信息呈现方式与学习者的个性特征对多媒体环境下学习效果的影响

采用两个实验:实验一以陈述性知识为学习内容,实验二以程序性知识为学习内容,在这两种情况下,分别用组间设计探讨信息呈现方式对不同认知风格和空间能力的学习者在多媒体环境下学习效果的影响。结果表明:(1)认知风格对陈述性知识在多媒体环境下的学习效果产生影响,而选择的多媒体信息呈现方式和被试的空间能力则对其不产生影响;(2)对于程序性知识的保持,多媒体信息呈现方式和被试认知风格都会对学习效果产生影响,被试空间能力则不会产生影响,而且被试不同的认知风格在不同的多媒体信息呈现方式上会产生不同的影响;(3)对程序性知识的迁移,多媒体信息呈现方式、被试认知风格和空间能力都会对多媒体环境下的学习效果产生影响,而且被试不同的认知风格和空间能力在不同的多媒体信息呈现方式上都会产生不同的影响。     

旋转任务中3～5岁儿童空间物体位置编码的研究

本实验探讨3~5岁儿童在对空间物体位置进行编码时,能否有效采用心理旋转策略或根据物体"位置关系"来判断物体方位。实验采用3×4混合设计,在旋转条件下研究上述问题。结果表明:(1)在策略方面,儿童对心理旋转的使用要显著优于利用位置关系进行判断;(2)随着年龄增长,心理旋转的能力不断提高,5岁时进步尤其明显;(3)3~5岁儿童均不能自动利用位置关系对物体位置进行编码,但5岁儿童经提示后可采用此策略。     

Overweight and cognition

There is a growing concern among health authorities that an increasing number of people in the Western world become overweight and even obese. It is well known that obesity is related to several diseases (e.g., diabetes, stroke, and high blood pressure) and that such diseases related to obesity lead to early death. It has also been discussed whether overweight and obesity in themselves or in relation to such diseases lead to cognitive decline. On the basis of data from a large, population‐based, prospective study we examined three cognitive domains: episodic memory, semantic memory, and spatial ability. Two body measures were used to define normal weight and overweight, body‐mass index and waist/hip ratio. Although these two body measures reveal quite different prevalence data of overweight, the associations between overweight and cognition are similar. For episodic memory, overweight interacts with age, but when controlling for hypertension, stroke and diabetes, this interaction disappears. For semantic memory, normal weight participants outperform overweight participants even after controlling for these diseases. For spatial ability, the well‐established advantage for men holds for young‐old and old‐old normal‐weight participants. For overweight participants, this advantage holds for middle‐age participants only. We conclude that there is a weight‐cognition relationship even after controlling for obesity‐related diseases. The results are discussed in terms of possible biological mechanisms.     

Mental number line disruption in a right-neglect patient after a left-hemisphere stroke

A right-neglect patient with focal left-hemisphere damage to the posterior superior parietal lobe was assessed for numerical knowledge and tested on the bisection of numerical intervals and visual lines. The semantic and verbal knowledge of numbers was preserved, whereas the performance in numerical tasks that strongly emphasize the visuo-spatial layout of numbers (e.g. number bisection) was impaired. The behavioral pattern of error in the two bisection tasks mirrored the one previously described in left-neglect patients. In other words, our patient misplaced the subjective midpoint (numerical or visual) to the left as function of the interval size. These data, paired with the patient's lesion site are strictly consistent with the tripartite organization of number-related processes in the parietal lobes as proposed by Dehaene and colleagues. According to these authors, the posterior superior parietal lobe on both hemispheres underpins the attentional orientation on the putative mental number line, the horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus is bilaterally related to the semantic of the numerical domain, whereas the left angular gyrus subserves the verbal knowledge of numbers. In summary, our results suggest that the processes involved in the navigation along the mental number line, which are related to the parietal mechanisms for spatial attention, and the processes involved in the semantic and verbal knowledge of numbers, are dissociable.     

