point, along with self-report measures of depressive symptoms, depressogenic attributions, and peer importance. Adolescents completed a second measure of depressive symptoms 17 months later. Results were consistent with integrated cognitive vulnerability-stress and cognitive dissonance models, particularly for girls. Specifically, peer rejection was a significant prospective predictor of depressive symptoms when combined with high levels of importance ascribed to peer status and high levels of adolescents' depressogenic attributional styles.     

Sensitivity to local sentence context information in lexical ambiguity resolution: evidence from left- and right-hemisphere-damaged individuals

Using a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm, the present study investigated the ability of left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) nonfluent aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) and non-brain-damaged (NBD) control subjects to use local sentence context information to resolve lexically ambiguous words. Critical sentences were manipulated such that they were either unbiased, or biased toward one of two meanings of sentence-final equibiased ambiguous words. Sentence primes were presented auditorily, followed after a short (0 ms) or long (750 ms) interstimulus interval (ISI) by the presentation of a first- or second-meaning related visual target, on which subjects made a lexical decision. At the short ISI, neither patient group appeared to be influenced by context, in sharp contrast to the performance of the NBD control subjects. LHD nonfluent aphasic subjects activated both meanings of ambiguous words regardless of context, whereas RHD subjects activated only the first meaning in unbiased and second-meaning biased contexts. At the long ISI, LHD nonfluent aphasic subjects failed to show evidence of activation of either meaning, while RHD individuals activated first meanings in unbiased contexts and contextually appropriate meanings in second-meaning biased contexts. These findings suggest that both left (LH) and right hemisphere (RH) damage lead to deficits in using local contextual information to complete the process of ambiguity resolution. LH damage seems to spare initial access to word meanings, but initially impairs the ability to use context and results in a faster than normal decay of lexical activation. RH damage appears to initially disrupt access to context, resulting in an over-reliance on frequency in the activation of ambiguous word meanings.     

The P600 as an indicator of syntactic ambiguity

In a study using event-related brain potentials, we show that the current characterization of the P600 component as an indicator of revision processes (reanalysis and repair) in sentence comprehension must be extended to include the recognition of syntactic ambiguity. By comparing the processing of ambiguous and unambiguous sentence constituents in German, we show that the P600 is elicited when our language processing system has syntactic alternatives at a certain item given in the input string. That the P600 is sensitive to syntactic ambiguity adds crucial evidence to current debates in psycholinguistic modelling, as the results clearly favour parallel models of syntactic processing which assume that ambiguity is recognized and costly.     

Misinterpretations of Garden-Path Sentences: Implications for Models of Sentence Processing and Reanalysis

Theories of sentence comprehension have addressed both initial parsing processes and mechanisms responsible for reanalysis. Three experiments are summarized that were designed to investigate the reanalysis and interpretation of relatively difficult garden-path sentences (e.g., While Anna dressed the baby spit up on the bed). After reading such sentences, participants correctly believed that the baby spit up on the bed; however, they often confidently, yet incorrectly, believed that Anna dressed the baby. These results demonstrate that garden-path reanalysis is not an all-or-nothing process and that thematic roles initially assigned for the subordinate clause verb are not consistently revised. The implications of the partial reanalysis phenomenon for Fodor and Inoue's (1998) model of reanalysis and sentence processing are discussed. In addition, we discuss the possibility that language processing often creates good enough structures rather than ideal structures.