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Information Distribution Modulates Integration Strategies: Evidence from Eye Movements Yanju Ren Xiao-Lan FU 2013, 36(1): 2-6.  Abstract ( )   PDF   In the present study, empty cell localization task was used to explore how information is integrated between visual short-term memory (VSTM) and visual perception. To explain the participants performances of the task, two hypotheses were proposed: image-percept hypothesis and convert-and-compare hypothesis. Image-percept hypothesis suggested that participants firstly encoded the locations of dots in array 1 and its mental image was formed to integrate with array 2. On the contrary, convert-and-compare hypothesis asserted that participants firstly encoded the location of empty cells in array 1 and its negative image was formed to compare with array 2. Analyzing the existing evidence for or against the two hypotheses, we found that the difference in dot distribution might contribute to different integrating strategies. To test this hypothesis, two experiments were conducted. In experiment 1, the dot distribution of sequential arrays (4–11, 5–10, 6–9, 7–8 and 8–7) and interstimulus interval (ISI, 500 ms, 1500 ms and 2500 ms) were manipulated. The results showed that the accuracy was a U-shaped function of array 1 dot number and at the condition of 6–9 distribution the accuracy reached a lowest value. We argued the findings suggested that integration strategies might change from “memorizing dots” to “memorizing empty cells” of array 1. In experiment 2, participants’ eye movements were monitored when performing empty cell localization task. Dot distribution varied in 3 levels (5–10, 6–9, 7–8) and ISI varied in 2 levels (500ms and 1500ms). The accuracy again showed a U-shaped function of array 1 dot number. In 1500ms ISI condition, there were significant different eye movement patterns between the 3 levels of dot distribution. Specifically, in 5–10 condition, participants showed a bias to look at dot locations during ISI period; in 6–9 condition, participants looked at locations of dots or empty cells on a chance level; while in 7–8 condition, a bias to looking at empty cell location was showed. Thus we found clear eye-movement evidence indicating a change of integration strategy from “memorizing dots” to “memorizing empty cells” in experiment 2. In sum, the present study suggested that human participants are flexible in integrating sequentially presented information because a change of integration strategy was revealed by our data. We argued that the limit of VSTM capacity played an important role in this adaptive characteristic. It seemed that “memorizing dots” strategy was adopted when dot numbers were within the capacity of VSTM while “memorizing empty cells” strategy was adopted when dot numbers were out of VSTM capacity. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The effect of Chinese bisyllable supra-segmental information on semantic activation 2013, 36(1): 7-13.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Chinese is a tone language; the semantic information of Chinese is attached with segmental information(vowel、consonant) and also supra-segmental information(tone). Although we have known the effect of the phonological information, it is not clear of the specific effect course between the two. We used the eye tracking method, and conducted two experiments to examine the effect of Chinese bisyllable supra-segmental information on semantic activation. Experiment 1 investigated the effect of Chinese bisyllable tone information on semantic activation. the task of the participants is to choose one word which is related in meaning with the word they heard, there were four Chinese bisyllable words in the screen, the four words were in the four corners, one of them is related in meaning with the heard word, one of them is changed both the tone of initial character and the last character, the rest of the two words are the word frequency controlled words of related word and tone changed word, the heard word and the screen are presented at the same time. The eye track shows that the tone changed word has more fixation and gaze time than its controlled words, it means the tone really effects on semantic activation, but the effects of the tone of initial character or last character, which is bigger? We designed experiment 2 to investigate this problem. In experiment 2, the tone changed word had two levers, one was only changed the tone of the initial character, and the other was only changed the tone of the last character, we found that the effects of the tone of initial character is bigger than the last character. This result shows the initial tone has more important effect than the last tone on semantic activation. In the two experiments, we didn’t find the word frequency effect. Word frequency effect is that the high word frequency word can make the react time shorter, and the low word frequency word can make the reaction time longer. We think the factor of word frequency in this research is very complicated, because it related with the task, and the personal use habit, and we also didn’t control the inner word frequency between the two characters. Many factors make the result didn’t find the word frequency effect. Based on the above studies’ results analysis and discussions, the main conclusions were drawn as follows: (1) on semantic activation of Chinese bisyllable, when changed the tone of initial character or last character, it constraints of semantic activation, and the initial character changed has lager effect than last. This result supports the Cohort theory. (2)The fixation count and fixation time is more than control word, but there is no word frequency effect. (3)The process of Chinese tone is similar to Chinese vowel and consonant, effect the semantic activation isolate. Many researches of phonological coding of words were done, but there exists controversies over the problem of cerebral hemisphere processing lateralization for the language function. The future research is to investigate the time course of Chinese segmental information and supra-segmental information by using eye movements recording and ERP technique, analyze its source of the cerebral neural activity. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Phonetic Radicals and Pattern of Stroke Removal on Identification of Chinese Phonograms 2013, 36(1): 14-19.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Two naming experiments are conducted to investigate the effects of phonetic radicals and pattern of stroke removal on identification of Chinese phonogram. A 2×3 within-participants design was used to examine left-right structure phonograms in Experiment 1. One independent variable was the position of phonetic radicals (left side and right side), and the other was the pattern of stroke removal (beginning stroke removal, ending stroke removal, normal character). The analyses were based on measures of reaction time and accuracy rate. The results show that (1) Significant difference was found among the stroke removal patterns(p＜.001). Reading normal characters is easiest, whilst characters with beginning strokes removed were most difficult to name. (2) Significant difference of the position of phonetic radicals was also obtained(p＜.001). The character with phonetic radical on the left side had shorter reaction time and higher accuracy rate than that on the right side. (3)There was a significant interaction between the two factors(p＜.001). When the phonetic radical was on the right side of the character, the result was reversed: the reaction time of the characters with ending strokes removed was longer and the accuracy rate was lower. It indicates that if the ending strokes removed is the phonetic radical, the stroke removal effect will disappear, which reflects the important role of phonetic radicals on identification of Chinese phonograms. To verify the universality of the result in Experiment 1, Experiment 2 examines the identification of Chinese up-down structure phonograms and also the 2×3 within-participants design was used. The result of Experiment 2 is similar to that of Experiment 1, and the tendency was more obvious. Experiment 2 shows that (1) Significant difference of stroke removal pattern was also observed like Experiment 1(p＜.001). (2)There was no significant difference of the position of phonetic radicals(p＞.05). (3) There was also significant interaction between the two factors(p＜.001). The effect was the same as the Experiment 1 and is stronger than that. The results in both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 verify the stroke removal effect which is consistent with the results of the prior studies. More importantly, the present study indicates that phonetic radicals play an important role in identification of Chinese phonograms. According to the dual route model, there exists a phonetic activation on identification of Chinese phonograms. Related Articles | Metrics

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Motivator-based contingency model in the resolution of English Syntactic ambiguity HAN YingChun 2013, 36(1): 20-26.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Two competing and largely incompatible classes of model dominate current sentence processing research. One is called Linear view. The best known account of this class is the garden-path model, in which the processor makes initial decisions on the basis of strategies defined in terms of syntactic information alone and uses thematic information (such as determined by minimal attachment and late closure).According to this class, the processor computes syntactic analyses serially, in two stages. In the first stage, it draws on a restricted range of information to construct an initial analysis. During the second stage, it accesses other sources of information, which may sometimes cause it to abandon its initial analysis and compute another. The second class of model assumes that the processor can activate multiple analyses in parallel. It employs both syntactic and nonsyntactic information in a single stage to foreground one analysis, but other analyses remain activated, which is called Parallel view or competing model. The best known account of this class is the constraint-based model. In the framework of the contingency model, which mechanism the subjects will explore to deal with the syntactic ambiguity corpus depends on the contingent properties of the ambiguity motivator. The so-called "ambiguity motivator" refers to the information point that promotes and forces people to make a choice between the alternative analysis. According to the contingent properties of the ambiguity motivator, there are three conditions in the resolution of syntactic ambiguity. In the first case, the ambiguity motivator does not appear in any position of the corpus. In this case, the individual will generate an analysis based on their syntactic knowledge, context and their preference and so on. They won’t attempt to do any deep processing to resolute the ambiguity. The mechanism people adopt to parse the ambiguity corpus is as same as the mechanism people apply to process the unambiguity corpus. In the second case, the ambiguity motivator appears in the region of the disambiguation region of the corpus. In this case, people will select the reanalysis mechanism to parse the corpus of the disambiguation and the subsequent regions. In the third case, the ambiguity motivator appears in the ambiguity region of the corpus. In this case, people will use the competition mechanism to parse the ambiguity corpus. In current paper, according to the motivator-based contingency model，three experiments were designed. In the three experiments, the English syntactic ambiguity corpus was used to investigate the mechanism that people explored to process the ambiguity corpus in three conditions which composed of the absence of the ambiguity motivator, the ambiguity motivator in the disambiguation region and ambiguity motivator in the ambiguity region. The task was self-paced word-by-word reading with a moving window display. Each trial began with a red “+” on the central of the screen for 300ms. Participants pressed the spacebar to reveal each word of the sentence. As each new word appeared, the preceding word disappeared. The amount of time the participant spent reading each word was recorded as the time between key-presses. After the final word of each item, a comprehension question appeared which asked about information contained in the sentence just read. Participants pressed one of two keys of “J” or “F” to respond ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no.’’ After an incorrect answer, the word ‘‘INCORRECT’’ flashed briefly on the screen. No feedback was given for correct responses. Participants were asked to read sentences at a natural rate and to be sure that they understood what they read. They were told to answer the questions as quickly and accurately as they could and to take wrong answers as an indication to read more carefully. A T test of determiner (ambiguity, control) on these reading time data was conducted. The data of the three experiments showed that when the ambiguity motivator didn’t appear in any region of the corpus, people would apply the mechanism that they used to parse the unambiguity corpus to process syntactic ambiguity coupus. When the ambiguity motivator appeared in the disambiguation region, people would adopt the reanalysis mechanism to parse the corpus of the disambiguiation and the subsequent region. When the ambiguity motivator appeared in the ambiguity region, people would select the competition mechanism to parse the ambiguity corpus. The conclusion is the motivator-based contingency model is applicable to predict and explain the resolution of syntactic ambiguity. People will follow the contingent properties of the ambiguity motivator to select mechanism to process the ambiguity corpus. Related Articles | Metrics

