Cooperative Learning Contingencies: Unrelated versus Related Individual and Group Contingencies

College students operating under related cooperative contingencies (students had to earn individual credit before being considered for group credit) showed more consistent individual and group improvement on exam performance than students operating under unrelated contingencies (individual credit and group credit were independently determined). A balanced ratio between individual and group credit proved to be the most productive ratio under the related contingency, whereas a ratio favoring group credit over individual credit proved most productive under the unrelated contingency. In general, a ratio favoring individual credit over group credit was the least productive in promoting both individual and group improvement under both unrelated and related contingencies. The findings showed less difference in improvement of exam scores for students of different performance levels than had been evident in previous research.     

大学生自我价值感领域权变性量表的编制

编制大学生自我价值感领域权变性量表,用3个分量表分别测量基于人际接纳、道德原则或个人目标的自我价值感权变性。对心理测量学特征的分析表明,量表具有较好的信度和结构效度,适合施测于中国的大学生并用来进行不同群体间的比较。同时,对一些在使用量表时应注意的问题提出了建议。     

A sad thumbs up: incongruent gestures and disrupted sensorimotor activity both slow processing of facial expressions

Recognising a facial expression is more difficult when the expresser's body conveys incongruent affect. Existing research has documented such interference for universally recognisable bodily expressions. However, it remains unknown whether learned, conventional gestures can interfere with facial expression processing. Study 1 participants (N?=?62) viewed videos of people simultaneously producing facial expressions and hand gestures and reported the valence of either the face or hand. Responses were slower and less accurate when the face-hand pairing was incongruent compared to congruent. We hypothesised that hand gestures might exert an even stronger influence on facial expression processing when other routes to understanding the meaning of a facial expression, such as with sensorimotor simulation, are disrupted. Participants in Study 2 (N?=?127) completed the same task, but the facial mobility of some participants was restricted, which disrupted face processing in prior work. The hand-face congruency effect from Study 1 was replicated. The facial mobility manipulation affected males only, and it did not moderate the congruency effect. The present work suggests the affective meaning of conventional gestures is processed automatically and can interfere with face perception, but does not suggest that perceivers rely more on gestures when sensorimotor face processing is disrupted.     

Enactive social cognition: Diachronic constitution & coupled anticipation

This paper targets the constitutive basis of social cognition. It begins by describing the traditional and still dominant cognitivist view. Cognitivism assumes internalism about the realisers of social cognition; thus, the embodied and embedded elements of intersubjective engagement are ruled out from playing anything but a basic causal role in an account of social cognition. It then goes on to advance and clarify an alternative to the cognitivist view; namely, an enactive account of social cognition. It does so first by articulating a diachronic constitutive account for how embodied engagement can play a constitutive role in social cognition. It then proceeds to consider an objection; the causal-constitutive fallacy (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008; Block, 2005) against enactive social cognition. The paper proceeds to deflate this objection by establishing that the distinction between constitution and causation is not co-extensive with the distinction between internal constitutive elements and external causal elements. It is then shown that there is a different reason for thinking that an enactive account of social cognition is problematic. We call this objection the ‘poverty of the interactional stimulus argument’. This objection turns on the role and characteristics of anticipation in enactive social cognition. It argues that anticipatory processes are mediated by an internally realised model or tacit theory (Carruthers, 2015; Seth, 2015). The final part of this paper dissolves this objection by arguing that it is possible to cast anticipatory processes as orchestrated as well as maintained by sensorimotor couplings between individuals in face-to-face interaction.     

Representational Momentum Beyond Internalized Physics

Abstract— Prediction of future motion is necessary in order to successfully deal with moving objects. Implicit measures have been used to evaluate the sources of information used in this task. For instance, observers may be asked to localize the final position of a moving target. Judgments have been found to be displaced in the direction of motion (forward displacement), suggesting that observers have internalized a mental analogue of physical momentum. However, more recent studies have shown that forward displacement may not be caused by cognitive mechanisms alone. Rather, predictive mechanisms at the perceptual and motor levels may contribute to the forward error. Supporting the notion that mechanisms of anticipation may be embodied, the forward error was found to depend on the execution of eye and pointing movements. Also, forward displacement depended on the motion type that was presented (smooth vs. jerky or implied), which suggests that attention moves to the next expected target position to facilitate responses to this position.     

