Discrimination of familiar human faces in dogs (Canis familiaris)

Faces are an important visual category for many taxa, and the human face is no exception to this. Because faces differ in subtle ways and possess many idiosyncratic features, they provide a rich source of perceptual cues. A fair amount of those cues are learned through social interactions and are used for future identification of individual humans. These effects of individual experience can be studied particularly well in hetero-specific face perception. Domestic dogs represent a perfect model in this respect, due to their proved ability to extract important information from the human face in socio-communicative interactions. There is also suggestive evidence that dogs can identify their owner or other familiar human individuals by using visual information from the face. However, most studies have used only dogs’ looking behavior to examine their visual processing of human faces and it has been demonstrated only that dogs can differentiate between familiar and unknown human faces. Here, we examined the dog's ability to discriminate the faces of two familiar persons by active choice (approach and touch). Furthermore, in successive stages of the experiment we investigated how well dogs discriminate humans in different representations by systematically reducing the informational richness and the quality of the stimuli. We found a huge inter-individual and inter-stage variance in performance, indicating differences across dogs in their learning ability as well as their selection of discriminative cues. On a group level, the performance of dogs significantly decreased when they were presented with pictures of human heads after having learned to discriminate the real heads, and when – after relearning – confronted with the same pictures showing only the inner parts of the heads. However, as two dogs quickly mastered all stages, we conclude that dogs are in principle able to discriminate people on the basis of visual information from their faces and by making active choices.     

Investigation of the process underpinning vowel‐size correspondence

Vowel‐size correspondence is frequently reported in the literature: Namely, the vowels a and i tend to elicit bigger and smaller images, respectively. Previous studies have speculated that two factors may contribute to this vowel‐size correspondence: the acoustical features of vowels and the speaker's kinesthetic experience of producing them. However, these two factors have been investigated without being considered separately in previous research. In this study, we investigated the process underpinning vowel‐size correspondence by using speeded classification tasks and manipulating the two factors mentioned above separately in two experiments. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that a and i elicited bigger and smaller images even in the absence of kinesthetic experience. The results of Experiment 2 indicate that the proprioception of the size of the oral cavity on its own may not contribute to vowel‐size correspondence. Thus, the acoustic features of vowels mainly contribute to vowel‐size correspondence, although other possibilities are also discussed.     

Listeners learn phonotactic patterns conditioned on suprasegmental cues

Language learners are sensitive to phonotactic patterns from an early age, and can acquire both simple and 2nd-order positional restrictions contingent on segment identity (e.g., /f/ is an onset with /æ/but a coda with /?/). The present study explored the learning of phonototactic patterns conditioned on a suprasegmental cue: lexical stress. Adults first heard non-words in which trochaic and iambic items had different consonant restrictions. In Experiment 1, participants trained with phonotactic patterns involving natural classes of consonants later falsely recognized novel items that were consistent with the training patterns (legal items), demonstrating that they had learned the stress-conditioned phonotactic patterns. However, this was only true for iambic items. In Experiment 2, participants completed a forced-choice test between novel legal and novel illegal items and were again successful only for the iambic items. Experiment 3 demonstrated learning for trochaic items when they were presented alone. Finally, in Experiment 4, in which the training phase was lengthened, participants successfully learned both sets of phonotactic patterns. These experiments provide evidence that learners consider more global phonological properties in the computation of phonotactic patterns, and that learners can acquire multiple sets of patterns simultaneously, even contradictory ones.     

An investigation of the role of some person and situation variables in multiple cue probability learning

Making decisions using judgements of multiple non-deterministic indicators is an important task, both in everyday and professional life. Learning of such decision making has often been studied as the mapping of stimuli (cues) to an environmental variable (criterion); however, little attention has been paid to the effects of situation-by-person interactions on this learning. Accordingly, we manipulated cue and feedback presentation mode (graphic or numeric) and task difficulty, and measured individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC). We predicted that graphic presentation, fewer cues, and elevated WMC would facilitate learning, and that person and task characteristics would interact such that presentation mode compatible with the decision maker's cognitive capability (enhanced visual or verbal WMC) would assist learning, particularly for more difficult tasks. We found our predicted main effects, but no significant interactions, except that those with greater WMC benefited to a larger extent with graphic than with numeric presentation, regardless of which type of working memory was enhanced or number of cues. Our findings suggest that the conclusions of past research based predominantly on tasks using numeric presentation need to be reevaluated and cast light on how working memory helps us learn multiple cue–criterion relationships, with implications for dual-process theories of cognition.     

