What Are You Waiting For? Real‐Time Integration of Cues for Fricatives Suggests Encapsulated Auditory Memory

Speech unfolds over time, and the cues for even a single phoneme are rarely available simultaneously. Consequently, to recognize a single phoneme, listeners must integrate material over several hundred milliseconds. Prior work contrasts two accounts: (a) a memory buffer account in which listeners accumulate auditory information in memory and only access higher level representations (i.e., lexical representations) when sufficient information has arrived; and (b) an immediate integration scheme in which lexical representations can be partially activated on the basis of early cues and then updated when more information arises. These studies have uniformly shown evidence for immediate integration for a variety of phonetic distinctions. We attempted to extend this to fricatives, a class of speech sounds which requires not only temporal integration of asynchronous cues (the frication, followed by the formant transitions 150–350 ms later), but also integration across different frequency bands and compensation for contextual factors like coarticulation. Eye movements in the visual world paradigm showed clear evidence for a memory buffer. Results were replicated in five experiments, ruling out methodological factors and tying the release of the buffer to the onset of the vowel. These findings support a general auditory account for speech by suggesting that the acoustic nature of particular speech sounds may have large effects on how they are processed. It also has major implications for theories of auditory and speech perception by raising the possibility of an encapsulated memory buffer in early auditory processing.     

God, Determinism, and Action: Perspectives from Physics

Recent articles by Michael Heller, Carl Helrich, Peter Hodgson, Jeffrey Koperski, and Nicholas Saunders present a challenge to much current thinking on God, divine action, and cosmology. In the process, they also reveal underlying assumptions and current problems, especially in the debate over physics and divine action. In particular, three issues come up that need to be addressed further. First, what is the status of determinism, and what can physics contribute? Second, what kind of divine action are we talking about? Third, what is the relationship between God and time, and how does this affect claims about the personhood of God? While these essays present necessary critiques and interesting, positive proposals, they also reveal unresolved tensions that need to be addressed.     

Effect of phonological processing on temporal processing

Many studies have reported that the effect of concurrent nontemporal processing on time estimation depends on the difficulty of the nontemporal task. The perceived duration of a given temporal interval decreases as the difficulty of the concurrent nontemporal task increases. A question thus arises as to whether any kind of nontemporal task will have the same effect on temporal processing. Two experiments were conducted in which the level of the nontemporal task demand was systematically varied. In Experiment 1, the effect of phonological processing on concurrent time estimation was shown to vary linearly with the number of items to be processed. Experiment 2 showed that the concurrent time estimation did not vary with the level of figural processing demands. This suggests selective interference with temporal processing on the part of concurrent phonological processing.     

Müller-Lyer图形中长度加工与时距估计的关系

采用复制法,考察Müller-Lyer错觉条件下,长度加工与时距估计的关系。实验1和实验2分别采用实线段和空线段,结果发现,图形的客观长度越长,估计的时距越长;箭头朝向造成的主观长度错觉对时距估计无影响;时距对长度判断的影响较小。实验3进一步操作线段长度和箭杆方向,发现长度错觉不影响时距估计与错觉量的大小无关。研究表明刺激的客观长度与时间在心理表征上存在自动化的联结,也受到刺激、实验方法和时距等因素的影响。     

Medieval Consideration and Moral Pace

This essay examines the relationship between virtue and understandings of time through a comparative examination of two medieval Christian writers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas. By locating temporal dimensions of virtue primarily in discussions of prudence, this essay compares Thomas's account of the virtue of counsel as preparatory to prudent judgment with Bernard's earlier account of consideration as an integrating virtue that coordinates an examination of physical surroundings and social responsibilities with an examination of one's own inner life and history of moral decisions. The essay argues that accounts of virtue ethics focusing on tradition‐specific views of the human good and practical reasoning are insufficient if they do not also examine how practical reasoning interprets and responds to religious interpretations of time that disclose the distinctive kinds of moral problems arising in each historical period.     

KAIROS: BETWEEN COSMIC ORDER AND HUMAN AGENCY A Comparative Study of Aurelius and Confucius

In nontheistic moral traditions, there is a typical ethical conundrum concerning the relation between cosmic order and human agency. Within those traditions, it is generally recognized that the universe has its own order and history that are independent of human will. A moral discourse has to find space to accommodate human agency in the midst of the iron grid of cosmic law. Both Confucius and Aurelius use the concept of timeliness (kairos) to resolve the difficult issue. But their philosophies take on divergent paths. By studying their resolutions of the issue, we will be able to appreciate the distinctive nature of their nontheistic moral narratives.     

Learning times for large lexicons through cross-situational learning

Cross-situational learning is a mechanism for learning the meaning of words across multiple exposures, despite exposure-by-exposure uncertainty as to a word's true meaning. Doubts have been expressed regarding the plausibility of cross-situational learning as a mechanism for learning human-scale lexicons in reasonable timescales under the levels of referential uncertainty likely to confront real word learners. We demonstrate mathematically that cross-situational learning facilitates the acquisition of large vocabularies despite significant levels of referential uncertainty at each exposure, and we provide estimates of lexicon learning times for several cross-situational learning strategies. This model suggests that cross-situational word learning cannot be ruled out on the basis that it predicts unreasonably long lexicon learning times. More generally, these results indicate that there is no necessary link between the ability to learn individual words rapidly and the capacity to acquire a large lexicon.     

中国文化价值观和未来时间取向对幸福感的影响

幸福感是个体根据自定的标准对其生活质量的整体性评估。本研究探讨了中国文化价值观对大学生幸福感的影响,并揭示了时间取向在中国文化价值观和幸福感间的中介作用。结果表明,中国文化价值观可分为刻苦上进、自然知足、重视家庭、谦逊克己、团结和谐、正义利他、服从权威和中庸守序等八个维度;自然知足、正义利他和谦逊克己与幸福感显著正相关,并通过未来取向的中介作用影响幸福感体验。     

“IF I WERE GOD”: EINSTEIN AND RELIGION

Designed as an introductory lecture for the conference “Einstein, God and Time,” this essay provides a brief survey of three sets of relations—between Einstein and time, God and time, and Einstein and God. The question is raised whether Einstein's rejection of absolute time held any implications for theology. It is argued that, despite Einstein's denial and his exemplary caution, the fact that Isaac Newton had associated absolute space and absolute time with a deity who constituted them meant that a revisitation of theological questions was inevitable. Consideration is then given to the time‐lessness and changelessness of God, with a brief reference to eschatological issues. The question whether there might be parallels between the renunciation of Newtonian time by physicists and by Christian theologians is discussed with reference to recent commentary on the eschatological thinking of Jürgen Moltmann. Whether Einstein himself would have sympathized with these theologies is to be doubted, given his antipathy to anthropomorphic and anthropopathic concepts of deity. Finally, in exploring Einstein's sometimes whimsical use of theological language, it becomes necessary to acknowledge that his well‐known affirmation of the complementarity of science and religion rested on a distinctive construction of religion that allowed him to say he was a “deeply religious unbeliever.” Attempts to categorize his convictions, or to appropriate them for conventional theistic purposes, miss their subtlety and their apophatic resonances.