Bilingual toddlers’ comprehension of mixed sentences is asymmetrical across their two languages

In bilingual language environments, infants and toddlers listen to two separate languages during the same key years that monolingual children listen to just one and bilinguals rarely learn each of their two languages at the same rate. Learning to understand language requires them to cope with challenges not found in monolingual input, notably the use of two languages within the same utterance (e.g., Do you like the perro? or ¿Te gusta el doggy?). For bilinguals of all ages, switching between two languages can reduce the efficiency in real‐time language processing. But language switching is a dynamic phenomenon in bilingual environments, presenting the young learner with many junctures where comprehension can be derailed or even supported. In this study, we tested 20 Spanish–English bilingual toddlers (18‐ to 30‐months) who varied substantially in language dominance. Toddlers’ eye movements were monitored as they looked at familiar objects and listened to single‐language and mixed‐language sentences in both of their languages. We found asymmetrical switch costs when toddlers were tested in their dominant versus non‐dominant language, and critically, they benefited from hearing nouns produced in their dominant language, independent of switching. While bilingualism does present unique challenges, our results suggest a united picture of early monolingual and bilingual learning. Just like monolinguals, experience shapes bilingual toddlers’ word knowledge, and with more robust representations, toddlers are better able to recognize words in diverse sentences.     

A Monte Carlo evaluation of masked visual analysis in response‐guided versus fixed‐criteria multiple‐baseline designs

We developed masked visual analysis (MVA) as a structured complement to traditional visual analysis. The purpose of the present investigation was to compare the effects of computer‐simulated MVA of a four‐case multiple‐baseline (MB) design in which the phase lengths are determined by an ongoing visual analysis (i.e., response‐guided) versus those in which the phase lengths are established a priori (i.e., fixed criteria). We observed an acceptably low probability (less than .05) of false detection of treatment effects. The probability of correctly detecting a true effect frequently exceeded .80 and was higher when: (a) the masked visual analyst extended phases based on an ongoing visual analysis, (b) the effects were larger, (c) the effects were more immediate and abrupt, and (d) the effects of random and extraneous error factors were simpler. Our findings indicate that MVA is a valuable combined methodological and data‐analysis tool for single‐case intervention researchers.     

The Role of Consistent Context in Rapid Movement Planning: Suboptimal Endpoint Adjustment to Changing Rewards

The authors' purpose was to determine if participants adjusted their endpoint during a rapid aiming task in the context of changing rewards and whether participants needed consistent feedback to do so. Participants aimed to a target that was overlapped by a penalty region. Participants gained points for hitting the target but lost points for hitting the penalty region. The reward value associated with target contact either changed trial to trial, reducing consistent feedback (variable condition) or changed between blocks of trials (blocked condition) with the repetition of reward value within a block increasing the consistency of feedback. Participants adjusted their endpoints with changing reward value in the blocked but not variable condition indicating consistent feedback is needed to adjust endpoint to changing rewards.     

Improving judgmental forecasts with judgmental bootstrapping and task feedback support

This study examines the utility of two widely advocated methods for supporting judgmental forecasts—providing task feedback and providing judgmental bootstrapping support. In a simulated laboratory based experiment that focused on producing composite sales forecasts from three individual components, we compared the effectiveness of these two methods in improving final judgmental forecasts. In the presence of cognitive feedback task, feedback led to better forecasts than providing judgmental bootstrap forecasts. Simply providing bootstrap forecasts was of no additional benefit over a control condition. This was true in terms of the Brunswik Lens model measures of achievement, knowledge, and consistency, and in terms of forecast accuracy. This occurred both in stable environments and when special events (unusual one‐time events requiring adjustments to the forecasts) arose. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wofür sprechen die Daten?

What Do the Data Tell Us? Justification of scientific theories is a three-place relation between data, theories, and background knowledge. Though this should be a commonplace, many methodologies in science neglect it. The article will elucidate the significance and function of our background knowledge in epistemic justification and their consequences for different scientific methodologies. It is argued that there is no simple and at the same time acceptable statistical algorithm that justifies a given theory merely on the basis of certain data. And even if we think to know the probability of a theory, that does not decide whether we should accept it or not.     

Teilen,Trennen und Vereinen: EPR ohne Holismus

Dividing, Separating and Unifying. EPR Without Holism. In the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics parts of composed systems are correlated in a non-causal way, they are ontologically dependent on each other. In this paper I try to defend traditional realism giving a non-holistic interpretation of the EPR-paradox. An analysis of events in the macroscopic world shows that dividing and unifying objects is quite dif-ferent from changing (modifying) objects. In application to quantum mechanics I argue that a measurement at a given single-system changes (modifies) this object, but the EPR-measurement divides the given object. Therefore this given object is an undivided and dividable One and not a composed system. If parts are produced (by EPR-measurement) correlations do not occur.

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Teilen, Trennen und Vereinen: EPR ohne Holismus

     

内隐学习研究方法述评

内隐学习自提出以来就成为认知心理学研究的热点,近40年内隐学习领域的研究在本质上都基于几种经典的研究方法和实验逻辑。本文拟对这些代表性的内隐学习研究方法做系统的介绍和归纳。     

共同方法变异的影响及其统计控制途径的模型分析

共同方法变异(common method variance, CMV)指两个变量之间变异的重叠是因为使用同类测量工具而导致, 而不是代表潜在构念之间的真实关系。虽然以往研究显示CMV不一定导致研究结果的偏差, 在实际研究中应当加以考量。特别是在使用测量方法的研究中, 如果数据来源越单一, 测量方法越类似, CMV效应使研究结果产生偏差的可能性越大。CMV效应的控制方法包括过程控制法和统计控制法。在统计控制法的选择和使用上, 需要重点考虑该方法是否分离了三大变异(特质变异、方法变异和误差变异), CMV效应是在测量构念层面还是题目层面, CMV效应是加法效应还是乘法效应。控制潜在方法因子途径是统计控制方法中最重要的一类方法, 理解其模型是正确使用这类方法的前提。未来研究应当关注多个研究的CMV效应和侧重评估某个理论研究中CMV所引起的潜在的效度威胁。     

QUANTUM INTERACTIVE DUALISM: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MATERIALISM

Abstract. René Descartes proposed an interactive dualism that posits an interaction between the mind of a human being and some of the matter in his or her brain. However, the classical physical theories that reigned during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are based exclusively on the material/physical part of Descartes' ontology, and they purport to give, in principle, a completely deterministic account of the physically described properties of nature, expressed exclusively in terms of these physically described properties themselves. Orthodox contemporary physical theory violates this condition in two separate ways. First, it injects random elements into the dynamics. Second, it requires psychophysical events, called Process 1 interventions by John von Neumann. Neither the content nor the timing of these events is determined, even statistically, by any known law. Orthodox quantum mechanics considers these events to be instigated by choices made by conscious agents. This quantum conception of the mind‐brain connection allows many psychological and neuropsychological findings associated with the apparent physical effectiveness of our conscious volitional efforts to be explained in a causal and practically useful way. According to this quantum approach, conscious human beings are invested with degrees of freedom denied to the mechanistic automatons to which classical physics reduced us.