群际态度与群际信念:耦合还是分离?

群际态度是人们对于某一群体的喜欢或不喜欢,包括外显群际态度和内隐群际态度,它是一个群体对另一群体正负连续体的评价。群际信念是人们对某一群体特性的刻板印象。以往研究认为,群际态度和群际信念是耦合关系,相互影响,相倚存在。但群际态度和群际信念也存在分离性证据,即存在矛盾性和非统一性。为何形成耦合或者分离,文化定型论、群际态度补偿机制(低地位群体的创造策略、高地位群体的慷慨策略),以及认知差别等都成为调节性平衡点。探讨群际态度和群际信念的分离性关系和作用机制对于干预和消弭群际边界与群际冲突,缓和群际关系具有深远影响,可以支持其独立路径予以针对性干预方案。     

Timing of human cortical functions during cognition: role of MEG

Understanding of sensory and cognitive brain processes requires information about activation timing within and between different brain sites. Such data can be obtained by magnetoencephalography (MEG) that tracks cortical activation sequences with a millisecond temporal accuracy. MEG is gaining a well-established role in human neuroscience, complementing with its excellent temporal resolution the spatially more focused brain imaging methods. As examples of MEG's role in cognitive neuroscience, we discuss time windows related to cortical processing of sensory and multisensory stimuli, effects of the subject's own voice on the activity of their auditory cortex, timing of brain activation in reading, and cortical dynamics of the human mirror-neuron system activated when the subject views another person's movements.     

Development of the Lurian Approach: A Cultural Neurolinguistic Perspective

This article presents a discussion of the principle of extracortical organization of higher mental functions and its significance for the development of contemporary neuropsychology. The role of external factors (stimulus-mediator, symbol) in establishing functional connections between various brain systems is, in principle, universal. However, inasmuch as differing mediators and means, or significantly different details within them (direction of writing, orientation by maps or by the behavior of sea birds, etc.) may and in fact do develop in different cultures, neuropsychological analysis must take into account cross-cultural differences. Diagnostic tools must also be adapted to differing cultural contexts. The efficacy of this principle for the analysis of bilingual aphasia and of mental organization of speech, including the effect of acquisition of literacy in native language, is demonstrated. The importance of this principle for the development of new directions in applied neuropsychology is also discussed.     

From aggressiveness to creativity

Psychology has a long tradition of considering human creativity as a distinct human characteristic and a special kind of human activity. After explaining the key motives for such an attitude, the author discusses those forms of healthy aggressiveness that stand out as necessary and constitutive elements of the creative process. Taking the well-known statement of C. G. Jung's 'The person who does not build (create), will demolish and destroy' as a starting point, the author compares the basic premises for understanding the process of human creativity, at the same time drawing on Freud's psychology of the individual and Jung's principle of the collective unconscious as well as his notion of 'complexes'. In doing so, the author somewhat boldly paraphrases Jung's dictum: 'In order to be creative, rather than just constructive, one must occasionally also destroy'. With reference to Wallas, Taylor and Neumann (Wallas 1926; Taylor 1959;;Neumann 2001), the author goes on to explore those concepts which help us to investigate the phenomenon of human creativity, drawing distinctions between emergent, expressive, productive, inventive and innovative creativity. The second part of the article discusses the importance of intelligence, originality, nonconformity, subversiveness and free-mindedness for the creative process of human beings. The author concludes with a further explanation of Erich Neumann's argument that human creativity cannot be understood solely as a result of sociogenetic factors, and argues that it is only by taking into consideration Jung's perception of creativity that a global ontological understanding of these processes can be achieved.     

