On editability of feature-based design

Techniques needed for editing generative designs are presented. When a feature is edited, all features attached later must be re-evaluated to satisfy the required constraints and shape references in the initial design. We describe name matching techniques that support the design reevaluation procedure. The algorithms account for failed or multiple matches. The matching uses a naming schema based on historical, topological, and geometric design information that has been described in a companion paper.     

Is the Chinese number-naming system transparent? Evidence from Chinese-English bilingual children.

Chinese-speaking children have been shown to have an advantage over English-speaking children in a variety of mathematical areas, including counting. One possible explanation for the advantage in counting is that the Chinese number-naming system is relatively transparent, compared to English, in that number names typically are directly indicative of base-10 structure (e.g., 12 is named "ten-two" rather than "twelve"). To determine whether the transparency of the Chinese number-naming system influences counting in bilingual children, we tested 25 Chinese-English bilingual children between the ages of 3 and 5 years, both in English and in Chinese. Children were asked to count as high as they could (abstract counting) and also to count objects in small, medium, and large arrays (object counting). No evidence was found for transparency or for transfer from one language to the other. Instead, relative proficiency in the two languages influenced counting skill. These results are discussed in terms of linguistic and cultural variables that might account for cross-linguistic differences in counting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Control Over the Time Course of Cognition in the Tempo-Naming Task.

Five experiments are reported in which standard naming and tempo-naming tasks were used to investigate mechanisms of control over the time course of lexical processing. The time course of processing was manipulated by asking participants to time their responses with an audiovisual metronome. As the tempo of the metronome increased, results showed that (a) the rate of lexical errors increased, whereas the rate of regularization errors remained constant; (b) onset errors increased at a faster rate than body errors; (c) stimulus effects weakened on latencies, whereas they strengthened on durations and errors; and (d) naming durations decreased more slowly when stimuli were presented prior to the response cue. These results constitute evidence that time pressure in the tempo-naming task caused a compression in the time course of lexical processing. Compression is discussed in terms of threshold mechanisms and rate mechanisms of control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic vigilance for negative words in lexical decision and naming: Comment on Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (2006).

An automatic vigilance hypothesis states that humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli, and this attention to negative valence disrupts the processing of other stimulus properties. Thus, negative words typically elicit slower color naming, word naming, and lexical decisions than neutral or positive words. Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (see record 2006-04603-006) analyzed the stimuli from 32 published studies, and they found that word valence was confounded with several lexical factors known to affect word recognition. Indeed, with these lexical factors covaried out, Larsen et al. found no evidence of automatic vigilance. The authors report a more sensitive analysis of 1011 words. Results revealed a small but reliable valence effect, such that negative words (e.g., "shark") elicit slower lexical decisions and naming than positive words (e.g., "beach"). Moreover, the relation between valence and recognition was categorical rather than linear; the extremity of a word's valence did not affect its recognition. This valence effect was not attributable to word length, frequency, orthographic neighborhood size, contextual diversity, first phoneme, or arousal. Thus, the present analysis provides the most powerful demonstration of automatic vigilance to date. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The evaluation of a color-naming test for color blindness.

A simple color-naming test for color blindness was developed using the Eastman Color Temperature Meter, and compared with three other color-vision tests: the Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue Test, AO Pseudo-Isochromatic Plates, and Freeman Illuminant-Stable Color Vision Test on a sample of 100 Ss. "The data indicated that there was fairly high agreement among the American Optical, Eastman and Freeman tests… . The correlations of the Farnsworth with the other three tests were somewhat lower, indicating that the Farnsworth is apparently measuring factors not measured by the other tests… . It is significant that high correlations were obtained between naming and color competence." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Videotherapy in the context of group therapy for late-latency children of divorce.

Although videotape has been used for a variety of clinical and research purposes, it is now being used in a unique fashion as a therapeutic tool in group treatment of late-latency children of divorce. The videotherapy takes the form of videotaped dramas staged by children, with the intent of making a "movie." The timing of its use is crucial, the child's stage of development is relevant, and its effectiveness is dependent on other therapeutic activities. Several differences appear to exist between videotherapy and usual role playing in therapy, chief of which is that the children invest their activity with more enthusiasm than is usually observed in therapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing The Latency In Head-Mounted Displays By A Novel Prediction Method Using Grey System Theory

In this paper we propose a novel prediction method for the head motion using Grey System theory, where a 6D tracker is attached to an HMD on a user's head in virtual reality applications. Our prediction method using Grey System Model can greatly reduce the latency by at least one half and reduce image jittering. A system latency below 100 ms or even 50 ins can be achieved, even though without prediction the latency is around 200 ms. Using 6 points in prediction with Grey System Model is currently the best in tracker prediction as we tried from 2 points to 10 points. In order to measure the latency, we also propose a way to measure it in an HMD system precisely and conveniently. During the process, we have implemented four different prototypes respectively on a PC486, a SUN SparcStation10, an SGI IndigoR4000, and a high performance computer image generator. The computation complexity of our prediction method is relatively low and therefore real time requirement is easily met.     

What's in a name? Many fascinating things.

Reviews the book, Names for Things: A Study of Human Learning by John Macnamara (1982). The reviewer commends Macnamara for writing a convincing book that undermines most of the popular psychological and philosophical approaches to meaning, reference, language learning and cognitive development. The major subject matter of this book is how children learn the names for things. Macnamara dismisses the view that children are unable to arrange related ideas into adult-like hierarchical orders, as Piaget claims. The reviewer feels the weakest part of the book is the author's chapter on the definition of "meaning", but does admit to having a much richer concept of what meaning is not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two techniques for improving performance on bus-based multiprocessors

In this paper, we explore two techniques for reducing memory latency in bus-based multiprocessors. The first one, designed for sector caches, is a snoopy cache coherence protocol that uses a large transfer block to take advantage of spatial locality, while using a small coherence block (called a subblock) to avoid false sharing. The second technique is read snarfing (or read broadcasting), in which all caches can acquire data transmitted in response to a read request to update invalid blocks in their own cache.

We evaluated the two techniques by simulating 6 applications that exhibit a variety of reference patterns. We compared the performance of the new protocol against that of the Illinois protocol with both small and large block sizes and found that it was effective in reducing memory latency and providing more consistent, good results than the Illinois protocol with a given line size. Read snarfing also improved performance mostly for protocols that use large line sizes.     

Differences in response latency and response variability between high and low anxiety subjects in a flicker-fusion task.

The present research investigated the effect of anxiety on various psychophysical tasks. Ss high in anxiety (HA) and their low anxiety (LA) relatives were presented with a flicker-fusion task. It was predicted that HA Ss would show significantly more difficulty than the LA group at the point of threshold for flicker-fusion. HA Ss showed lower threshold to flicker, more variability and response alternation, therefore, increased difficulty in making decisions at the threshold values. From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2HK55W. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)