中文书写者字迹识别的眼动研究

采用眼动技术,以不同整体书写风格的字迹为实验材料,探讨中文字迹识别的眼动模式。实验结果显示：随着整体书写风格一致性的变化,被试识别不同书写者中文字迹的反应时、注视次数,眼跳次数,兴趣区数及落入兴趣区的比率均表现出显著性差异。结论：（1）识别中文字迹依赖字迹整体书写风格;（2）中文字迹识别模式：在识别字迹时,优先采用字迹整体书写风格识别不同的字迹;（3）中文字迹识别属于图像识别加工。     

Introduction

There are very significant conceptual links between theories of social macroevolution and theories of the World System development. It is shown that the growth of the World System complexity and integrity can be traced through a system of phase transitions of macroevolution. The first set of phase transition is connected with the agrarian, industrial, and information-scientific revolutions (that are interpreted as changes of “production principles”). The second set consists of phase transitions within one production principle. These phase transitions are analyzed on the basis of the World System urbanization dynamics, but they can be traced with respect to the other (cultural, economic, technological, demographic, political, etc.) dimensions of the World System development.     

The Effects of Aging and Dual Task Demands on Language Production

ABSTRACT

A digital pursuit rotor task was used to measure dual task costs of language production by young and older adults. After training on the pursuit rotor, participants were asked to track the moving target while providing a language sample. When simultaneously engaged, young adults experienced greater dual task costs to tracking, fluency, and grammatical complexity than older adults. Older adults were able to preserve their tracking performance by speaking more slowly. Individual differences in working memory, processing speed, and Stroop interference affected vulnerability to dual task costs. These results demonstrate the utility of using a digital pursuit rotor to study the effects of aging and dual task demands on language production and confirm prior findings that young and older adults use different strategies to accommodate to dual task demands.     

Training Motor Sequences: Effects of Speed and Accuracy Instructions

Participants practiced a fixed 3- and a fixed 6-key press sequence for 144 times each. In the speed group, they were instructed to execute their sequences fast without bothering much about errors while the accurate group was instructed to be careful and prevent errors. In the test phase, participants executed series of 3 and 6 responses (a) when all element-specific stimuli were displayed in the familiar order, (b) in response to just the familiar first stimulus, and (c) by responding to random stimuli. The speed instruction yielded stronger sequencing skill while the accuracy instruction developed stronger reaction skill.     

The Detection of Prosocial Lying by Children

The purpose of the present study was to explore the detection of prosocial lying in children. Six‐ to 11‐year‐olds and adults were videotaped telling the truth or a lie about the desirability of an object, sometimes being asked a follow‐up question (i.e., elaborative trials) and other times not (i.e., regular trials). A different group of adults and children then judged the veracity of the individuals' statements in the video clips. Adults and children performed significantly better than chance at detecting lies in the youngest age group, and children's detection performance was unrelated to their age. Child lie detectors, unlike the adults, were also able to discriminate between adults' truthful and untruthful statements in the regular trials, but misidentified adults' truthful responses as lies. They appeared to be more trusting of other children. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Atypical speech lateralization in adults with developmental coordination disorder demonstrated using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound

Research using clinical populations to explore the relationship between hemispheric speech lateralization and handedness has focused on individuals with speech and language disorders, such as dyslexia or specific language impairment (SLI). Such work reveals atypical patterns of cerebral lateralization and handedness in these groups compared to controls. There are few studies that examine this relationship in people with motor coordination impairments but without speech or reading deficits, which is a surprising omission given the prevalence of theories suggesting a common neural network underlying both functions. We use an emerging imaging technique in cognitive neuroscience; functional transcranial Doppler (fTCD) ultrasound, to assess whether individuals with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) display reduced left‐hemisphere lateralization for speech production compared to control participants. Twelve adult control participants and 12 adults with DCD, but no other developmental/cognitive impairments, performed a word‐generation task whilst undergoing fTCD imaging to establish a hemispheric lateralization index for speech production. All participants also completed an electronic peg‐moving task to determine hand skill. As predicted, the DCD group showed a significantly reduced left lateralization pattern for the speech production task compared to controls. Performance on the motor skill task showed a clear preference for the dominant hand across both groups; however, the DCD group mean movement times were significantly higher for the non‐dominant hand. This is the first study of its kind to assess hand skill and speech lateralization in DCD. The results reveal a reduced leftwards asymmetry for speech and a slower motor performance. This fits alongside previous work showing atypical cerebral lateralization in DCD for other cognitive processes (e.g., executive function and short‐term memory) and thus speaks to debates on theories of the links between motor control and language production.     

非熟练双语者言语产生中非目标语言的激活范围

采用图-图干扰范式来考察非熟练中-英双语者言语产生中非目标语言的激活范围。实验1探讨用汉语命名时,干扰图的英语名称能否得以激活。结果发现,干扰图的词汇熟悉度高时,音译词的反应时显著长于音韵无关词,而熟悉度低时,二者无显著差异,说明在一语的产生过程中只能激活二语中高熟悉的非目标词。实验2探讨用英语命名时,干扰图的汉语名称能否激活。结果发现,不论熟悉度高还是低,音译词的反应时均显著长于音韵无关词,说明在二语的产生过程中会激活一语中的非目标词。总的结果说明,非熟练中-英双语者在言语产生过程中非目标语言中的非目标词也会激活,并且激活范围既受非目标语言的熟练程度的影响,也受非目标词熟悉度的影响。     

What's so funny? Modelling incongruity in humour production†

Finding something humorous is intrinsically rewarding and may facilitate emotion regulation, but what creates humour has been underexplored. The present experimental study examined humour generated under controlled conditions with varying social, affective, and cognitive factors. Participants listed five ways in which a set of concept pairs (e.g. MONEY and CHOCOLATE) were similar or different in either a funny way (intentional humour elicitation) or a “catchy” way (incidental humour elicitation). Results showed that more funny responses were produced under the incidental condition, and particularly more for affectively charged than neutral concepts, for semantically unrelated than related concepts, and for responses highlighting differences rather than similarities between concepts. Further analyses revealed that funny responses showed a relative divergence in output dominance of the properties typically associated with each concept in the pair (that is, funny responses frequently highlighted a property high in output dominance for one concept but simultaneously low in output dominance for the other concept); by contrast, responses judged not funny did not show this pattern. These findings reinforce the centrality of incongruity resolution as a key cognitive ingredient for some pleasurable emotional elements arising from humour and demonstrate how it may operate within the context of humour generation.     

Inhibitory control and the speech patterns of second language users

Inhibitory control (IC), an ability to suppress irrelevant and/or conflicting information, has been found to underlie performance on a variety of cognitive tasks, including bilingual language processing. This study examines the relationship between IC and the speech patterns of second language (L2) users from the perspective of individual differences. While the majority of studies have supported the role of IC in bilingual language processing using single‐word production paradigms, this work looks at inhibitory processes in the context of extended speech, with a particular emphasis on disfluencies. We hypothesized that the speech of individuals with poorer IC would be characterized by reduced fluency. A series of regression analyses, in which we controlled for age and L2 proficiency, revealed that IC (in terms of accuracy on the Stroop task) could reliably predict the occurrence of reformulations and the frequency and duration of silent pauses in L2 speech. No statistically significant relationship was found between IC and other L2 spoken output measures, such as repetitions, filled pauses, and performance errors. Conclusions focus on IC as one out of a number of cognitive functions in the service of spoken language production. A more qualitative approach towards the question of whether L2 speakers rely on IC is advocated.