Inner speech slips exhibit lexical bias, but not the phonemic similarity effect

Inner speech, that little voice that people often hear inside their heads while thinking, is a form of mental imagery. The properties of inner speech errors can be used to investigate the nature of inner speech, just as overt slips are informative about overt speech production. Overt slips tend to create words (lexical bias) and involve similar exchanging phonemes (phonemic similarity effect). We examined these effects in inner and overt speech via a tongue-twister recitation task. While lexical bias was present in both inner and overt speech errors, the phonemic similarity effect was evident only for overt errors, producing a significant overtness by similarity interaction. We propose that inner speech is impoverished at lower (featural) levels, but robust at higher (phonemic) levels.     

Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: a Japanese-Italian cross-linguistic study

Learning word order is one of the earliest feats infants accomplish during language acquisition [Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.]. Two theories have been proposed to account for this fact. Constructivist/lexicalist theories [Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74(3), 209-253.] argue that word order is learned separately for each lexical item or construction. Generativist theories [Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.], on the other hand, claim that word order is an abstract and general property, determined from the input independently of individual words. Here, we show that eight-month-old Japanese and Italian infants have opposite order preferences in an artificial grammar experiment, mirroring the opposite word orders of their respective native languages. This suggests that infants possess some representation of word order prelexically, arguing for the generativist view. We propose a frequency-based bootstrapping mechanism to account for our results, arguing that infants might build this representation by tracking the order of functors and content words, identified through their different frequency distributions. We investigate frequency and word order patterns in infant-directed Japanese and Italian corpora to support this claim.     

Context effects in a temporal discrimination task" further tests of the Scalar Expectancy Theory and Learning-to-Time models

Pigeons were trained on two temporal bisection tasks, which alternated every two sessions. In the first task, they learned to choose a red key after a 1-s signal and a green key after a 4-s signal; in the second task, they learned to choose a blue key after a 4-s signal and a yellow key after a 16-s signal. Then the pigeons were exposed to a series of test trials in order to contrast two timing models, Learning-to-Time (LeT) and Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET). The models made substantially different predictions particularly for the test trials in which the sample duration ranged from 1 s to 16 s and the choice keys were Green and Blue, the keys associated with the same 4-s samples: LeT predicted that preference for Green should increase with sample duration, a context effect, but SET predicted that preference for Green should not vary with sample duration. The results were consistent with LeT. The present study adds to the literature the finding that the context effect occurs even when the two basic discriminations are never combined in the same session.     

The limits of newborn's grasping to detect texture in a cross-modal transfer task

Three experiments were conducted to investigate human newborns’ ability to perceive texture property tactually, either in a cross-modal transfer task or in an intra-modal tactual discrimination task. In Experiment 1, newborns failed to tactually recognize the texture (smooth vs. granular) of flat objects that they had previously seen, when they held flat objects. This failure was mainly due to a lack of intra-modal tactual discrimination between the two objects (Experiment 2). In contrast, Experiment 3 showed that newborns were able to tactually recognize the texture of previously seen surfaces when they held volumetric objects. Taken together, the results suggest that cross-modal transfer of texture from vision to touch stem from a peripheral mechanism, not a central mechanism. Grasping only allows newborns to perceive the texture of volumetric but not flat objects. As a consequence, this study reveals the limits of newborns’ grasping to detect and process information about texture. The results also suggest that more mature exploratory procedures, such as the “lateral motion” procedure exhibited by adults [Lederman, S. J., & Klatzky, R. (1987). Hand movements: A window into haptic object recognition. Cognitive Psychology, 19, 342–368], might be necessary for detecting the texture of flat objects in newborn infants.     

颜色词与颜色认知的关系:相互作用理论及其证据

颜色词与颜色认知的关系是探讨语言与认知关系的重要领域.对颜色词与颜色认知的关系,普遍进化理论认为,颜色词与颜色认知相互独立;语言关联性假设认为,颜色词对颜色认知有重要影响;折衷的理论认为,颜色认知既受光波的物理属性影响,又受人眼的生物特性影响,还受语言和文化影响.在国内外研究基础上,作者提出了颜色词与颜色认知关系的相互作用理论,认为颜色认知包括物理-生理、认知-智力、社会-文化三个水平,涉及物理、生理、认知、智力、语言和文化六个因素;三个层次、六个因素的相互作用,为人们提供了丰富多彩的颜色世界.     

