Learning new vocabulary during childhood: Effects of semantic training on lexical consolidation and integration

Research suggests that word learning is an extended process, with offline consolidation crucial for the strengthening of new lexical representations and their integration with existing lexical knowledge (as measured by engagement in lexical competition). This supports a dual memory systems account, in which new information is initially sparsely encoded separately from existing knowledge and integrated with long-term memory over time. However, previous studies of this type exploited unnatural learning contexts, involving fictitious words in the absence of word meaning. In this study, 5- to 9-year-old children learned real science words (e.g., hippocampus) with or without semantic information. Children in both groups were slower to detect pauses in familiar competitor words (e.g., hippopotamus) relative to control words 24 h after training but not immediately, confirming that offline consolidation is required before new words are integrated with the lexicon and engage in lexical competition. Children recalled more new words 24 h after training than immediately (with similar improvements shown for the recall and recognition of new word meanings); however, children who were exposed to the meanings during training showed further improvements in recall after 1 week and outperformed children who were not exposed to meanings. These findings support the dual memory systems account of vocabulary acquisition and suggest that the association of a new phonological form with semantic information is critical for the development of stable lexical representations.     

An Experiment upon Repeated Reproduction

The author presented dwarf hamsters (Phodopus campbelli) and golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) with conspecific and inanimate signals for food. Both species approached a cardboard stimulus that predicted food. The dwarf hamsters engaged in high levels of social contact directed toward a conspecific conditioned stimulus for food, but the golden hamsters did not. The author also presented dwarf hamsters with a conspecific signal that did not indicate food, and the levels of social behaviors that they directed toward it were significantly lower. These results suggest the presence of a social component in the dwarf hamster feeding system and are consistent with previous findings that the social transmission of food preferences occurs more readily in dwarf hamsters than in golden hamsters.     

Moral Motivation Based on Multiple Developmental Structures: An Exploration of Cognitive and Emotional Dynamics

Intrapersonal variability and multiplicity in the complexity of moral motivation were examined from Dynamic Systems and Self-Determination Theory perspectives. L. Kohlberg's (1969) stages of moral development are reconceptualized as soft-assembled and dynamically transformable process structures of motivation that may operate simultaneously within person in different degrees. Moral motivation is conceptualized as the real-time process of self-organization of cognitive and emotional dynamics out of which moral judgment and action emerge. A detailed inquiry into intrapersonal variation in moral motivation is carried out based on the differential operation of multiple motivational structures. A total of 74 high school students and 97 college students participated in the study by completing a new questionnaire, involving 3 different hypothetical moral judgments. As hypothesized, findings revealed significant multiplicity in the within-person operation of developmental stage structures, and intrapersonal variability in the degrees to which stages were used. Developmental patterns were found in terms of different distributions of multiple stages between high school and college samples, as well as the association between age and overall motivation scores. Differential relations of specific emotions to moral motivation revealed and confirmed the value of differentiating multiple emotions. Implications of the present theoretical perspective and the findings for understanding the complexity of moral judgment and motivation are discussed.     

Psychophysics of Kinesthesis

A horizontal straight-arm movement was used to determine the relationship between the physical stimulus continuum and the psychological continuum of kinesthetic extent of arm movement. A power function with an exponent of 1.075 best described this relationship. In addition, to classify extent of movement as belonging to either a prothetic or metathetic continuum, the category scale was derived. According to the functional criteria described by Stevens (1957), extent of movement was subserved by a metathetic process which would indicate that, for the present task, judgments were made through the use of positional cues rather than amplitude cues.     

Skill transfer,affordances and dexterity in different climbing environments

This study explored how skills in one region of a perceptual-motor landscape of performance, created in part by previous experience in rock climbing, can shape those that emerge in another region (ice climbing). Ten novices in rock climbing and five intermediate rock climbers were observed climbing an icefall. Locations of right and left ice tools and crampons were videotaped from a frontal camera. Inter-individual variability of upper and lower limb couplings and types of action regarding icefall properties were assessed by cluster hierarchical analysis, distinguishing three clusters. Pelvis vertical displacement, duration and number of pelvis pauses were also analyzed. Experienced rock climbers were grouped in the same cluster and showed the highest range and variability of limb angular locations and coordination patterns, the highest vertical displacement and the shortest pelvis plateaux durations. Non-fluent climbers (clusters 2 and 3) showed low range and variability of limb angular locations and coordination patterns. In particular, climbers of cluster 3 exhibited the lowest vertical displacement, the longest plateaux durations and the greatest ratio between tool swinging and definitive anchorage. Our results exemplified the positive influence of skills in rock climbing on ice climbing performance, facilitated by the detection of affordances from environmental properties.     

