平话心理科学向何处去

对心理学现状,要从课题的琐细,及屈从物理方法的独裁解放出来。建议群策群力,从战略的高度,进行战役性的研究,避免仓卒应付的遭遇战．要理论研究结合实际,从现实中发现漏洞以资利用。克服方法论中的诸多限制,比较机器人学的缺陷,重视意义的地位,采纳释义学的方法,打破“所谓”科学的梏制,以活跃心理学克服科学方法论的专制。     

Scale freeness in factor analysis

The notion of scale freeness does not seem to have been well understood in the factor analytic literature. It has been believed that if the loss function that is minimized to obtain estimates of the parameters in the factor model is scale invariant, then the estimates are scale free. It is shown that scale invariance of the loss function is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for scale freeness. A theorem that ensures scale freeness in the orthogonal factor model is given in this paper.The authors are grateful for the suggestions of the referees.     

元认知要素的研究

从实证的角度探讨元认知三要素假设的合理性。以元认知知识、元认知体验、元认知技能三者为基本维度,编制一份元认知问卷;施测元认知问卷,利用LISREL8.02对数据进行验证性因素分析,检验三维度假设与数据之间的拟合程度。结果表明,三维度假设与数据间有较好的拟合,且三维度假设比两维度假设与数据间的拟合更佳,从而为元认知三要素假设提供了实证支持。     

DANCING WITH THE SACRED: EXCERPTS

Abstract. In excerpts from my Dancing with the Sacred (2002), I use ideas from modern science, our world's religions, and my own experience to highlight three themes of the book. First, working within the framework of a scientific worldview, I develop a concept of the sacred (or God) as the creative activity of nature, human history, and individual life. Second, I offer a relational understanding of human nature that I call our social‐ecological selves and suggest some general considerations about what it means to live meaningfully and morally in an evolutionary world. Third, I explore how we might be at home in a universe that is constantly changing and in which suffering and death are interwoven with life and new creation.     

Newton Algorithms for Analytic Rotation: an Implicit Function Approach

In this paper implicit function-based parameterizations for orthogonal and oblique rotation matrices are proposed. The parameterizations are used to construct Newton algorithms for minimizing differentiable rotation criteria applied to m factors and p variables. The speed of the new algorithms is compared to that of existing algorithms and to that of Newton algorithms based on alternative parameterizations. Several rotation criteria were examined and the algorithms were evaluated over a range of values for m. Initial guesses for Newton algorithms were improved by subconvergence iterations of the gradient projection algorithm. Simulation results suggest that no one algorithm is fastest for minimizing all criteria for all values of m. Among competing algorithms, the gradient projection algorithm alone was faster than the implicit function algorithm for minimizing a quartic criterion over oblique rotation matrices when m is large. In all other conditions, however, the implicit function algorithms were competitive with or faster than the fastest existing algorithms. The new algorithms showed the greatest advantage over other algorithms when minimizing a nonquartic component loss criterion.     

Neurophysiology and neuroanatomy of smooth pursuit in humans

Smooth pursuit eye movements enable us to focus our eyes on moving objects by utilizing well-established mechanisms of visual motion processing, sensorimotor transformation and cognition. Novel smooth pursuit tasks and quantitative measurement techniques can help unravel the different smooth pursuit components and complex neural systems involved in its control. The maintenance of smooth pursuit is driven by a combination of the prediction of target velocity and visual feedback about performance quality, thus a combination of retinal and extraretinal information that has to be integrated in various networks. Different models of smooth pursuit with specific in- and output parameters have been developed for a better understanding of the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms and to make quantitative predictions that can be tested in experiments. Functional brain imaging and neurophysiological studies have defined motion sensitive visual area V5, frontal (FEF) and supplementary (SEF) eye fields as core cortical smooth pursuit regions. In addition, a dense neural network is involved in the adjustment of an optimal smooth pursuit response by integrating also extraretinal information. These networks facilitate interaction of the smooth pursuit system with multiple other visual and non-visual sensorimotor systems on the cortical and subcortical level. Future studies with fMRI advanced techniques (e.g., event-related fMRI) promise to provide an insight into how smooth pursuit eye movements are linked to specific brain activation. Applying this approach to neurological and also mental illness can reveal distinct disturbances within neural networks being present in these disorders and also the impact of medication on this circuitry.     

