Against the lexical representation of idioms.

Investigated whether essentially similar processes are involved in the comprehension of idioms and literal phrases, and whether additional knowledge necessary for the conventional interpretation of idioms is used after lexical access. In 3 experiments, 134 undergraduates were required to make speeded acceptability judgments about idiomatic, literal, and nonsense phrases. In Exp 1, Ss responded faster to idioms and everyday phrases than their respective controls and made faster responses to idioms with high, rather than low, metaphoric transparency. In Exp 2, Ss were equally fast classifying idioms beginning with high and low frequency words, and their response latencies were affected more by changes in the length of control phrases than of idioms. In Exp 3, the interpolation of nonsense words into phrases to force word-by-word processing did not abolish the processing time advantage for idioms over control phrases. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

《祖堂集》成语探析

从结构、意义等方面对<祖堂集>中的成语进行考察,发现成语结构多样化,以联合结构为主.指出佛教成语运用方式多种多样,如减少文字、更改文字、同素异序,通过对有关佛教成语意义的考察,认为绝大多数佛教成语的意义发生变化,并力求反映佛教成语在晚唐五代禅录中的语义面貌;最后拟揭示佛教对词汇发展所产生的深远影响.     

Conceptual Clarifications in the Study of Resilience.

Comments on George Bonanno's article entitled Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? (see record 2004-10043-003). The authors note that Bonanno's article on loss, trauma, and human resilience serves an important function for the field in drawing attention to the pseudoscientific mythologies that have grown up around brief normative (loss-related) and nonnormative (traumatic) stressors. As the author rightly pointed out, traditional assumptions regarding the absolute necessity of "grief work" in the case of loss and clinical debriefing following exposure to traumatic events may indeed be overdrawn (and overprescribed) in light of emerging evidence. Although there is much to like about Bonanno's analysis, several limitations inherent in the author's conceptualization of resilience are troubling in light of the history of developmental research in this area, much of which is cited in the target article. In essence, Bonanno defined adult resilience as an individual's capacity to resist maladaptation in the face of risky experiences (e.g., "stress resistance"). Although this is one plausible way of conceptualizing resilience, it is by no means an exclusive definition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual and procedural knowledge of mathematics: Does one lead to the other?

This study examined relations between children's conceptual understanding of mathematical equivalence and their procedures for solving equivalence problems (e.g., 3?+?4?+?5?=?3?+?9). Students in 4th and 5th grades completed assessments of their conceptual and procedural knowledge of equivalence, both before and after a brief lesson. The instruction focused either on the concept of equivalence or on a correct procedure for solving equivalence problems. Conceptual instruction led to increased conceptual understanding and to generation and transfer of a correct procedure. Procedural instruction led to increased conceptual understanding and to adoption, but only limited transfer, of the instructed procedure. These findings highlight the causal relations between conceptual and procedural knowledge and suggest that conceptual knowledge may have a greater influence on procedural knowledge than the reverse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual performance in deaf adults.

Noncollege deaf adults were compared with hearing controls on a series of 8 nonverbal learning and transfer or shift tasks which were designed to test an S's ability to combine previously discovered elements into new disjunctive and conjunctive groupings. In terms of total errors, successes, and trials to criterion, performance on these tasks was found to differentiate high from low IQ normal Ss and deaf Ss performed similar to hearing Ss on all tasks except one. These results would seem to refute the hypothesis that deaf people are generally inferior to hearing people in conceptual ability or that deaf children's experimental deficiency would leave a permanent lack in their conceptual development. The need for clarifying the role of language in cognition was stressed. (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual shifting in chronic alcoholics.

Examined the inferior performance of chronic alcoholics on abstracting tasks. After, administering the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test to 24 alcoholics, it was found that alcoholics took more trials to reach criterion and made more errors than either a group of 24 hospital controls or 24 students. Error pattern analysis indicates that these differences could not be attributed to perseveration. The deficit appeared to be in sustaining a pattern of search and persistence in problem solution. Duration of drinking history was related to impairment of task persistence. Results are consistent with the hypothesis of subcortical organic involvement with a concomitant deficit in conceptual shifting tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neuropsychological interpretation of the WAIS.

