Human memory does not record and store information like technical devices. Rather, memory can deviate in various ways from the original experience of an event. It is fragile and potentially unreliable. Some deviations from the original experience can be attributed to forgetting or trace decay, while other deviations reflect systematic biases and distortions (e.g., McDermott & Chan, 2003; Schact...

We study a stochastic model of influence where agents have “yes” or “no” inclinations on some issue, and opinions may change due to mutual influence among the agents. Each agent independently aggregates the opinions of the other agents and possibly herself. We study influence processes modelled by ordered weighted averaging operators, which are anonymous: they only depend on how many agents sha...

Expressing spatial information with iconic gestures is abundant in human communication and requires to transform a referent representation into resembling gestural form. This task is challenging as the mapping is determined by the visuo-spatial features of the referent, the overall discourse context as well as concomitant speech, and its outcome varies considerably across different speakers. We...

English intonation can be difficult for L2 speakers to learn, particularly for those whose L1 intonation system works differently from English. This study investigates whether Hong Kong English (HKE) speakers whose L1 is Cantonese have knowledge of the appropriate English intonation patterns in specific contexts. Results from an intonation pattern selection tasks indicate that HKE speakers (n =...

The main purpose of this study is to examine the influence of cultural capital on social trust. One of the main dimensions of social capital which plays an important role in making relationships among individuals is social trust. It seems that cultural capital has an important role in explanation of social trust. Therefore, this study tried to show the level of cultural capital of social trust ...