归纳推理中相似性和类别标签的作用

该文采用“篇章阅读”实验范式探索了归纳推理中前提类别和结论类别间相似性、结论类别标签属性对归纳推理的作用。90名大学生被试参加了3个实验。实验1结果表明,归纳推理受前提类别和结论类别之间相似性的影响,相似性越高归纳推理力度越强;实验2结果表明,归纳推理还受结论类别上位类别知识的影响,当类别属性和相似性冲突情况下,被试更倾向按照类别属性进行推理;实验3结果表明,归纳推理通达上位类别知识是一个主动建构的过程,即使是在类别标签不确定的情况下,被试仍然依赖类别标签进行推理。并初步提出了“归纳推理力度=两事物相似性×归类概率”模型设想。     

When senses meet functions: an amodal stage in conceptual processing

Research has shown that concepts are associated with modality-specific features widely distributed in the brain and that semantic hubs or convergence zones may exist to mediate or integrate distributed representations. Although much neuropsychological and neuroimaging literature has provided support for the existence of hubs/convergence zones from the spatial perspective, opinions differ as to whether the representations in the hubs/convergence zones are modality-specific or amodal. The current ERP study aimed to explore whether there is an amodal stage in conceptual processing from the temporal perspective. Participants were presented with prime-target pairs and were asked to judge whether the prime (a sensory or functional feature) could be an attribute of the target (a noun in a natural or artifactual category). The results revealed that a semantic hub or convergence zone may be reached no later than 350–450?ms in conceptual processing and that the representations in the hub may be amodal.     

The development of visual search in infants and very young children.

In two experiments, 90 1- to 3-year-olds were trained in a new nonverbal task to touch a video screen that displayed a unique target resembling a popular television character. The target appeared among varying numbers of distractors that resembled another familiar television character and was either a uniquely colored shape (the feature search task) or a unique color-shape combination (the conjunction search task). Each correct response triggered a sound and produced four animated objects on the screen. Irrespective of age and experimental design (between-subjects or within-subjects), children's reaction time (RT) patterns resembled those obtained from adults in corresponding search tasks: The RT slope for feature search was flat and independent of distractor number, whereas the RT slope for conjunction search increased linearly with distractor number. These results extend visual search effects found with adults to infants and very young children and suggest that the basic perceptual processes underlying visual search are qualitatively invariant over ontogeny.     

Disengagement from driving when using automation during a 4-week field trial

IntroductionA small body of research on the real-world use of commercially available partial driving automation suggests that drivers may struggle with or otherwise lapse in adequately monitoring the system and highway environment, and little is known about key issues such as how behavior associated with system use changes over time. The current study assessed how driver disengagement, defined as visual-manual interaction with electronics or removal of hands from the wheel, differed as drivers became more accustomed to partial automation over a 4-week trial.MethodsTen volunteers drove a Volvo S90 with adaptive cruise control (ACC), which automates speed and headway, and Pilot Assist, which combines ACC and continuous lane centering. Instrumentation captured automation use, secondary task activity, hands-on-wheel status, vehicle speed, and GPS location during all trips.ResultsThe longer drivers used the Pilot Assist partial automation system, the more likely they were to become disengaged, with a significant increase in the odds of observing participants with both hands off the steering wheel or manipulating a cell phone relative to manual control. Results associated with use of ACC found comparable or lower levels of disengagement compared to manual driving as the study progressed.DiscussionThis study highlights concerns about vehicle control and the degree to which drivers remain actively in the loop when using automation. Calls for implementing more robust driver monitoring with partial automation appear warranted—particularly those that track head or eye position.     

Modality-specific interference between action planning and perceptual processing

This paper reports a study which examined an interaction between action planning and processing of perceptual information in two different sensory modalities. In line with the idea that action planning consists in representing the action’s sensory outcomes, it was assumed that different types of actions should be coupled with different modalities. A visual and auditory oddball paradigm was combined with two types of actions: pointing and knocking (unrelated to the perceptual task). Results showed an interactive effect between the action type and the sensory modality of the oddballs, with impaired detection of auditory oddballs for knocking (congruent) action, as compared to a pointing (incongruent) action. These findings reveal that action planning can interact with modality-specific perceptual processing and that preparing an action presumably binds the respective perceptual features with an action plan, thereby making these features less available for other tasks.     

