Being In Front Is Good—But Where Is In Front? Preferences for Spatial Referencing Affect Evaluation

Speakers of English frequently associate location in space with valence, as in moving up and down the “social ladder.” If such an association also holds for the sagittal axis, an object “in front of” another object would be evaluated more positively than the one “behind.” Yet how people conceptualize relative locations depends on which frame of reference (FoR) they adopt—and hence on cross-linguistically diverging preferences. What is conceptualized as “in front” in one variant of the relative FoR (e.g., translation) is “behind” under another variant (reflection), and vice versa. Do such diverging conceptualizations of an object's location also lead to diverging evaluations? In two studies employing an implicit association test, we demonstrate, first, that speakers of German, Chinese, and Japanese indeed evaluate the object “in front of” another object more positively than the one “behind.” Second, and crucially, the reversal of which object is conceptualized as “in front” involves a corresponding reversal of valence, suggesting an impact of linguistically imparted FoR preferences on evaluative processes.     

Space in Hand and Mind: Gesture and Spatial Frames of Reference in Bilingual Mexico

Speakers of many languages prefer allocentric frames of reference (FoRs) when talking about small-scale space, using words like “east” or “downhill.” Ethnographic work has suggested that this preference is also reflected in how such speakers gesture. Here, we investigate this possibility with a field experiment in Juchitán, Mexico. In Juchitán, a preferentially allocentric language (Isthmus Zapotec) coexists with a preferentially egocentric one (Spanish). Using a novel task, we elicited spontaneous co-speech gestures about small-scale motion events (e.g., toppling blocks) in Zapotec-dominant speakers and in balanced Zapotec-Spanish bilinguals. Consistent with prior claims, speakers’ spontaneous gestures reliably reflected either an egocentric or allocentric FoR. The use of the egocentric FoR was predicted—not by speakers’ dominant language or the language they used in the task—but by mastery of words for “right” and “left,” as well as by properties of the event they were describing. Additionally, use of the egocentric FoR in gesture predicted its use in a separate nonlinguistic memory task, suggesting a cohesive cognitive style. Our results show that the use of spatial FoRs in gesture is pervasive, systematic, and shaped by several factors. Spatial gestures, like other forms of spatial conceptualization, are thus best understood within broader ecologies of communication and cognition.     

决策的三参照点理论:从原理到应用

三参照点理论(Tri-Reference Point Theory,Wang,2008a; Wang& Johnson,2012)以底线、现状和目标为参照点,将决策结果空间划分为失败、损失、获益和成功4个功能区域.根据3个参照点的心理权重的排序:底线＞目标＞现状,该模型继而推导出跨越不同区域的以现状为分界的双S-型的价值函数,以及据此产生的对于跨越不同参照点的预期结果的偏好转换、和损失-获益及失败-成功的两种不对称性.总之,风险决策的基本任务在于,在使得达到目标的可能性最大化的同时使底线不保的可能性最小化.三参照点理论将统计学和金融学中的均值与方差(均差)分析与行为决策研究中的参照点效应有机地结合在一起;在面对不同的风险选项时,通过分析各个预期结果的均差分布与3个参照点之间的关系作出适应性的决策.本文介绍了三参照点理论的基本推论、运行原则、实证检验、以及它与期望效用理论和前景理论相比较的异同之处.同时我们也探讨了三参照点理论对实践中管理决策的指导意义和多重启示.     

The motivations for Walter Burley’s theory of the proposition

Walter Burley (born c. 1275; died. c. 1344) claims throughout his career that the mind can make a statement (propositio) out of things. Since things include entities that exist outside of the mind, Burley appears to be claiming that the mind can form a statement out of things that exist outside of it. Most scholars of Burley offer a deflationary reading of this claim, arguing that it confuses two distinct but closely related philosophical issues: the nature of propositional content, on the one hand, and the role of facts in a compelling account of truth, on the other. But I argue that Burley means exactly what he says: that the mind can, quite literally, form statements out of things that exist outside of it. In Burley’s account, statements of this sort function as the propositional contents of our thoughts and written or uttered sentences. This account of propositional content is motivated by three more fundamental theses to which Burley is committed: referentialism, compositionality, and a claim about truth-conditionality I call intellectualism.     

Scientific Realism and the Meanings of Theoretical Terms

In contemporary philosophy of science, there are many interesting arguments for and against scientific realism with regard to the meaningfulness and truthfulness of theoretical statements. Some anti-realists hold that since many important concepts in scientific theories have no specific referents, the relevant theoretical statements are therefore either false or meaningless. In this essay, I join the debates concerning the plausibility of scientific realism by focusing on two intertwined issues： first, that of how we can we explicate the meaningfulness of theoretical statements, especially statements pertaining to unobservable objects, and second, that of the meaningfulness of theoretical statements for our acceptance of scientific realism.     

Conceptual Locations and Pronominal Reference in American Sign Language

We report the results of an experiment investigating the ramifications of using space to express coreference in American Sign Language (ASL). Nominals in ASL can be associated with locations in signing space, and pronouns are directed toward those locations to convey coreference. A probe recognition technique was used to investigate the case of "locus doubling" in which a single referent is associated with two distinct spatial locations. The experiment explored whether an ASL pronoun activates both its antecedent referent and the location associated with that referent. An introductory discourse associated a referent (e.g, MOTHER) with two distinct locations (eg., STOREleft, KITCHENright), and a continuation sentence followed that either contained a pronoun referring to the referent in one location or contained no anaphora (the control sentence). Twenty-four deaf participants made lexical decisions to probe signs presented during the continuation sentences. The probe signs were either the referent of the pronoun, the referent-location determined by the pronoun, or the most recently mentioned location (not referenced by the pronoun). The results indicated that response times to referent nouns were faster in the pronoun than in the no-pronoun control condition and that response times to the location signs did not differ across conditions. Thus, the spatial nature of coreference in ASL does not alter the processing mechanism underlying the on-line interpretation of pronouns. Pronouns activate only referent nouns, not spatial location nouns associated with the referent.     

掩蔽刺激的空间参考框架对视觉表象旋转的影响

本实验通过将具有参考框架信息的前置刺激改为掩蔽刺激,进一步探讨参考框架的变化和表象旋转的过程。结果表明：１、因掩蔽刺激而引起的主观参考框架的产生是瞬间完成的,而不是由原先直立的参考框架经过连续旋转后形成的。２、显示了倾斜字母的加工不完全是整体表象的线性旋转过程,而可能是整字一成分的混合加工过程。     

Testing the reference-dependent model: an experiment on asymmetrically dominated reference points

Standard choice theory assumes choice to be independent of the point of reference. Based on a number of studies which challenge this assumption, Tversky and Kahneman have proposed a reference-dependent model which captures the influence of reference points on individual choice. If choice is reference-dependent, switching the reference point so that it is first dominated by x and then by y increases the likelihood of choosing y. Switching the location of an asymmetrically dominated reference point without altering the dominance relationship should also influence reference-dependent choice in a predicted manner. In this paper the reference-dependent model is tested in two experiments which focus on asymmetrically dominated reference points. The results of these experiments give further confirmation to the reference-dependent model. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Color, reference, and expertise in language acquisition

In learning the meaning of a new term, children need to fix its reference, learn its conventional meaning, and discover the meanings with which it contrasts. To do this, children must attend to adult speakers--the experts--and to their patterns of use. In the domain of color, children need to identify color terms as such, fix the reference of each one, and learn how each is used in the language. But color is a property, and terms for properties appear to be more difficult to grasp than do those for objects, actions, and relations. Although children find some domains easier to learn than others, they depend in each case on the expertise of adult speakers.