28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

suggest some surprising functional similarities between signed and spoken languages.
Neuroimaging studies comparing early bilinguals' working memory for sign and speech
demonstrate rather different cortical activation patterns. Models of working memory for speech
and sign processing are discussed.
2102 STATE-OF-THE-ART
Chair: Merry Bullock, USA
A single meta-theoretical framework for a number of conscious vision phenomena, Talis
Bachmann, Department of Philosophy, Institute of Law, Estonia
Considerable part of visual information processing is carried out at the pre-conscious level (eg,
masked priming, binocular rivalry, subthreshold discrimination). A number of experimental
paradigms have been used in order to study the time-course functions of how pre-conscious data
become explicitly represented in perception of objects, scenes and events (visual masking,
flash-lag effect, line motion illusion, Frhlich effect, focusing of spatial attention, iconic memory
research). Unfortunately, these paradigms have been developed in mutual isolation. A new concept
- pertention - is presented in order to develop a common metatheory of the microgenesis of
conscious representations. The neurobiological basis for the psychological process of pertention
consists in the activity of the so-called non-specific part of thalamus (intralaminar nuclei, the
pulvinar complex) which modulates the activity of cortical driver-neurons so as to create
representation of specific data about objects and events in awareness.
2103 STATE-OF-THE-ART
Chair: Ype Poortinga, The Netherlands
Cross-cultural views of parenting, Marc Bornstein, National Institute of Health, USA
What can we learn from studies of parents that cross cultures? I first introduce three general
developmental questions cross-cultural research can address. Next, I overview a set of methods
and procedures for the research. Then, I turn to review briefly data from several countries in reply
to the three general developmental questions. Last, I overview three reasons for cultural
developmental study.
2104 STATE-OF-THE-ART
Chair: Yinghe Chen, China
How children come to grasp the causal structure of the world, Frank Keil, Psychology
Department, Yale University, USA
Children can only track part of the immense causal complexity that exists in the world around
them, raising questions as to what causal patterns they do use and how they deal with the
incompleteness of their understanding. The problem is exacerbated by demonstrations that all
people grossly overestimate the depth and quality of their causal understandings. Yet, at a more
implicit level, even quite young children are highly effective at extracting causal gists that enable
them to build more detailed causal explanations when needed and which allow them to effectively
use the division of cognitive labor that exists in all cultures.
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