Why Do you Often Stop your Impulsive Behavior at the Last Moment?

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Intentional inhibition, a critical ability of human cognitive control, is the capacity to internally withhold a to-be-performed action. In the voluntary...     

Connectedness underlies the underestimation of the horizontal vertical illusion in L-shaped configurations

L-shaped configuration is a commonly used stimulus configuration in studying horizontal vertical illusion. Here, we report that the horizontal vertical illusion is substantially underestimated when the L-shaped configuration is used for evaluating the illusion. Experiment 1 found that, in a length perception task, the perceived length of a vertical bar was about 10% longer than that of a horizontal bar with the same physical size. Similar amount of HVI was found in a length comparison task, in which the length of a horizontal bar was compared to that of a vertical bar and the two bars were presented separately in space or in time. In contrast, when the length comparison task was conducted with the two bars being arranged in a connected L-shape, the illusion was halved in strength. Experiment 2 and 3 studied what might be the cause of this L-shape induced HVI-underestimation. Two factors were investigated: the connectedness of the two lines, and the 45° absolute orientation or the 45° inner angle information embedded in the upright isosceles L-shape. The results showed that the HVI strength was not much affected when the 45° absolute orientation and the 45° angle information was made useless for the length comparison task. In contrast, the illusion was significantly reduced in strength whenever the two lines were separated as compared to when they were connected. These results suggested that the connectedness of the two lines must underlie the underestimation of the horizontal vertical illusion in the L-shaped configurations.     

古希腊哲学家与奥运会

中国哲学界对2008年北京奥运会不著一字,似乎哲学与体育有天遥地远的隔阂。其实古希腊许多著名哲学家都参加奥运会,甚至还是奥运会的冠军;包括奥运会在内的各种赛会的公开、公正、公平的传统,尼采认为是优良政制的一种政治伦理;而且,奥运会曾是巴门尼德和芝诺宣示自身哲学的一个影响深远的舞台。另外学园与浴池实际上都可以在赛会的竞技馆中得到统一的解释。对于奥运会,哲学家作为参加者而不仅仅是旁观者的地位,“看”到了许多超越时代超越民族的普世价值,使之升华,也许正因为如此,才有了现代奥运的今天。     

注意转移在负相容效应产生中的作用:独立还是伴随*

采用两个实验设计,在确保负相容效应(NCE)的产生主要来自反应抑制贡献的实验范式基础上加入引发显性注意转移的目标刺激,探讨了注意转移在负相容效应产生中的作用。具体来说,实验一在经典NCE范式中加入中性目标刺激,并操纵启动与目标的关系。发现,不相容条件下的反应时最短,无关条件次之,相容条件下最长。证明在该范式中反应抑制在NCE的产生中占主导地位。实验二则在实验一范式的基础上,加入左、中、右呈现的加号目标刺激。发现,两种目标类型的反应时结果模式均与实验一相似。结果表明,注意转移并非如Cole和Kuhn(2010)提出的能够独立引发NCE,它只是伴随NCE的抑制加工过程而出现,且其加工模式与抑制加工模式类似。     

Response readiness modulates the development of association-based automaticity in masked priming

The current study investigated the role of the automatization of stimulus and response (S-R) associations and response readiness in triggering the motor activation for masked primes in two experiments. The automatization of associations was manipulated by employing different types of stimuli, and response readiness was manipulated by varying the relative frequency of Go trials in a modified Go/No-Go task. Compatibility (compatible and incompatible), stimulus type (arrows and parallel lines), and test session (Sessions 1, 2, and 3) were manipulated in a high response-readiness condition (Experiment 1) and in a low response-readiness condition (Experiment 2). Negative compatibility effects (NCEs) occurred regardless of session and experiment in the arrow stimuli condition. However, in the parallel-line stimuli condition, no significant compatibility effect (CE) appeared regardless of the experiment in Sessions 1 and 2, whereas a significant NCE appeared in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 2 in Session 3. These results are consistent with the claim that motor activation can only occur if the association between specific stimuli and specific responses has been automatized by previous practice, and response readiness can modulate the development of automaticity, but this modulation will have a minimal effect once the association is automatized. The findings also provide experimental evidence for the assumption that the formation of association-based automaticity could be modulated by top-down control (e.g., response readiness).     

Alerting and orienting of attention without visual awareness

Two types of the attentional network, alerting and orienting, help organisms respond to environmental events for survival in the temporal and spatial dimensions, respectively. Here, we applied chromatic flicker beyond the critical fusion frequency to address whether awareness was necessary for activation of the two attentional networks. We found that high-frequency chromatic flicker, despite its failure to reach awareness, produced the alerting and orienting effects, supporting the dissociation between attention and awareness. Furthermore, as the flicker frequency increased, the orienting effect attenuated whereas the alerting effect remained unchanged. According to the systematic decline in temporal frequency sensitivity across the visual hierarchy, this finding suggests that unconscious alerting might be associated with activity in earlier visual areas than unconscious orienting. Since high-frequency flicker has been demonstrated to only activate early visual cortex, we suppose that neural activation in early visual areas might be sufficient to activate the two attentional networks.