Discusses the use of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) to detect brain damage. Patterns produced by types of damage that have been recognized in relation to WAIS subtests include chronic lateralized damage, acute lateralized damage, and slowly progressive diffuse damage. It is concluded that the WAIS is a valuable instrument for assessing brain damage when it is used in conjunction with other tests of brain damage. However, the WAIS is not a good diagnostic tool for determining either the existence of damage or laterality when it is used by itself. Most brain damaged patterns that are found on the WAIS can be produced by several types of other conditions, both functional and organic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual priming in fragment completion.

Some researchers have claimed that fragment completion tasks are dependent primarily on data-driven processing and are insensitive to conceptually driven processing. In this article we present four experiments demonstrating that conceptually driven processing affects fragment completion by showing that under appropriate conditions, studied words can facilitate identification of their picture and word fragments. We examine two theoretical explanations of this effect. First, we consider the possibility that subjects explicitly retrieve episodic representations in fragment completion. Analyses of correlations between priming and recall performance across items and subjects do not support this explanation. The alternative explanation is that there are two separate conceptual representations in memory. The first is assumed to mediate conceptual priming in fragment completion; the second is assumed to mediate free recall performance. A final experiment supports this view by demonstrating that even when differences between experimental conditions are made to disappear in fragment completion, they remain in free recall. Further applications of the notion of two semantic representations are discussed in the General Discussion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual issues in the development of police selection procedures.

Although police selection procedures have been identified as necessary to the development of socially effective and responsive police agencies, the implication that such procedures are sufficient to this goal is criticized in the present article. It is argued that job performance criteria, embedded in the status quo of the prevailing police culture, inherently limit the ultimate utility of selection procedures. Therefore, prior to developing selection and job performance prediction procedures, which are at best palliative solutions to the problems of the police agency, it is necessary to address the more fundamental issues regarding social goals of a contemporary police agency. Such an analysis may suggest alternative ways of providing the services necessary to obtain these identified social goals. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual semantics in a nonhuman primate.

Some animal vocalizations have been described as referential, or semantic, because individuals respond to them as if they designate some object or event. Alternatively, subjects may simply attend to the acoustic features of calls rather than their meanings. Field playback experiments on diana monkeys (Cercopithecus diana diana) tested these hypotheses using the calls of leopards and eagles and the males' alarm calls to these predators. In the experiment, 2 calls were played in sequence, separated by 5 min of silence, such that they were either (a) similar in acoustic and semantic features, (b) similar in semantic features only, or (c) different in both acoustic and semantic features. Subjects readily transferred habituation across acoustic but not semantic features, suggesting that they attended to the calls' underlying meanings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual limitations in comprehending line graphs.

This article examines the conceptual limitations that influence a viewer's mental representation of a data set of 3 continuous variables. Such data can be graphed in 2 ways, depending on which variable is depicted on the x axis and which is made a parameter on the curve (the z variable). The results of several studies indicate that a viewer's internal representation of a graph expresses quantitative functional information about the x–y relations (such as "y decreases exponentially as x increases"). By contrast, the z–y information is represented ordinally or even nominally. This difference in the mental representations of the variables was evident when viewers described or interpreted simple line graphs or judged the equivalence of successively presented graphs. The difference persisted in spite of the viewer's accurate encoding of the graph's visual pattern, as indicated by accuracy in reproducing them from memory. Viewers seldom formed an integrated representation of the 3 variables, even when explicitly instructed to encode them. The x–y line patterns may automatically activate quantitative concepts, whereas viewers may be unfamiliar with the quantitative interpretations of z–y patterns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the interpretation of factor analysis.

