Comparison of simultaneous prompting and constant time delay procedures in teaching sight words to elementary students with moderate mental retardation

Simultaneous prompting (a type of antecedent prompt and test procedure) and constant time delay were compared with four students with moderate mental retardation learning expressive sight words. A parallel treatments design across word sets and replicated across students was used. For acquisition, the simultaneous prompting procedures required fewer trials, sessions, and training time to criterion and resulted in fewer student errors during daily probe and training sessions. However, maintenance data indicated mixed results across the two procedures. Reliability data (both dependent and independent variables) revealed no differences between the two procedures in terms of the teacher's accuracy in recording student responses and implementing each procedure. Future research issues are discussed.     

幼儿从电视中学单词──项伴随学习的研究

对幼儿从电视中伴随学习单词的可能性及其影响因素进行了初步的探讨。４０名小班幼儿和４６名大班幼儿参加了实验,他们在接近自然的状态下观看有字幕的动画片。结果发现：幼儿在无任何指导的情况下观看有字幕的动画片,能伴随学习到汉字,这表明,电视对幼儿的词汇发展有着积极的影响;不同性别的儿童都能同等程度地从电视中伴随学习到单词;词义的伴随学习受幼儿原有的词汇水平和幼儿对目标词熟悉程度的影响;词音的伴随学习只发生在词汇水平较高的幼儿当中,并且随着幼儿对目标词熟悉程度的增加而增加;词音和词义的伴随学习存在频度效应。     

学前儿童对汉语副词的理解和运用

在汉语中,副词是一种比较独特的词类,它没有具体形象的物体可作为理解支柱,因而儿童对它的掌握较晚。在各类副词中,５、６岁儿童对范围副词的理解最佳,时间副词次之,程度副词最差。三者的差异均有非常显著性意义。即使在每一类副词中,由于儿童概念发展的不均衡性,掌握的顺序也有先后。     

Tapping into the interplay of lexical and number knowledge using fast mapping: A longitudinal eye-tracking study with two-year-olds

Language skills and mathematical competencies are argued to influence each other during development. While a relation between the development of vocabulary size and mathematical skills is already documented in the literature, this study further examines how children’s ability to map a novel word to an unknown object as well as their ability to retain this word from memory may be related to their knowledge of number words. Twenty-five children were tested longitudinally (at 30 and at 36 months of age) using an eye-tracking-based fast mapping task, the Give-a-Number task, and standardized measures of vocabulary. The results reveal that children’s ability to create and retain a mental representation of a novel word was related to number knowledge at 30 months, but not at 36 months while vocabulary size correlated with number knowledge only at 36 months. These results show that even specific mapping processes are initially related to the acquisition of number words and they speak for a parallelism between the development of lexical and number-concept knowledge despite their semantic and syntactic differences.     

Aging drivers and post delineated express lanes: Threading the needle at 70 miles per hour

Post-delineated express lanes represent a combination of driving complexities that are particularly difficult for older drivers to navigate. The narrow geometry and high speeds that are common to this treatment reflect a critical test for drivers whose depth perception, contrast sensitivity, and visual processing speed are reduced. The present study was designed to empirically examine the effects of age and color of express lane delineators on driver behavior. Three groups of participants (aged 18–39, 40–64, and 65 + years old) were required to complete a series of simulated driving scenarios consisting of combinations of single and dual lane configurations, with speed and lane position measured at the beginning and midpoint of each express lane. All drivers were pre-screened on various visual functioning abilities. Drivers in the 65 and older group show significant age-related declines in depth perception, contrast sensitivity, and phoria which were subsequently correlated with a wide range of driving measures including deceleration rate, brake time, jerk, speed, and lane position. Age related perceptual declines were statistically correlated with slower driving speed and wider lane deviations, including a statistically significant increase in the number of excursions beyond the typical 12-foot lane width. Based on these findings, the behavior of senior drivers was identified as a distinct design condition that should govern the design of high-speed, narrow geometric conditions. This age group requires wider lane widths, particularly at the beginning of single-lane post delimited sections, wider buffer areas around the post markers, and dual lane configurations wherever possible.     