Motor knowledge is one dimension for concept organization: Further evidence from a Chinese semantic dementia case

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have indicated that motor knowledge is one potential dimension along which concepts are organized. Here we present further direct evidence for the effects of motor knowledge in accounting for categorical patterns across object domains (living vs. nonliving) and grammatical domains (nouns vs. verbs), as well as the integrity of other modality-specific knowledge (e.g., visual). We present a Chinese case, XRK, who suffered from semantic dementia with left temporal lobe atrophy. In naming and comprehension tasks, he performed better at nonliving items than at living items, and better at verbs than at nouns. Critically, multiple regression method revealed that these two categorical effects could be both accounted for by the charade rating, a continuous measurement of the significance of motor knowledge for a concept or a semantic feature. Furthermore, charade rating also predicted his performances on the generation frequency of semantic features of various modalities. These findings consolidate the significance of motor knowledge in conceptual organization and further highlights the interactions between different types of semantic knowledge.     

齐风和韵——谈《韶》乐及齐国宫廷乐舞的音乐特点

《韶》乐来源于帝的《九招》,经过不断的发展,齐《韶》成为春秋时期齐国音乐文化发展水平的杰出代表,孔子的"尽善尽美"更是对齐《韶》的高度赞誉。齐《韶》作为齐国宫廷乐舞的重要组成部分,其场面宏大、优美典雅、刚毅庄重、欢快愉悦、情深意切、感人至深和音乐跌宕起伏,也成为齐国宫廷乐舞的音乐特点。     

试论惠栋《周易述》的治易特色

<周易述>是惠栋一生治<易>的结晶,是乾嘉时代最具代表性的易学著作,其主旨在于发挥汉易传统.作为引导乾嘉易学发展方向的易学著作,其治易特色可归纳为:尊汉法,以象数解<易>;重小学,以文字、音韵、训诂知识解<易>;贯通群书,纳入多学科以解<易>;追求古义,改易经文等几个方面.     

自闭症儿童语言认知发展理论研究综述

目前,关于语言障碍和认知障碍是自闭症的核心症候,这一点在国际上已无异议,但究其发展障碍的本质如何,则各种见解仍处于分歧之中。本文主要是从认知心理学和发展语言心理学的角度,对自闭症儿童的语言认知障碍及其特征进行分析,旨在为中国儿童自闭症的研究和治疗提供一些参考观点。     

儿童自我延迟满足的视觉认知

采用眼动研究方法,以儿童的延迟等待时间及眼动特征为指标,通过两个实验考察儿童在自我延迟满足情境中的注意分配策略及自我延迟满足能力发展的年龄特点。实验结果表明：偏爱策略能促进学前儿童的自我延迟满足;小学1、2年级儿童的自我延迟满足能力显著高于学前儿童;延迟奖励物的彩色照片比黑白照片更有利于儿童的延迟等待;眼动方法是延迟满足研究的有效方法     

Influence of aging pathways on the evolution of heterogeneous solute-rich features in peak-aged Al-Mg-Si-Cu alloy with a high Mg/Si ratio

We report on a study of the influence of aging pathways on the evolution of solute-rich features in peak-aged Al-Mg-Si-Cu alloys. The concentration and partitioning ratios of Mg, Si and Cu and Mg/Si ratios in the heterogeneous solute-rich features all increase with increasing size, with Si exhibiting the highest partitioning ratio, but notably these ratios change dramatically depending on the aging pathway selected. Accordingly, the short-time age hardening response can be enhanced by promoting both homogeneous and heterogeneous precipitate nucleation, while simultaneous improvements in peak-aged strength and elongation can be attained by a vacancy-assisted aging pathway.