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The product mechanism of diglossias TOT：Evidence from Mandarin-Cantonese diglossias 2013, 36(1): 27-32.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon is an intense feeling that the sought-after information is known and that the information will pop into mind at any moment. Until now, researches had proposed 5 theories to explain the TOT’s produce. These are Partial Activation Theory, Transmission Deficit Hypothesis, Blocker Hypothesis, Metacognitive Control Theory, and Quantitative Neural Network Model. But most of the results from cross-linguistic support the first two theories. Compared with the researches about the tip-of-tongue of bilinguals in foreign countries, due to the complexity of Chinese language combined with its difficult operation, there always lack of diglossia TOT studies in China. According to cross-linguistic interference theory, bilinguals are in bad situation in language production or lexical process. Considering that diglossia and bilingual both have similarity and difference, then, this “bad situation in lexical process” whether happen on diglossias? How the familiarity of dialect can influence the TOT? And, what’s the mechanism of this diglossias TOT? 100 subjects participated in this research. All of subjects were native speaker of Cantonese, and were chosen randomly from a high middle school in Guangzhou suburbs. 56 of them can speak mandarin fluently, while another 44 can speak Cantonese but non-smoothly. This research contained 3 experiments, using picture-naming paradigm and E-Prime programming technology. In experiment, subject and experimenter were in the form of one-to-one and experimenter recorded participant’s response (including 5 dependent variables as GOT, Positive TOT, Negative TOT, Don’t Know, andj Post Don’t Know) in the whole course. At last, used mix design variance analysis to process the data of PTOT rates and GOT rates. In experiment 1, compared the TOT rates of two kinds of participants when using different languages, and the results showed a significant higher TOT rates and lower GOT rates for these participants who unfamiliar with Mandarin. This contributed to the partial activation theory preliminary. In experiment 2, adding auditory priming information (the family name of these stars, including 3 types: Cantonese, Mandarin, and irrelevant) as an independent variable, exploring the difference of GOTs and TOTs when naming in different language and in different priming condition. The results showed that GOT rates was higher in the condition of Mandarin and Cantonese priming than in irrelative priming, and the TOT rates was significant higher when priming and naming both in Mandarin, but in Cantonese priming, TOT rates caused by two naming was non-significant. What’s more, in contrast with exp.1, Mandarin familiar speakers experienced more TOTs than these who unfamiliar. To sum up, language familiarity affect language production. The more the language familiarity is, the easier to naming. This effect can be explained by the differences of lexical representation and language dependent effects. Besides, it states that the mechanism of diglossia is Partially Activation Theory and can be explained by nodes structure theory (NST). In exp2, the TOT rate was significant higher when priming and naming both in Mandarin. As explained by NST, it confirms the Partially Activation Theory again. Related Articles | Metrics

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Emotional Voice Modulates the Recognition of Facial Expression: Evidences from an ERP Study 2013, 36(1): 33-37.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Continuous integration of information from multiple sensory inputs is very important for daily life of human being. But the mechanisms underlying the interaction of cross-modal stimulus processing failed to draw sufficient attention, especially on the cross-modal interaction of the stimulus containing emotional significance. This study aimed to investigate the neural mechanism of interaction of emotional voice and facial expression. Event-related potentials(ERP) technique and cross-modal priming paradigm were used to explore the influence of emotional voice on the recognition of facial expression. The materials consisted of 240 prime-target pairs using voices as primes and facial expressions as targets. Neutral semantic words were spoken with happy or angry prosody and followed by congruous or incongruous facial expressions. The participants were asked to judge the consistency between the valence of emotional voice and facial expression, during which ERPs were recorded. Each trial began with a central fixation cross presented for 500ms, then the priming stimuli(emotional voice) was presented through headphone. The central fixation cross displayed on the screen until the target(facial expression) was presented. The inter-stimulus-interval(ISI) is 1000ms. The facial expression was presented for 500ms, followed by a black screen for 2000-2200ms. After the presentation of facial expression, participants were instructed to indicate the consistence of valance between the emotional voice and facial expression by pressing a mouse button as quickly and accurately as possible. The results were analyzed by Repeated Measure ANOVA. The response time (RT) results showed that subjects responded more quickly to the congruous trials than the incongruous trials. It suggested the existence of the priming effect of emotional voice on recognition of emotional facial expression. The analysis of ERPs waveforms indicated that emotional voice modulates the time course of processing of facial expression. At the time window of 70-130ms and 220-450ms, facial expressions evoked more negative waveforms in incongruous trials than in congruous trials. At the time window of 450-750ms, facial expressions evoked more positive late positive component(LPC) in incongruous trials than in congruous trials. The ERPs results suggested that emotional voice influences the processing of emotional facial expression at the early perception stage, the emotional significance evaluation stage and the subsequent decision-making stage. This study demonstrated that emotional voice can influence the processing of facial expression in a cross-modal manner, and provided converging evidences for the interaction of multi-sensory inputs. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Status of the Nonresponding Hand Affect Simon Effect in the Go/No-Go Task 2013, 36(1): 38-43.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The Simon effect arises if a spatial response feature is used to represent one or more responses in working memory. The previous studies found that the go/no-go task in which stimuli were the same as the standard Simon task can generate Simon effect only when the participants used the spatial feature to represent response by referring to the location of the nonresponding hand. However, the participants can select ?exibly the reference frame for action according to sensory context. Further, the reference frame determined whether spatial anatomical code or the cognitive spatial code is used to represent the one response in the go/no-go task. Thus, we suppose that sensory context of the nonresponding hand may affect the nature of the Simon effect in the go/no-go task. If the spatial anatomical code is used to represent the response, then the visuomotor Simon effect would arise; if the cognitive spatial code is used to represent the one response, then the cognitive Simon effect would arise. To explore the supposition, we implemented three experiments. In the experiments, the stimuli were red or green squares presented in left and right physical locations, participants were instructed to perform a spatial response to one color, and refrain from responding to another color. But, the status of the nonresponding hand were different: In Experiment 1, the participants were only required to press one key by index finger of one hand and put the nonresponding hand on any place except for the desk and keyboard; in Experiment 2, the nonresponding hand was asked to put on a fixed location of the desktop; in Experiment 3, the subjects were instructed to put their nonresponding hand on a fixed key (e.g., if the response key was “Z” then put the nonresponding hand on “/”, and vice versa). Moreover, if the Simon effects were obtained in the experiments, we would further explore the different mechanism of Simon effects with reaction time (RT) distribution analysis. To that end, the correct RTs of each participant are ‘‘vincentized’’ in separate experimental condition, i.e., rank-ordered RTs are divided into equally sized quantiles, and the mean RT was grouped into equally spaced quantiles. The results showed: in Experiment 1, we didn’t obtain the Simon effect, F(1,21) = .39, p = .54; in Experiment 2, we obtained a significant Simon effect, F(1,20) = 8.48, p < .01; in Experiment 3, we also acquired a significant Simon effect, F(1,25) = 10.93, p < .01. Moreover, the RT distribution analysis showed that the size of Simon effect in Experiment 2 was rather stable from the first to fourth quantile but disappeared in the fifth quantile, and that in Experiment 3 increased from the first to the fifth quantile. The results demonstrated that representing the response by the spatial feature is the prerequisite for the generation of the Simon effect. Moreover, the results implied that the nature of the Simon effect relied on the sensory context of the nonresponding hand. Related Articles | Metrics

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Gender differences on crossed-hands effect of tactile temporal order perception 2013, 36(1): 44-50.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Temporal order perception is the successive perception of sensory events, which is influenced by many factors. Studies have shown that when the observers’ hands were crossed over the midline, judgments about the temporal order of two successive tactile stimuli delivered to the left and right hands are less accurate as compared to when the hands were placed in an uncrossed posture. Different theories have been proposed to explain the effect which focus on the reference frame involved in the touch representation, but neither involved organic variable. In view of the spatial specific of the crossed-hands effect, and spatial factor proved to be influential on male and female spatial performance, We were interested in the role of gender in crossed-hands effect. Temporal order judgment (TOJ) task is used to investigate whether sex influence on the crossed-hands effect or not. Twenty-four healthy under graduate students as paid volunteers participated in this experiment. Each subject participated in three experimental blocks: for one block of crossed-hand trials, subjects were instructed to respond based on which hand was stimulated first (somatotopic instructions) and for another block of crossed-hand trials subjects were instructed to respond based on which side of the body was stimulated first, and in the uncrossed-hand condition, subjects were instructed to respond based on which hand was stimulated first. Owing to the response ways usually employed in prior studies are difficult to avoid the confuse influence of spatial relation (compatibility or incompatibility) between stimuli and response on the temporal order judgment; Subjects are required make an oral report in this study. Crossed-hands effect is found in both males and females in tactile TOJ tasks based on somatotopic and spatiotopic frames of reference. This robust and reproducible crossed-hands effect has gender differences when intervals shorter than 150ms, female participants produced larger tactile TOJ crossed-hands deficits compared to male participants, especially when stimuli on the left hand or left side (right hand) came first in tasks that stimuli were identified by different reference frames. According to the previous results that the temporal order judgment reversal when the SOA is shorter than 300ms, while temporal order accuracy in the crossed-hands tactile TOJ task significantly improved when the SOA longer enough. The finding reveals that gender differences disappear under longer SOA condition. Marked gender differences found at moderately short intervals maybe have something to do with the differences of ability to space perception and physiologicanatomy between males and females. