《易经》的宇宙观与阴阳五行家思想之渊源

若从思想自身的发展来看,阴阳五行家与《易经》有着重要的渊源关系。《易经》的阴阳变化观念和带有浓厚的原始思维特性的宇宙观,是阴阳五行家思想的理论基石,阴阳五行家的宇宙发生图式和序列便滥觞于此。《易经》的以“因果联想”为重要特征的认知方式对阴阳五行家认识和把握世界的基本方式产生了重要的影响。《易经》的时空观念也与阴阳五行家以阴阳五行配四时、四方,以阴阳五行说明宇宙之大化、社会之变迁、人事之行止的思想紧密联系在一起。     

Color terms and color concepts

In their lead articles, both Kowalski and Zimiles (2006) and O'Hanlon and Roberson (2006) declare a general relation between color term knowledge and the ability to conceptually represent color. Kowalski and Zimiles, in particular, argue for a priority for the conceptual representation in color term acquisition. The complexities of the interaction are taken up in the current commentary, especially with regard to the neuropsychological evidence. Data from aphasic patients also argue for a priority for abstract thought, but nevertheless it may still be that the use of color terms is the only way in which to form color categories even if both linguistic and attentional factors play an important role.     

Geographical profiling incorporating neighbourhood-level factors using spatial interaction modelling

The aim of this study was to examine the applicability of methods that use spatial interaction modelling to predict the most probable area for an offender's residence. Tokyo, which is the capital of Japan and is divided into 1507 square-kilometre zones, was selected as the study area. We analysed 4316 criminal trips to commit residential burglaries by 1089 offenders who lived in Tokyo. The following neighbourhood-level factors, and a distance-decay effect between zones, were incorporated into the proposed model: the size of the residential population aged 15–59 years in origin zones, the numbers of households living in detached houses, newcomers, the number of police facilities in destination zones, and the spatial structures of the criminal trips. Search areas calculated by the proposed model were smaller than previous models, suggesting that neighbourhood-level factors are important for predicting the location of an offender's residence.     

Spatial attention based on 2D location and relative depth order modulates visual working memory in a 3D environment

The attentional effect on visual working memory (VWM) has been a heated research topic in the past two decades. Studies show that VWM performance for an attended memory item can be improved by cueing its two-dimensional (2D) spatial location during retention. However, few studies have investigated the effect of attentional selection on VWM in a three-dimensional setting, and it remains unknown whether depth information can produce beneficial attentional effects on 2D visual representations similar to 2D spatial information. Here we conducted four experiments, displaying memory items at various stereoscopic depth planes, and examined the retro-cue effects of four types of cues – a cue would either indicate the 2D or depth location of a memory item, and either in the form of physical (directly pointing to a location) or symbolic (numerically mapping onto a location) cues. We found that retro-cue benefits were only observed for cues directly pointing to a 2D location, whereas a null effect was observed for cues directly pointing to a depth location. However, there was a retro-cue effect when cueing the relative depth order, though the effect was weaker than that for cueing the 2D location. The selective effect on VWM based on 2D spatial attention is different from depth-based attention, and the divergence suggests that an object representation is primarily bound with its 2D spatial location, weakly bound with its depth order but not with its metric depth location. This indicates that attentional selection based on memory for depth, particularly metric depth, is ineffective.     

The Corsi Block-Tapping Task: Methodological and Theoretical Considerations

The Corsi block-tapping task has enjoyed extensive use in clinical and experimental studies for a quarter of a century and is arguably the single most important nonverbal task in neuropsychological research. Nevertheless, there has been considerable inconsistency not only in the administration and scoring of this measure, but also in the physical properties of the test apparatus. In this paper, we survey a wide range of studies that have made use of the block-tapping task during the past 25 years and provide a detailed appraisal of the manifold methodological variations. Additionally, we discuss the historical context in which the Corsi originated and offer a critical examination of the cognitive processing operations purported to underlie performance on this task.     