The social semantics of Mikhail Pokrovskij and Nikolaj Marr

Criticizing the works of “Western” specialists in semantics, Soviet academician M. M. Pokrovskij (1868–1942) comes to the conclusion that social factors are essential for semantic evolution, while psychological factors constitute an intermediate link between the “external” life of a society and the semantics of the corresponding language. This conception resembles the general explanations of semantic evolution proposed by N. Ja. Marr (1864–1934). Nevertheless, despite a number of common points in the semantic theories of these two researchers, Pokrovskij’s attitude towards Marr was negative: in particular, he disagreed with the thesis of the chronological primacy of Marr’s discoveries in the domain of semantics. The article investigates why Pokrovskij had for a long time constituted an intermediate link between Russian and “Western” “traditions” in the field of semantics.

Of substance: The nature of language effects on entity construal

Shown an entity (e.g., a plastic whisk) labeled by a novel noun in neutral syntax, speakers of Japanese, a classifier language, are more likely to assume the noun refers to the substance (plastic) than are speakers of English, a count/mass language, who are instead more likely to assume it refers to the object kind [whisk; Imai, M., & Gentner, D. (1997). A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning: Universal ontology and linguistic influence. Cognition, 62, 169–200]. Five experiments replicated this language type effect on entity construal, extended it to quite different stimuli from those studied before, and extended it to a comparison between Mandarin speakers and English speakers. A sixth experiment, which did not involve interpreting the meaning of a noun or a pronoun that stands for a noun, failed to find any effect of language type on entity construal. Thus, the overall pattern of findings supports a non-Whorfian, language on language account, according to which sensitivity to lexical statistics in a count/mass language leads adults to assign a novel noun in neutral syntax the status of a count noun, influencing construal of ambiguous entities. The experiments also document and explore cross-linguistically universal factors that influence entity construal, and favor Prasada’s [Prasada, S. (1999). Names for things and stuff: An Aristotelian perspective. In R. Jackendoff, P. Bloom, & K. Wynn (Eds.), Language, logic, and concepts (pp. 119–146). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] hypothesis that features indicating non-accidentalness of an entity’s form lead participants to a construal of object kind rather than substance kind. Finally, the experiments document the age at which the language type effect emerges in lexical projection. The details of the developmental pattern are consistent with the lexical statistics hypothesis, along with a universal increase in sensitivity to material kind.     

Working through the end of civilization

This is an account of how a civilization works through the problems it faces when it is threatened with destruction. It focuses on the example of the Crow Nation, an Indian tribe of the northwest plains of North America, and their last great chief Plenty Coups. Psychoanalytic ideas play a crucial role in explaining how a creative response was possible. In particular, their collective use of dream-visions and dream-interpretation made possible the creation of a new ego ideal for the tribe. This allowed for the transformation of traditional allocations of shame and humiliation. It also allowed for the possibility of transformation of psychological structure. And it opened up new possibilities for what might count as flourishing as a Crow. Conversely, the threat of civilizational collapse allows us to see new possibilities for the conceptual development of psychoanalysis. In particular, psychoanalysis needs to recognize that destruction can occur at the level of the culture while the individuals are not physically harmed. The psychological states of these individuals can be various and complex and cannot be neatly summed up under the category of trauma. A culture can be devastated, while there is no one-to-one relation to the psychological states of the individuals who participate in that culture. It is also true that a collapse of a way of life makes a variety of psychological states impossible. Coming to understand these phenomena is essential to understanding how a culture works through threats to its very existence.