刻板印象的自动激活实验研究

本研究应用模糊主次评判方法配合语义启动技术进行实验。结果表明;在年龄刻板印象上存在自动激活,而且没有性别差异;用不同性质的启动词来激活与年龄有关的刻板印象,激活后的刻板印象对年龄的判断有不同的影响,而且被试没有一个人意识到这点,表明内隐刻板印象的存在;人的判断具有模糊性,模糊主次评判方法有助于社会认知领域的量化研究,这是一个全新的尝试。     

汉语句子阅读理解中的语境效应

采用计算机快速系列视觉呈现技术,以反应时为指标,利用命名法,考察了汉语句子阅读中的语境效应。该研究表明：语境的作用机制是灵活的,它会随语境条件的变化而变化。在启动词与目标词语义联结弱的情况下,如果语境对目标词是一种低干扰,那么各模块之间彼此独立,一个模块不受另一个模块的影响;如果句法关系改变后的语境对目标词形成高干扰,各模块相互作用,不同语境对词汇通达有不同的作用。当启动词与目标词间有较强的语义联结时,语境效应主要来源于词与词之间的联结启动,这时的语境作用机制符合模块化理论;而当启动词与目标词间有较弱的语义联结时,随语境干扰强度的增加,目标词的词汇通达也随之增加,这时的语境作用机制则符合相互作用理论。     

在家庭自由游戏和智力任务游戏中儿童与母亲的交往行为特征

本研究采用家庭录像观察的方法,考察了61名3－4岁儿童在家庭环境中的两个情境－－自由和带有智力任务倾向的拼图游戏情境中所表现出来的行为特征,结果发现：1儿童在两种游戏情境中与母亲交往时所表现出来的行为特征可以从独立性、顺从、言语交流和参与四个维度进行评价。2当儿童的游戏从自由游戏转为带有智力任务倾向的游戏时,儿童与母亲的交往行为方式发生明显变化,交流行为和积极情绪明显减少,而依赖行为和不与母亲交流的行为显著增加。3在上述两种游戏情境中,儿童与母亲的交往行为表现出个别差异,在自由游戏情境中,42.6%为独立型、32.8%为顺从型和24.6%为交流型;在拼图游戏情境中,54％为独立型、23％为顺从型和23％不顺从型。     

Recollection and familiarity for words and faces: a study comparing Remember–Know judgements and the Process Dissociation Procedure

Measures of recollection and familiarity often differ depending on the paradigm utilised. Remember–Know (R–K) and Process Dissociation Procedure (PDP) methods have been commonly used but rarely compared within a single study. In the current experiments, R–K and PDP were compared by examining the effect of attention at study and time to respond at test on recollection and familiarity using the same experimental procedures for each paradigm. We also included faces in addition to words to test the generality of the findings often obtained using words. The results from the R–K paradigm revealed that recollection and familiarity were similarly affected by attention at study and time to respond at test. However, in the case of PDP, the measures of recollection and familiarity showed a different pattern of results. The effects observed for recollection were similar to those obtained with the R–K method, whereas familiarity was affected by time to respond but not by attention at study. These results are discussed in relation to the controlled-automatic processing distinction and the contribution of each paradigm to research on recognition memory.     

儿童绘图作业内隐学习智力独立性研究

实验采用中性参数程序和绘图作业,让正常智力、轻度智力落后、中度智力落后3组8～12岁右利手儿童接受符合、不符合或与“起始-旋转法则”无关的绘图练习,考察练习对原初行为方式的影响。结果发现,违反“起始-旋转法则”的练习使智力落后组被试的绘图行为发生了明显改变,证明内隐学习具有智力独立性;“意识污染”对内隐学习结果的影响可能是复杂的而非单向的;中性参数实验程序能够更好地隐蔽规则学习的实验目的,但不能有效消除意识污染的影响。