It's Fascinating Research: The Cognition of Verbal Irony

ABSTRACT— Verbal irony is nonliteral language that makes salient a discrepancy between expectations and reality. For researchers who study verbal irony, a critical question is: How do we grasp the meaning of ironic language? The parallel-constraint-satisfaction approach holds promise as an answer to this question. By this account, multiple cues to ironic intent, such as tone of voice, incongruity, and knowledge of the speaker, are processed rapidly and in parallel and this information is coordinated with the utterance itself in order to construct a coherent interpretation that is the best fit for the activated information. Recently, research with individuals who struggle with irony comprehension (typically developing children, individuals with autism-spectrum disorder, individuals with brain injury) has provided new clues about the complex process by which ironic meaning is inferred.     

电子地图汉字大小辨认阈限和合理字间距

本研究由三个实验组成,探讨电子地图中汉字呈现的辨认闽限和合理字间距（信息载负量）问题。实验一采用恒定刺激法测定电子地图中汉字的辨认闽限,结果显示,汉字复杂度和背景的复杂度都影响地图汉字识别,且不存在交互作用;宋体汉字的平均辨认阈限为7．0771’。实验二运用调整法测得在电子地图中宋体汉字的舒适阈限（能识别每个笔画的汉字辨认阈限）为16．6951’。实验三以视觉搜索方法研究字间距（体现在电子地图中单位面积字数）与搜索效率的关系,结果显示,每个汉字平均耗费的搜索时间随着字数增加而减少,说明字数越多,搜索效率越高。     

Faceted Thesauri

The basic elements of faceted thesauri are described, together with a review of their origins and some prominent examples. Their use in browsing and searching applications is discussed. Faceted thesauri are distinguished from faceted classification schemes, while acknowledging the close similarities. The paper concludes by comparing faceted thesauri and related knowledge organization systems to ontologies and discussing appropriate areas of use.     

A new secretary problem with rank-based selection and cardinal payoffs

We present an extension of the secretary problem in which the decision maker (DM) sequentially observes up to n applicants whose values are random variables X₁,X₂,…,X_n drawn i.i.d. from a uniform distribution on [0,1]. The DM must select exactly one applicant, cannot recall released applicants, and receives a payoff of x_t, the realization of X_t, for selecting the tth applicant. For each encountered applicant, the DM only learns whether the applicant is the best so far. We prove that the optimal policy dictates skipping the first sqrt(n)-1 applicants, and then selecting the next encountered applicant whose value is a maximum.     

Trait affect and job search outcomes

The present study examines the role of trait affect in job search. One hundred and twenty-three university students completed measures of positive and negative affectivity, conscientiousness, job search self-efficacy, job search clarity, and job search intensity during their last year of school while on the job market. At the end of the school year, participants completed the measure of job search intensity again, and indicated the number of interviews and offers they had received and whether they had accepted a full-time job. As hypothesized, positive affectivity predicted job search clarity over and above conscientiousness and job search self-efficacy. Job search clarity mediated relationships between positive affectivity and job search intensity and between job search self-efficacy and job search intensity. Negative affectivity, however, did not predict job search clarity. Job search clarity predicted job search intensity, which led to interviews, offers, and employment. The results suggest that job seekers high in positive affectivity find a job because they achieve job search clarity and, in turn, look for a job intensely.     

New job market entrants' future work self,career adaptability and job search outcomes: Examining mediating and moderating models

Based on career construction theory and the model of proactive motivation, the current research examined the mediating and moderating models for the relations among future work self, career adaptability, job search self-efficacy and employment status. A survey study was conducted among Chinese university graduates (N = 270). The results showed that future work self (measured at wave 1) had positive effect on employment status (measured at wave 3), with this relationship partially mediated by career adaptability (measured at wave 1) and job search self-efficacy (measured at wave 2). In addition, the results further revealed that the positive effect of future work self on job search self-efficacy was stronger among the graduates who had a higher level of career adaptability. In support of the hypothesized moderated mediation model, for individuals with a higher level of career adaptability, the indirect effect of future work self on employment status through job search self-efficacy was stronger. These findings carry implications for research on job search behavior, career education and career counseling.     

