The influence of expertise and of physical complexity on visual short-term memory consolidation

This paper examines controversial claims about the merit of “unconscious thought” for making complex decisions. In four experiments, participants were presented with complex decisions and were asked to choose the best option immediately, after a period of conscious deliberation, or after a period of distraction (said to encourage “unconscious thought processes”). In all experiments the majority of participants chose the option predicted by their own subjective attribute weighting scores, regardless of the mode of thought employed. There was little evidence for the superiority of choices made “unconsciously”, but some evidence that conscious deliberation can lead to better choices. The final experiment suggested that the task is best conceptualized as one involving “online judgement” rather than one in which decisions are made after periods of deliberation or distraction. The results suggest that we should be cautious in accepting the advice to “stop thinking” about complex decisions.     

句子重音对汉语同音异义词的解歧作用

通过针对包含两对汉语同音异义词(“qui(4)shi(4)”(“趣事”或“去世”和“sheng(1)xue(2)”(“声学”或“升学”))的10个发音人语料的声学特征分析和知觉实验,结果发现：消除这两对同音异义词歧义的不是词重音而是句子重音。这个研究结果说明：汉语中句子重音能够通过选择强调同音异义词的某个音节来消除它们的歧义。     

Moral dilemmas and moral rules

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contribution that rules make to reasoning about moral dilemmas. In two experiments, we find that participants show a parallel asymmetry about versions of the dilemmas that have minimized emotional force. In a third experiment, we find that people distinguish between whether an action violates a moral rule and whether it is, all things considered, wrong. We propose that judgments of whether an action is wrong, all things considered, implicate a complex set of psychological processes, including representations of rules, emotional responses, and assessments of costs and benefits.     

Virtue Ethics, Theory, and Warrant

Are there good grounds for thinking that the moral values of action are to be derived from those of character? This ‘virtue ethical’ claim is sometimes thought of as a kind of normative ethical theory; sometimes as form of opposition to any such theory. However, the best case to be made for it supports neither of these claims. Rather, it leads us to a distinctive view in moral epistemology: the view that my warrant for a particular moral judgement derives from my warrant for believing that I am a good moral judge. This view seems to confront a regress-problem. For the belief that I am a good moral judge is itself a particular moral judgement. So it seems that, on this view, I need to derive my warrant for believing that I am a good moral judge from my warrant for believing that I am a good judge of moral judges; and so on. I show how this worry can be met, and trace the implications of the resulting view for warranted moral judgement.     

Challenges for the sequential two-system model of moral judgement

Considerable evidence supports the sequential two-system (“default interventionist”) model of moral judgement, as proposed by Greene and others. We tested whether judgement speed and/or personal/impersonal moral dilemmas can predict the kind of moral judgements (utilitarian or deontological) subjects make for each dilemma, and whether personal dilemmas create difficulty in moral judgements. Our results showed that neither personal/impersonal conditions nor spontaneous/thoughtful-reflection conditions were reliable predictors of utilitarian or deontological moral judgements. Yet, we found support for an alternative view, in which, when the two types of responses are in conflict; the resolution of this conflict depends on both the subject and the dilemma. While thinking about this conflict, subjects sometimes change their minds in both directions, as suggested by the data from a mouse-tracking task.     

The assistant referees’ activity in refereeing elite football: Preoccupations when not judging offside

ObjectiveThe purpose of this research was to study the preoccupations assistant referees had to participate in decision making about duels during football games.DesignResearch adopted a phenomenological framework to investigate the assistant referees’ lived experiences in order to understand their activity when they judged duels in match.MethodThis study investigated six professional football matches. Researchers conducted a participatory observation of the refereeing team before each match. Twelve self-confrontation interviews with each assistant referee of each match were conducted in order to make him/her describing his/her unfolding lived experience during the match.ResultsIn case of players’ duels, the perception of contextual cues enabled the assistants to appraise the occurring of a decision process with the central referee. For the assistants, the occurring of a decision process with the central referee meant his priority to intervene in the adjudication of duels, while the absence of decision process with the central referee meant for the assistants the possibility to intervene. The assistants adjusted their way of judging duels to how the central referee judged the previous ones.ConclusionsThe participation of assistants in decision making about duels depends on their preoccupations concerning the central referee’s priority. The way assistants perceive the central referee’s contextual judgment shapes the way they adjudicate duels. A latent intention to coordinate with the central referee, in relation with their collaborative tasks, is embedded in their preoccupations. Our results are a platform to develop further research about the referees’ collective activity.