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Cues on Representation Momentum ZHANG ZhiJie 2013, 36(1): 51-56.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Memory for the final location of a moving target is often displaced in the direction of anticipated target motion, and this has been called representational momentum. How the attention influence the representational momentum is a question of empirical and theoretical interest. Hayes and Freyd’s (2002) experiments the manipulation of attention occurred during presentation of the target and was relatively long in duration, in which forward displacement increased with decreases in attention. Whereas in Kerzel’s(2003) experiments, the manipulation of attention occurred after the target vanished and was relatively short in duration, in which forward displacement decreased with decreases in attention. In an attempt to consider whether differences in the timing and duration of the attention manipulation can account for the different results of Hayes and Freyd and of Kerzel, Hubbard, Kumar & Charlotte (2009) presented cue was always located at the coordinates of the final inducing stimulus and, and the duration of the cue was 250ms. The decrease was larger when the cue was present during the retention interval than when the cue was present during the final inducing stimulus. Thus, timing of the cue relative to when the probe was present, rather than duration of the cue, determined the influence of the cue on displacement. The during of target motion and the during the final inducing stimulus are not the same, but the during of target motion contained during the final inducing stimulus. So we presented the different duration within the during of target motion (1250ms，1750ms，2250ms，2750ms) and the same duration within the during of retention interval(250ms). The cue presented at the same display coordinates of the first position of a horizontally moving target. The research included two experiments. In experiment l, the cue was presented the different duration within the during of target motion, and the cue was not presented the same duration within the during of retention interval. In experiment 2, the cue was not presented the different duration within the during of target motion, and the cue was presented the same duration within the during of retention interval. Each experiment has third-two participants and each group has eight participants. Each participant received 112 trials [3(Cue: present, absent) × 2(direction of motion: left, right) × 7(probes: -15,-10,-5, 0, +5, +10, +15) × 4 replications] in a different random order. The experiments resulted in three main findings: First, the cue was presented during of target motion, forward displacement of target didn’t significantly decreased, relative to when a cue was absent. Representational momentum was significant. Second, presentation of the cue during the retention interval, displacement of the target was opposite to the direction of motion. Third, the different durations within the during of target motion didn’t significantly influenced the representational momentum. These results suggested that timing of the cue, rather than duration of the low-relevant cue, determined the influence of the cue on displacement. More importantly, the cue provided information regarding the final location of the target, which suggested that representational momentum was a control process. The different durations within the during of target motion didn’t significantly influenced the representational momentum, which suggested that representational momentum was at least partly automatic. To the further verified the two-process theory of representational momentum. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence from Dual Task on Deception Liu YanShuo Genyue FU 2013, 36(1): 57-60.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The present study used a dual task paradigm to investigate the relationship between memory load and individuals’ success in deception. More specifically, we created a mock job interview situation where participants were asked to fake their educational experiences in order to meet the stated requirements in the job description. We interviewed participants twice with exactly the same questions. Half of the questions asked participants information about their non-existent education experience whereas the control questions asked participants about their actual educational experience. To examine the influence of working memory load on deception, we randomly assigned participants to one of the four conditions. In the Double-Double Condition, we required participants to answer interview questions in the first and second interview while performing an irrelevant but working memory-demanding cognitive task. The task required participants to press the appropriate button when they saw a certain color on a computer monitor. In the Double-Single Condition, participants were only asked to perform the cognitive task while being questioned in the first interview but not in the second interview. In the Single-Double Condition, participants only performed the cognitive task during the second interview but not the first interview. In the Single-Single Condition, participants were questioned without performing the cognitive task in both interviews. We hypothesized that for the control true experience questions, working memory load should have limited impact on participants’ accurate retrieval from their biographical memory the information about their actual educational experience and thus their answers to the same questions in the two interviews should be highly consistent. In contrast, the working memory demanding cognitive task should affect participants’ consistencies in their answers to the same questions about the non-existent educational experiences and thus their answers in the two interviews should be more likely to contradict each other. This negative effect should be more pronounced in the Double-Double Condition than in the Double-Single or Single- Double Conditions. Consistent with our hypothesis, ANOVAs revealed that participants’ consistency scores for the true education experience questions were significantly higher than those for the non-existent education experience questions in all four conditions (ps<.001). Further, the consistency scores for the false education experience questions were also different between the four conditions (p<.0001). The post hoc showed that the Double-Double Condition had a significantly lower mean consistency score than that in each of the other three conditions (p=0.016，p=0.001，p=0.003, respectively). The other three conditions did not differ from each other in terms of the mean consistency scores. Thus, the Double-Double procedure is the best procedure for detecting deception in job seekers who fabricate their educational or work experiences. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Neural Mechanism Processing Feedbacks of Lie Detection: an Event-Related Potential Study Qian Cui 2013, 36(1): 61-66.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The previous researches on feedback mainly emphasize that how ERPs which relate to feedback, such as FRN, P300 etc. change with the changes of feedback’s value, quantity and probability (expected). Most of the researches were conducted in gambling games which were experimental tasks, and the feedback which was in form of figure indicated winning or losing money. There have been many researches investigating the cognitive process before executing deceptive response, but less attention has been paid to how people perceive the outcomes of deception. In real life, however, it’s just the outcomes that make people have special mental process when they lie and make the processing to deceptive outcomes be different from the general processing. In the lie-detection paradigm of this research, positive and negative feedback represent “lie-escaped” and “lie-caught” respectively. This kind of feedback may need more complicated cognitive process than general feedback does. We speculate that the cognitive and neural mechanism processing the outcomes of deception may be different from the expectation in usual theories. In order to exploring how people conduct cognitive process to the outcomes of deception, this research tries to analyze the ERPs evoked by the feedback in a lie-detection paradigm. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded when 17 subjects did this lie-detection task. We mainly analyzed ERPs evoked by the two sorts of feedbacks following deceptive response. The experimental result showed that three kinds of ERPs were evoked by feedbacks following two sorts of deceptive responses, they were P200-300、P300 and N500 respectively, and the negative feedback (“-2”) which indicated “lie-caught” did not evoke FRN. The feedback indicating “lie-caught” evoked larger amplitude of P200-300 than the feedback indicating “lie-escaped” did, while the two evoked similar amplitude of P300, which showed that the latter evoked larger amplitude of N500 than the former. The results revealed that, in this research, FRN seemed to reflect instant and motivational evaluation to feedback, might having no necessary relations with learning process. When processing the feedbacks which indicate the outcomes of deception, P200-300 was distinct from P300. P200-300 might be sensitive to the consequences of stimulus encoding (positive or negative), thinking the feedback indicating “lie-caught” was more negative than the feedback indicating “lie-escaped”; while P300 might be sensitive to the subjective significance, thinking the two sorts of feedbacks are similar in subjective significance. P300 represented the process to the subjective significance of feedbacks, and its sensibility to the number of feedback might because: large numbers of feedbacks might have more significance of rewards and penalties. During the process to outcomes of lie-detection, N500 might reflect cortical excitability, and “lie-escaped” might be more exciting than “lie-caught”. Related Articles | Metrics

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Number-form Synesthesia: A New Approach of Spatial Representation of Numbers 2013, 36(1): 67-71.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Spatial representation of numbers is an important way for human beings to represent numbers. There is a renowned phenomenon named mental number line – small numbers are represented on the left side of the mental number line and large numbers are represented on the right side of the line. Similarly number-form synesthesia is a remarkable phenomenon in which numbers could be perceived consciously and automatically as exist in spatial-defined locations. There are intriguing differences and similarities both on the cognitive processes and on the mechanism of brain. Number-form synesthesia is a kind of explicit, involuntary number-spatial connection which automatically activated by number. While mental number line is implicit, flexible, number-spatial connection which depends on spatial demands of tasks. On the aspect of brain mechanism, synaesthetes were thought to be genetically predisposed to develop such spatial-number association through the random profusion of cortical pathways between brain areas responsible for numerical concepts and those that process spatial representations. However, we assert that these differences are concealed in different levels of awareness (and not in qualitatively different mechanisms). And the study of number-form synesthesia already supplied plenty of substantial data to solve the questions in the domain of spatial representation of numbers, such as the origin of spatial representation of numbers and the representation of double-digit numbers. The study of number-form synesthetes is bound to supply substantial behavior and brain mechanism data to solve the problems existing in the domain of spatial representation of numbers and contribute to reinforce our understanding of human spatial representation of numbers, and it is also able to provide new inspirations to further develop this field of study, which makes it a compelling new approach of this field of study. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Relative uniqueness of Personal names : Evidences from the RSVP 2013, 36(1): 72-77.