The power of nonverbal behavior: Penalty-takers’ body language influences impression formation and anticipation performance in goalkeepers in a simulated soccer penalty task

Previous research showed that penalty-takers’ body language affects the impressions goalkeepers form about them. Furthermore, it is often assumed that body language influences goalkeepers’ performance. However, as yet, there is no empirical evidence that indicates whether this latter effect exists. The present research was aimed at (1) replicating and offering more insight in the initial impression formation effects (Experiment 1-3) and (2) providing evidence that signals of dominance and submissiveness affect participants’ anticipation performance within a simulated soccer penalty task (Experiment 3). We report three experiments demonstrating that participants form more positive impressions and have less confidence in saving penalty kicks from dominant penalty-takers (or scoring against dominant goalkeepers, Experiment 1) than submissive penalty-takers (goalkeepers). However, we did not find evidence that participants’ automatic associations with dominant and submissive players underlie these findings (Experiment 2). Finally, we demonstrate that anticipation of kick direction is influenced by penalty-takers’ body language (Experiment 3). Participants performed worse in the simulated soccer penalty task against dominant than submissive penalty-takers. No mediation of impression formation was found.     

Conceiving of entities as objects and as stuff

What is the difference between conceiving of an entity as an object of some kind and conceiving of it as an amount of solid stuff? We propose that the difference lies in how one thinks about the entity's structure. Object construals require thinking of the structure as being nonarbitrary, whereas substance construals require thinking of the structure as being arbitrary. We report six experiments that provide empirical support for this proposal. Regularity of structure, repetition of structure, and the existence of structure-dependent functions, all of which provide reasons to consider the structure of an entity to be nonarbitrary, were shown to bias participants towards object construals. We also discuss how the proposed account of what it means to construe an entity as an object or as some stuff can account for a range of findings in the literature on lexical development. These include the relation between cohesiveness and ontological category, shape and ontological category, and complexity of shape and ontological category. Finally, we discuss the nature of construals and the relation of object and substance construals to the physical, design, and intentional stances.     

The competition-among-relations-in-nominals theory of conceptual combination: implications for stimulus class formation and class expansion

One way in which new concepts are added to the conceptual system is through conceptual combination. The competition-among-relations-in-nominals (CARIN) theory (Gagné & Shoben, 1997) proposes that conceptual combination involves specifying a thematic relation (e.g., noun MADE OF modifier) to link the constituent concepts (e.g., chocolate and bee). This theory claims that relations have different strengths for various concepts that correspond to how often a modifier and relation have been paired in previous encounters with combined concepts and that this relational knowledge strongly affects the ease with which combined concepts can be formed. A mathematical model that incorporates key claims of the theory is presented, and empirical findings that are relevant to evaluating the CARIN theory are reviewed. The parallels between the CARIN theory and approaches to stimulus class formation are also discussed.     

共享概念的性质对拥有关系句子情景模型建立的影响

应用扇效应技术探讨共享概念的性质对建构拥有关系情境模型的影响。共包括2个实验,探讨在将“多人买1物”句式中的所购“物品”改变为隐含共同地点信息的“物品”条件下,被试对“多人买1物”拥有行为句式的学习是否表现出扇效应。结果表明,当所购物品隐含的相同地点信息的情况下,“多人买1物”的拥有行为句式无论是否具有明确的地点状语,都如同“1人买多物”的句式一样,没有表现出扇效应,与Radvanskv的研究结果不同。据此认为,只有在共享概念是属于情景模型建构的维度信息的情况下,有共享概念的信息才能整合为同一个情景模型。     

The Power to Feel Fear and The One to Feel Happiness are the Same

The centre of Adorno's Critical Theory is occupied by the theme of happiness. He speaks of the impaired life, of the unjustness of society, of murderous prejudices, of the atrocities in history, of the dissonance in art, of the unhappy consciousness, because something better can only be described from a point of opposition. Happiness cannot be objectified as possession, it always needs to be experienced subjectively, somatically. (With happiness it is like with truth: One does not have it, one is in it.) Happiness cannot be prescribed and ordered; nothing can be done to guarantee happiness. (Happiness goes beyond doing.) Happiness (like fear) has to do with being open to experience which can overwhelm the self. Sexual and aesthetical experience are models for such overwhelming happiness. The sensation of happiness always is very personal, but in this experience the individual leaves its particularity behind. One has to differentiate between goal and object: Happiness may be a goal, but not it itself, only what obstructs it, can be an object of Critical Theory.     

