The role of visual experience on the representation and updating of novel haptic scenes

We investigated the role of visual experience on the spatial representation and updating of haptic scenes by comparing recognition performance across sighted, congenitally and late blind participants. We first established that spatial updating occurs in sighted individuals to haptic scenes of novel objects. All participants were required to recognise a previously learned haptic scene of novel objects presented across the same or different orientation as learning whilst they either remained in the same position to moved to a new position relative to the scene. Scene rotation incurred a cost in recognition performance in all groups. However, overall haptic scene recognition performance was worse in the congenitally blind group. Moreover, unlike the late blind or sighted groups, the congenitally blind group were unable to compensate for the cost in scene rotation with observer motion. Our results suggest that vision plays an important role in representing and updating spatial information encoded through touch and have important implications for the role of vision in the development of neuronal areas involved in spatial cognition.     

Personality, Meta-Mood Experience, Life Satisfaction, and Anxiety in Australian versus Singaporean Students

This study explores two issues concerning the relationships between personality, meta-mood experience, life satisfaction, and anxiety. First, it explored the incremental value of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience in predicting the three components of meta-mood experience (that is, attention to feelings, emotional clarity, clarity of feelings and mood repair), after controlling for demographic variables across Australia and Singapore. Second, it explored the incremental value of the three meta-mood experience components in predicting life satisfaction and anxiety, after controlling for demographic variables and personality variables across the two countries. One hundred and eighty nine tertiary students from Australia and 243 tertiary students from Singapore participated in this study. First, hierarchical regression analyses for both samples suggested that Agreeableness and Neuroticism are the two most important personality predictors of meta-mood experience, emotional attention, and emotional repair. Second, hierarchical regression analyses for both samples suggested that emotional repair was a significant predictor for life satisfaction and anxiety, even after controlling for demographic variables and personality variables. These results have implications for therapeutic interventions with life satisfaction versus anxiety. Funding for this research is facilitated partially by a research grant from the National Institute of Education.     

Capturing the Naturally Occurring Superior Performance of Experts in the Laboratory: Toward a Science of Expert and Exceptional Performance

ABSTRACT— Expertise researchers have traditionally shied away from studying the highest levels of achievement in favor of studying basic cognitive processes, such as memory and categorization. In this article, we present a different approach that is focused on capturing superior (expert) performance on representative tasks that reveal the essential characteristics of expertise in a given domain. In domains where expert performance is measurable, acquisition is gradual and the highest levels are only attained after 10 years of intense preparation—even for the most "talented." Analyses of reproducibly superior performance show that it is mediated by physiological adaptations and cognitive skills acquired as a result of the cumulative effects of special practice activities (deliberate practice). It appears that the genes necessary to attain such adaptations and expert skills can be activated in healthy children—the only clear exceptions to date being genes that control body size and height. Our knowledge of how experts acquire their superior skills provides insights into the potential for human adaptation and skill acquisition and has important implications for theories of the structure of general and expert cognition, as well as for training interventions in applied psychology and education.     

The role of prior experience in language acquisition

Learners exposed to an artificial language recognize its abstract structural regularities when instantiated in a novel vocabulary (e.g., Gómez, Gerken, & Schvaneveldt, 2000; Tunney & Altmann, 2001). We asked whether such sensitivity accelerates subsequent learning, and enables acquisition of more complex structure. In Experiment 1, pre-exposure to a category-induction language of the form aX bY sped subsequent learning when the language is instantiated in a different vocabulary. In Experiment 2, while naíve learners did not acquire an acX bcY language, in which aX and bY co-occurrence regularities were separated by a c-element, prior experience with an aX bY language provided some benefit. In Experiment 3 we replicated this finding with a 24-hour delay between learning phases, and controlled for prior experience with the aX bY language's prosodic and phonological characteristics. These findings suggest that learners, and the structure they can acquire, change as a function of experience.     

Replicated alternatives and the role of confusion,chasing, and regret in decisions from experience

The current paper explores choice among alternatives that can be classified into distinct classes. All the members of a particular class were ‘replicated alternatives’: they promised the same payoff distribution. Information to decision makers was limited to feedback concerning the realized (obtained and foregone) payoffs. Experiment 1 demonstrates that increasing the number of replicated alternatives creates confusion (which facilitates random choice) and changes the implications of the tendency to chase recent returns (i.e., select the alternative with the best recent outcomes). This effect, termed ‘confused chasing,’ facilitates risk seeking even when this behavior impairs expected earnings. Experiment 2 reveals that increasing the number of replicated alternatives can reduce (but does not eliminate) the tendency to underweight rare events. Experiment 3 shows that the relative importance of chasing and confusion is sensitive to the likelihood of realizing lower payoffs than the forgone payoffs. The main results are summarized with a simple model assuming that payoff sensitivity decreases with experienced regret. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

