EPS Mid-Career Award 2014

In visual search, observers try to find known target objects among distractors in visual scenes where the location of the targets is uncertain. This review article discusses the attentional processes that are active during search and their neural basis. Four successive phases of visual search are described. During the initial preparatory phase, a representation of the current search goal is activated. Once visual input has arrived, information about the presence of target-matching features is accumulated in parallel across the visual field (guidance). This information is then used to allocate spatial attention to particular objects (selection), before representations of selected objects are activated in visual working memory (recognition). These four phases of attentional control in visual search are characterized both at the cognitive level and at the neural implementation level. It will become clear that search is a continuous process that unfolds in real time. Selective attention in visual search is described as the gradual emergence of spatially specific and temporally sustained biases for representations of task-relevant visual objects in cortical maps.     

构建21世纪美国公共卫生体系的原则

美国卫生与福利部长沙拉拉博士在一次演讲中提出了构建２１世纪美国公共卫生体系的十大原则,这些原则包括公共卫生与信息革命;大力发展预防医学;医学研究;消除卫生保健的悬殊状况;新世纪卫生人卫生人培养;保护大学生卫生中心以及医学伦理学等主要内容。这些原则对我们思考规划２１世纪的医疗卫生体系及医学教育系不无借鉴启迪意义。     

Timing of human cortical functions during cognition: role of MEG

Understanding of sensory and cognitive brain processes requires information about activation timing within and between different brain sites. Such data can be obtained by magnetoencephalography (MEG) that tracks cortical activation sequences with a millisecond temporal accuracy. MEG is gaining a well-established role in human neuroscience, complementing with its excellent temporal resolution the spatially more focused brain imaging methods. As examples of MEG's role in cognitive neuroscience, we discuss time windows related to cortical processing of sensory and multisensory stimuli, effects of the subject's own voice on the activity of their auditory cortex, timing of brain activation in reading, and cortical dynamics of the human mirror-neuron system activated when the subject views another person's movements.     

How is the Other Approached and Conceptualized in Terms of Schutz's Constitutive Phenomenology of the Natural Attitude?<Superscript>1</Superscript>

The problem of the other was one of the central problems for the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. He investigated the other as the alter ego intensively in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, in which he introduced the conceptions of “analogical apperception' and “pairing' as fundamental forms of “passive synthesis.' Although it is no doubt Husserl who investigated the other most seriously and intensively, there is anaporiain his theory of the other. If the other is an object of ego's intentional consciousness, the other turns out to be no more than a modification of the ego. In the face of such anaporia, some phenomenologists embarked upon inquiry into the other. This paper focuses primarily on Alfred Schutz's discussion of the “other' in general and about the “stranger' in particular.     

人格理论的系统发展观初探

文章以遗传论、精神动力论、学习论、特质论、社会文化及认知一情感系统理论为基础。利用系统科学中的系统论观点,对人格理论进行系统发展观分析。该观点将人格看作一个复杂的“大”系统,它包括外部系统和内部系统两部分。外部系统即外环境系统,内部系统则分为个体心理系统和个体行为系统,其核心是个体心理系统,它由认识系统、情意系统、自我系统及需要系统构成。人格的形成是内外两个系统相互作用、循环运动的结果。     

Evidence that baroreflex feedback influences long-term incidental visual memory in men

Sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity at the time of acquisition is associated with human memory. However, rather than SNS activity per se, it may be afferent baroreflex feedback that is responsible for this effect. A pharmacological design was employed to unload (SNP, sodium nitro-prusside) and load (norepinephrine) baroreceptors. In addition to two placebo periods, epinephrine and esmolol (a peripherally acting beta1-blocker) served as control conditions for altered cardiac perception. During drug infusion blood pressure, heart rate, and perception of heartbeat were tested. Twenty-four healthy men were participated. The participants viewed emotional slides while their electromyographic eye blink responses to random noise bursts were measured (affective startle modulation paradigm) to determine potential drug impact on emotional processing. Subjects were not informed that memory testing would take place after 4 weeks. Drugs did not impact startle, thus indicating unbiased emotional processing at the time of acquisition. Norepinephrine had no effect on heartbeat perception, but improved (p = .002) recognition memory. SNP (p = .0001) increased heartbeat perception but impaired (p = .038) recognition memory. Epinephrine, on the other hand, increased heartbeat perception (p = .0001) yet did not impair but partially improve memory (effect on high arousing pictures only: p = .05). Heartbeat perception in the placebo condition did not correlate with recognition memory (p's > .5). We suggest that baroreflex unloading, with subsequent feedback activation of the SNS, impairs long-term incidental visual recognition memory in humans while baroreflex loading enhances it. Further, we propose that these memory effects are neither secondary to cardiac sensations that accompany SNS activation nor to altered emotional picture processing at the time of acquisition.     

目标理论述评

目标理论是近年来成就动机研究领域的一个热点 ,学者们基于对目标概念、目标功能的不同理解 ,提出了各种目标理论。本文着重介绍了目标设置理论、动机系统理论和成就目标理论 ,剖析了不同学者对目标结构的性质、功能及其作用机制的理论观点。     

On the Concept of the Scale

The theory of linear arrays provides a definition of linear order from the reflexive, symmetric, but non-transitive relation of matching. However, a distance function is not generally available for the elements of a linear array. Given the original intended interpretation of the matching predicate as holding between phenomenal qualia, this result presents an apparent contradiction to the existence of human practices, specifically the tradition of musical practice described by common-practice music theory, that involve precise judgments of phenomenal distance. This paper resolves that seeming contradiction by constructing a notion of the musical scale out of the theory of linear arrays. First, the theory of linear arrays is briefly reviewed. Then, criteria of adequacy for the construction are adduced from common-practice music theory, the theory of measure and the semiotic theory of notation. The construction is presented along with results indicating its fulfillment of the criteria of adequacy. Finally, the relations between several variables introduced in the course of the construction are investigated.     

Personalized System Of Instruction In Cyberspace

Four different undergraduate psychology courses with no allotted classroom time slots were taught in the same term by means of a computer-based version of Keller's personalized system of instruction (PSI), called computer-aided personalized system of instruction (CAPSI). Students' performance and ratings indicate that CAPSI is a viable on-line educational method.