Sensory substitution: an approach to the experimental study of perception / Sustitución sensorial: un abordaje para el estudio experimental de la percepción

Abstract

Sensory substitution refers to the phenomenon where object and environment information normally acquired through one sense can be obtained by another sense. For example, visual input being provided by hearing or touching. Sensory substitution devices are technological designs that transform the characteristics of one sensory modality into stimuli of another sensory modality. These devices were developed with two purposes: (1) to assist people with sensory disabilities in daily tasks; and (2) to study the involved mechanisms of brain plasticity. This article reviews studies in which sensory substitution phenomenon is employed as a methodological strategy to study visual perception. Furthermore, its use is discussed as an experimental platform to contrast new perceptual theories and underlying neurophysiological mechanisms that are currently under review.     

Re‐framing systemic paradigms for the art of learning

Thoughtful people are increasingly concerned that the current paradigms for social, corporate, and educational activities are in disgraceful disarray. The “problem‐solving” or analytical model, the competitive or game model, the commercial or consumer model, the bureaucratic or institutional model, and the disease or illness model which prevail in public discourse are proving to be especially unwholesome. We cannot, however, educate ourselves without paradigms. A credible educational paradigm must be generally accessible without being simplistic, informative without being monothematic, and accommodating as well as discriminating. Given our disquiet with the current cognitive situation, a renewing paradigm must be somehow novel; given the character of human nature, a sustaining paradigm must be somehow familiar.

For a very long time now, professional Sciences have committed themselves to paradigms about “reality out there,” while professional Arts have devoted themselves to expressing “imagination from within here.” The more these two worldviews polarize in opposition to one another, the more room there is—and the more human heed there becomes—for mediation by an applied philosophy which accommodates the “real” as well as the “imaginary” in a complementary way. Such a philosophy would address not only “what do you know?” and “how do you do?” but also “how do you know?” and “why do you do?” In earlier times, people would have been considered neither educated nor wise unless they appreciated the Sciences and the Arts whole. In our time, we may not survive unless we can re‐integrate our fractured perceptions. How might we proceed to do so? There may be a systemological way.     

Chaotic attractors in the therapeutic system 1

Because little research had been done on the presence and role of latent communication in the context of team‐conducted family therapy, the writers set out to monitor unconscious responses generated under these conditions. Specifically, they investigated an ongoing family treatment situation conducted according to the “reflecting team model.” One team of therapists handles the actual treatment session, while the other observes from behind a one‐way mirror. During the course of a session, the second team makes suggestions to the treatment team either by telephone or by calling the therapists out of the treatment room.

As the project developed, the writers found that the unconscious responses of both family and treatment teams indicated a process at work beyond the conscious intentions of the participants. That is, the therapeutic enterprise was functioning as a dynamical system, whose increasing complexity suggested a self organizing principle at work. This paper traces the development of the system's movement toward greater complexity, identifies the specific interventions that indicate this process, describes how all participants demonstrated a high degree of resonance and synchronization with this overarching‐self organizing pattern. This paper serves to alert therapists to the role of unconscious communication within the therapeutic system and postulates that the generation of form within psychotherapy follows many of the same self organizing processes found in other human and non human systems.     

The structure of “communities” and communications in the new millennium

The three lineages of information,—the genetic, the cultural and artifactual—will increasingly merge their constituent information contents through advances in biotechnology and information technology. This will redefine what constitutes “social” and what constitutes “community.” A community's members communicate with their “significant others” and change their internal information states (and their internal and external behaviors). Under conditions of merging, information exchanges occur across all the three lineages. In this sense, the concept of significant other,—that is, a communicating entity—, is now spread from human communities to encompass also the biological and the artifactual. A seamless merging between the three realms now occurs affecting their respective internal information stores. The resulting image of interactions that now arises is of multiple oceans of communities, operating at different levels, the genetic, the cultural and the artifactual. There are exchanges across the different levels, up and down and sideways, as information is translated from one realm to the other. These dynamics result in changes in the evolutionary characteristics of each lineage and sub‐lineage, including the internal perceptions from within a lineage, namely in the language of evolutionary epistemology, its “meanings” and “hypotheses” on the world. A future sociology must necessarily take into account these factors and incorporate the dynamics of all three realms.