Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic structure: for the speaker or for the addressee?

Evidence has been mixed on whether speakers spontaneously and reliably produce prosodic cues that resolve syntactic ambiguities. And when speakers do produce such cues, it is unclear whether they do so "for" their addressees (the audience design hypothesis) or "for" themselves, as a by-product of planning and articulating utterances. Three experiments addressed these issues. In Experiments 1 and 3, speakers followed pictorial guides to spontaneously instruct addressees to move objects. Critical instructions (e.g., "Put the dog in the basket on the star") were syntactically ambiguous, and the referential situation supported either one or both interpretations. Speakers reliably produced disambiguating cues to syntactic ambiguity whether the situation was ambiguous or not. However, Experiment 2 suggested that most speakers were not yet aware of whether the situation was ambiguous by the time they began to speak, and so adapting to addressees' particular needs may not have been feasible in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 examined individual speakers' awareness of situational ambiguity and the extent to which they signaled structure, with or without addressees present. Speakers tended to produce prosodic cues to syntactic boundaries regardless of their addressees' needs in particular situations. Such cues did prove helpful to addressees, who correctly interpreted speakers' instructions virtually all the time. In fact, even when speakers produced syntactically ambiguous utterances in situations that supported both interpretations, eye-tracking data showed that 40% of the time addressees did not even consider the non-intended objects. We discuss the standards needed for a convincing test of the audience design hypothesis.     

Does Children's Colour Use Reflect the Emotional Content of their Drawings?

When children draw in clinical contexts, clinicians sometimes rely on children's colour use to make inferences about their emotional reaction to the subject of the drawing. Here, we examined whether children use colour to portray emotion in their drawings. In Experiment 1, children indicated their colour preferences and then coloured in outlines of figures characterized as nasty or nice. Children also drew complex, multi‐coloured pictures about their own happy or sad experiences. In Experiment 2, hospitalized children drew about being worried or scared in hospital and about their positive experiences. In both experiments, we examined the relation between children's colour use and their colour preferences. Three‐ to 10‐year‐old children used more preferred colours to colour in the nice outline. Although they were more likely to use non‐preferred colours to colour in the nasty outline, they tended to used a mix of preferred and non‐preferred colours. When both normal and hospitalized children produced drawings about positive and negative events, there was no relation between children's colour choices and their colour preferences; children primarily used preferred colours. These data suggest that clinicians should exercise extreme caution when interpreting the meaning of colour in children's drawings. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

内隐多效性选择的ERP证据

采用事件相关电位技术,考察内隐多效性选择及其神经机制。被试的任务是认真观看配对的纯色图片刺激,并进行分类按键反应。实验结果发现,在P2上,积极启动刺激比对照刺激激发了更大的P2波幅; 对比对照刺激,积极启动刺激在左脑、大脑中部和后脑诱发了更大的P2波幅,其中右脑的效应最大。在N2上,积极启动刺激比对照刺激激发了更小的N2波幅; 对比对照刺激,积极启动刺激在左脑、大脑中部和后脑诱发了更小的N2波幅,其中右脑的效应最大。在P3上,积极启动刺激比对照刺激激发了更大的P3波幅; 对比对照刺激,积极启动刺激在左脑、大脑中部和后脑诱发了更大的P3波幅,其中右脑的效应最大。研究结果表明当外显目标与内隐目标同时被呈现时,被试趋向于做多效性选择,这可能表明无意识信息加工具有相当大的权重。且右后部脑区可能是加工多效性刺激的核心和关键区域,P3成分可能反应了内隐多效性选择的精细加工过程,能够作为内隐多效性选择的有效的ERPs指标。     

羞怯与受欺负:社交回避与被他人容纳的多重中介效应

采用大学生羞怯量表、被他人容纳量表、大学生社交回避及苦恼量表和欺负问卷测量了369名大学生,探讨社交回避和被他人容纳在羞怯与受欺负之间的作用。结果表明:(1)羞怯、社交回避和受欺负三个变量彼此之间均呈显著正相关,这三个变量与被他人容纳均呈显著负相关;(2)羞怯不仅直接影响受欺负,也通过社交回避-被他人容纳的链式中介作用间接影响受欺负。     