Long-term memory for concepts in a California sea lion (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Zalophus californianus</Emphasis>)

An adult California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) with extensive experience in performing discrimination learning tasks was tested to evaluate her long-term memory for two previously learned concepts. An associative concept, that of equivalence classification, was retested after a retention interval of approximately 1 year. The sea lion had originally shown emergent equivalence classification with nonsimilarity-based classes of stimuli in a simple discrimination repeated-reversal procedure as well as in a matching-to-sample procedure. The 1-year memory test revealed no decrement in classification performance in either procedure. A relational concept, that of generalized identity matching, was retested after approximately 10 years. The sea lion had originally received trial-and-error exemplar training with identity matching-to-sample problems prior to transferring the concept to novel stimulus configurations. In the 10-year memory test, the sea lion immediately and reliably applied the previously established identity concept to familiar and novel sets of matching problems. These are the first reports of long-term conceptual memory in a nonprimate species. The experimental findings are consistent with a variety of observations of sea lions in natural settings, which indicate that natal sites, feeding areas, and individuals may be remembered over long periods of time. Electronic Supplementary Material is available if you access this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10071-002-0153-8. On that page (frame on the left side), a link takes you directly to the supplementary material. Electronic Publication     

Infants' formation and use of categories to segregate objects

Four- and-a-half-month-old infants' (N = 100) category formation and use was studied in a series of five experiments. For each experiment, the test events featured a display composed of a cylinder and a box. Previous research showed that this display is not clearly parsed as a single unit or as two separate units by infants of this age. Immediately prior to testing, infants were shown a set of category exemplars. Knowledge about this category could help infants disambiguate the test display, which contained a novel exemplar of this category. Clear interpretation of the test display as composed of two separate units (as indicated by infants' longer looking at the move-together than at the move-apart test event) was taken as evidence of category formation and use. In Experiments 1 and 5, infants' prior experience with a set of three different boxes that were similar to the test box facilitated their segregation of the test display. Experiment 2 showed that three different exemplars are necessary: prior experience with any two of the three boxes used in Experiment 1 did not facilitate infants' segregation of the test display. Experiment 3 showed that variability in the exemplar set is necessary: prior experience with three identical boxes did not facilitate infants' segregation of the test display. Experiment 4 showed that under these conditions of very brief prior exposure, similarity between the exemplar set and test box is necessary: prior experience with three different boxes that were not very similar to the test box did not facilitate infants' segregation of the test display. Together, these findings suggest that: (a) number of exemplars, variability, and similarity in the exemplar set are important for infants' category formation, and (b) infants use their category knowledge to determine the boundaries of the objects in a display.     

Oddity learning by African dwarf goats ( Capra hircus)

Seventeen African dwarf goats (adult females) were trained on oddity tasks using an automated learning device. One odd stimulus and three identical nonodd stimuli were presented on a screen divided into four sectors; the sector for the odd stimulus was varied pseudorandomly. Responses to the odd stimulus were deemed to be correct and were reinforced with food. In phase 1, the goats were trained on eight stimulus configurations. From trial to trial the odd discriminandum was either a + symbol or the letter S, and the nonodd discriminandum was the symbol not used as the odd one. In phase 2, the animals were similarly trained using an unfilled triangle or a filled (i.e., solid black) circle. In phase 3, three new discriminanda were used, an unfilled, small circle with radiating lines, an unfilled heart-shaped symbol, and an unfilled oval; which of the three discriminanda was odd and nonodd was varied from trial to trial. Following these training phases, a transfer test was given, which involved 24 new discriminanda sets. These were presented twice for a total of 48 transfer test trials. Results early in training showed approximately 25% correct, which might be expected by chance in a four-choice task. After 500-2,000 trials, results improved to approximately 40-44% correct. The best-performing subject reached 60-80% correct during training. On the transfer test, this subject had 47.9% correct and that significantly exceeded 25% expected by chance. This finding suggests that some exceptional individuals of African dwarf goats are capable of learning the oddity concept.     

Sehen, Sichtbarkeit und empirische Forschung

Vision, Visibility, and Empirical Research. In general, natural scientists use the concept of observation in a liberal way: they talk of observing electrons, DNA, or distant quasars. Several philosophers of science have recently argued for a similar use of the concept of observation: they have claimed that the important aspects of scientific research can only be properly reconstructed in accordance with how this term is actually used in science. With reference to an example from astronomy, I point out that the proposed generalisation of the concept of observation leads to undesirable consequences. I argue that a differentiated conceptual framework is required in order to give an adequate account of the varieties of scientific experience. Thus, the appropriate starting point for distinguishing these various scientific research practices should not be the generalised scientific conception of observation, but instead distinctly different uses of the term observation drawn from ordinary language. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.