Mechanisms of Reference Frame Selection in Spatial Term Use: Computational and Empirical Studies

Previous studies have shown that multiple reference frames are available and compete for selection during the use of spatial terms such as “above.” However, the mechanisms that underlie the selection process are poorly understood. In the current paper we present two experiments and a comparison of three computational models of selection to shed further light on the nature of reference frame selection. The three models are drawn from different areas of human cognition, and we assess whether they may be applied to a reference frame selection by examining their ability to account for both existing and new empirical data comprising acceptance rates, response times, and response time distributions. These three models are the competitive shunting model (Schultheis, 2009 ), the leaky competing accumulator (LCA) model (Usher & McClelland, 2001 ), and a lexical selection model (Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, & Cole‐Virtue, 2006 ). Model simulations show that only the LCA model satisfactorily accounts for the empirical observations. The key properties of this model that seem to drive its success are its bounded linear activation function, its number and type of processing stages, and its use of decay. Uncovering these critical properties has important implications for our understanding not only of spatial term use, in particular, but also of conflict and selection in human cognition more generally.     

Does Environmental Experience Shape Spatial Cognition? Frames of Reference Among Ancash Quechua Speakers (Peru)

Previous studies have shown that language contributes to humans' ability to orient using landmarks and shapes their use of frames of reference (FoRs) for memory. However, the role of environmental experience in shaping spatial cognition has not been investigated. This study addresses such a possibility by examining the use of FoRs in a nonverbal spatial memory task among residents of an Andean community in Peru. Participants consisted of 97 individuals from Ancash Quechua‐speaking households (8–77 years of age) who spoke Quechua and/or Spanish and varied considerably with respect to the extent of their experience in the surrounding landscape. The results demonstrated that environmental experience was the only factor significantly related to the preference for allocentric FoRs. The study thus shows that environmental experience can play a role alongside language in shaping habits of spatial representation, and it suggests a new direction of inquiry into the relationships among language, thought, and experience.     

Postpartum depression and attachment: Is anybody here?

Abstract

The paper presents a developmental and dynamic multitheoretical overview of many dimensions of attachment-related processes activated under the conditions of maternal depression. The clinical vignette (from the analytic practice of Eva D. Papiasvili) of reconstructive anaytic work with an adult patient illustrates the profound impact of maternal depression on precocious early differentiation between the attachment styles, of the depressed parent and the substitute caregiver, at the root of early “counterdependent” self-sufficiency. Through reconstructive interpretive work, first with enactments and then dreams, pertaining to not-remembered, represented, or symbolized events of earliest infancy, the patient is able to make a series of developmentally transformative symbolic leaps, restoring the capacity for intimacy, hope, trust, and pleasure. This breaks the intergenerational mother–daughter transmission of postpartum depression and related problematic attachment.     

风险敏感理论:需要驱动风险决策

风险敏感理论由研究动物觅食行为发展而来,提出有机体在有需要的状况下会出现从风险规避到风险寻求的行为,是风险决策领域内的一种生物学理论。目前风险敏感理论所做出的预测在动物和人类身上都获得了大量实证研究的支持,表明该理论可以解释很多领域中的风险决策。因此有必要对这一理论做一个系统的论述,包括对其理论来源和数学模型的发展演变进行梳理;从参照点等不同的角度分析该理论与其他决策理论的区别;并且,风险敏感理论也为经济不平等和权力等外部因素下的风险转移提供了解释,对已有研究做出了独特的贡献。     

学业自我概念的建构:内/外参照模型研究述评

内/外参照模型在理论上同时考虑了社会比较和维度比较两种比较方式在建构个体学业自我概念过程中的作用。近年来,对内/外参照模型的研究进展主要体现在三个方面:对该模型进行跨文化一致性检验;提出了维度比较理论;与大鱼小池效应相整合。这些研究表明学业自我概念具有学科特异性,研究者要更加注重学业自我概念及其它学业变量的学科特异性研究,并加强内/外参照模型的调节因素研究,教师及家长要引导学生合理选择比较方式。     

