Search results for " Formation"
showing 10 items of 1920 documents
Animacy matters: ERP evidence for the multi-dimensionality of topic-worthiness in Chinese
2013
Abstract An event-related potential (ERP) study was conducted to investigate how animacy interacts with givenness during topic processing. Both animacy and givenness have been considered as within-discourse factors that contribute to an element׳s potential to form an optimal topic (i.e., topic-worthiness). ERPs were recorded while participants read question–answer pairs, of which the target sentence induced either a continuation or an alternation of a previously introduced topic (i.e., given vs. new). Depending on the context, a potential topic further differed in its animacy from the preceding one (i.e., animate vs. inanimate). The data revealed a robust givenness effect with an N400 reduc…
Facilitating Effect of Natural Frequencies: Size Does Not Matter
2009
The question of whether humans are able to work in a Bayesian way is currently a topic of substantial investigation. An important finding, reported by Gigerenzer and Hoffrage in 1995 is that Bayesian reasoning is facilitated when the information format corresponds to natural frequencies. The present concern was whether the facilitating effect of frequencies persists when natural frequencies relate to samples which are not convenient multiples of 10. 150 undergraduates participated as volunteers (42 men, 108 women; M age = 23 yr.). Analysis showed the effect of natural frequency formats was not dependent on size of reference class. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Does the Coordination of Verbal and Motor Information Explain the Development of Counting in Children?
2001
Counting is often considered to be the coordination of two actions: saying the number-words and pointing to each object. We report three experiments to test the hypothesis that this coordination requires the use of the central executive (A. D. Baddeley, 1990), and that the cost of coordination decreases with age. Participants were 5- and 9-year-old children and adults. At all ages tested, the manipulation of the difficulty of each component affected counting performance but did not make coordination more difficult. These results suggest that, at least from the age 5, counting is a procedure in which the control of coordination is not attention demanding.
Questionning and reading goals: information seeking questions asked on scientific texts read under different task conditions
2013
Background: A number of studies report that few questions are asked in classrooms and that many of them are shallow questions. Aims: This study investigates the way in which reading goals determine questioning on scientific texts. Reading goals were manipulated through two different tasks: reading for understanding versus reading to solve a problem. Sample: A total of 183 university students. Methods: In the first and third questioning experiments the participants read two short texts. Students in one condition were instructed to understand the texts, while in the alternative condition they had to read texts to solve a problem. Students were instructed to write down any questions they might…
Implicit memory functioning in schizophrenia: Explaining inconsistent findings of word stem completion tasks
2014
The definitive implicit memory profile of schizophrenia is yet to be clarified. Methodological differences between studies could be the reason for the inconsistent findings reported. In this study, we have examined implicit memory functioning using a word stem completion task. In addition, we have addressed methodological issues related with lexical and perceptual stimuli characteristics, and with the strategy used to calculate priming scores. Our data show similar performance values in schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. Furthermore, we have not detected significant differences in priming between the two groups, even when this parameter was calculated using three different procedu…
Perceptual priming in schizophrenia evaluated by word fragment and word stem completion
2011
Implicit memory seems to be preserved in schizophrenia as a whole, but dissociations between conceptual and perceptual tasks and between accuracy and reaction time measures have appeared. The present research has revealed some methodological limitations in many studies to date that are focused on the study of perceptual implicit memory in schizophrenic patients using accuracy measures. The review of these studies revealed that limitations are related to an inadequate definition of performance and priming measures, a lack of control over the characteristics of the stimuli, and the absence of information on the experimental procedures used in data collection. Moreover, the task used in these …
The development of facial emotion recognition: The role of configural information
2007
International audience; The development of children's ability to recognize facial emotions and the role of configural information in this development were investigated. In the study, 100 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and 26 adults needed to recognize the emotion displayed by upright and upside-down faces. The same participants needed to recognize the emotion displayed by the top half of an upright or upside-down face that was or was not aligned with a bottom half that displayed another emotion. The results showed that the ability to recognize facial emotion develops with age, with a developmental course that depends on the emotion to be recognized. Moreover, children at all ages and adults e…
Recollection and familiarity in hippocampal amnesia
2008
Currently, there is a general agreement that two distinct cognitive operations, recollection and familiarity, contribute to performance on recognition memory tests. However, there is a controversy about whether recollection and familiarity reflect different memory processes, mediated by distinct neural substrates (dual-process models), or whether they are the expression of memory traces of different strength in the context of a unitary declarative memory system (unitary-strength models). Critical in this debate is the status of recognition memory in hippocampal amnesia and, in particular, whether the various structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) contribute differentially to the recol…
Decreased dopamine D2/D3-receptor binding in temporal lobe epilepsy: an [18F]fallypride PET study.
2006
Summary: Purpose: Although animal data are suggestive, evidence for an alteration of the extrastriatal dopaminergic system in human focal epilepsy is missing. Methods: To quantify D2/D3-receptor density, we studied seven patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and nine agematched controls with positron emission tomography (PET) by using the high-affinity dopamine D2/D3-receptor ligand [ 18 F]Fallypride ([ 18 F]FP) suitable for imaging extrastriatal binding. TLE was defined by interictal and ictal video-EEG, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and [ 18 F]fluorodeoxyglucose ([ 18 F]FDG)-PET and was due to hippocampal sclerosis (HS), based on histology in all patients. Primary analysis was ba…
The quantitative humoral immune response to the hepatitis C virus is correlated with disease activity and response to interferon-alpha.
1996
Virus-host interactions may have pathogenetic significance in chronic hepatitis. Thus the humoral immune response was evaluated during the clinical course of HCV-infected patients.Eighteen selected chronic HCV patients received three doses of 3 or 6 MU interferon-alpha 2a weekly for 6 to 12 months and were followed up for 6 to 60 months. Anti-HCV antibody levels were serially measured either in end-point diluted sera with the Matrix-Assay or with quantitative anti-HC34-IgG and -IgM ELISA. Circulating immune complexes were assessed by flow cytometry and the results were correlated with histology, quantitative HCV-RNA levels and genotypes.Nine complete responders (CR; genotypes 1a n = 4; 1b n…