The importance of impaired physical health and age in normal cognitive aging

The objective of this study was to investigate the importance of impaired physical health and age in normal cognitive aging. In our cross-sectional, clinical and explorative study, medical and neuropsychological data from 118 voluntary healthy controls aged 26-91 years were collected from five recruitment occasions. Health was assessed according to a criterion reflecting clinical and subclinical severity. The examinations included a clinical investigation, brain neuroimaging, and a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. Regression analyses showed a significant incidence of clinical and subclinical medical disorders that explained 10.8% of the variation in cognitive performance, while age-related impairment explained 5.6%. Findings of the central nervous system were important but various other medical findings explained about half of the health-related variation. Cognitively demanding tasks were more susceptible to impaired physical health while tasks comprising salient motor- and visual spatial elements were more prone to be impaired by age. Our findings suggest (1) that impaired physical health is more important than chronological age in accounting for cognitive impairment across the adult lifespan, (2) that age and health dissociate with regard to cognitive functions affected, and (3) that selection for so-called "super healthy" elderly people might be justified in cognitive research. Because the prevalent diseases in normal aging are potentially preventable, the present findings promise good prospect for prevention of future cognitive disability among elderly people.     

小学生快速阅读的眼动研究

用自然实验和实验室实验考察了对小学四年级学生进行快速阅读训练的有效性,结果发现：（1）快速阅读训练可以显著地提高小学生的有效读速;（2）快速阅读训练可以显著减少注视次数、注视点平均持续时间;（3）快速阅读训练可以显著扩大眼跳距离。     

文章标记对阅读信息保持的影响及其作用机制的研究

通过3个实验,探讨了文章标记对阅读信息保持的影响及其作用机制。结果发现,标记有利于读者对文章信息的保持;随着年级的增长,读者利用文章标记建构文章表征的能力不断提高;文章标记对文章信息保持的促进作用存在选择性加工,通过延时加工测量技术和眼动分析技术证实了策略转化假设的合理性。     

易之"生"意与理学的生生之学

"生生之谓易"既是哲学家对宇宙相状的揭示,也是"易"本身的性质。从"天地之大德日生"到"易简"之善和"复其见天地之心",贯穿的都是同一个"生"意。理学继承前人又广加扩展,天地生物之心既是静与动的综合集成,又是天地生物与仁德流行的统一。从静体到动用,从"动之端"到"动之机",现象存在虽有生死显微,"生"之理却通贯不息。     

高中二年级学生中文阅读知觉广度的眼动研究

采用“呈现随眼动变化技术”对高中二年级学生中文阅读的知觉广度进行了眼动研究。结果发现,高中二年级学生的阅读知觉广度具有不对称性,大约为注视点左侧一个或两个汉字到注视点右侧三个或四个汉字的空间;高中二年级学生在正常阅读中的眼跳距离约为三个汉字的空间,在连续注视的过程中知觉广度有较小范围的重叠。     

Hearing what the body feels: auditory encoding of rhythmic movement

Phillips-Silver and Trainor (Phillips-Silver, J., Trainor, L.J., (2005). Feeling the beat: movement influences infants' rhythm perception. Science, 308, 1430) demonstrated an early cross-modal interaction between body movement and auditory encoding of musical rhythm in infants. Here we show that the way adults move their bodies to music influences their auditory perception of the rhythm structure. We trained adults, while listening to an ambiguous rhythm with no accented beats, to bounce by bending their knees to interpret the rhythm either as a march or as a waltz. At test, adults identified as similar an auditory version of the rhythm pattern with accented strong beats that matched their previous bouncing experience in comparison with a version whose accents did not match. In subsequent experiments we showed that this effect does not depend on visual information, but that movement of the body is critical. Parallel results from adults and infants suggest that the movement-sound interaction develops early and is fundamental to music processing throughout life.     

运动、语言和学习：小脑的功能磁共振成像研究

对小脑功能的认识在过去的100年里经历了缓慢而稳定的发展。在最近20年,随着活体神经影像技术尤其是功能磁共振成像（fMRI）的出现,这一领域取得了更加显著的进展。文章简要总结了我们最近关于小脑的fMRI研究,考察了该结构在运动、语言和学习任务中的作用;并通过回顾相关文献,讨论了这些研究的理论意义。小脑的功能本质似乎是一般性的而非通道特异的,动态的而非静态的,联系的而非孤立的。作者提出,研究小脑与大脑之间的相互作用和合作机制将是小脑研究领域的新的生长点     

城市绿化景观观赏性的眼动研究

采用眼动实验方法,观测52名大学生和研究生观看观赏性高低不同的城市绿化景观的眼动数据.结果表明,对于观赏性较高的景观,被试的注视时间增多,注视次数增加,平均眼跳幅度减小;注视点相对比较集中于某些区域而形成观察兴趣区并对兴趣区内的景观投注大量注视时间,延长每次注视时间(注视点持续时间),而且瞳孔有所扩大.研究结果揭示了城市绿化景观观赏性相关眼动特征.     

The Self’s Symbolic Role in Implicit Approach/Avoidance: Movement Time Evidence

Theories of self-regulation emphasize the special role that the symbolic self may play in approach and avoidance movements, but experimental evidence is lacking. In two experiments (total N = 157), participants moved either a self-relevant (e.g., “me”) or non-self (e.g., “not me”) agent to one of two locations, one occupied by a positive word and the other occupied by a negative word. In both experiments, the movement agent interacted with the destination valence such that it was only the symbolic self that moved more quickly to positive rather than negative locations. These results established a role for the symbolic self in approach/avoidance that had been questioned, thereby supporting both classic and contemporary self-related theories of approach and avoidance.     

Self-unawareness of levodopa induced dyskinesias in patients with Parkinson’s disease

The study analyzes the presence of dyskinesias-reduced-self-awareness in forty-eight patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease (PD). As the association with executive dysfunction is a matter of debate and we hypothesize it plays an important role in dyskinesias self-unawareness, we analyzed the role of dopaminergic treatment on the medial-prefrontal-ventral-striatal circuitry using a neurocognitive approach. Special attention was given to metacognitive abilities related to action-monitoring that represent a novel explanation of the phenomenon.PD patients were assessed using different rating scales that we devised to measure movement awareness disorders. In order to ascertain whether each variable measured at a cognitive-clinical level contributes to predicting the scores of the movement-disorder-awareness-scales, we conducted multiple logistic regression models using the latter as binary dependent variables. We used the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test-metacognitive-version to assess the executive functions of the prefrontal-ventral-striatal circuitry.Data showed that a reduction of self-awareness using the Dyskinesia rating scale was associated with global monitoring (p = .04), monitoring resolution (p = .04) and control sensitivity (p = .04). Patients failed to perceive their performance, distinguish between correct and incorrect sorts, be confident in their choice and consequently decide to gamble during the task.We did not find any association with executive functions using the hypo-bradykinesia rating scale.Our findings indicate that when the comparator mechanism for monitoring attentive performance is compromised at a prefrontal striatal level, patients lose the ability to recognize their motor disturbances that do not achieve conscious awareness.