The egocentric reference for visual exploration and orientation

Clinical signs of damage to the egocentric reference system range from the inability to detect stimuli in the real environment to a defect in recovering items from an internal representation. Despite clinical dissociations, current interpretations consider all symptoms as due to a single perturbation, differentially expressed according to the medium explored (perceptual or representational). We propose an alternative account based on the functional distinction between two separate egocentric mechanisms: one allowing construction of the immediate point of view, the other extracting a required perspective within a mental representation. Support to this claim comes from recent results in the domain of navigation, showing that separate cognitive mechanisms maintain the egocentric reference when actively exploring the visual space as opposed to moving according to an internal map. These mechanisms likely follow separate developmental pathways, seemingly depend on distinct neural pathways and are used independently by healthy adults, reflecting task demands and individual cognitive style. Implications for spatial cognition and social skills are discussed.     

时序信息和空间信息在工作记忆中的分离存储

采用相对新近性判断范式（judgments of relative recency）,通过三个实验探讨了工作记忆中时序信息和空间信息的存储方式及其关系。实验一比较了有无空间线索两种条件下时序信息的记忆绩效,结果发现,有无空间线索并不影响对时序信．E-的记忆。实验二和实验三通过控制刺激呈现的视野范围和减少呈现位置的不确定性来利化空间线索,结果表明,时序信息的记忆绩效也不受空间线索的影响。由此推论,工作记忆中的时序信息和空间信息是分离编码存储的,加入空间线索并不能提高时序信息的记忆绩效。     

Environmental enrichment improves behavioral performance and auditory spatial representation of primary auditory cortical neurons in rat

Environmental enrichment (EE) has an important role in brain plasticity. Early research has shown that EE increases the response strength of neurons in the auditory cortex, but it remains unknown whether EE can influence the process of spatial localization in the auditory system. In this study, we raised rats in enriched and standard conditions from postnatal day 10 to day 56. By testing behavioral tasks via auditory cues, we have shown that EE improved the number of correct scores, but decreased the reaction time and azimuth deviation in behavioral performance of sound-azimuth discrimination. By in vivo extracellular recording, we have shown that EE enhanced the directional sensitivity of neurons in the primary auditory cortex. For example, EE rats had a smaller spatial receptive field, sharper frequency tuning curve and directional selective curve of auditory neurons compared with normal rats. Our findings indicate that early exposure to EE increases directional sensitivity. These results provide an insight into developmental plasticity in the auditory system.     

A Bayesian Semiparametric Latent Variable Model for Mixed Responses

In this paper we introduce a latent variable model (LVM) for mixed ordinal and continuous responses, where covariate effects on the continuous latent variables are modelled through a flexible semiparametric Gaussian regression model. We extend existing LVMs with the usual linear covariate effects by including nonparametric components for nonlinear effects of continuous covariates and interactions with other covariates as well as spatial effects. Full Bayesian modelling is based on penalized spline and Markov random field priors and is performed by computationally efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. We apply our approach to a German social science survey which motivated our methodological development. We thank the editor and the referees for their constructive and helpful comments, leading to substantial improvements of a first version, and Sven Steinert for computational assistance. Partial financial support from the SFB 386 “Statistical Analysis of Discrete Structures” is also acknowledged.     

视觉空间注意的事件相关电位研究

视觉空间注意是心理学多年来一直探讨的问题,也是近来多学科共同关注的领域。在脑机制研究中,事件相关电位(ERP)的研究方法具有高时间分辨率的特点,近年来高密度记录技术的发展,也提高了ERP在功能定位方面的作用,因此其应用日益广泛。该文概述了近年来有关ERP在视觉空间注意研究中的实验方法、结果和初步结论,并就今后研究方向提出了几点看法。     

小学儿童两维空间方位传递性推理能力的发展

研究了小学儿童两维空间方位传递性推理能力的发展水平及认知策略,同时,对心理模型理论进行了检验。被试为城市中等小学7岁、9岁、11岁儿童各24名,男女各半。单模型和双模型两种实验任务均为四前提。采用个别实验,儿童在前提呈现的情况下进行推理。主要研究结果：（1）7岁儿童开始萌发了两维空间方位传递性推理能力,9岁儿童和11岁儿童的推理能力处于发展和提高过程中;（2）随着年龄增长,使用模型建构策略解决问题的儿童人次越来越多,绝大部分11岁儿童都能使用这一策略进行推理。但即使儿童使用了模型建构策略,他们的推理成绩也没有反映出模型数量所造成的任务难度差异,即不符合心理模型理论关于模型数量的主要预期;（3）即使儿童能自发生成模型建构策略,儿童在两维空间方位传递性推理中使用这一策略的有效性程度并不高。