执行功能与心理理论关系的元分析:抑制控制和灵活转换的作用

心理理论的发展对个体社会化具有重要意义。研究通过元分析的方法,表明执行功能能够有效预测个体心理理论的发展水平(r=0.37,p0.001),且具有跨文化和跨人群的稳定性;同时,在个体的毕生发展中,执行功能均与心理理论存在显著相关,证明了执行功能的表达说;但在不同的发展阶段(Q1=411.75,p10.001,df1=90;Q2=219.49,p20.001,df2=50),心理理论的发展会受到执行功能不同成分的影响:0~3岁时抑制控制起关键作用;3~12岁时,心理理论受到抑制控制和灵活转换的共同影响;青春期阶段,灵活转换的作用明显;而到了成年期,抑制控制与灵活转换均会对心理理论产生积极影响。     

Unconscious activation of task sets

Using an explicit task cuing paradigm, we tested whether masked cues can trigger task-set activation, which would suggest that unconsciously presented stimuli can impact cognitive control processes. Based on a critical assessment of previous findings on the priming of task-set activation, we present two experiments with a new method to approach this subject. Instead of using a prime, we varied the visibility of the cue. These cues either directly signaled particular tasks in Experiment 1, or certain task transitions (i.e., task repetitions or switches) in Experiment 2. While both masked task and transition cues affected task choice, only task cues affected the speed of task performance. This observation suggests that task-specific stimulus–response rules can be activated only by masked cues that are uniquely associated with a particular task. Taken together, these results demonstrate that unconsciously presented stimuli have the power to activate corresponding task sets.     

Valence-specific laterality effects in vocal emotion: interactions with stimulus type, blocking and sex

Valence-specific laterality effects have been frequently obtained in facial emotion perception but not in vocal emotion perception. We report a dichotic listening study further examining whether valence-specific laterality effects generalise to vocal emotions. Based on previous literature, we tested whether valence-specific laterality effects were dependent on blocked presentation of the emotion conditions, on the naturalness of the emotional stimuli, or on listener sex. We presented happy and sad sentences, paired with neutral counterparts, dichotically in an emotion localisation task, with vocal stimuli being preceded by verbal labels indicating target emotions. The measure was accuracy. When stimuli of the same emotion were presented as a block, a valence-specific laterality effect was demonstrated, but only in original stimuli and not morphed stimuli. There was a separate interaction with listener sex. We interpret our findings as suggesting that the valence-specific laterality hypothesis is supported only in certain circumstances. We discuss modulating factors, and we consider whether the mechanisms underlying those factors may be attentional or experiential in nature.     

Attentional set protects visual marking from visual transients

When some distractors (old items) appear before others (new items) in an inefficient visual search task, the old items are excluded from the search (visual marking). Previous studies have shown that changing the shape of old items eliminates this effect, suggesting that shape identity must be maintained for successful visual marking. However, the contribution of top-down target knowledge to the maintenance of visual marking under shape change conditions has not been systematically examined. The present study tested whether the vulnerability of visual marking to shape change is contingent on observers' attentional set, by manipulating compatibility of the set and the domains in which the change occurs. The results indicated that visual marking survived shape changes when the observer's attentional set was consistent with critical features between the old and new items. This protection was observed when the set was based on explicit instructions at the beginning of the experiment, and when the task set was implicitly carried over from the previous task. These results suggest that top-down processes play a role in maintaining memory templates by enhancing the grouping and suppression processes during visual search, despite disruptive bottom-up signals.     

Multicriteria Optimization Technique for Optimal Design of Orthotropic Bridges

The design improvement of large‐scale structures such as cable stayed and suspension bridges with large spans is one of the major engineering optimization problems faced by design engineers. In many real‐life engineering design problems, it is necessary to carry out large‐scale experimental physical models for only one prototype to construct the feasible solution set that is too expensive and not practical. For these reasons, an experimental search for optimal solutions is often not carried out at all. This paper presents a technique for multicriteria analysis, which involve the finite element analysis of the prototype in the optimization process. The improvement of the Suez Canal Bridge in Egypt is introduced as a real‐life large‐scale case study. The parameter space investigation method, the visual basic for application programming language, and Femap as finite element analysis software provide an implementation tools to construct the feasible and Pareto solution sets for the studied bridge. An efficient combination between the parameter space investigation method and the finite element programme was successfully investigated to obtain the Pareto solution set. This study shows possibility to apply the multicriteria optimization method for more applications on different large‐scale structural systems in the future. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Executive Functioning and Gambling: Performance on the Trail Making Test is Associated with Gambling Problems in Older Adult Gamblers

ABSTRACT

Rates of gambling problems in older adults have risen with increased accessibility of gambling venues. One possible contributor to problem gambling among older adults is decreased self-control brought about by diminished executive functioning. Consistent with this possibility, Study 1 revealed that older adults recruited from gambling venues reported greater gambling problems if they also experienced deficits in executive functioning, measured via the Trail Making Test. Study 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated that problem gambling is associated with increased depression among older adults, mediated by increased financial distress. These studies provide support for the hypothesis that older adult gamblers who have executive functioning problems are also likely to have gambling problems.     

John Bridges's Tools of Persuasion: Prescription,Dispensation, and Early Christianity in A Defence of the Government Established(1587)

Abstract

Prayer was central to the worship and everyday life of both clergy and laity in late medieval England. This paper explores how far domestic prayer changed in the early modern period. After a brief historiographical and methodological survey, it is suggested that in the period 1540-1640, Protestant clergy were anxious for the laity to acquire the ‘gift’ of composing their own prayers for use in family worship and closet, though they did countenance the use of suitably Protestant set forms as a temporary ‘crutch.’ However, many parishioners apparently preferred to persist with prepared forms, some composed by clergy, others by lay authors with rather different emphases to their pastors. The radicalism of many who ‘prayed with the Spirit’ in the 1640s and 1650s produced some caution among moderate clergy on the wisdom of encouraging parishioners to ‘conceive’ their own prayers. This was one reason why the period 1660-1720 witnessed an Indian summer of publication of set forms by both clergy and laity.     

Rumfitt on the logic of set theory

According to a famous argument by Dummett, the concept of set is indefinitely extensible, and the logic appropriate for reasoning about the instances of any such concept is intuitionistic, not classical. But Dummett's argument is widely regarded as obscure. This note explains how the final chapter of Rumfitt's important new book advances our understanding of Dummett's argument, but it also points out some problems and unanswered questions. Finally, Rumfitt's reconstruction of Dummett's argument is contrasted with my own preferred alternative.     

Task switching: a PDP model

When subjects switch between a pair of stimulus-response tasks, reaction time is slower on trial N if a different task was performed on trial N - 1. We present a parallel distributed processing (PDP) model that simulates this effect when subjects switch between word reading and color naming in response to Stroop stimuli. Reaction time on "switch trials" can be slowed by an extended response selection process which results from (a) persisting, inappropriate states of activation and inhibition of task-controlling representations; and (b) associative learning, which allows stimuli to evoke tasks sets with which they have recently been associated (as proposed by Allport & Wylie, 2000). The model provides a good fit to a large body of empirical data, including findings which have been seen as problematic for this explanation of switch costs, and shows similar behavior when the parameters are set to random values, supporting Allport and Wylie's proposal.