视觉表象扫描的概念控制

将表象扫描和概念提示范式相结合, 在三个实验中通过考察概念控制下表象扫描加工中的参照系冲突效应以及概念参照系的优先性, 进而揭示表象扫描加工中的自上而下控制机制。结果发现：(1) 正立或旋转方位汉字提示下表象扫描加工中出现了参照轴效应, 箭头提示下不存在这种效应, 表明不同提示引发了不同空间关系计算过程; (2) 在表象扫描概念控制过程中, 概念参照系、环境(重力)参照系及提示汉字内在参照系同时被激活, 它们可能处于不同冲突状态, 解决这些冲突具有不同认知代价; (3) 在解决不同参照系冲突过程中, 反映自上而下加工的概念参照系总能通过抑制其它参照系而取得优先地位, 表明人的认知系统能够对表象加工进行自上而下的主动控制, 这种主动控制反映了一种执行功能。     

Gaze following and gaze priming in lemurs

Although primates have often been found to co-orient visually with other individuals, members of these same species have usually failed to use co-orientation to find hidden food in object-choice experiments. This presents an evolutionary puzzle: what is the function of co-orientation if it is not used for a function as basic as locating resources? Co-orientation responses have not been systematically investigated in object-choice experiments, and requiring co-orientation with humans (as is typical in object-choice tasks) may underestimate other species’ abilities. Using an object-choice task with conspecific models depicted in photographs, we provide experimental evidence that two lemur species (Eulemur fulvus, n = 4, and Eulemur macaco, n = 2) co-orient with conspecifics. Secondly, by analysing together two measures that have traditionally been examined separately, we show that lemurs’ gaze following behaviour and ultimate choice are closely linked. Individuals were more likely to choose correctly after having looked in the same direction as the model, and thus chose objects correctly more often than chance. We propose a candidate system for the evolutionary origins of more complex gaze following: ‘gaze priming.’     

Novel-view scene recognition relies on identifying spatial reference directions

Five experiments investigated whether observer locomotion provides specialized information facilitating novel-view scene recognition. Participants detected a position change after briefly viewing a desktop scene when the table stayed stationary or was rotated and when the observer stayed stationary or locomoted. The results showed that 49° novel-view scene recognition was more accurate when the novel view was caused by observer locomotion than when the novel view was caused by table rotation. However such superiority of observer locomotion disappeared when the to-be-tested viewpoint was indicated during the study phase, when the study viewing direction was indicated during the test phase, and when the novel test view was 98°, and was even reversed when the study viewing direction was indicated during the test phase in the table rotation condition but not in the observer locomotion condition. These results suggest scene recognition relies on the identification of the spatial reference directions of the scene and accurately indicating the spatial reference direction can facilitate scene recognition. The facilitative effect of locomotion occurs because the spatial reference direction of the scene is tracked during locomotion and more accurately identified at test.     

TOWARD AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF CERTAIN SUBSTANTIVE A PRIORI TRUTHS

Abstract: This article explains and motivates an account of one way in which we might have substantive a priori knowledge in one important class of domains: domains in which the central concepts are response-dependent. The central example will be our knowledge of the connection between something's being harmful and the fact that it is irrational for us to fail to be averse to that thing. The idea is that although the relevant responses (basic aversion in the case of harm, and a kind of interpretive failure in the case of irrationality) are produced by independent psychological mechanisms, they have distal causes that turn out to be related in ways that—once language enters the picture—yield epistemically accessible necessary connections between the referents of their corresponding terms.     

The Younger Generation of Culture Scholars and Culture-studies in Russia Today

I consider the main problem areas within theacademic project ``The 1990s: The Semantics ofRussian Culture,' undertaken by researchers,recent graduates, and the first post-graduatesof the Moscow Institute for European Cultures.The areas include new figures on the publicscene; new forms of communication; newinstitutions; current processes in culture andsociety. I examine the social and historicalframework of the formation of culture studiesas an academic discipline in contemporaryRussia, the alternative perspectives and tasksof the sociology of culture in Russian today.