关于迁移理论的几点思考

迁移理论是教育心理学研究的一个重要内容,在其发展过程中不断有新观点产生。其间后继观点往往对先前观点有所臧否,这很正常。但后继观点本身以及对先前观点的评价并不一定无懈可击。桑代克对形式训练说的否定是值得商榷的;认知结构迁移理论否定相同因素是迁移的条件也值得讨论;相同因素应是迁移产生的最为重要的条件。     

统计认知理论及应用研究

长期以来大家认为人类认知尽管可以看成是非确定的推理计算过程,但它的知识表达、模型结构、及计算方法和概率统计理论在本质上是不同的,因此认知科学和概率统计方法存在巨大的鸿沟,过去两者基本上独立发展。近年来随着Bayesian概率统计模型研究的一系列突破性工作和认知过程本质的不断被发现和挖掘,两者的相关性和互补性逐渐突显出来。许多研究者认为认知是近似遵循概率统计推理原则的,一些研究工作显示两者的结合有可能对人工智能发展产生深远的影响。本文对当前统计认知理论及应用研究的现状进行系统的梳理,并结合自身的研究对它今后的发展提出自己的看法。     

结构限制和信息干扰对双重作业绩效的影响

研究通过改变双重任务呈现的间隔时间来探讨结构限制与信息干扰对双重任务操作绩效的影响。实验结果表明：(1)两种作业呈现的间隔时间对双重任务操作绩效有明显的影响。间隔时间越大,双重任务的作业绩效越高。(2)信息干扰对双重任务的操作有明显的影响。信息干扰越大,双重任务的操作绩效越差。(3)两个作业呈现的间隔时间不同并不影响信息干扰对双重任务操作绩效的作用。根据实验结果,该研究提出了三因素假设：结构限制、信息干扰和资源竞争是影响双重任务操作绩效的三个主要因素。     

Word category and verb--argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing

One of the core issues in psycholinguistic research concerns the relationship between word category information and verb-argument structure (e.g. transitivity) information of verbs in the process of sentence parsing. In two experiments (visual versus auditory presentation) using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we addressed this question by presenting sentences in which the critical word simultaneously realized both a word category and a transitivity violation. ERPs for sentences with both types of violation clustered with the patterns for sentences with a word category violation only, but were different from the patterns elicited by argument structure violations in isolation, since only the latter elicited an N400 ERP component. The finding that an argument structure violation evoked an N400 only if the phrase structure of the respective sentence was correct suggests that a successful integration of the word category information of a verb functionally precedes the application of its argument structure information.     

The Structure of Negative Self-Statements in Children and Adolescents: A Confirmatory Factor-Analytic Approach

The aim of this study was to examine the nature and organization of a range of negative self-statements in children and adolescents, using a structural equations/confirmatory factor-analytic approach. A community sample of 978 children aged 7-16 years completed a questionnaire about the frequency with which they experienced a broad range of negative automatic thoughts. The outcome of comparative modeling provided strongest support for a model in which 4 distinct cognitive factors were all related to a single higher order factor. The 4 lower order factors related to cognitions on social threat, physical threat, personal failure, and hostility. The pattern of results was consistent across age and gender. Results were consistent with assumptions of cognitive specificity models of psychopathology, on the latent structure of automatic thoughts in children and adolescents.     

The Advantage of First Mention in Korean The Temporal Contributions of Syntactic,Semantic, and Pragmatic Factors

Using Korean, we investigated how syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors influence the representation of a sentence, in particular, the relative accessibility of different components of a sentence representation. In six experiments, participants performed a probe recognition task after reading each of a series of sentences. We manipulated the rate at which each word of the sentence was presented (250 ms and 500 ms) and the interval between the sentence-final word and the probe-recognition test word (immediate, 500 ms delay, and 1000 ms delay). We also manipulated the syntactic position (subject versus object), semantic role (agent versus patient), and order of mention (first-versus second-mentioned participant) of the probed item. Pragmatic factors (the order of mention) strongly influenced accessibility immediately and through the longest delay, whereas syntactic and semantic factors had little effect.     