感觉运动模拟隐喻理论的形成与发展

感觉运动模拟理论属于概念隐喻理论范畴,是经典概念隐喻理论的最新发展。感觉运动模拟隐喻理论认为概念隐喻的具身效应并不一定要建立在以往的经验之上,与感觉运动信息无关的抽象概念通过快速学习建立的隐喻也具有了具身效应,没有以往经验为基础的抽象概念也能引起感觉运动的模拟。除了感觉运动模拟隐喻理论的主要观点之外,文章还介绍了该理论的形成与发展的过程。并通过与经典概念隐喻理论的对比,提出感觉运动模拟隐喻理论存在的优势与局限性     

抽象概念表征的具身认知观

抽象概念是否通过感知经验来表征以及如何被感知经验表征是具身认知面临的一大问题.在抽象概念表征是否具有感知经验基础的问题上,具身认知理论认为抽象概念通过情境模拟或隐喻与感知经验发生联系.在抽象概念如何与感知经验表征发生联系的问题上,概念模拟理论强调情景或运动模拟在抽象概念表征中的直接作用;概念隐喻理论则侧重具体经验或具体经验与抽象概念之间的共同结构关系在抽象概念表征中的间接作用.未来研究应改变概念表征的稳定的心理实体观,从语言和抽象表征的关系、正常儿童和特殊群体的抽象概念表征差异入手,整合不同的具身认知观点.     

The Role of Precues in the Preparation of Motor Responses in Humans

The authors investigated how precues about the location of an upcoming target are used by the sensorimotor system to reduce manual reaction time. In 4 experiments, participants (N = 12 in each experiment) pressed a response key as fast as possible when a precued or a nonprecued visual target appeared. Precues remained effective when a visual mask was interposed between the display of the precue and the target (Experiment 1), which suggests that precues act downstream from visual sensory memory. The precue effect was abolished when precues were presented along with a task requiring attention and a verbal response (Experiment 2) but not when presented with a task that required verbal output but had no attention demands (Experiment 3). Those findings indicate that precues must be processed attentively to become effective. When the attention-demanding task was interposed between precue and target display, the precue effect was still abolished (Experiment 4), which suggests that individuals' attention must remain in the precued area until target appearance.     

QEEG markers of superior shooting performance in skilled marksmen: An investigation of cortical activity on psychomotor efficiency hypothesis

For elite performers, psychomotor behavior's success or failure can be traced to differences in brain dynamics. The psychomotor efficiency hypothesis suggests refined cortical activity through 1) selective activation of task-relevant processes and 2) inhibition of non-essential processes. The use of electroencephalography (EEG) has been applied to investigate psychomotor performance's neural processes. The EEG markers that reflect an elevation of psychomotor efficiency include left temporal alpha (T3 alpha), frontal midline theta (Fm theta), sensorimotor rhythm (SMR), and the coherence between frontal and left temporal regions. However, the relationship between elite performers' task-relevant and non-essential neural processes is still not well understood. Therefore, this study aimed to explore how each task-relevant and inhibition of non-essential processes contribute to superior psychomotor behavior. Thirty-five highly skilled marksmen were recruited to perform 30 shots in the shooting task while the EEG was recorded. The marksmen were divided into two groups (superior & inferior) based on a median split of shooting performance. The superior group exhibited higher accuracy and precision, with a reduction in movement jerk. EEG measures revealed that the superior group exhibited higher SMR before the trigger pull than the inferior group. In addition, the superior group demonstrated reduced Fz-T3 coherence in their bull's eye shots than the missed shots. These results suggest that the superior group exhibited less effortful engagement of task-relevant processes and lower interference from non-essential cortical regions than the inferior group. The study's overall findings support the psychomotor efficiency hypothesis. When comparing highly skilled performers, the slight differences in brain dynamics ultimately contribute to the success or failure of psychomotor performance.     

语言和情境对具体概念感知运动仿真的影响

具体概念加工中的感知运动仿真是概念表征的核心加工过程。本研究系统探讨了语言因素(语言类型：第一语言和第二语言)和情境因素(知觉情境：空间知觉情境和语义知觉情境)对具体概念加工中感知运动仿真的影响。实验1采用语义相关判断范式探讨了第二语言加工过程中是否存在感知运动仿真, 以及第二语言中的仿真和第一语言中的仿真是否存在差异。研究发现, 第二语言加工中依然存在感知运动仿真, 但是第一语言的感知运动仿真具有一定的优势。实验2采用语义相关判断范式及其变式, 通过2个分实验分别探讨了个体加工概念时空间知觉信息和语义知觉信息对于概念表征过程中感知运动仿真的影响。研究发现, 无论是在较弱的空间信息知觉条件下还是在较浅的语义信息知觉条件下, 具体概念加工过程中都产生了感知运动仿真。本研究的发现弥补了知觉符号理论未对第二语言中的感知运动仿真提出针对性预测的不足, 表明感知运动仿真具有一定的跨语言稳定性。同时, 具体概念加工中的感知运动仿真不受空间信息和语义信息的调节, 这表明感知运动仿真能在一定程度上自动化产生。