大学生生活满意度判断的文化差异研究

对36个国家8007名大学生的生活满意度进行了问卷调查。多层线性模型分析(HLM)的结果表明:(1)积极情感体验、自我满意和社会关系满意度能显著正向预测生活满意度,而消极情感体验能显著负向预测生活满意度;(2)情感体验、自尊和社会关系满意度对整体生活满意度的预测力存在着显著的国家间差异;(3)个人主义———集体主义是导致生活满意度水平国家间差异的重要因素,同时也对自尊与生活满意度的相关有显著预测作用,但它并不影响情感体验和社会关系满意度与整体生活满意度之间的关系。     

On talking-as-dreaming

Many patients are unable to engage in waking-dreaming in the analytic setting in the form of free association or in any other form. The author has found that 'talking-as-dreaming' has served as a form of waking-dreaming in which such patients have been able to begin to dream formerly undreamable experience. Such talking is a loosely structured form of conversation between patient and analyst that is often marked by primary process thinking and apparent non sequiturs. Talking-as-dreaming superficially appears to be 'unanalytic' in that it may seem to consist 'merely' of talking about such topics as books, films, etymology, baseball, the taste of chocolate, the structure of light, and so on. When an analysis is 'a going concern,' talking-as-dreaming moves unobtrusively into and out of talking about dreaming. The author provides two detailed clinical examples of analytic work with patients who had very little capacity to dream in the analytic setting. In the first clinical example, talking-as-dreaming served as a form of thinking and relating in which the patient was able for the first time to dream her own (and, in a sense, her father's) formerly unthinkable, undreamable experience. The second clinical example involves the use of talking-as-dreaming as an emotional experience in which the formerly 'invisible' patient was able to begin to dream himself into existence. The analyst, while engaging with a patient in talking-as-dreaming, must remain keenly aware that it is critical that the difference in roles of patient and analyst be a continuously felt presence; that the therapeutic goals of analysis be firmly held in mind; and that the patient be given the opportunity to dream himself into existence (as opposed to being dreamt up by the analyst).     

A lost horizon: the experience of an other and school bullying

To date, research on bullying has largely employed empirical methodologies, including quantitative and qualitative approaches. Through this research we have come to understand bullying as both a dyadic and peer group phenomenon, primarily situated in the heads (thinking) of those involved, or in a lack of skill or expertise, or in the delinquency of a bully who needs to be reformed. This research has largely directed its strategies toward problem students using individual and peer group approaches. And yet school bullying continues to be a crucial educational issue affecting millions of students each year. In this project I introduce a missing philosophical perspective. Analyzing the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer I am led to conclude that typical anti-bullying strategies at times simply train bullies to be better at bullying (i.e., learning to bully more covertly, more expertly so as to inflict the same devastation without adult detection). Gadamer invites us to think about bullying in new ways. While certainly involving the thinking and skills of the bully and the victim, Gadamer contends that bullying does not fundamentally result from a problem within the participants, but is fostered by certain spaces between them; terrains that cultivate specific experiences of an "other". Generally, this project stems from an interest in the ways that domination develops in this "space between". Specifically in this paper I ask: What is the nature of "hermeneutic" experience as conceptualized by Gadamer? What kinds of experiences of an other does bullying exemplify? What kinds of experience of an other do non-bullying relations exemplify and what kinds of relational spaces foster such experience? This paper opens up significant new territory for anti-bullying work, expanding our focus to include the space between students which fosters certain inter-personal experiences - experiences situated in domination and stymied growth or, alternatively, experiences of reciprocity which open the possibility of human growth and transformation.     

Metaphor,Religious Language,and Religious Experience

Is it possible to talk about God without either misrepresentation or failing to assert anything of significance? The article begins by reviewing how, in attempting to answer this question, traditional theories of religious language have failed to sidestep both potential pitfalls adequately. After arguing that recently developed theories of metaphor seem better able to shed light on the nature of religious language, it considers the claim that huge areas of our language and, consequently, of our experience are shaped by metaphors. Finally, it considers some of the more significant implications of this claim for our understanding of both religious language and religious experience.     

The effect of aging in recollective experience: the processing speed and executive functioning hypothesis

This study was designed to investigate the effects of aging on consciousness in recognition memory, using the Remember/Know/Guess procedure (Gardiner, J. M., & Richarson-Klavehn, A. (2000). Remembering and Knowing. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Memory. Oxford University Press.). In recognition memory, older participants report fewer occasions on which recognition is accompanied by recollection of the original encoding context. Two main hypotheses were tested: the speed mediation hypothesis (Salthouse, T. A. (1996). The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. Psychological Review, 3, 403–428) and the executive-aging hypothesis (West, R. L. (1996). An application of prefrontal cortex function theory to cognitive aging. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 272–292). A group of young and a group of older adults took a recognition test in which they classified their responses according to Gardiner, J. M., & Richarson-Klavehn, A. (2000). Remembering and Knowing. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Memory. Oxford University Press. remember-know-guess paradigm. Subsequently, participants completed processing speed and executive function tests. The results showed that among the older participants, R responses decreased, but K responses did not. Moreover, a hierarchical regression analysis supported the view that the effect of age in recollection experience is determined by frontal lobe integrity and not by diminution of processing speed.