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The processing of self-name is known as unique that it have no need of attentional resource. The evidences from both behavioral and electrophysiological studies in which the spatial focus of attention is explicitly manipulated have showed that no attention is required for self-name processing. But there have new evidence from an fMRI that the differences between own and other's name processing may rather be quantitative than qualitative in nature and there is evidence that personal names do not always survive the attentional blink under the high perceptual load, but the study ignores the familiarity of personal names, so it can not make conclusion about the uniqueness of self name relatively. The present study was aim to investigate the mechanism of personal names processing by combining the Load Theory and RSVP of attentional blink (AB) paradigm, and to investigated the advantage of recognize self-name is due to the uniqueness or familiarity of the self-name, we added the names of celebrity to this study. We hypothesized that in attentional blink paradigm the familiar other's name produced a similar pattern of process to personal name, the process of personal name has relative uniqueness. In present study, each trial consisted of a first target (T1, consisted of 5 arrows) and a second target (T2, a stranger’s name or a celebrity’s name or self-name ) embedded in a rapid series visual presentation (RSVP) of 20 common nouns. The Eriksen flanker task was used to distinguish the level of T1 perceptual load in which the participants were asked to determine the orientation of central arrow between other 4 congruent (low-load condition) or incongruent (high-load condition) arrows. All 22 items were presented on the black background of computer screen and immediately followed by sequential items. The possible intervals between T1 and T2 were Lag-2 (SOA 64ms), Lag-9 (SOA 504ms), 30 undergraduate and graduate students were instructed to make the identification response to the central arrow of the T1 item (left or right) and the identification response to the gender of the name(male or female). T1 load conditions were separately presented in two blocks and the order of these two blocks was counterbalanced across the participants. The T1 identification accuracy and the T2 detection accuracy in all conditions were recorded respectively. The result of this study showed that for low-load conditions, compared to stranger-name, both of self-name and celebrity-name were detected more often than stranger-name, showing the advantages of personal name and celebrity name. However, the advantage was hampered significantly in the high-load condition and the detection of stranger-names were not affected by the increased T1 load, suggesting that the privileged access of self-name and celebrity-name to awareness were more sensitive to the current available processing resources, but in the condition of “low-load and shot-lag”, self-name showed the unique advantage of detection, while the advantage of celebrity-names disappeared. The result of this study shows that the uniqueness of personal name processing is not absolute but relative. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Number Line Task and Discrete Object Task Training on Children’s Whole Number Bias Chun-Hui Liu 2013, 36(1): 78-85.  Abstract ( )   PDF   When children solve the fractional problems, they usually use previously formed single-unit counting scheme to interpret the fractions. This phenomenon is named as “whole number bias”, which is ubiquitous in fractional cognition. Previous literature showed that adults represented fractions in a manner with the correct whole number bias, instead of directly representing the magnitude of fractions. However, there is also a wrong whole number bias which may hinder the children from correctly solving the fractional problems. Therefore the purpose of this study is to explore whether the number line task and discrete object task can weaken children’s wrong whole number bias and investigate how children represent fractions when they successfully solve the fraction comparison task. This study consists of two tasks: the intervention task and the fraction comparison task via computer. Eighty-one forth-grade children who had the wrong whole number bias in a paper-pencil fraction comparison task were chosen for the current intervention task. They were divided into two groups: one was asked to accomplish the number line task, the other was asked to accomplish the discrete objects task. Each task had two sub-tasks: representing and comparing fractions with number line/ discrete object model and identifying and comparing fractions through number line/ discrete object model. After completing 20 items of intervention task, children performed a series of fractional comparison tasks via computer. Within-subject and between-subject crossed three factors design was conducted to investigate the effects of group (number line group versus discrete object group), numerical magnitude of a target fraction (either larger than the reference or smaller than the reference) and the response hand (left or right) on children’s accuracy and react time. Each child was presented eight target fractions which had the same numerator “1” but denominators varied from 1 to 9, and except for the fraction 1/5, which was the reference. Children were asked to compare the target fraction and reference. Each target fraction randomly appeared six times, so there were 48 trials in one block. Each child had two blocks in a random order. Stimulus presentation and the recording of behavioral data (reaction time and accuracy) were controlled by E-prime 1.1. The main results are as follows: (1) in intervention task, children in discrete objects group perform better than children in number line group. Children using the number line model are more likely to make mistakes. (2) Children in discrete objects group have better performance in fraction comparison task but their mean react time is significant longer than children in number line group. (3) Both two groups use the mental number line to represent fraction, and they show both correct and wrong whole number bias. From the results, two conclusions are drawn: (1) Using the number line or discrete object model can weaken wrong whole number bias, therefore teacher should use varied models to improve children’s understanding of fraction concept during fraction teaching. (2) During the process of conceptual change from the whole number to the rational number, children often have both correct and wrong whole number bias. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Latent Class Analysis of 6 to 15-Year-Old Chinese Children’s Rule Use in Balance Scale Task Tie-Chuan LIU 2013, 36(1): 86-91.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The balance scale task has been frequently studied in developmental psychology. The aim of the present paper was to explore the latent structure of Chinese children’s performance on the balance scale task. In the first section, I review psychological studies using the balance scale task, including a description of Siegler’s(1976) rule assessment methodology (RAM). A critical analysis is provided based on problems RAM and the four basic rules proposed by Siegler. However, RAM was frequently criticized for lacking statistical background. It can be solved by latent class analysis (LCA) by which we can test statistically how many rules are needed to fit the data and which these rules are. The basic thoughts of latent class analysis and classification were introduced briefly. A test made of 25 items which belong to four different type of balance scale task, was developed for the present research. The 457 Chinese children aged 6 years to 15 years finished the complete test and the data was analyzed through latent class approach with MPLUS 6.0. Before analysis of combinations of items, it is essential to eliminate the one who could not use RULEⅠ. Those children were found by latent class analysis of 5 weight items. After that, there are 428 people in our dataset for further analysis of combinations of items. Latent class analysis of combinations of distance, conflict-balance and conflict weight items, two of each type, showed that LCA has several advantages in classification of cognitive rules. Model of sixed classes fit the data well, in which classes correspond RULEⅠ, RULEⅠ', RULEⅡ, compensation rule, RULE Ⅳ, distance dominant rule. Chinese children aged 6 to 9 mainly use RULEⅠ, and with increase of age, less children choose RULEⅠ, RULEⅠ', RULEⅡ to solve the test items. Children aged 10 to 13 mainly use compensation rule. Almost all Children aged more than 14 use RULE Ⅳ during the testing. The increase of proportion of one who using RULE Ⅳ was sudden between age 13 and age 14. The results of the present paper can be well explained by the Overlapping Waves Model. The rules utilized by Chinese children are discussed and compared to other researcher’s findings. Some advantages and shortcomings of LCA are also discussed. One hypothesis of using LCA to investigate the cognitive rules is that subject should utilize the same strategy during testing. That’s difficult to testing for LCA and may be well studied by more complex strategy shifting model. Related Articles | Metrics

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Development of Working Memory From 6 to 9 Years of Age 2013, 36(1): 92-97.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Working memory capacity involves the ability of temporary storage and simultaneous manipulation of information. Baddeley and Hitch proposed that working memory could be divided into three subsystems, phonological loop concerned with storage of verbal and acoustic information, a second subsystem, the visuo-spatial sketchpad providing its visual and spatial equivalent, and the central executive, a domain general system involved attention of focus, divided attention, attention switching and communication with long term memory. Substantial studies suggest that the structure of working memory in children is consistent with Baddeley’s 3-subsystem model. Working memory is believed to be essential for a very wide range of complex cognitive tasks. Complex span tasks, like reading span, listening span, operating span, counting span, are usually used to measure working memory capacity development. However, the complex span tasks have not been fully understood and there has been a heated controversy about what they really measure. The aims of the current study was to examine the development of working memory through testing the function of working memory components based on Baddeley’s model and to explore how these measurements were related to the complex span, commonly acknowledged as index of working memory capacity. 225 pupils aged from 6 to 9 years old performed nine working memory tasks, including digit span, non-word span, visual pattern span, spatial span, focus of attention, divided attention, switching attention, semantic fluency test and listening span task, to be examined the capacity of phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and central executive respectively. The results showed phonological memory, visuos-patial storage and central executive functions grew with age at changing pace during 6 to 9 years of age. Post hoc tests demonstrated that phonological storage developed slowly from 6 to 8 and increased significantly between 8-9 years of age, while visuo-spatial capacity experienced significant increase from 6 to 7 , 7 to 8 years old and showed no significantly differnces between 8 and 9 years age. The results also suggested that three central executive functions , retrieval of long term memory, divided attention and focus of attention, witnessed significant increase between 6 and 7, 8 and 9 years of age, while switching attention ability increased significantly from 6 to 7 years of age. SEM analysis showed that both phonological loop and central executive positively affected the listening span. The overall pattern of results has important implications for understanding and measurement of working memory development and structure in childhood. we conclude that both the capacity of the 3 subsystems of working memory and the relationship between them are changing during childhood, and both the central executive functions and phonological loop are involved in verbal working memory tasks. Related Articles | Metrics

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Positive Effect of Practicing Chinese Calligraphic Handwriting on Emotion and Emotional Regulation Strategies in Children 2013, 36(1): 98-102.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Previous studies have established that practicing of Chinese calligraphy handwriting (PCCH) has consequences on reducing negative emotions (e.g. anxiety) and serve as a supplemental treatment for mental illness (See Kao et al., 2006, 2011 for a review). However, little is known about the relation between the PCCH and positive emotion. The present study investigates whether PCCH has positive effect on emotional states and emotional regulation skills, which serve as core aspects of mental health. A longitudinal developmental design was employed in the present study: 170 primary school students were tested two times across a two-school-year interval, i.e., the beginning of Grade 3 to the end of Grade 4. During the interval, 101 students (experimental group) joined a Chinese calligraphy course which held 2 times per week (approximately 1.5 hours a time) plus extra exercises, whereas another 69 students (control group) did not participant the course. Chinese version of Positive and negative affect scale for Children (PANAS-C) and Child version of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ-k) were used to test children’s emotional states and emotional regulation skills in groups (30~40 participants per group) respectively. When controlling positive emotion measured by PANAS-C in the pretest (experimental group: M = 51.91, SD = 11.13; control group: M = 51.82, SD = 12.32), analysis of covariance showed that experimental group’s showed significantly more positive emotions (M = 53.90, SD = 10.80) than control group (M = 50.81, SD = 9.66) in the posttest, F(1,167) = 4.03，p < .05; however, no difference was found in negative emotions with similar analysis (F < 1). More importantly, using change scores (posttest – pretest) on each components of the CERQ-k, experimental group showed significantly more positive changes than control group on two components: positive refocusing (t(168) = 1.99 , p < .05) and refocus on planning (t(168) = 2.20, p < .05). These results suggested that PCCH can have positive effect on the development of emotional states and emotional regulation skills. Related Articles | Metrics

