Developing an efficient clinical information system for a comprehensive psychiatric institute: I. Principles,design, and organization

The principles, design considerations, and components of a clinical information system intended to support and enhance the patient care, educational, and research missions of a comprehensive psychiatric institute are presented. Major characteristics of the system are its emphases on efficiency, simplicity, and intensive user involvement throughout the development of the system.     

Intrusion patterns in rapid serial visual presentation tasks with two response dimensions

A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm using both one and two response dimensions was used to test parallel processing models of stimulus dimensions. Fifty subjects were asked to report the identity and/or color of a target uppercase word inserted in a series of lowercase words. The results produced a predominance of posttarget intrusions for color responses and a predominance of pretarget intrusions for identity responses. The requirement of a response to a second dimension impaired hit rates but did not change the pattern of intrusions. An examination of the distributions of intrusions in each response dimension as a function of the response given to the other dimension showed an unexpectedly high percentage of simultaneous hits, a moderate covariation between both responses, and the same patterns of intrusions when compared with the general distributions. While these results seem to be compatible with parallel models of processing for stimulus dimensions, two modifications to this model are suggested. First, the processing of response dimension(s) needs some attentional resources. Second, provision for a mixed model is indicated, which would include trials where no illusory conjunctions are formed.     

Neighborhood frequency effects and letter visibility in visual word recognition

Two experiments are described that measured lexical decision latencies and errors to five-letter French words with a single higher frequency orthographic neighbor and control words with no higher frequency neighbors. The higher frequency neighbor differed from the stimulus word by either the second letter (e.g.,astre-autre) or the fourth letter (chope-chose). Neighborhood frequency effects were found to interact with this factor, and significant interference was observed only tochope-type words. The effects of neighborhood frequency were also found to interact with the position of initial fixation in the stimulus word (either the second letter or the fourth letter). Interference was greatly reduced when the initial fixation was on the critical disambiguating letter (i.e., the letterp inchope). Moreover, word recognition was improved when subjects initially fixated the second letter relative to when they initially fixated the fourth letter of a five-letter word, but this second-letter advantage practically disappeared when the stimulus differed from a more frequent word by its fourth letter. The results are interpreted in terms of the interaction between visual and lexical factors in visual word recognition.     

Phoneme monitoring and lexical processing: Evidence for associative context effects

In this paper, we propose a new version of the phoneme monitoring task that is well-suited for the study of lexical processing. The generalized phoneme monitoring (GPM) task, in which subjects detect target phonemes appearing anywhere in the test words, was shown to be sensitive to associative context effects. In Experiment 1, using the standard phoneme monitoring procedure in which subjects detect only word-initial targets, no effect of associative context was obtained. In contrast, clear context effects were observed in Experiment 2, which used the GPM task. Subjects responded faster to word-initial and word-medial targets when the target-bearing words were preceded by an associatively related word than when preceded by an unrelated one. The differential effect of context in the two versions of the phoneme monitoring task was interpreted with reference to task demands and their role in directing selective attention. Experiment 3 showed that the size of the context effect was unaffected by the proportion of related words in the experiment, suggesting that the observed effects were not due to subject strategies.     

Response to commentaries on “A neurobiological model for near-death experiences”

This work has received financial support from FONDECYT (Project 1111-88). The authors also acknowledge the helpful comments of Dr. Bruce Cassels.     

现代心理学关于单词识别的研究——单词识别的理论模型简介

心理学家近年来的研究一致发现,单词识别受词形、语音、刺激强度、语境、词频、词义等多种因素的影响。但是,关于这些因素的作用机制,各家的看法却颇不相同。本文较详细地介绍了国外几家有代表性的理论模型。这对于我们揭示汉语词字识别的基本过程将具有一定的参考价值。     

在回忆性同一判断中汉字信息提取的研究

继《再认性同一判断中汉字信息的提取》一文之后,我们作了《回忆性同一判断中汉字信息的提取》的研究,进一步研究了在同一性判断中汉字信息的提取问题,旨在比较在回忆与再认条件下人们对汉字信息提取的特点。结果表明,在回忆条件下意同判断的反应时最长,音近其次,形似最短。形似与意同判断,音近与意同判断间反应时差异显著,音近与形似之间不显著。 与前次实验相比。在回忆条件下语音的作用提高了,但形的作用仍然很大,说明字形与字音的编码对提取语义信息都有重要作用。同时,在回忆条件下,特征干扰都大于一般分心物的作用,说明单词的各种特征都影响到汉字信息的提取。     

乳头体和隔区在大鼠条件性味觉痕迹的形成和保存中的作用

本工作是在前一工作的基础上,进一步研究分别电损毁有关回路的乳头体、隔区,对以糖精水为条件刺激。氯化锂腹腔注射引起中毒作为非条件刺激的条件性糖精厌恶痕迹的形成和保存的影响。结果表明,无论是损毁乳头体,或者隔区,对条件性糖精厌恶痕迹的形成和保存均无影响。说明在本实验条件下,这种条件性味觉痕迹的形成与保存,不依赖边缘系统的乳头体、海马、隔区这些回路的参与,这就进一步说明味觉信号的记忆确有其不同于视、听觉信号的记忆的机制的。