The effects of task-irrelevant threatening stimuli on orienting- and executive attentional processes under cognitive load

Human visual attention is biased to rapidly detect threats in the environment so that our nervous system can initiate quick reactions. The processes underlying threat detection (and how they operate under cognitive load), however, are still poorly understood. Thus, we sought to test the impact of task-irrelevant threatening stimuli on the salience network and executive control of attention during low and high cognitive load. Participants were exposed to neutral or threatening pictures (with moderate and high arousal levels) as task-irrelevant distractors in near (parafoveal) and far (peripheral) positions while searching for numbers in ascending order in a matrix array. We measured reaction times and recorded eye-movements. Our results showed that task-irrelevant distractors primarily influenced behavioural measures during high cognitive load. The distracting effect of threatening images with moderate arousal level slowed reaction times for finding the first number. However, this slowing was offset by high arousal threatening stimuli, leading to overall shorter search times. Eye-tracking measures showed that participants fixated threatening pictures more later and for shorter durations compared to neutral images. Together, our results indicate a complex relationship between threats and attention that results not in a unitary bias but in a sequence of effects that unfold over time.     

预览搜索中基于颜色的两种自上而下加工

预览搜索（preview search）研究是近几年来注意选择研究领域新的热点。本研究将预览搜索任务和探测任务相结合,通过两个实验证明了预览搜索中存在基于颜色的自上而下加工。在每次实验中,先出现预览项目,然后让被试根据有无提示音完成搜索任务或探测任务。在实验一中,探测点的颜色为旧项目同色和无关色两种;在实验二中,探测点的颜色为新项目同色和无关色两种。结果发现,旧项目同色的探测子的反应时长于无关色反应时,而新项目同色的探测子的反应时短于无关色反应时。笔者认为这是由于在预览阶段,可能存在两种自上而下加工,一种是主要基于旧项目颜色的抑制定势,另一种是基于靶子颜色的预期定势。这两种自上而下的调控机制可以解释预览效应的原因,同时利用颜色等特征的格式塔组织也在预览搜索中起着重要的作用     

Antecedents and consequences of the frequency of upward and downward social comparisons at work

The current paper examines the dispositional and situational antecedents, as well as the attitudinal and behavioral consequences, of the frequency of upward and downward social comparisons. We predicted social comparison frequency would be influenced by uncertainty-related antecedents, and that social comparisons in organizations would be characterized by contrast, not assimilation, effects. A large and occupationally diverse sample of 991 employed adults was surveyed at three separate points in time over a 12–16 week period. Our results, based on structural equation modeling, indicated that (a) role ambiguity, task autonomy, and core self-evaluations were significant predictors of upward social comparison, (b) upward social comparison was significantly negatively related to job satisfaction and affective commitment, (c) downward social comparison was significantly positively related to job satisfaction and affective commitment, and (d) upward and downward social comparisons had significant positive and negative indirect effects on the frequency of job search behaviors, respectively. The findings are discussed in terms of their general implications for understanding the importance of directional social comparison processes in organizational settings.     

A model of working memory capacity in the radial-arm maze task

The radial arm maze is one of the most commonly used tests for assessing working memory in laboratory animals. However, to date, there exists no quantitative method of estimating working memory capacity from performance on this task. Here, we present a mathematical model of performance on the radial arm maze from which we can derive estimates of capacity. We derive explicit results for the two most commonly used measures of performance as functions of number of arms in the maze and memory capacity, assuming a uniform random search. We simulate random non-uniform search strategies. Comparing our model to previous experiments, we show that our model predicts a working memory capacity in the range of 3-9 at the level of performance observed in these experiments. This estimate is within the typical estimate of human working memory capacity. Performance of rats on large mazes (e.g. 48 arms) has been used as evidence that the working memory capacity of rats may be significantly larger than that of humans. We report that memory capacity in the range 3-9 is sufficient to explain the performance of rats in very large radial mazes. Furthermore, when we simulate non-uniform random search strategies observed in the experiments, the resulting estimates do not differ significantly from those assuming a uniform random search. We conclude that a list-based model of working memory with modest capacity is more powerful than previously expected.