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A study on the mediated effect and moderated mediate effect of college students’ family factors parental emotional warmth， Intellectual-Cultural Orientation and conscientiousness on career decision-making self efficacy Chun-Na HOU Lin WU 2013, 36(1): 103-108.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Abstract It has been shown that the development of college students’ career decision-making self efficacy is influenced by conscientiousness and family factors which main for parenting style and family environment. However, family factors make a great important to the conscientiousness. Though arranging and theoretical exploring related literature about family factors, conscientiousness and career decision-making self efficacy, the study showed that although college students’ life have been changed , family factors may make an indirect effect to the college students’ career decision-making self efficacy though conscientious as a bridge. Because of this, the study puts forward related assumptions and does empirical examinations. Objective: The study adopting stratified cluster random sampling gains 1207 students of four grades as sample who are from three universities, and Adopt the conscientiousness subscale of NEO-PI-R, CDMSE, EMBU and FES-CV to do measurement. Randomly selected 150 freshmen as subjects that is the model construction of sample，1057 students did relevant model examinations for samples. Methods: The statistical method is consisted of single factor analysis of variance, statistical analysis of Bootstrapping and multiple-group defining comparison used by spss12.0 and Amos17.0. Result：(1) In family factors, parental emotional warmth rearing is an argument through mediate variable conscientiousness that makes a stable and lasting effect to career decision making self efficacy which is a dependent variable(ab=.089，p=.002；c’=.116,p<.01). (2) In family factors, intellectual-cultural orientation family environment as adjustable variable to intermediary variable conscientiousness is cooperated with parental emotional warmth rearing which is an argument and through intermediary variable conscientiousness that makes a stable and lasting effect to career decision-making self efficacy which is a dependent variable(λ=.014,p=.012). At present, scholars pay little attention to the family factors. But family makes a difference to individual in the traditional culture of east. Under the background of eastern culture, this study examines the effect that family factors have on the development of the college students' career decision-making self efficacy. To a certain extent, the research provides a useful point of reference for other similar studies. Key words family factors, parenting style, family environment, conscientiousness, career decision-making self efficacy Related Articles | Metrics

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Forgiveness in Different Interpersonal Relationship among Adolescents 2013, 36(1): 109-115.  Abstract ( )   PDF   In the present study, the features of forgiveness and its three dimensions in different interpersonal relationships were explored. The participants were 388 Chinese students from junior middle schools, senior high schools and colleges, who were around 12.00-21.67 years old filling out Enright Forgiveness Inventory in class. MANOVA design was applied to analyzing data. The results indicated as follows: There were two main types of offender, peers (40.9%) and family members (29.9%). When the offender was peer, the forgiveness level of junior middle school students was the highest; when offender was family member,the forgiveness level of every age group was not statistically significant different with each other. At junior middle school stage, the forgiveness level of every type of offender was not significantly different; At senior high school and undergraduate stage, the forgiveness level to family member was significant higher than that of peer. Among all age state, the forgiveness level of affective dimension was significantly lower than that of behavioral dimension and cognitive demension. Related Articles | Metrics

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Influences of Perceived Personal and Group Discrimination on Subjective Well-being among Chinese Migrant Children 2013, 36(1): 116-121.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Although the perception of discrimination has been revealed to play crucial negative roles in the well-being of disadvantaged children, the nature of the relation between perceived discrimination and well-being remains unclear. Using social identity theory as a framework, Branscombe, Schmitt and Harvey. (1999) developed the rejection–identification model to describe the dual effects of perceiving discrimination on the psychological well-being, and empirical research has supported its predictions among the members of low status group members, particularly when the boundaries between the low status group and the higher status group are perceived as impermeable. For Chinese migrant children, their group membership is transitory (i.e., upward mobility into the higher status group is possible), the relation between perceived discrimination and well-being among them may be different from those whom membership is impermeable. This study aimed to investigating the relationship between perceived personal and group discrimination and subjective well-being as well as the mediation effect of ingroup identity and perceived group status on it among Chinese migrant children. 904 migrant children in the school of migrant children and 446 migrant children in the public school participated in this study. All participants completed a self-report assessment on testing their perceived personal and group discrimination, negative and positive affections, students’ life satisfaction, ingroup identity and perceived group status. The results indicated that there was a significant relationship between perceived personal and group discrimination and subjective well-being, ingroup emotional identity and perceived group status among Chinese migrant children. Perceived personal and group discrimination both had the significantly direct effects on the subjective well-being of migrant children, and had the significantly indirect effect on the subjective well-being via the mediation effect of perceived group status. In addition, perceived personal discrimination had the significantly indirect effects on the subjective well-being of migrant children via the multiple mediation effect of ingroup emotional identity and perceived group status. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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A Study on the Implicit View of Moral Emotion of Middle School Students 2013, 36(1): 122-127.  Abstract ( )   PDF   For the moral emotions, researchers have had controversial views which lie in how to understand the prototypical features of moral emotions. Some people think that moral emotion is the feeling based on moral evaluation, links with others’ or social’s interests and well-being, and only those with disinterested elicitors and pro-social action tendencies can be called moral emotions. While other people suggest that almost all emotion relate with moral in nature, so all right emotion that are felt appropriately at a right time can be regarded as moral emotions. On the teenagers’ view, what kind of emotion can be considered as moral emotion? In order to understand their implicit theory about moral emotions in daily life, in this study, 974 middle school students from 14 to 16 years old were gathered to finish two researches consisted of vocabulary assessment and situation assessment, so as to examine their implicit view of typical categories and prototypical features of moral emotions. In the first study, 42 filtered emotional vocabularies were provided, such as joy, anger, compassion. Subjects were asked to assess the degree of compliance these terms to moral emotion according to their own understanding. On this basis, factor analysis was used to explore the structure of 28 emotional vocabularies whose mean were higher than the theory median. The results showed that, more positive emotion vocabularies, such as gratitude, touch, happy, respect and other terms obtained relatively high rating scores. This means that young people tended to regard positive emotions as moral emotions. Furthermore, young students’ approving principal moral emotions can be reduced into five types: negative-situational emotions, other-guiding emotions, positive-situational emotions, self-critical emotion, and other-praising emotions. Negative-situational emotions and positive-situational emotions are not necessarily as moral emotions, but as common experiences in daily life, they are easily turned to be forms of moral feelings in certain situations. Other-guiding emotions involved in both positive feelings and negative feelings associated with witnessing greatness, good deeds or adversity. It had the commonality of other people-oriented, and a significant role in guiding the ethical behavior. Self-critical emotions is the negative emotions directed at self for violating moral codes, whereas other-praising emotions is the positive feelings associated with witnessing others’ power and ability. The second study took two kinds of positive emotion and negative emotion as examples, elicitor and action tendency as context dimensions, required the subjects to assess the conformity between characters’ emotions in 16 situational items and the moral emotions. The results showed that, compared with action tendency model, emotional valence model, emotional type model, and mixture model of elicitor and action tendency, elicitor model became relatively optimal model. That was to say, middle school students are significantly inclined to clustering differentiate emotions according to their elicitors, and regarded disinterested elicitors as sole prototypical feature of moral emotions. Besides, the result of 2×2×2 Repeated Measures with covariance showed that there were no significant effects of grade, gender and emotions valence on adolescents’ implicit theory for the moral emotions, except for emotion’s elicitor. The rating scores of emotions triggered by disinterested elicitors were significantly higher than those triggered by the elicitors related to self interests. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Relationship among Parenting Style, Dual Filial Piety and Respecting Common Senior Citizen 2013, 36(1): 128-133.