When Memory Shifts Toward More Typical Category Exemplars: Accentuation Effects in the Recollection of Ethnically Ambiguous Faces.

In 4 studies, the authors examined the impact of categorization on the recollection of ethnically ambiguous faces. Participants were presented with faces lying at various locations on mixed-race continua (i.e., Caucasian-North African and Caucasian-Asian faces were used as source images in a morphing program). In all studies, the prevalence of exclusive ethnic features in a face distorted participants' recollections of the face toward faces more typical of the category. Specifically, the recollection of 30% North African (or 30% Asian) faces shifted toward Caucasian source faces, whereas the recollection of 70% North African (or 70% Asian) faces shifted toward North African (Asian) source faces. Memory distortions did not emerge for extremely ambiguous (50%) faces and proved larger on mixed-race than same-race continua (Studies 3 and 4). Memory distortions also emerged with high levels of confidence. The authors elaborate on the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

四川历史文化名城可持续发展研究初探

分析了历史文化名城可持续发展的含义,阐述了四川省历史文化名城的特色及其表现方面,并对名城可持续发展中应注意的问题及名城开发的原则进行了论述,为历史文化名城的进一步研究提供了依据。     

Language Features of Contractual English

As contract is a written document in which what the parties are concerned and agree is stated, the simplest way to understand the drafting of the contract is, from the author's point of view, to be well acquainted with contractual language. Therefore, this article is intended to give a brief account of the language features of contractual English.     

Hippocampal Function and Spatial Memory: Evidence From Functional Neuroimaging in Healthy Participants and Performance of Patients With Medial Temporal Lobe Resections.

Several strategies can be used to find a destination in the environment. Using a virtual environment, the authors identified 2 strategies dependent on 2 different memory systems. A spatial strategy involved the use of multiple landmarks available in the environment, and a response strategy involved right and left turns from a given start position. Although a probe trial provided an objective measure of the strategy used, classification that was based on verbal reports was used in small groups to avoid risks of misclassification. The authors first demonstrated that the spatial strategy led to a significant activity of the hippocampus, whereas the response strategy led to a sustained activity in the caudate nucleus. Then, the authors administered the task to 15 patients with lesions to the medial temporal lobe, showing an impaired ability using the spatial strategy. Imaging and neuropsychological results are discussed to shed light on the human navigation system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Questioning the Living/Nonliving Dichotomy: Evidence From a Patient With an Unusual Semantic Dissociation.

In this article the authors describe a patient (J.P.) whose category-specific naming deficit eluded the classical dichotomies between living versus nonliving items or visual versus functional attributes. At age 22, he had herpes simplex encephalitis followed by a left temporal lobectomy. J.P. was tested on measures of visual perception, category naming, fluency, and name-picture matching. He showed a severe impairment naming and identifying fruits, vegetables, and musical instruments. His performance with animals and birds was spared inconsistently, meaning that even the preserved categories were, at some point, affected. J.P.'s unusual deficit supports the hypothesis that semantic knowledge is organized in the brain on the basis of object properties, which can cut across the living-nonliving categorical distinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired naming of unique landmarks is associated with left temporal polar damage.

Previous studies have shown that the left temporal polar (TP) region is important for the retrieval of proper names for persons. It has been proposed that the key specialization of left TP is for proper nouns (rather than names for persons, per se), which predicts that left TP should support other categories whose members are denoted by proper names (e.g., landmarks). A lesion study tested the hypothesis that impaired naming of famous unique landmarks would be associated with damage to left TP. A Landmark Recognition and Naming Test was administered to participants with lesions to left TP, right TP, or regions outside TP. The results provided strong support for the hypothesis: Landmark naming was significantly inferior in the left group, supporting the hypothesis. The findings converge with previous lesion and functional imaging data to support the idea that the left TP region is important for the retrieval of names for unique entities. This fits the proposal that left TP contains convergence regions that operate as intermediaries between conceptual knowledge retrieval and lexical retrieval for classes of unique stimuli (H. Damasio, D. Tranel, T. J. Grabowski, R. Adolphs, & A. R. Damasio, 2004). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal construal.

Construal level theory proposes that temporal distance changes people's responses to future events by changing the way people mentally represent those events. The greater the temporal distance, the more likely are events to be represented in terms of a few abstract features that convey the perceived essence of the events (high-level construals) rather than in terms of more concrete and incidental details of the events (low-level construals). The informational and evaluative implications of high-level construals, compared with those of low-level construals, should therefore have more impact on responses to distant-future events than near-future events. This article explores the implications of construal level theory for temporal changes in evaluation, prediction, and choice. The authors suggest that construal level underlies a broad range of evaluative and behavioral consequences of psychological distance from events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Debouncing the speech button: A sliding capture window device for synchronizing turn-taking

When human beings converse, they alternate between talking and listening. Participating in such turntaking behaviors is more difficult for machines that use speech recognition to listen and speech output to talk. This paper describes an algorithm for managing such turn-taking through the use of a sliding capture window. The device is specific to discrete speech recognition technologies that do not have access to echo cancellation. As such, it addresses those inexpensive applications that suffer the most from turn-taking errors—providing a “speech button” that stabilizes the interface. Correcting for short-lived turn-taking errors can be thought of as “debouncing” the button. An informal study based on ten subjects using a voice dialing application illuminates the design.     

Solving hard qualitative temporal reasoning problems: Evaluating the efficiency of using the ORD-Horn class

While the worst-case computational properties of Allen's calculus for qualitative temporal reasoning have been analyzed quite extensively, the determination of the empirical efficiency of algorithms for solving the consistency problem in this calculus has received only little research attention. In this paper, we will demonstrate that using the ORD-Horn class in Ladkin and Reinefeld's backtracking algorithm leads to performance improvements when deciding consistency of hard instances in Allen's calculus. For this purpose, we prove that Ladkin and Reinefeld's algorithm is complete when using the ORD-Horn class, we identify phase transition regions of the reasoning problem, and compare the improvements of ORD-Horn with other heuristic methods when applied to instances in the phase transition region. Finally, we give evidence that combining search methods orthogonally can dramatically improve the performance of the backtracking algorithm.