Signal functions in delayed reinforcement

Three experiments were conducted with pigeons to examine the role of the signal in delay-of-reinforcement procedures. In the first, a blackout accompanying a period of nonreinforcement increased key-peck response rates maintained by immediate reinforcement. The effects of dissociating the blackout from the delay interval were examined in the second experiment. In three conditions, blackouts and unsignaled delays were negatively correlated or occurred randomly with respect to one another. A signaled delay and an unsignaled delay that omitted the blackouts were studied in two other conditions. All delay-of-reinforcement conditions generally produced response rates lower than those produced by immediate reinforcement. Signaled delays maintained higher response rates than did any of the various unsignaled-delay conditions, with or without dissociated blackouts. The effects of these latter conditions did not differ systematically from one another. The final experiment showed that response rates varied as a function of the frequency with which a blackout accompanied delay intervals. By eliminating a number of methodological difficulties present in previous delay-of-reinforcement experiments, these results suggest the importance of the signal in maintaining responding during delay-of-reinforcement procedures and, conversely, the importance of the delay interval in decreasing responding.     

On the redundancy of convex non-decreasing transformations in vector maximum problems

In this note we show that auxiliary functions used for generating vector maxima and which are based upon convex non-decreasing transformation functions of the objective functions cannot perform better than the standard non-negative weighting factor method.     

Identical Twins,Deduction Theorems,and Pattern Functions: Exploring the Implicative BCSK Fragment of S5

We recapitulate (Section 1) some basic details of the system of implicative BCSK logic, which has two primitive binary implicational connectives, and which can be viewed as a certain fragment of the modal logic S5. From this modal perspective we review (Section 2) some results according to which the pure sublogic in either of these connectives (i.e., each considered without the other) is an exact replica of the material implication fragment of classical propositional logic. In Sections 3 and 5 we show that for the pure logic of one of these implicational connectives two – in general distinct – consequence relations (global and local) definable in the Kripke semantics for modal logic turn out to coincide, though this is not so for the pure logic of the other connective, and that there is an intimate relation between formulas constructed by means of the former connective and the local consequence relation. (Corollary 5.8. This, as we show in an Appendix, is connected to the fact that the ‘propositional operations’ associated with both of our implicational connectives are close to being what R. Quackenbush has called pattern functions.) Between these discussions Section 4 examines some of the replacement-of-equivalents properties of the two connectives, relative to these consequence relations, and Section 6 closes with some observations about the metaphor of identical twins as applied to such pairs of connectives.     

On additivity of duration reproduction functions

In the present paper properties of theoretical response functions in the duration reproduction task (drt) are studied. If the drt response is to be interpreted as the measure of a temporal duration elapsed in the past, the reproduction function (rf) must be additively measuring. The additivity property is defined for bivariate rfs, taking into account the delay between retention and reproduction. The requirement that an rf be additively measuring leads to a system of two functional equations, which are solved by (i) linear functions of time, or (ii) functions of the form yielded by the ‘dual klepsydra model’ of duration reproduction [Wackermann, J., & Ehm, W. (2006). The klepsydra model of internal time representation and time reproduction. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 239, 482-493]. This result supports the outstanding rôle of the ‘klepsydraic reproduction function’ (krf) in models of internal representation and reproduction of temporal durations.     

Dimensional structure and measurement invariance of the BRIEF-2 across gender in a socially vulnerable sample of primary school-aged children

The present study aims to analyze, on the one hand, the dimensional structure of the BRIEF-2 and, on the other, its measurement invariance across gender in a sample of primary school-aged children. Participants were 168 students (51.8% girls) in conditions of social risk and in foster homes, with ages ranging from 6 to 15 years old (M = 10.08; SD = 2.09). The children’s executive functioning level was obtained from their parents or caregivers. The analysis of the internal structure using confirmatory factor analysis reveals that the model with three indexes (Behavioral, Emotional and Cognitive) and nine scales (Inhibit, Shift, Self-Monitor, Emotional Control, Initiate, Working Memory, Plan/Organize, Organization of Materials and Task-Monitor) showed a good fit to the sample. Likewise, the results support the measurement invariance of the BRIEF-2 across genders. The coefficient alpha values for the index scores ranged from .71 to .91, with coefficients for the individual scales ranging from .66 to .88. The findings support the factorial validity of the BRIEF-2 scores, suggesting that it is an adequate instrument to evaluate executive functioning reported by parents and caregivers. Future studies must continue to examine the structure and invariance of the BRIEF-2 in different populations and cultures.