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The family as the basic unit of the society, it is the embryo of social interpersonal relationships, the root of the harmonious interpersonal family is that parents love their children, and the children give filial piety to their parents. As children grow up by different parenting style in the family, and they form the different filial piety which affects their dealing with interpersonal relationship. The culture of filial piety includes the thought of respecting common senior citizen and care the old as we care our old which make filial piety expand to the whole society, children not only respect their own parents, but also to love other people’s parents with the same feelings. To examine the relationship between parenting style, dual filial piety and respecting common senior citizen, the present study explore the modulating pattern of these factors using the structural equation modeling. A total of 536 students (240 male and 295female) from two universities in Wuhan were enrolled. They completed the EMBU, the Filial Piety Concept Scale, and the Respect for Senior Citizen Scale. It took about 20 minutes to complete the questionnaires. The correlations among factors were calculated with SPSS 16.0 and Structural equation model was applied to deal with all data. In the analysis of structural equation modeling, four models were constructed; one for the hypothetical model and the other for the competing model. The results indicated that the controlled parenting style had significant direct effect on authoritarian filial piety, the cared parenting style had significant direct effect on reciprocal filial piety; the authoritarian filial piety plays complete intermediary role between controlled rearing and respecting common senior citizen, the reciprocal filial piety did not play complete intermediary role between care of rearing and respecting common senior citizen, the care of rearing had significant direct effect on reciprocal filial piety and respecting to common senior citizen; the care of rearing of father had significant direct effect on reciprocal filial piety and the respecting to common senior citizen, the care of rearing of mother had significant indirect effect on respecting to common senior citizen from reciprocal filial piety. In line with the moral cognition development theory, these findings demonstrated that different parenting style such as controlled parenting style, cared parenting style and dual filial piety have significant impact on respecting common senior citizen, while controlled parenting style contribute to authoritarian filial piety and failure to reciprocal filial piety, cared parenting style contribute to reciprocal filial piety and failure to authoritarian filial piety. The care of rearing of father and the care of rearing of mother have different impact on reciprocal filial piety and authoritarian filial piety, and on respecting common senior citizen. The care of rearing of father had direct effect on reciprocal filial piety and the respecting to common senior citizen; the care of rearing of mother had indirect effect on respecting to common senior citizen from reciprocal filial piety. These findings suggest that in order to improve the consciousness of respecting to common senior citizen of the youth, parenting style and filial piety play a critical role. Parents and educators are very necessary to set up a good parenting style to establish filial piety and improve the consciousness of respecting to common senior citizen of the youth. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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the Effects Analysis of Mathematics Anxiety on Working Memory Subsystems and Mental Arithmetic Jin-Ling SUN 2013, 36(1): 134-138.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Mathematics anxiety not only affects the development of individual emotion, but also affects the development of individual mathematics cognition. Ashcraft (1994,1998) et al. attempted to develop a program of research that examines the possible cognitive consequences and correlates of mathematics anxiety and got a lot of valuable results. But there are some questions which were still unclear, for example, mathematics anxiety impacts on which working memory subsystems more greatly, how mathematics anxiety impacts on mental arithmetic achievement and so on. So in this article, we will discuss the effects of mathematics anxiety on working memory subsystems and mental arithmetic from work memory capacity. And then we will seek the theory explanation that can explain the relationship. It’s 3×2×2 mixed design: Mathematics anxiety (high, medium, low), working memory (the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad) and mental arithmetic tasks. Mathematics anxiety was measured in classroom by group test. The working memory subsystem and mental arithmetic task were measured in a quiet laboratory using the computer by individual test. And the reaction time and accuracy are regarded as the mental arithmetic performance index. The experimental results indicate that mathematics anxiety impacts on visual-spatial working memory more greatly. In mental arithmetic tasks which request high work memory capacity, mathematics anxiety is correlated negatively with mental arithmetic achievement, and mathematics anxiety can influence mental arithmetic achievement by the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad and that the visuospatial sketchpad is the medium variable between mathematics anxiety and mental arithmetic (carry) reaction time. According to these findings, we can integrate Processing Efficiency Theory proposed by Eysenck and Calvo (1992) and Inhibition Theory proposed by Hasher and Zack (1991) to explain what we discovered in this experiment. That is, for those who are in high mathematics anxiety, their mandatory thoughts or fear and other negative emotions can struggle for limited processing resources in working memory with ongoing cognitive tasks ,and then reaction time will increase or accuracy will cut, that is to say the cognitive efficiency reduces. From the perspective of inhibition, we also can say those who are in high mathematics anxiety are confronted with some difficulties including failure of inhibition of these ideas. But the theory of Arousal-Performance Function can’t be used to explain these findings. It may indicate that the mathematics anxiety is a special type of anxiety. It may also be associated with the mathematics achievement evaluation index used in the experiment (the reaction time and accuracy of mental arithmetic task, rather than the students' exam results). References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy and Subjective Well-being：the Mediating Effect of Style of Emotional Regulation 2013, 36(1): 139-144.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Regulatory emotional self-efficacy is a widely concerned issue in recent years. It is defined as the individuals’ confidence level of successfully managing their emotion. Regulatory emotional self-efficacy helps mitigate emotional tension, maintain self-control effective and improve one’s ability of self-control towards emotional impulsiveness. As an essential social competency, regulatory emotional self-efficacy has been demonstrated to impose various effects on the processes of attention, memory and motive. Failure in managing one’s emotion will easily result in affective dysfunctions and then decrease one’s subjective well-being. Previous research has found that there are large differences in the effect of emotional regulatory, which not only result from the ability or skill in regulating one’s emotion, but also from the perceived self-efficacy. On the ground of the above reasoning, the current study hypothesized that: (1) regulatory emotional self-efficacy will directly influence subjective well-being; (2) people with different regulatory emotional self-efficacy may choose different style of emotional regulation; (3) people using different emotional managing strategies will show different positive and negative expression, and further influence their subjective well-being. Regulatory Emotion Self-Efficacy Scale (Revised), Regulatory Emotional Style Questionnaire, Youth Life Satisfaction Scale and Happiness Scale were administered to 1128 middle school students. Pearson correlation, hierarchical regression and structural equation modeling statistical method were adopted to analyze the data. The results showed that: (1) regulatory emotion self-efficacy positively correlated with life satisfaction; (2) style of emotional regulatory was associated with subjective well-being; (3) SEM analysis showed that style of mitigating regulation could serve as the mediating variable between regulation emotion self-efficacy and subjective well-being, and the mediating effect between positive affect expression and subjective well-being as well as negative affect inhibition and subjective well-being were 0.017 and 0.046, respectively. On the basis of these findings, we may conclude that adolescent may experience more subjective well-being when they can effectively amplify their positive affects and manage negative their affects. More importantly, the mechanism of why regulatory emotional self-efficacy affects subjective well-being may be partly due to what regulatory styles people choose. The present study contributes to current literature and promotes our understanding on regulatory emotional self-efficacy and may be applied to improving adolescents’ mental health. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Research on Dongba Pictograph Influencing Children’s Chinese Orthographic Acquisition with Implicit Learning 2013, 36(1): 145-149.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Because of Chinese characters’ complicated orthographies and children’ immature cognitive level, Chinese orthographics’ acquisition seemed to be quite difficult. Dongba pictograph has similar characteristics of Chinese characters and pictures to some extent. It is suggested that Dongba pictograph may contribute to children's Chinese character orthographic learning. In this research, task dissociation paradigm was adopted to explore the simulative functions of Dongba pictograph and picture on Chinese character orthographic learning under implicit learning. A total of 160 children (80 males and 80 females) were tested in this study, 80 children took part in Experiment 1 and another 80 children took part in Experiment 2. Three-factor mixed design was used：4(learning style：Chinese learning only, Dongba pictograph learning only, Chinese learning combined with Dongba pictograph, Chinese learning combined with pictures )×2(test style：instant test, delay test)×2(word class：verbs, nouns). The materials included 40 Chinese characters (20 verbs which included 10 ideograph words and 10 phonograms, 20 nouns which included 10 ideograph words and 10 phonograms), 40 Dongba pictographs and 40 pictures, while three stimuli shared the same meaning. Color judgement tasks were used in this research in the learning period. Using recognition task, Experiment 1 was to investigate the influence of learning style to explicit memory of Chinese orthographic learning. Results showed that Dongba pictograph can promote Chinese character learning. Using preference task, Experiment 2 was to investigate the influence of learning style to implicit memory of Chinese orthographic learning. Results showed that Chinese learning combined with Dongba pictograph caused better results than Chinese learning combined with pictures and Chinese learning only in explicit memory. Chinese character learning only acquired the most implicit priming in implicit memory. The performance of nouns was better than that of verbs. Performance of instant tests was better than that of delay tests. These results may result from the characteristics of collateral learning and testing styles, and the similarity between Dongba pictograph and Chinese character, also children’s cognitive features influenced Chinese orthographic acquisition. The results also indicated that the combination of voluntary learning and collateral learning would help children’s Chinese learning. The conclusions are derived from this study: (1) Dongba pictograph can be a kind of auxiliary learning tool to promote young children’s Chinese character orthographic learning. (2) The effects of Dongba on Chinese character orthographic learning may result from characteristics of collateral learning and testing styles, and the similarity between Dongba pictograph and Chinese character, as well as children’s cognitive characteristics. Related Articles | Metrics

