学习不良儿童社会信息加工的特点

设置儿童与同伴、成人相互作用的三类情景,每类情景又分为模糊情景和清晰情景两种情况,通过对51名小学生进行结构性访谈,比较了学习不良儿童与一般儿童在信息加工各阶段的差异。结果发现,无论是模糊情景还是意义清晰情景,学习不良儿童和一般儿童在对权威社会情景进行编码时存在显著差异,学习不良儿童的编码准确性和全面性显著低于一般儿童;在模糊同伴情景下,学习不良儿童的反应数量显著多于一般儿童,其消极或侵犯性的反应也多于一般儿童。     

From Noosphere to Theosphere: Cyclotrons, Cyberspace, and Teilhard's Vision of Cosmic Love

Two theme–setting quotations introduce this essay—that of Yeats's falcon, deaf to the falconer's call, adrift in space above the blood–dimmed tide, counterpoised to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's call to abandon old nationalistic prejudices and build the earth. With primary references to the thought of Teilhard, along with, among others, to Ewert Cousins, Andrew M. Greeley, Karl Jaspers, Marshall McLuhan, Ilya Prigogine, Karl Rahner, Leonard Swidler, David Tracy, and Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that the most crucial intellectual paradigm shift of the twenty–first century will challenge humanity to take the turn from uncritical attachment to rigid absolutism or atomistic fragmentation toward a sense of open–ended, off–centered centeredness and fluid connections—from a static to a dynamic model of reality. Central to my argument is the Teilhardian reinterpretation of the Christian metaphors of creation, fall, incarnation, salvation, and the eschaton in the evolutionary terms of the emergence of cosmic consciousness from the chrysalis of the world of the past—from chaos to order, from biosphere via noosphere to theosphere. Facilitated by the exponential growth of populations, collaborative research, science, technology, and global communication (most dramatically manifested by the Internet), this emergent understanding of what it means to be human can, first, foster the awareness that in humanity evolution has become conscious of itself, and then, gradually, precipitate the formation of “the global village” (the mystical body of Christ), as respectful dialogue replaces diatribe and the dualistic pugilism of Samuel Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations” is gradually transformed into a nonadversarial mentality that values shared humanity and a common purpose. Thus, eons hence, empowered by love–energy, the transmutation of the human into the ultra–human can take the ultimate quantum leap into a yet higher dimension where spirit/energy is no longer in need of flesh/mass, and Earth can be safely left behind.     

An experimental analysis of decision channeling by restrictive information display

This study focuses on the effect of restrictive information display on decision performance. Specifically the study examines whether two‐channeled and one non‐channeled computerized information display systems result in significant differences in decision accuracy. The two‐channeled information display systems are designed to encourage two general information processing patterns commonly observed in the experimental literature examining multi‐alternative, multi‐attribute choice decisions: information processing by alternative and information processing by attribute. An information display program was developed which used restrictive information display to operationalize the channeled versus non‐channeled manipulation. Channeling was implemented either by displaying information only by alternative or by displaying information only by attribute. The task was an operations scheduling problem that subjects completed under three levels of time pressure. The results indicate statistically significant effects on decision accuracy for both the type of information display and time pressure manipulations. The highest decision accuracy was observed when information was displayed by alternative and when subjects were under highest levels of time pressure. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychoeducational Interventions with Pediatric Cancer Patients: Part II. Effects of Information and Skills Training on Health-Related Outcomes

In Part I of this paper, we described a model that was used as a framework for reviewing studies of psychoeducational interventions intended to influence illness- and treatment-related behaviors and attitudes in pediatric cancer patients. In Part II, we distinguish between interventions that attempt to influence patients' behaviors just by providing information and interventions that specifically teach skills related to the behaviors they are trying to change. Many types of psychoeducational interventions appear to be effective and those that are training-based generally appear more effective than those that are information-based. Training-based interventions may face a barrier to wide adoption because they are resource-costly, but the development of digital-based training interventions may potentially overcome this barrier.     

Reasonable reasons for waiting

Recent decision‐making research claims to establish that, in violation of Savage's normative sure‐thing principle, individuals often wait to acquire noninstrumental information and subsequently base their decisions upon this information. The current research suggests that characterizing individuals as pursuing noninstrumental or useless information may be overstated. Through a series of experiments we establish, first, that many people choose to wait, even when waiting provides no additional information at all. Second, the longer people are allowed to wait before having to decide, the more people prefer to wait rather than decide immediately. Third, those individuals who choose to wait are the ones less confident about committing themselves to a decision. For them, the benefit from waiting may be especially valuable by allowing them to come to terms with a less‐than‐ideal decision. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

文本阅读中简单推理情境下的信息整合

研究采用动窗技术探讨了文本阅读中需要简单推理情境下的信息整合发生的时机。本研究通过三个实验证明了在需要简单推理情境下的文本阅读中 ,需要推理的信息整合是即时发生的 ,而不是经过追溯才发生 ,在这种情况下支持文本阅读的更新追随假设理论。同时本研究发现文本阅读中协调性整合不是以词为单位的。     

Languages for Gestalts of line patterns

Any formal model of visual Gestalt perception requires a language for representing possible perceptual structures of visual stimuli, as well as a decision criterion that selects the actually perceived structure of a stimulus among its possible alternatives. This paper discusses an existing model of visual Gestalt perception that is based on Structural Information Theory. We investigate two factors that determine the representational power of this model: the domain of visual stimuli that can be analyzed, and the class of perceptual structures that can be generated for these stimuli. We show that the representational power of the existing model of Structural Information Theory is limited, and that some of the generated structures are perceptually inadequate. We argue that these limitations do not imply the implausibility of the underlying ideas of Structural Information Theory and introduce alternative models based on the same ideas. For each of these models, the domain of visual stimuli that can be analyzed properly is formally defined. We show that the models are conservative modifications of the original model of Structural Information Theory: for cases that are adequately analyzed in the original model of Structural Information Theory, they yield the same results.     

PEIRCEAN APPROACHES TO EMERGENT SYSTEMS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Cognitive science and religion provides perspectives on human cognition and spirituality. Emergent systems theory captures the subatomic, physical, biological, psychological, cultural, and transcendent relationships that constitute the human person. C. S. Peirce's metaphysical categories and existential graphs enrich traditional cognitive science modeling tools to capture emergent phenomena. From this richer perspective, one can reinterpret the traditional doctrine of soul as form of the body in terms of information as the constellation of constitutive relationships that enables real possibility.