Illustrates the importance of the researcher's interpretation of factor analysis. Results from this example appear to be meaningful and easily interpreted. The example omits any measure of reliability or validity. If a measure of reliability had been included, it would have indicated the worthlessness of the results. A survey of 46 recent papers supports the claim that the example is typical, as 2/3 of the papers provide no measure of reliability. Some papers did not even provide sufficient information to allow for replication. To improve the current situation some measure of factor reliability should accompany applied studies which utilize factor analysis. 3 operational approaches are suggested for obtaining measures of factor reliability; use of split samples, Monte Carlo simulation, and a priori models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual masking in brief visual displays.

Examined a paradigm used to study conceptual masking. This paradigm uses a variant of the partial report procedure, wherein a display of characters is preceded or followed by a probe character and Ss must report whether the probe was in the display or not. Ss were 7 undergraduates. Results show that neither specific orienting effects of the probe nor eye movements to the probe character could explain the pattern of data found in earlier studies (V. Di Lollo and M. Moscovitch; see record 1984-14011-001). Data are discussed in the context of P. Dixon's (see record 1986-21077-001) model of performance within this paradigm. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual foundations of IQ testing.

Cognitive neuroscience has not yet arrived at a definition of what human "intelligence" is. Intelligence is a chapter-heading word used in the 19th century to denote some unspecified mental property that increases in evolution. Other words were given speculative evolutionary meanings in the 19th century: genius, degeneracy, retardation. When the Binet-Simon test came along as a test to screen degrees of mental retardation, later as a pupil classification instrument, some (not Binet) associated the test with these 19th-century words and meanings. Descendants of the Binet-Simon instrument, IQ tests, remain useful today, but the old legendry lives on with them, at times supporting speculative social and political arguments. Researchers need to disentangle what is factual about IQ testing from its associated legendry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Levels of interpretation in dynamic psychotherapy.

Interpretation of patterns and warded-off ideas and feelings may be focused at many levels of content. These content areas range from the relatively recent stressors and immediate responses to stress to the deepest levels of warded-off, unconscious scenarios, agendas, self-concepts, and role relationship models. This range from external events to the psychological manifestations of unconscious drives may also be interpreted in terms of the usual triangle of insight, involving the current situation, the therapy situation, and past situations during developmental periods. A system for describing such levels of interpretation is described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analytic techniques in the interpretation of the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery.

The use of the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery meets clinical needs and provides for continued research, but should not prevent the clinician from using qualitative data when appropriate. A review of the theoretical basis of the Luria-Nebraska Battery, including reasons for use of a standardized battery and the construction of the scales, is included. The article also presents a brief example of a Luria-Nebraska interpretation using the case of a 60-yr-old male displaying fluent aphasic deficits, who was examined by D. C. Delis and E. Kaplan (see record 1982-08842-001). (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Issues in the use and interpretation of discriminant analysis.

Reviews the 2 problems for which a discriminant analysis is used—separation and classification. Issues related to the use and interpretation of a discriminant analysis are those pertaining to (a) distinguishing between a linear discriminant function and a linear classification function, (b) misusing stepwise discriminant analysis programs, (c) ordering variables and selecting variable subsets, (d) choosing a classification rule, (e) estimating true classification hit rates, (f) assessing classification accuracy, and (g) examining and using classification results. Most of these issues deal with information available from package discriminant analysis computer programs. (50 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of including the action stage in dream interpretation.

Forty-three volunteer clients were randomly assigned to single sessions of dream interpretation using the Hill (1996) dream interpretation model with or without the action stage. As expected, no differences were found between conditions on client-perceived session quality or on client-reported insight. Volunteer clients who went through the action stage, however, rated sessions higher on problem solving and had higher quality ideas for action than did clients who did not go through the action stage. Therapists using the action stage attributed easy sessions to client involvement, client psychological mindedness, recency of the dream, therapist comfort facilitating the action stage, thorough exploration of the dream and client insight into the dream. Limitations and implications of the results are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)