Time ordering in frontal lobe patients: a stochastic model approach

Frontal lobe patients reproduced a sequence of capital letters or abstract shapes. Immediate and delayed reproduction trials allowed the analysis of short- and long-term memory for time order by means of suitable Markov chain stochastic models. Patients were as proficient as healthy subjects on the immediate reproduction trial, thus showing spared encoding and short-term memory. They failed, instead, on the delayed trials with capital letters, but not with random shapes, suggesting that their long-term memory impairment did not depend on primary deficits for ordering, but on inability to benefit from the organisational strategies that improve the retention and retrieval in normal subjects.     

Bootstrapping the lexicon: a computational model of infant speech segmentation

Prelinguistic infants must find a way to isolate meaningful chunks from the continuous streams of speech that they hear. BootLex, a new model which uses distributional cues to build a lexicon, demonstrates how much can be accomplished using this single source of information. This conceptually simple probabilistic algorithm achieves significant segmentation results on various kinds of language corpora - English, Japanese, and Spanish; child- and adult-directed speech, and written texts; and several variations in coding structure - and reveals which statistical characteristics of the input have an influence on segmentation performance. BootLex is then compared, quantitatively and qualitatively, with three other groups of computational models of the same infant segmentation process, paying particular attention to functional characteristics of the models and their similarity to human cognition. Commonalities and contrasts among the models are discussed, as well as their implications both for theories of the cognitive problem of segmentation itself, and for the general enterprise of computational cognitive modeling.     

Grammar overrides frequency: evidence from the online processing of flexible word order

We show that online processing difficulties induced by word order variations in German cannot be attributed to the relative infrequency of the constructions in question, but rather appear to reflect the application of grammatical principles during parsing. Event-related brain potentials revealed that dative-marked objects in the initial position of an embedded sentence do not elicit a neurophysiologically distinct response from subjects, whereas accusative-marked objects do. These differences are predictable on the basis of grammatical distinctions (i.e. underlying linguistic properties), but not on the basis of frequency information (i.e. a superficial linguistic property). We therefore conclude that the former, but not the latter, guides syntactic integration during online parsing.     

The development of exogenous orienting: mechanisms of control

The present study examined exogenous orienting in children ages 6 years (n=14), 10 years (n=13), 14 years (n=14), and adults (n=13). The main purpose was to identify which of the attentional operations underlying exogenous orienting (disengaging, shifting, and/or engaging) improves with age. A simple detection task was used in which single targets were correctly (80%) or incorrectly (20%) cued. The main finding was that disengaging attention alone distinguished the performance of younger children from that of older children and adults, regardless of whether attention alone (covert attention) or attention and associated sensory and motor systems (overt attention) were involved. In addition, our data, in contrast to those reported previously, raise the possibility that even the youngest children tested were able to use the predictability of the cue to enhance their performance. These and related neuroanatomical findings are taken as evidence for the development with age of more flexible control in orienting visual attention.     

《序卦》卦序中的“参伍”“错综”思想

今本《周易》六十四卦卦序即《序卦》卦序,是根据一定象数原则有规律地排列出来的,而这种象数原则又体现了当时人的宇宙观及《易》的基本精神。三才、五行及错综变化思想是古人宇宙观的基本内容之一,也是易学的基本内容之一,而在《序卦》卦序建构所运用的诸多象数原则中,就有"参伍"错综"原则。     

邵雍先天易“天地自然之数”一解——对冯友兰先生《邵雍的“先天学”》的两点补充

作者通过对冯友兰先生《邵雍的“先天学”》的两点补充,认为．邵雍“先天易”图的六十四卦卦序按二进制六位数的大小依次排列而来．此即是宋代道学家所谓的“天地自然之数”。作者由此进一步揭示了先天卦序与阴阳生息的卦气思想之同．在一定程度上的某种暗合与实质上的相互矛盾。     

Comparing music- and food-evoked autobiographical memories in young and older adults: A diary study

Previous research has found that music brings back more vivid and emotional autobiographical memories than various other retrieval cues. However, such studies have often been low in ecological validity and constrained by relatively limited cue selection and predominantly young adult samples. Here, we compared music to food as cues for autobiographical memories in everyday life in young and older adults. In two separate four-day periods, 39 younger (ages 18–34) and 39 older (ages 60–77) adults recorded their music- and food-evoked autobiographical memories in paper diaries. Across both age groups, music triggered more frequent autobiographical memories, a greater proportion of involuntary memories, and memories rated as more personally important in comparison to food cues. Age differences impacted music- and food-evoked memories similarly, with older adults consistently recalling older and less specific memories, which they rated as more positive, vivid, and rehearsed. However, young and older adults did not differ in the number or involuntary nature of their recorded memories. This work represents an important step in understanding the phenomenology of naturally occurring music-evoked autobiographical memories across adulthood and provides new insights into how and why music may be a more effective trigger for personally valued memories than certain other everyday cues.     

The associations of birth order with personality and intelligence in a representative sample of U.S. high school students

We tested birth order associations with personality traits and intelligence using Project Talent, a representative sample (N = 377,000) of U.S. high school students. Using a between-family design and several background factors (i.e., age, sex, sibship size, parental socio-economic status, and family structure), we were able to control for potential confounds, and estimate the links between birth order and outcomes across several different social categories. In addition to differences between firstborns and laterborns across the entire sample, we also tested birth rank trends in a sub-sample of targets from sibships of three, raised by two parents. Overall, the average absolute association between birth order and personality traits was .02, whereas the one between birth order and intelligence was .04.     

Moderators of Candidate Name‐Order Effects in Elections: An Experiment

Past studies of elections have shown that candidates whose names were listed at the beginning of a list on a ballot often received more votes by virtue of their position. This article tests speculations about the cognitive mechanisms that might be responsible for producing the effect. In an experiment embedded in a large national Internet survey, participants read about the issue positions of two hypothetical candidates and voted for one of them in a simulated election in which candidate name order was varied. The expected effect of position appeared and was strongest (1) when participants had less information about the candidates on which to base their choices, (2) when participants felt more ambivalent about their choices, (3) among participants with more limited cognitive skills, and (4) among participants who devoted less effort to the candidate evaluation process. The name‐order effect was greater among left‐handed people when the candidate names were arrayed horizontally, but there was no difference between left‐ and right‐handed people when the names were arrayed vertically. These results reinforce some broad theoretical accounts of the cognitive process that yield name‐order effects in elections.