Cognitive and affective predictors of boredom proneness

Boredom proneness has been linked to various forms of cognitive and affective dysregulation including poor self-control and mind-wandering (MW), as well as depression and aggression. As such, understanding boredom and the associated cognitive and affective components of the experience, represents an important first step in combatting the consequences of boredom for psychological well-being. We surveyed 1928 undergraduate students on measures of boredom proneness, self-control, MW, depression and aggression to investigate how these constructs were related. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that self-control operated as a strong negative predictor of boredom proneness. Finally, when controlling for age and self-control, we observed large decreases in the magnitudes of the relationships between boredom proneness and our other measures of interest. Together, these results imply a strong relationship between boredom proneness and cognitive and affective dysregulation, and show that individual levels of self-control can account for the lion’s share of variance in the relationships between boredom, cognition, and affect.     

Interpreting action as an answer

The aim of this paper is to introduce a logically grounded approach to action semantics and action interpretation. The main idea is to present the context of action as a set of questions demanding an action to answer. I introduce (a) a basic procedure of action interpretation, which is a reformulation of Hilpinen's semantical procedure for imperatives; (b) a procedure of what-interpretation; (c) a procedure of why-interpretation. The conditions of mutual reducibility of interpretation procedures are explicated. The paper concludes by putting forth the problem of interpretive bounds of moral responsibility.     

Possibility of a shape phase transition for solidification of tin at scallop-like surfaces of Cu6Sn5

The possibility of solder-spreading transitions in solidification of solder at a rough rigid intermetallic surface is proven theoretically. Depending on the misorientation of scallops on the interface, one can observe a two-dimensional spreading transition over the scallops or a one-dimensional spreading transition along the triple-junction of two intermetallic compound scallops and liquid solder. The extent of undercooling can be determined not only by different interface energies, but by different angles between neighbouring scallops as well.     

Determinants of structural choice in visually situated sentence production

Three experiments investigated how perceptual, structural, and lexical cues affect structural choices during English transitive sentence production. Participants described transitive events under combinations of visual cueing of attention (toward either agent or patient) and structural priming with and without semantic match between the notional verb in the prime and the target event. Speakers had a stronger preference for passive-voice sentences (1) when their attention was directed to the patient, (2) upon reading a passive-voice prime, and (3) when the verb in the prime matched the target event. The verb-match effect was the by-product of an interaction between visual cueing and verb match: the increase in the proportion of passive-voice responses with matching verbs was limited to the agent-cued condition. Persistence of visual cueing effects in the presence of both structural and lexical cues suggests a strong coupling between referent-directed visual attention and Subject assignment in a spoken sentence.     

Kinetic pinning versus capillary pinning of voids at the moving interface during reactive diffusion

Two mechanisms of the Kirkendall voids pinning at the moving interface are discussed. Besides common Zener pinning, voids can be additionally, kinetically pinned to the interface by the additional vacancy concentration gradient, existing due to unideal vacancy sinks/sources at the interface and at the both sides of it. Kinetic pinning may explain the influence of copper substrate defect prehistory on the pinning behaviour. Capillary pinning is difficult to apply for the cases of voids enveloping by the growing phase.     

Structural priming across cognitive domains: from simple arithmetic to relative-clause attachment

In the two experiments reported here, we uncovered evidence for shared structural representations between arithmetic and language. Specifically, we primed subjects using mathematical equations either with or without parenthetical groupings, such as 80 - (9 + 1) × 5 or 80 - 9 + 1 × 5, and then presented a target sentence fragment, such as "The tourist guide mentioned the bells of the church that . . .," which subjects had to complete. When the mathematical equations were solved correctly, their structure influenced the noun phrase--for example, either "the bells of the church" or "the church," respectively--that subjects chose to attach their sentence completion to. These experiments provide the first demonstration of cross-domain structural priming from mathematics to language. They highlight the importance of global structural representations at a very high level of abstraction and have potentially far-reaching implications regarding the domain generality of structural representations.     

Criteria of kinetic suppression of lateral growth of intermediate phases

In many cases, the formation of intermediate phases in solid-state reaction starts from nucleation, proceeds at first by lateral spreading along interface in the form of narrow layer and after that continues slow growth in normal direction. So far, the lateral growth stage was considered as something almost instant. Yet, if the emerging phase is not the first one and the already growing phase layer has high diffusivity, the lateral growth can be also kinetically suppressed due to ‘sucking out’ of atoms from the moving interface into the growing first phase layer. Criteria of such suppression are formulated and examples of real systems are discussed.