The relative importance of spatial versus temporal structure in the perception of biological motion: an event-related potential study

We investigated how the spatiotemporal structure of animations of biological motion (BM) affects brain activity. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) during the perception of BM under four conditions: normal spatial and temporal structure; scrambled spatial and normal temporal structure; normal spatial and scrambled temporal structure; and scrambled spatial and temporal structure. As in a previous study, we identified two negative components at both occipitotemporal regions: N210 reflected general motion processing while N280 reflected the processing of BM. We analyzed the averaged ERPs in the 200-300 ms response time window and found that spatial structure had a substantial effect on the magnitude of the averaged response amplitude in both hemispheres. This finding suggests that spatial structure of point-lights elicits a stronger response in the occipitotemporal region than temporal structure for the BM perception.     

The structure of childhood obsessions and compulsions: dimensions in an outpatient sample

While obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is defined as a unitary condition, prior research has identified meaningful and distinct symptom dimensions in adult samples. In contrast, there have been no investigations of symptom dimensions in samples of children diagnosed with OCD. The present study sought to address this gap. Children diagnosed with OCD (n = 137) were administered the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale symptom checklist and severity index. Symptoms were analyzed using principal components analysis. As with adult samples, four factors were identified from the checklist. However, these four factors (compulsions, sexual/aggressive obsessions, superstitions, and hoarding/ordering/somatic concerns) were different in content from adult studies. Further, several symptoms significantly contributed to more than one dimension. Each dimension was significantly correlated with scores from the severity index, with the exception of the obsession score with the hoarding/ordering/somatic concerns factor. Results suggest that there are distinct dimensions of symptoms in childhood OCD, but that these dimensions do not correspond to those identified in adults. Instead, it appears that some factors share variance, and the dimensions themselves are separated based upon developmental trajectories. The dimensions examined may be useful in future treatment studies using pharmacological and/or behavioral interventions.     

Recognition of Inflected Words in a Morphologically Limited Language: Frequency Effects in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

The effect of word frequency on the processing of monomorphemic vs. inflected words was investigated in a morphologically relatively limited language, Swedish, with two participant groups: early Finnish–Swedish bilinguals and Swedish monolinguals. The visual lexical decision results of the monolinguals suggest morphological decomposition with low-frequency inflected nouns, while with medium- and high-frequency inflections, full-form processing was apparently employed. The bilinguals demonstrated a similar pattern. The results suggest that morpheme-based recognition is employed even in a morphologically limited language when the inflectional forms occur rarely. With more frequent inflectional forms, full-form representations have developed for both mono- and bilingual speakers. In a comparable study employing a morphologically rich language, Finnish, Lehtonen and Laine (2003, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 213–225) observed full-form access only at the high-frequency range and only for monolinguals. These differences suggest that besides word frequency and language background, the morphological richness of a language affects the processing mode employed with polymorphemic wordsThis study was financially supported by a grant (#20010) from the Joint Committee of the Nordic Social Science Research Councils (NOS-S). We are grateful for Jonna Kortelahti- Brunnsteiner for recruitment and testing of part of the bilingual participants     

Processing correlates of lexical semantic complexity

This paper explores how verb meanings that differ in semantic complexity are processed and represented. In particular, we compare eventive verbs, which denote causally structured events, with stative verbs, which denote facts without causal structure. We predicted that the conceptually more complex eventive verbs should take longer to process than stative verbs. Two experiments, a lexical decision task and a self-paced reading study, confirmed this prediction. The findings suggest that (a) semantic complexity is reflected in processing time, (b) processing verb meanings involves activating properties of the event structure beyond participants' roles, and (c) more generally, lexical event structures, which subsume thematic roles, may mediate between syntactic knowledge and semantic interpretation.