Phonotactic probability influences speech production

Speakers are faster and more accurate at processing certain sound sequences within their language. Does this reflect the fact that these sequences are frequent or that they are phonetically less complex (e.g., easier to articulate)? It has been difficult to contrast these two factors given their high correlation in natural languages. In this study, participants were exposed to novel phonotactic constraints de-correlating complexity and frequency by subjecting the same phonological structure to varying degrees of probabilistic constraint. Participants' behavior was sensitive to variations in frequency, demonstrating that phonotactic probability influences speech production independent of phonetic complexity.     

Bilingualism aids conflict resolution: evidence from the ANT task

The need of bilinguals to continuously control two languages during speech production may exert general effects on their attentional networks. To explore this issue we compared the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals in the attentional network task (ANT) developed by Fan et al. [Fan, J., McCandliss, B.D. Sommer, T., Raz, A., Posner, M.I. (2002). Testing the efficiency and independence of attentional networks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 340-347]. This task is supposed to tap into three different attentional networks: alerting, orienting and executive control. The results revealed that bilingual participants were not only faster in performing the task, but also more efficient in the alerting and executive control networks. In particular, bilinguals were aided more by the presentation of an alerting cue, and were also better at resolving conflicting information. Furthermore, bilinguals experienced a reduced switching cost between the different type of trials compared to monolinguals. These results show that bilingualism exerts an influence in the attainment of efficient attentional mechanisms by young adults that are supposed to be at the peak of their attentional capabilities.     

Accommodating variation: dialects, idiolects, and speech processing

Listeners are faced with enormous variation in pronunciation, yet they rarely have difficulty understanding speech. Although much research has been devoted to figuring out how listeners deal with variability, virtually none (outside of sociolinguistics) has focused on the source of the variation itself. The current experiments explore whether different kinds of variation lead to different cognitive and behavioral adjustments. Specifically, we compare adjustments to the same acoustic consequence when it is due to context-independent variation (resulting from articulatory properties unique to a speaker) versus context-conditioned variation (resulting from common articulatory properties of speakers who share a dialect). The contrasting results for these two cases show that the source of a particular acoustic-phonetic variation affects how that variation is handled by the perceptual system. We also show that changes in perceptual representations do not necessarily lead to changes in production.     

作业时间和指导语导向对10-12岁儿童发散性思维的影响

研究者以239名10岁、11岁和12岁的儿童为实验对象,采用四种作业时间(2分钟、4分钟、6分钟和8分钟)和两种指导语导向(无导向、导向独特性)为实验条件,考察了这些条件对儿童发散性思维的影响.结果发现,作业时间和指导语导向对儿童发散性思维的流畅性,变通性和独特性均有明显的影响.在该实验条件下,发散性思维的三个指标随作业时间的增加而增加.有导向组儿童的发散性思维作业成绩显著高于无导向组.另外,在各实验条件下,儿童的作业成绩都有随着年龄的增长而上升的趋势.     

大学生孤独人群箱庭作品特征研究

对通过UCLA孤独量表选出的具有孤独症候群倾向的14名大学生28个箱庭作品的分析,发现其箱庭作品表现出以下特征：①缺乏生机活力;②对良好人际关系的渴望和对交流对象的挑剔之间的矛盾;③对自我认识的迷茫;④对曾有过的精神家园的留恋和对营造现阶段精神世界的追求。研究还发现,箱庭作品不仅反映人的心理状态,而且还在一定程度上反映人的心理特质。     

工作记忆与小学生文本产生、书写活动的关系

以小学三、六年级学生为被试,考察工作记忆与小学生文本产生、书写活动之间的关系。结果表明．工作记忆中的储存、加工功能对小学生写作的影响不同,储存功能主要与书写活动有关,加工功能主要与文本产生有关,储存与加工相对独立。随年级增长,小学生工作记忆的加工水平逐步提高。     

应用发展科学 ——一门研究人与社会发展的新兴学科

20世纪以来,社会、经济和地缘政治的变化使得科学与服务以及知识的研发与应用之间的矛盾进一步加剧。顺应社会发展的要求,发展心理学融合诸多相关学科而逐渐形成了一门新兴学科——应用发展科学（Applied Developmental Science）。与传统发展心理学相比,应用发展科学更强调生态化研究、发展性研究、积极干预和发展知识的普及。它力图实现多学科间知识的融合增效以及深入社会的知识研发和应用,从而更好地以问题为中心来解决影响个体发展的社会问题。应用发展科学能够为有关人类发展的科学研究和实践应用提供新的知识经验,同时,它又通过直接参与和影响社会政策的制定与实施来促进社会的积极发展     

Lexical or syntactic control of sentence formulation? Structural generalizations from idiom production

To compare abstract structural and lexicalist accounts of syntactic processes in sentence formulation, we examined the effectiveness of nonidiomatic and idiomatic phrasal verbs in inducing structural generalizations. Three experiments made use of a syntactic priming paradigm in which participants recalled sentences they had read in rapid serial visual presentation. Prime and target sentences contained phrasal verbs with particles directly following the verb (pull off a sweatshirt) or following the direct object (pull a sweatshirt off). Idiomatic primes used verbs whose figurative meaning cannot be straightforwardly derived from the literal meaning of the main verb (e.g., pull off a robbery) and are commonly treated as stored lexical units. Particle placement in sentences was primed by both nonidiomatic and idiomatic verbs. Experiment 1 showed that the syntax of idiomatic and nonidiomatic phrasal verbs is amenable to priming, and Experiments 2 and 3 compared the priming patterns created by idiomatic and nonidiomatic primes. Despite differences in idiomaticity and structural flexibility, both types of phrasal verbs induced structural generalizations and differed little in their ability to do so. The findings are interpreted in terms of the role of abstract structural processes in language production.     

论马克思的实践——社会生产关系本体论

For a long time, under the influence of traditional Western philosophy, Orthodox interpreters have distorted Marx’s philosophy as the ontology of matter, thereby concealing the essence of Marx’s philosophy, and eliminating the fundamental difference between Marx’s philosophy and traditional philosophy. This paper proposes that Marx’s philosophy is not the ontology of matter, but on the contrary, by examining the ontology of matter, Marx put forward his own ontological theory, i.e., the ontology of the praxis-relations of social production, by which Marx linked the realms of phenomenon and essence, revealing the content and essence of his philosophy. __________ Translated by Kong Hui from Zhexue yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Researches), 2008, (3): 3–11