Article
Онтогенетические основания для влияния знака на формирование понятий в младенческом возрасте
The effect of conceptual flexibility involves inclusion of attributes that are irrelevant to the formed category in the concept and their further handling where required. The previous studies show that the conceptual flexibility effect arises while performing feature inference tasks and doesn’t arise while performing classification tasks. In the last case attention becomes too focused on one attribute. In the study the hypothesis according to which the conceptual flexibility effect may arise while performing classification tasks is tested on a sample of students (N=60). As this take place objects with attributes that are functionally connected and potentially related to semantic knowledge of the students are used as stimuli.
The material of the present paper is grounded on the holist algebraic method (Q-analysis) proposed by English mathematician and physicist R.H.Atkin. At its core, the approach is aimed at both analysis of systems structures (in the form of simplicial complexes K, which is formed by a set of properly adjoined objects called simplexes) and calculation of numeric estimates of structural complexity of systems based on the results of such analysis.
Turning complexity estimate of system’s structure into a real number creates additional difficulties in the comparison of two different complexes because there is no real verbal scale, which would have been accustomed to human beings and would allow a group of experts to express opinions and draw easily conclusions about degree of complexity of K at each particular dimensional level of its analysis. Therefore, the present paper deals with consideration of the approach that is more focused on human perception of characteristics obtained, mental comprehension and formation (comparison) of personal constructs in psychological space (or, P-space) – modified structural complexity estimate is based right on notions of distance and similarity within psychological space.
Our experimental study looked into the way existing knowledge influences the way subjects con- struct the rules of categorization and modify them as they are applied. We modified the experiment of E. Wisniewski and D. Medina (1994) by asking the respondents not only to create a categorization rule, but also to use it to categorize new images, and we looked at the frequency and type of subsequent rule modification. The respondents, 114 university students, were given a set of images drawn by children and asked to identify their common features under one of the four conditions: relevant prior knowledge (participants were told that the drawings had been made by children with high and low creativity), stan- dard condition (participants were told the drawings had been made by children from groups A and B), standard condition with examples (one sample of drawings from each group was shown), and irrelevant knowledge. We found that under the relevant prior knowledge condition, compared to the other three conditions, the respondents tended to construct more complex and abstract rules and to change them more frequently when they categorized new objects. We also found that rule modifications during usage led to more complex and abstract rules under all four conditions. We interpret the findings as evidence for two stages of categorization, the first stage involving search for existing generalizations in semantic memory, and the second stage involving adaptation of prior knowledge to current conditions.
The distractive effects on attentional task performance in different paradigms are analyzed in this paper. I demonstrate how distractors may negatively affect (interference effect), positively (redundancy effect) or neutrally (null effect). Distractor effects described in literature are classified in accordance with their hypothetical source. The general rule of the theory is also introduced. It contains the formal prediction of the particular distractor effect, based on entropy and redundancy measures from the mathematical theory of communication (Shannon, 1948). Single- vs dual-process frameworks are considered for hypothetical mechanisms which underpin the distractor effects. Distractor profiles (DPs) are also introduced for the formalization and simple visualization of experimental data concerning the distractor effects. Typical shapes of DPs and their interpretations are discussed with examples from three frequently cited experiments. Finally, the paper introduces hierarchical hypothesis that states the level-fashion modulating interrelations between distractor effects of different classes.
This article describes the expierence of studying factors influencing the social well-being of educational migrants as mesured by means of a psychological well-being scale (A. Perrudet-Badoux, G.A. Mendelsohn, J.Chiche, 1988) previously adapted for Russian by M.V. Sokolova. A statistical analysis of the scale's reliability is performed. Trends in dynamics of subjective well-being are indentified on the basis the correlations analysis between the condbtbions of adaptation and its success rate, and potential mechanisms for developing subjective well-being among student migrants living in student hostels are described. Particular attention is paid to commuting as a factor of adaptation.