时间顺序关系对语言理解的影响

通过2个实验探讨在语言理解中时间顺序相关性(顺时序、反时序、不相关)和时间间隔(200ms、500ms、1000ms)在日常事件认识中的作用。实验采用关系——认知范式(relarion-recognition paradigm)。结果表明：被试在有明显时间信息影响下,优先对将来取向(顺时序)的事件进行加工处理。对时间上不相关的事件比对顺时序和反时序的事件加工得快而准。但在无明显时间信息影响时,首先受到本身词义的影响,继而受到隐含的时间信息的影响。     

Expectation-based syntactic comprehension

This paper investigates the role of resource allocation as a source of processing difficulty in human sentence comprehension. The paper proposes a simple information-theoretic characterization of processing difficulty as the work incurred by resource reallocation during parallel, incremental, probabilistic disambiguation in sentence comprehension, and demonstrates its equivalence to the theory of Hale [Hale, J. (2001). A probabilistic Earley parser as a psycholinguistic model. In Proceedings of NAACL (Vol. 2, pp. 159-166)], in which the difficulty of a word is proportional to its surprisal (its negative log-probability) in the context within which it appears. This proposal subsumes and clarifies findings that high-constraint contexts can facilitate lexical processing, and connects these findings to well-known models of parallel constraint-based comprehension. In addition, the theory leads to a number of specific predictions about the role of expectation in syntactic comprehension, including the reversal of locality-based difficulty patterns in syntactically constrained contexts, and conditions under which increased ambiguity facilitates processing. The paper examines a range of established results bearing on these predictions, and shows that they are largely consistent with the surprisal theory.     

荀子社会分层的政治伦理思想及其现代价值

基于天人关系,荀子从人的自然本性和社会性出发,对其社会分层的政治伦理思想作了哲学论证。以“礼”为核心和标准,荀子把社会分层划分为社会等级分层与社会职业分层两个层面。荀子把“礼”的功能———“群”与“分”,特别是等级差别之“分”作为社会分层的手段,以最终实现社会和谐有序的政治理想。这对于我们今天构建社会主义和谐社会仍具有一定的现实意义。     

印尼留学生汉语主动句被动句命题表征项目顺序

采用句子-图形验证任务初步探讨了不同汉语水平的印尼留学生理解汉语主动句、被动句所形成的命题表征中的项目顺序特点。结果表明,初级汉语水平印尼留学生理解汉语主动句、被动句后所建构的命题表征中项目顺序均为“受事→施事”;中级汉语水平印尼留学生理解汉语主动句所形成的命题表征项目顺序为“施事→受事”,而其理解汉语被动句所形成的命题表征项目顺序为“受事→施事”。母语主动句、被动句的理解特点影响印尼留学生汉语主动句、被动句命题表征项目顺序;这种影响作用与其汉语水平有一定的关系。     

Is ZF a hack?: Comparing the complexity of some (formalist interpretations of) foundational systems for mathematics

This paper presents Automath encodings (which are also valid in LF/λP) of various kinds of foundations of mathematics. Then it compares these encodings according to their size, to find out which foundation is the simplest.

The systems analyzed in this way are two kinds of set theory (ZFC and NF), two systems based on Church's higher order logic (Isabelle/Pure and HOL), three kinds of type theory (the calculus of constructions, Luo's extended calculus of constructions, and Martin-Löf's predicative type theory) and one foundation based on category theory.

The conclusions of this paper are that the simplest system is type theory (the calculus of constructions), but that type theories that know about serious mathematics are not simple at all. In that case the set theories are the simplest. If one looks at the number of concepts needed to explain such a system, then higher order logic is the simplest, with twenty-five concepts. On the other side of the scale, category theory is relatively complex, as is Martin-Löf's type theory.

(The full Automath sources of the contexts described in this paper are one the web at http://www.cs.ru.nl/~freek/zfc-etc/.)     