Difficulties experienced by older drivers during their regular driving and their expectations towards Advanced Driving Aid Systems and vehicle automation

The aim of this study was to analyse the difficulties experienced by older drivers during their regular driving, and to identify their needs and their expectations regarding Advanced Driving Aid Systems (ADAS) and vehicle automation. More than 100 items were investigated by using a Focus Group method based on a Collective Questionnaire (named FoG-CoQS). Thirty elderly drivers, 15 females and 15 males aged from 70 to 81 years (mean age of 73.3; S.D. = 3.18) were recruited among a representative sample of 76 older drivers living in the Rhône area and having previously participated to an on-road experiment, in order to collect from this Focus Group method further information about the driving difficulties they experienced in their everyday life and their expectations towards driving aids. Seven main topics were more particularly investigated, recovering at last all the main dimensions of the driving task (from navigation to speed control, through intersection crossing).Regarding driving difficulties, one of the most interesting result collected is the high contrast between the literature review, identifying Left Turn (LT) manoeuvres at crossroads as a risky driving situation for elderly drivers, and the relatively low values of perceived difficulties (i.e. compared to other driving sub-tasks) collected during this Focus Group among our sample of older drivers. Regarding the driving aid functions investigated, 10 of them obtained high scores of “perceived utility” (i.e. overpassing 60% on scales ranging from 0% [no utility] to 100% [high utility]), and they concerned assistances liable to support all the main components of the driving task investigated in this study.Additional results are related to the differences between the elderly female and male drivers. Several driving situations were assessed as significantly more difficult to perform by the older female than by the older male drivers, like intersection crossing, entering expressways, or implementing a lane change manoeuver. By contrast, this gender effect is more limited regarding driving aids: synthetically, men and women have a positive attitude towards driving aid systems and their expectations for future ADAS are quite similar (for instance, “informative systems” are preferred than driving aids based on “vehicle automation”).Finally, from two transversal items (i.e. “difficulties” to perform a driving sub-task and “perceived utility” of ADAS), it was possible to rank older drivers’ difficulties experienced during their everyday life (from lowest difficulties to “navigate on a familiar itinerary” to highest when “interacting with bicyclists”) and their expectations towards driving aids (from lowest utility score given to “Automatic Lane Change systems” to highest utility value provided to “Speed Informer systems”). At last, older drivers’ acceptance and expectations towards highly automated cars was also investigated: full automation was assessed as an interesting solution to ensure the self-mobility of elderly peoples in their circle, but also for themselves in the future, in case of impairments of their own cognitive or physical capacities.     

Mental rotation of random lined figures

The present study investigated the possible occurrence of mental rotation in judgments of whether pairs of line figures were identical. The feasibility of two discrete cognitive explanations based on holistic transformation and on feature computation was examined with varied levels of complexity controlled by the numbers of lines in a figure. In the experiment, participants were required to judge whether simultaneously presented pairs of figures were the same or different. When the participants' data were collapsed for regression analyses, evidence for mental rotation was not detected at any level of complexity, but reanalysis of the data revealed that some participants employed mental rotation in the cognition of complex figures. A monotonous increase in reaction times as a function of the number of lines was evident in identical pairs of figures but not in nonidentical pairs. It is argued that the feature computation explanation would better account for these results than would the holistic transformation explanation.     

数量化维度的特征搜索

本文从特征整合理论的视觉搜索的研究出发,总结了数量化维度特征搜索的早期研究及进展,提出目前在数量化维度特征搜索研究中需要解决的问题。     

Clouds make nerds look good: field evidence of the impact of incidental factors on decision making

Abundant experimental research has documented that incidental primes and emotions are capable of influencing people's judgments and choices. This paper examines whether the influence of such incidental factors is large enough to be observable in the field, by analyzing 682 actual university admission decisions. As predicted, applicants' academic attributes are weighted more heavily on cloudier days and non‐academic attributes on sunnier days. The documented effects are of both statistical and practical significance: changes in cloud cover can increase a candidate's predicted probability of admission by an average of up to 11.9%. These results also shed light on the causes behind the long demonstrated unreliability of experts making repeated judgments from the same data. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

中医临床心理学理论的文化特质与跨文化比较

从文化比较的角度,阐述了中医形与神俱论与西方心身医学、五脏藏神说与情绪生理心理学、精神内守法与西方精神分析及生物反馈技术的区别与联系,指出了中医心身相关理论与技术的文化特质及其蕴涵的现代科学意义。