人名发音与脸型的跨模态映射效应

摘要:本文基于无意义词与简单几何体之间的跨模态映射效应,来研究社会知觉中人名发音与脸型的关系。本研究控制了人名发音的唇形和人物面孔的轮廓,通过简单匹配范式来考察人名发音与面孔之间是否存在跨模态映射效应。结果发现：被试将圆唇人名与圆面孔匹配、扁唇人名与尖面孔匹配的概率,均显著大于随机水平。该结果说明了人名发音和脸型之间存在跨模态映射效应,这不仅拓宽了声音-形状跨模态映射的研究范围,对于人们取名字方面具有一定的指导意义。     

语言差异对跨通道情绪启动效应的影响

采用跨通道启动范式,探讨言语与面孔情绪加工的相互影响效应,以及语言差异（母语：汉语;非母语：英语）在其中的影响作用。实验1以言语情绪词为启动刺激,面孔情绪为目标刺激,结果发现,相比于英语启动刺激条件,在汉语启动刺激条件下的面孔情绪判断具有更好的表现;在积极情绪启动条件下,言语情绪刺激能够启动面孔情绪刺激。实验2以面孔情绪为启动刺激,言语情绪词为目标刺激,结果发现,相比于英语目标刺激条件,在汉语目标刺激条件下的言语情绪判断具有更好的表现;在积极情绪启动条件下,面孔情绪刺激能够启动言语情绪刺激。研究结果表明,言语情绪与面孔情绪的加工能够相互影响,但这种相互关系仅表现在积极情绪启动条件下。此外,母语和非母语在情绪功能上具有差异性。     

The minimal unit of phonological encoding: prosodic or lexical word

Wheeldon and Lahiri (Journal of Memory and Language 37 (1997) 356) used a prepared speech production task (Sternberg, S., Monsell, S., Knoll, R. L., & Wright, C. E. (1978). The latency and duration of rapid movement sequences: comparisons of speech and typewriting. In G. E. Stelmach (Ed.), Information processing in motor control and learning (pp. 117-152). New York: Academic Press; Sternberg, S., Wright, C. E., Knoll, R. L., & Monsell, S. (1980). Motor programs in rapid speech: additional evidence. In R. A. Cole (Ed.), The perception and production of fluent speech (pp. 507-534). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum) to demonstrate that the latency to articulate a sentence is a function of the number of phonological words it comprises. Latencies for the sentence [Ik zoek het] [water] 'I seek the water' were shorter than latencies for sentences like [Ik zoek] [vers] [water] 'I seek fresh water'. We extend this research by examining the prepared production of utterances containing phonological words that are less than a lexical word in length. Dutch compounds (e.g. ooglid 'eyelid') form a single morphosyntactic word and a phonological word, which in turn includes two phonological words. We compare their prepared production latencies to those syntactic phrases consisting of an adjective and a noun (e.g. oud lid 'old member') which comprise two morphosyntactic and two phonological words, and to morphologically simple words (e.g. orgel 'organ') which comprise one morphosyntactic and one phonological word. Our findings demonstrate that the effect is limited to phrasal level phonological words, suggesting that production models need to make a distinction between lexical and phrasal phonology.     

Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic structure: for the speaker or for the addressee?

Evidence has been mixed on whether speakers spontaneously and reliably produce prosodic cues that resolve syntactic ambiguities. And when speakers do produce such cues, it is unclear whether they do so "for" their addressees (the audience design hypothesis) or "for" themselves, as a by-product of planning and articulating utterances. Three experiments addressed these issues. In Experiments 1 and 3, speakers followed pictorial guides to spontaneously instruct addressees to move objects. Critical instructions (e.g., "Put the dog in the basket on the star") were syntactically ambiguous, and the referential situation supported either one or both interpretations. Speakers reliably produced disambiguating cues to syntactic ambiguity whether the situation was ambiguous or not. However, Experiment 2 suggested that most speakers were not yet aware of whether the situation was ambiguous by the time they began to speak, and so adapting to addressees' particular needs may not have been feasible in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 examined individual speakers' awareness of situational ambiguity and the extent to which they signaled structure, with or without addressees present. Speakers tended to produce prosodic cues to syntactic boundaries regardless of their addressees' needs in particular situations. Such cues did prove helpful to addressees, who correctly interpreted speakers' instructions virtually all the time. In fact, even when speakers produced syntactically ambiguous utterances in situations that supported both interpretations, eye-tracking data showed that 40% of the time addressees did not even consider the non-intended objects. We discuss the standards needed for a convincing test of the audience design hypothesis.     

Color charts, esthetics, and subjective randomness

Color charts, or grids of evenly spaced multicolored dots or squares, appear in the work of modern artists and designers. Often the artist/designer distributes the many colors in a way that could be described as "random," that is, without an obvious pattern. We conduct a statistical analysis of 125 "random-looking" art and design color charts and show that they differ significantly from truly random color charts in the average distance between adjacent colors. We argue that this attribute generalizes results in subjective randomness in a black/white setting and gives further evidence supporting a connection between subjective randomness and what is esthetically pleasing.