An Impossibility Theorem on Beliefs in Games

A paradox of self-reference in beliefs in games is identified, which yields a game-theoretic impossibility theorem akin to Russell’s Paradox. An informal version of the paradox is that the following configuration of beliefs is impossible:Ann believes that Bob assumes thatAnn believes that Bob’s assumption is wrongThis is formalized to show that any belief model of a certain kind must have a ‘hole.’ An interpretation of the result is that if the analyst’s tools are available to the players in a game, then there are statements that the players can think about but cannot assume. Connections are made to some questions in the foundations of game theory.Special Issue Ways of Worlds II. On Possible Worlds and Related Notions Edited by Vincent F. Hendricks and Stig Andur Pedersen     

Listen to your mother! The role of talker familiarity in infant streaming

Little is known about the acoustic cues infants might use to selectively attend to one talker in the presence of background noise. This study examined the role of talker familiarity as a possible cue. Infants either heard their own mothers (maternal-voice condition) or a different infant's mother (novel-voice condition) repeating isolated words while a female distracter voice spoke fluently in the background. Subsequently, infants heard passages produced by the target voice containing either the familiarized, target words or novel words. Infants in the maternal-voice condition listened significantly longer to the passages containing familiar words; infants in the novel-voice condition showed no preference. These results suggest that infants are able to separate the simultaneous speech of two women when one of the voices is highly familiar to them. However, infants seem to find separating the simultaneous speech of two unfamiliar women extremely difficult.     

积极情景线索对内隐攻击性的影响

通过向被试呈现代表积极情景线索的材料(一段含有互助、和谐信息的公益短片),运用内隐联想测验(IAT)范式,从内隐社会认知的角度来研究积极情境线索对个体内隐攻击性的影响,并分析这种影响是否具有性别差异。结果表明:未观看积极情景线索材料的被试表现出显著的内隐攻击性,而观看积极情景线索材料的被试的内隐攻击性不显著;积极情景线索的主效应显著,且这一效应不存在性别差异。这说明,积极情景线索能有效抑制个体的内隐攻击性,并支持自我攻击信念IAT是测量个体内隐攻击性的有效工具。     

Seeing to hear better: evidence for early audio-visual interactions in speech identification

Lip reading is the ability to partially understand speech by looking at the speaker's lips. It improves the intelligibility of speech in noise when audio-visual perception is compared with audio-only perception. A recent set of experiments showed that seeing the speaker's lips also enhances sensitivity to acoustic information, decreasing the auditory detection threshold of speech embedded in noise [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109 (2001) 2272; J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108 (2000) 1197]. However, detection is different from comprehension, and it remains to be seen whether improved sensitivity also results in an intelligibility gain in audio-visual speech perception. In this work, we use an original paradigm to show that seeing the speaker's lips enables the listener to hear better and hence to understand better. The audio-visual stimuli used here could not be differentiated by lip reading per se since they contained exactly the same lip gesture matched with different compatible speech sounds. Nevertheless, the noise-masked stimuli were more intelligible in the audio-visual condition than in the audio-only condition due to the contribution of visual information to the extraction of acoustic cues. Replacing the lip gesture by a non-speech visual input with exactly the same time course, providing the same temporal cues for extraction, removed the intelligibility benefit. This early contribution to audio-visual speech identification is discussed in relationships with recent neurophysiological data on audio-visual perception.     

西汉孟喜改列卦序中的哲学思想

孟喜为西汉象数易的创建人,其易学后人称之为“卦气”。卦气乃结合“学”与“术”成一结构庞大的思想体系。就学而言,乃承受先秦伏、文、孔三圣的易学精神;就术而言,乃用于当时流行的占断灾异、吉凶及祸福。然而后世易学界受儒学重经思想的影响,多轻视象数,以“术家”视孟喜。作者兹特提出孟氏卦气中对于六十四卦卦序之排列。并详作象敷之解析,以见孟氏易学实具有学术思想之价值。