Effects of Posttraining Intrahippocampal Injections of Platelet-Activating Factor and PAF Antagonists on Memory

The present experiments examined the effects of posttraining intrahippocampal injections of the degradative enzyme-resistant methylcarbamyl analog of the bioactive phospholipid platelet-activating factor (mc-PAF) and the platelet-activating factor (PAF) receptor antagonists BN52021 and BN 50730 on memory in male Long-Evans rats trained in a hidden platform version of the Morris water maze. Following an eight-trial training session, rats received a unilateral intrahippocampal injection of mc-PAF (0.5, 1.0, or 2.0 μg/0.5 μl), lyso-PAF (1.0 μg/0.5 μl), the cell surface PAF receptor antagonist BN 52021 (0.25, 0.5, or 1.0 μg/0.5 μl), the intracellular PAF receptor antagonist BN 50730 (2.0, 5.0, or 10.0 μg/0.5 μl), or vehicle (50% DMSO in 0.9% saline; 0.5 μl). On a retention test conducted 24 h after training, the escape latencies of rats administered mc-PAF (1.0 or 2.0 μg) were significantly lower than those of the vehicle-injected controls, demonstrating a memory-enhancing effect of mc-PAF. Injections of lyso-PAF, a structurally similar metabolite of PAF, had no influence on memory, indicating that the memory-enhancing effect of mc-PAF is not caused by membrane perturbation by the phospholipid. The retention test escape latencies of rats administered BN 52021 (0.5 μg) and BN 50730 (5.0 or 10 μg) were significantly higher than those of the controls, indicating a memory impairing effect of both PAF antagonists. When mc-PAF, BN 52021, or BN 50730 was administered 2 h posttraining, no effect on retention was observed, indicating a time-dependent effect of the neuroactive substances on memory storage. The findings suggest a role for endogenous PAF in hippocampal-dependent memory processes.     

内源性和外源性视觉空间选择注意

以内源性和外源性注意选择为主题,空间选择性注意的控制性加工和自动加工过程成为近年来研究的一个活跃领域,特别是自动化加工过程,取得了一些新的实验证据：对其形成的机制提出了一些理论;提出了选择注意自动化和控制之间关系的理论框架。本文介绍了有关的实验研究和理论模型。     

Visual search at different spatial scales

Treisman and Gelade's (1980) feature-integration model claims that the search for separate ("primitive") stimulus features is parallel, but that the conjunctions of those features require serial scan. Recently, evidence has accumulated that parallel processing is not limited to these "primitive" stimulus features, but that combinations of features can also produce parallel search. In the experiments reported here, the processing of feature conjunctions was studied when the stimulus features of a combination were at different spatial scales. The patterns in the search array were composed of three cross-shaped or T-shaped (local) elements, which formed an oblique bar (the global pattern) 45 deg or 135 deg in orientation. When the target and distractors differed from each other at one spatial scale only (either in the bar orientation or in the shape of the local elements), target detection was independent of the number of distractors, i.e., the search was parallel. In the conjunction task, in which the target and distractors were defined as the combinations of the bar orientation and the element shape, i.e., both spatial scales were relevant, the detection of the target required slow serial scrutiny of the search array. It is possible that the conjunction search could not be performed in parallel because switches between the two scales (or spatial frequency channels) are linked to attention and the task required the use of both scales in order to find the target.     

Developmental changes in the embodied self of spatial perspective taking

Spatial perspective taking consists of mental self‐rotation and other cognitive information processing. Mental self‐rotation is a process of rotating an embodied representational self through mental simulation of the sensorimotor mechanisms underlying actual self‐movement. It was predicted that physical development would affect the operation of the representational self. One hundred and twenty‐five individuals aged 5–80 years (57 children, 35 students, and 33 elderly people) executed a video game task of spatial perspective taking in three conditions of sensorimotor activation: A restrained, stable, and unstable condition. In the linear function formulas considering the degree of rotation and response times, the gradient represented the theoretical speed of mental self‐rotation and the intercept represented other cognitive processing. A significant interaction was found between age group and condition on the gradients, indicating that the response times in the unstable condition were faster than in the other conditions for the children, the restrained condition was slower than the other conditions for the students, while no difference was found for the elderly adults. The results suggest that the influence of sensorimotor activation on the embodied representational self depends on developmental changes in physical control.     

空间路线学习中的前向测试效应

空间路线信息学习中的前向测试效应及其机制有待检验。研究以虚拟背景下的住宅小区为实验材料, 要求被试学习同一场景4个方向的路线信息(实验1)以及4个不同场景(实验2)的路线信息。结果表明, 在路线1~3的测试中, 同一场景下路线信息相似性高, “隔离”干扰的难度大, 在测试过程中的干扰率高于不同场景的路线信息。在路线4的测试中, 两个实验中测试组的回忆正确率均显著高于重学组, 干扰率则显著低于重学组, 出现了前向测试效应。这些发现表明, 测试可以通过“隔离”来自先前学习信息的前摄干扰来增强后续空间信息的学习。研究结果揭示了空间路线学习中的前向测试效应及其机制, 支持前摄抑制减少理论, 证实了前向测试效应在生活中具有广阔的应用性。