社会支持对流动儿童社会退缩的影响:心理弹性的中介作用

目的:探讨心理弹性在社会支持与流动儿童社会退缩之间的中介作用。方法:采用社会支持评定量表、青少年心理弹性量表和班级戏剧量表对258名流动儿童进行调查。结果表明:(1)活跃退缩与社会支持、心理弹性呈显著负相关; 安静退缩与社会支持相关不显著,与心理弹性呈显著负相关; 社会支持与心理弹性呈显著正相关;(2)社会支持、心理弹性显著负向预测流动儿童的活跃退缩;(3)心理弹性在社会支持与流动儿童活跃退缩之间具有完全中介作用。     

身体动作与语义加工:具身隐喻的视角

概念隐喻理论认为个体建立基于身体经验的具体概念和抽象概念之间的隐喻联结是人类特有的认知方式。不管是具体概念还是抽象概念,只要有具身隐喻联结的概念,其语义的理解便会受到具身启动效应的影响。大脑在加工动词或者含动词的句子时,不仅激活了语言中枢和运动皮层,且大脑随着个体是否执行与语义相应的动作、抽象概念的熟悉程度和其文本背景是否符合等因素而激活不同的神经回路。本文将对以上研究进行梳理与分析,旨在从具身隐喻的视角为身体动作影响语义加工的神经机制模型提供初步的思路。     

社会支持对大学生社会幸福感的影响—希望的中介作用

基于积极心理学,采用问卷调查法,对1098名大学生进行调查,探讨社会支持对社会幸福感的影响,并基于希望进行中介效应检验,借此构建三个变量之间的关系模型,探索促进大学生心理健康发展的内在机制。结果表明:社会支持、希望与社会幸福感之间两两相关显著; 社会支持和希望及其各维度,显著正向影响大学生的社会幸福感; 社会支持通过希望影响大学生社会幸福感水平。研究结果证实了希望在社会支持影响社会幸福感中起部分中介作用的心理机制,为大学生心理健康教育提供了参考建议。     

建构反应题中能力估计准确性的影响因素:评分者人数和项目个数的交互作用

采用康春花、孙小坚和曾平飞(2016)提出的等级反应多水平侧面模型探讨了评分者人数和项目个数对被试能力估计准确性的影响。模拟研究的结果表明:(1)随着项目个数的增加,估计值与真值之间的相关也不断增加;(2)评分者人数和项目个数在平均绝对偏差(MAB)和误差均方根(RMSE)上的主效应均显著,两者间的交互效应也显著;(3)简单效应分析发现,当项目较少时,3个评分者条件下的能力估计准确性最好; 随着项目个数的增加,4个评分者的估计误差迅速下降,且表现变为最好。     

编码方式与指拼特征在聋生手语词加工中的作用研究

本研究探讨了聋生在加工手语词过程中不同编码方式和指拼特征的影响。实验1采用指拼类手语词和手势类手语词考察了指拼有无对手语词编码方式的影响。实验2则采用不同特征的指拼类手语词,深入考察指拼位置、指拼形式对手语词编码方式的影响。结果表明,聋生较语音编码更擅长使用指拼编码加工手语词;指拼与手势的加工存在显著差异,指拼在聋生手语词加工中起到了促进作用;指拼位置与指拼形式共同作用于手语词的加工过程。     

Content words in Hebrew child-directed speech

The goal of the study was to examine whether the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon, which exists in the lexicon of Hebrew-speaking children, also exists in Hebrew child-directed speech (CDS) as well as in Hebrew adult-directed speech (ADS). In addition, we aimed to describe the use of the different classes of content words in the speech of Hebrew-speaking parents to their children at different ages compared to the speech of parents to adults (ADS). Thirty infants (age range 8:5–33 months) were divided into three stages according to age: pre-lexical, single-word, and early grammar. The ADS corpus included 18 Hebrew-speaking parents of children at the same three stages of language development as in the CDS corpus. The CDS corpus was collected from parent–child dyads during naturalistic activities at home: mealtime, bathing, and play. The ADS corpus was collected from parent–experimenter interactions including the parent watching a video and then being interviewed by the experimenter. 200 utterances of each sample were transcribed, coded for types and tokens and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results show that in CDS, when speaking to infants of all ages, parents’ use of types and tokens of verbs and nouns was similar and significantly higher than their use of adjectives or adverbs. In ADS, however, verbs were the main lexical category used by Hebrew-speaking parents in both types and tokens. It seems that both the properties of the input language (e.g. the pro-drop parameter) and the interactional styles of the caregivers are important factors that may influence the high presence of verbs in Hebrew-speaking parents’ ADS and CDS. The negative correlation between the widespread use of verbs in the speech of parents to their infants and the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon in the Hebrew-child lexicon will be discussed in detail.