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Sensation Seeking on Drug Use Among Reform School Students’: Mediated Moderating Effect 2013, 36(1): 150-156.  Abstract ( )   PDF   In recent years, adolescent drug use is becoming more and more serious. The drug use behavior of reform school students is worse than the drug use behavior of middle school students (Lin, Su, Hu, & He, 2010; Xie, Bu, Liang, Mai, & Zhao, 2007). The younger adolescent beginning to use drug is, the bigger possibility of using drug in whole life is (Lin, Fan, Fang, Tan, & Li, 2010). Drug use greatly endangers adolescents health and may make them death. They can lead to serious adolescents behavioral problems, such as adolescents crime and suicide (Estévez & Emler, 2011; Ma, Guo, & Pan, 2010; Tang et al., 2009). Therefore, more attention should be paid to drug use among reform school students. It is very necessary to study the potential mechanisms of drug use of reform school students so as to design prevention and intervention programs. The present study aimed to explore characteristics of drug use of reform school students and to explore the mediated moderation among sensation seeking, stressful life events, affiliation with deviant peers, and drug use after controlling for several demographic variables. A sample of 523 reform school students of 9 reform schools (442 boys and 81 girls, Mage=14.13±0.84) was recruited in the study to complete self-report questionnaires. The self-report questionnaires used in this study included sensation seeking scale, stressful life events scale, affiliation with deviant peers questionnaire, and drug use questionnaire． The results indicated that: (1) reform school students had a high level of drug use. About 32% of the reform school students used drugs, characterized by using drugs in a younger age, mainly using new drugs; (2) reform school students’ sensation seeking was a risk factor of drug use, which confirms the results from earlier studies that have found a positive relationship between sensation seeking and adolescents drug use; (3) stressful life events moderated the effect of sensation seeking on drug use; (4) affiliation with deviant peers mediated this moderation effect. The theoretical and practical implications of the results was further discussed. Future direction in the field of the relationship between sensation seeking and adolescent substance use was prospected. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Review of Researches on the Big Fish Little Pond Effect Wen JIANG 2013, 36(1): 157-163.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Big Fish Little Pond Effect (BFLPE) is a specific phenomenon which is based upon social comparison theory of educational and social psychological researches. The definition of BFLPE given by Marsh (1986) is a kind of effect of that students in high-ability classes and schools have lower academic self-concepts than their equally able counterparts in lower-ability classes and schools. BFLPE refers to assimilation effect and contrast effect caused by students’ different reference of social comparison—generalized others (class or school average ability) and specific others (target comparison classmate). Some previous studies abroad demonstrate that either upward social comparison or downward social comparison can arouse assimilation effect, contrast effect and both of them. It is the standard of comparison rather than the direction of comparisons influence negative academic self-conception. In BFLPE research, students are presumed to use a generalized other as an implicit comparison target. This generalized other is enforced as the mean performance level of other students in the same class or school. But in social comparison research, participants focus on a special comparison target whom the participant of their own choice. Therefore, imposed vs. self-engendered social comparison activates different sources of social comparison information. As we all know, choosing a good student as a goal is inspiring and can improve academic performance later, but have no effect on one’s academic self-conception. However, it is a quite different story for using the perceived relative standing in class as comparison target in BFLPE research. Selective Accessibility Model is chose to clarify the role of social comparison in the Big-Fish–Little-Pond. This means teachers should guide students to compare the similarity to comparison targets no matter how excellent they are and make students compare different stages of themselves’ performance as much as possible. Although lots of studies have been done on BFLPE, limitation of present studies still exists. For instance, whether social comparison leads to contrast or assimilation effects depends on the extent of self involvement. Activate the social self (“we”) is more likely to cause assimilation effects, and activate the personal self (“I”) is more likely to cause contrast effects. Likewise, the independent self construal leads to lower self-evaluation under upward comparison, but interdependent self construal reduces the contrast effect, and no difference in self evaluative consequences between upward and downward comparison. In the end, the future research of BFLPE should focus on education enlightenment, perfection of method, controlling of potential moderations (contextual, developmental, and individual differences) and using of cross-cultural study. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects and its Mechanisms of Interactional Justice on Performance and Supervisory Commitment 2013, 36(1): 164-169.  Abstract ( )   PDF   In recent years, along with thorough studies of social exchange and leader-member exchange theory, interactional justice has become an important research topic in fields of managerial psychology. Previous studies have indicated that interactional justice had significant effects on organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction etc. (Stecher & Rosse, 2005; Chiaburu, 2007). Meanwhile some scholars thought that interactional justice could affect these variables, because trust played an important role between them (Wong, Ngo, & Wong, 2006). McAllister (1995) thought that trust was consisted of cognitive trust and affective trust. A lot of empirical evidences were available suggesting that their relationships with subsequent outcomes might differ (Yang, Mossholder, & Peng, 2009). Based on past studies, we found that scholars pay less attention to the impacts of interaction justice on task and contextual performance (particularly, voice behavior), importantly, past findings were controversy. Whether and how interactional justice affects employee’s performance? Which role trust played between interactional justice and task performance, voice behavior? In addition, previous finding indicated that interactional justice influenced employee’s commitment to organization (Leow & Khong, 2009), however, whether and how interactional justice affects employee’s commitment to supervisor? Which role trust played between interactional justice and supervisory commitment? In order to answers above questions, this paper used scales and structural equation modeling. Scales included Interactional Justice Scale, Supervisory Cognitive Trust Scale, Supervisory affective Trust Scale, Task Performance Scale, Voice Behavior Scale and Supervisory Commitment Scale. For these scales, analysis of reliability indicated that internal consistencyαcoefficient was respectively .88, .82, .85, .90, .85, .87, which meant these scales had good reliability. For validity, confirmatory factor analysis of employees and supervisors’ data respectively showed that models fit the data better, which meant these scales had good construct validity. Data were obtained from 215 full-time employees of sixteen companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen. To avoid the effects of common method bias, we collected employee’s interaction justice, trust and performance separately (performance data were rated by employee’s direct leader). All the data were analyzed with the software SPSS15.0 and Amos7.0, and the main statistics methods were correlation analysis and structural equation modeling. Based on data from a total of 215 matched supervisor-subordinate dyads, the results indicated that: (1) supervisory cognitive trust partially mediated the relationship between interactional justice and task performance; (2) supervisory affective trust fully mediated the relationship between interactional justice and voice behavior; (3) supervisory cognitive trust and affective trust fully mediate the relationship between interactional justice and supervisory commitment. This paper summed up the conclusion: results indicated that interactional justice may influence employee’s performance and attitude, the mechanism of influence may be supervisory trust. The present study contributed to our understanding of the relationships between interactional justice and performance, supervisory commitment by explaining in more detail the psychological mechanism involved. The results of this study had theoretical as well as impractical implications. Further studies needed to explore the relationships between supervisory distributive justice, supervisory procedural justice and employee’s attitude and behavior, and its mediating, moderating variables. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Job Demands, Job Resources, Psychological Capital on Work Family Relationship 2013, 36(1): 170-174.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The intersection of paid work and family care is the subject of innovative research during these decades. However, most researches about the antecedents of work family interface are focused on work and family domains, while little attention has been paid on individual difference especially personal resources. The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of psychological capital on work family relationship and how the effects happen. The influence of job demands and job resources on work family relationship has also been discussed. A self-reported questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 253 full-time employees in order to test the influence of job demands, job resources and psychological capital on work family balance. Job demands have two indicators which are workload and working hours. Job resources have three indicators which are decision autonomy, colleague support and supervisor support. Psychological capital has four dimensions which are self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience. Work family relationship has four dimensions which are work-family conflict, family-work conflict, work-family conflict and family-work facilitation. Structure Equation Model was used to test hypotheses, which was calculated by AMOS 17.0. The main results show that: (1) Job demands are positively related to both work-family conflict and family-work conflict, whereas they are not significantly related to either work-family facilitation or family-work facilitation. (2) Job resources are negatively related to both work-family conflict and family-work conflict, whereas they are positively related to both work-family facilitation and family-work facilitation. (3) Psychological capital is negatively related to both work-family conflict and family-work conflict, whereas it is positively related to both work-family facilitation and family-work facilitation. (4) Psychological capital plays a mediating role between job resources and work family relationship. These results support spillover theory, which illustrate that a change in one domain (work/family) may cause a similar change in the other domain (family/work) either positive (facilitation) or negative (conflict). The findings of this research show that conflict and facilitation have different antecedents - conflict is influenced by both job demands and job resources, while facilitation is just influenced by job resources - which indicates that the mechanism of conflict and facilitation may be different. On the whole, the mechanism of conflict can be explained from a stress perspective such as Job Demand – Resource Model and Conservation of Resources Theory. However, facilitation is mainly influenced by the trends of positive psychology which explains phenomenon from a positive perspective. Therefore, the mechanism of facilitation is focused on positive resources. Previous researches demonstrate that job resources have a positive effect on work family relationship. However, the reason why resources from work domain may influence family domain has not been discussed yet. This research explores this progress from a new perspective, introducing a variable of personal resources – psychological capital. The results demonstrate that psychological capital may play a mediating role, which offers a ‘job character – personal character – work/family relationship’ model and expands the theory of work family relationship. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Self-efficacy on Gamblers' Fallacy 2013, 36(1): 175-182.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Gambler's fallacy is the belief that if deviations from expected behavior are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process, future deviations in the opposite direction are then more likely. When people judge the probability of an uncertainty event, gambler’s fallacy often occurs. Stock performance is also uncertain. So gambler’s fallacy appears in stock market investment. The purpose of this research is to investigate when the gambler’s fallacy occurs in stock investment and what affects its frequency. Besides, how the investors’ personality, especially self-efficacy (SE), moderates the relationship between stocks’ factors and gambler’s fallacy is also discussed. 83 stock investors participated in this research in China. In order to measure the frequency of gambler’s fallacy, stocks’ K-lines with trends (up or down) obviously were used in this study. According to 4 kinds of trends (short-up, short-down, long-up, long-down), we chose 10 pictures for each of these trends. Subjects were asked to judge the current trend (up or down) and the future price (increase or decrease) of each of the stock. When they suggested that the price wound increase in a down-trend or decrease in an up-trend, gambler’s fallacy occurred. Besides, Schwarze’s general self-efficacy scale was used to measure investors’ self-efficacy (α=0.86). Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) was used in data analysis because of the nested structure, i.e. trend duration and direction as the intra-personal variable was nested in self-efficacy (personal variable). The result indicated that the duration (β=-.65，t=-2.44，p<.05) and direction (β=-.66，t=-3.424，p<.01) of the trend have both main effect and interaction effect (β=.80，t=2.80，p<.01). Specifically, in the down trend, the frequency of gambler’s fallacy was more in short-trend than in long-trend (β down trend = -.65, t = -2.44, p < .05), and most likely occurred under short-down condition (F=10.05，p < .01). Besides, investors with high self-efficacy (one SD more than average) showed more fallacies in short-trend than in long-trend (β high SE=-1.10, t = -3.17, p < .01), while people with low self-efficacy did not have this difference. It means that self-efficacy negatively moderated the relationship between trends’ duration and gambler’s fallacy. The result indicated that investors’ speculation and lose aversion made them show more fallacies in short-down trends. Interestingly, self-efficacy, often had positive correlation with performance, negatively moderated the relationship between trends’ durations and gambler’s fallacy. Vancouver et al. found that people with high self-efficacy often showed overconfident and had more logic error under uncertain circumstances. Therefore, investors, facing with the uncertainty stock market, were probably overconfident and made more mistakes in decision making processes. Finally, applications and contributions were discussed. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Social Identity on Group Attitude: The Role of Intergroup Threat and Group-based Emotion as Mediators Hao CHEN 2013, 36(1): 183-188.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Intergroup attitude has always been an important issue in traditional social psychology for its blending of individual and social characteristic, social identity, intergroup threat and group-based emotion were the most relevant and important variables in traditional researches. Though there were many studies have found the basic role of social identity, few studies have tried to integrate those variables in the same model. For example, ITT first tried to argue that the realistic threat, symbolic threat and intergroup anxiety complement each other when affecting intergroup attitude, but it didn’t explore the relation of different threats and different emotions. Other researchers have showed that different threats might work on different attitudes and behaviors through different emotions, or have tried to propose a theory model including the three main factors, but there were rare researches to investigate the hypothesis systemically. Moreover, former studies mainly focused on the attitude to the out-group, neglecting the attitude to the in-group. And the later is also an important part of intergroup attitude. So the present study was aimed to explore the role of social identity, three forms of intergroup threats and three forms of intergroup group-based emotions in effecting the two forms of intergroup attitudes, and systemically analyze the fundamental role of social identity and its potential influencing mechanism. In order to reach the aim, a questionnaire survey in the background of Diaoyu Island Event was carried out, before formal survey, a primary survey including 150 students from the target populate was made, and the result was used to modify the specific questions. In the formal survey, 431 undergraduates from different grades and majors took apart in the research in the unit of class (151boys and 256 girls). A neutral background material of about 1000 words was edited on the news from Sep 7th to Oct 20th, the questionnaire included identity to nation, three types of group-based emotions, three types of intergroup threats, and two types of intergroup attitudes, most of the questions were based on former researches and were modified to the specific situation. The last part of the survey was some demographic data. The date collected was analyzed by SPSS13.0 and SEM. The result showed: firstly, national identity as the main antecedent variable could have a direct effect on both the in-group and out-group attitude, but also have an indirect effect the two intergroup attitudes through cultural threat and anger. But as the structural model showed, it had no significant effect on identity threat, realistic threat, uneasy and depressed. The result verified former researches and hypotheses partly. Secondly, different intergroup threat had varied effect on different intergroup attitudes through different group-based emotions. For example, the effect of identity threat on the in-group attitude was fully mediated by depressed, and the effect of realistic and culture threat on the two intergroup attitudes was partly or fully mediated by anger. Finally, national identity can both mediated the effect of identity threat on the two forms of intergroup attitude and the mediation of anger between identity threat and the two forms of intergroup, and the directions of the two mediations were both negative, which partly suggesting the key role of social identity in effecting intergroup attitude. . Those results proved that the mechanism of in-group and out-group attitude was not all the same, the correlation and difference of them together constituted the panorama of intergroup attitudes. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Anger and Fear Emotion on Crisis Decision-making of Individuals 2013, 36(1): 189-194.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The decision-making behavior of individuals and groups under the crisis situations has become the focus of the academic circles. This paper is organized with both the measures of laboratory experiment and questionnaire method in order to explore the effects of anger and fear emotion on crisis decision-making. The study induces anger and fear mood by watching the film clips and designs crisis situations on the basis of the questionnaire. Through analysis of the data, we can conclude that: (1) Concerning the crisis decision-making time, the subjects in fear mood are much longer than those in angry mood, and there is a significant interaction between emotional variables and the gender variables. (2) The female’s crisis decision-making time is obviously longer in fear mood than in angry mood , and also longer than the male’s . Meanwhile, in terms of the degree about satisfaction of the crisis decision-making, males are apparently higher than females, and there is a significant interaction between emotional variables and the gender variables in the degree about the confidence of crisis decision-making.(3) With the increase of the programs, especially when the number of programs is 4, crisis decision-making time is significantly longer than the other two cases. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Comparison of Several Subjective Rating Scales of Cognitive Load Chong-Yong SUN Dian-Zhi LIU 2013, 36(1): 195-202.  Abstract ( )   PDF   After Cognitive Load Theory（CLT）was proposed by John Sweller in 1980s’, researchers began to invent new methods for measuring cognitive load. At present, the measurements can be divided into three categories: subjective measures; task performance measures; physiological measures. Because of its simplicity, practicability and convenience, subjective measures was the most popular in recent influential researches on cognitive load. According to some statistics, the Paas Cognitive Load Scale（the PAAS）designed by Paas in 1993 was used most in the previous researches. However, some researchers leveled criticism at it, which was focused that sensitivity and validity of PAAS were to call a question, because its items were few and it was easy to cause social desirability effects. Therefore, the objective to the research was to identify the most sensitive and effective subjective measurement tool by comparing three subjective rating scales, and test the sensitivity of response time of secondary-task which was used as reference object to subjective measures. In the dual-task experiment paradigm, the primary task was face recognition, which was to choose the only right answer from four faces according to the criterion ordered by the researcher, and the secondary task was mental calculation, which was to judge one two digits whether to be divided with no remainder by three or not. We used a 3×4 mixed design with between-subjects factor being category of subjective rating scale and within-subjects factor being task difficulty. The subjective rating scale included three categories, which were the PAAS, the Workload Profile Index Ratings（the WP） and the NASA Task Load Index （the TLX）. The task difficulty included four categories, which were matched by the difficulty level of primary task （easy or difficult） and secondary task （easy or difficult）. A sample of 60 college students volunteered to participate in the study. Ages ranged from 18 to 22 years and all were right-handed. The subjects were randomly assigned to three groups of the same size: 20 subjects filled out the PAAS, another 20 answered the WP, and the remaining 20 filled in the TLX. The experiment was carried out on the computer, which program was designed by E-prime psychology software so as to control the presentation time of experiment materials and measure the response time and accuracy of the secondary task. The hypotheses were testified on the whole. The results showed that, in the present task condition, the sensitivity and intrusiveness of response time of secondary-task were both better and it could be used as reference object to subjective measures. Meanwhile, the sensitivity and validity of the WP and the PAAS were both better, and were higher than those of the TLX. At the same time, the sensitivity and diagnosticity of the WP were higher than that of the PAAS. In conclusion, taking all evaluating indexes into consideration, the WP was the most effective and perfective subjective rating scales of the three, especially for the task of medium or lower difficulty. Related Articles | Metrics

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Estimating the Variability of Estimated Variance Components for Generalizability Theory Based on Non-normal Distribution Data Guang MingLI 2013, 36(1): 203-209.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Abstract Estimating variance component, which is the essential technique for generalizability theory, is constrained by sampling. Different sampling may cause different estimated variance component. Therefore, estimating the variability of estimated variance components needs to be further explored. The variability of estimated variance components mainly includes standard error and confidence interval. In the past studies, there were some problems as follows. Fist, it was often that some researchers only focused on normal distribution data and neglected non-normal distribution data. In fact, non-normal distribution data could be always seen in such tests as TOEFL test. Second, the previous studies didn’t compare the variability of estimated variance components using traditional, bootstrap, jackknife and Markov Chain Monte Carlo method (MCMC) at the same time. The study adopts Monte Carlo data simulation technique to compare the variability of estimated variance components for generalizability theory based on three non-normal distribution data using four methods that include traditional method, bootstrap method, jackknife method and MCMC method. As for traditional method, ANOVA is used to estimate the variance components and their standard error and TBJGL are used to estimate the confidence intervals. As for bootstrap method, twelve bootstrap strategies are considered. But jackknife method only considered three strategies. Moreover, two strategies, informative and noninformative priors, are considered in MCMC method. Three non-normal distribution data are simulated by some techniques. To compare these four methods in two variabilities, the criterion is made and it is the bias. The smaller bias, the more reliable the results are.Some programs are made by us in R statistical programming environment. To link R program with WinBUGS, R2winGUGS and Code package are used. To simulate skewed data, HyperbolicDist package is used. The simulation results are as follows. First, data distribution has an effect on the variability of estimated variance components. Different estimation procedures have different results. For normal data, traditional, bootstrap and MCMC procedure are accurate for estimating the variability of estimated variance components, but jackknife procedure isn’t. For dichotomous data, bootstrap procedure is accurate, but MCMC procedure is either accurate or inaccurate. Traditional and jackknife procedure aren’t accurate. For polytomous data, bootstrap procedure is accurate, but traditional, jackknife and MCMC procedure aren’t. For skewed data, bootstrap procedure is accurate, but jackknife procedure isn’t. Traditional and MCMC procedure are either accurate or inaccurate. Related Articles | Metrics

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The development of cognitive diagnosis test based on automated item generation Tu Dong-Bo 2013, 36(1): 210-215.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Cognitive diagnosis (CD) and automated item generation were important developing directions in modern psychology measurement. To combining with both areas was a major topic to explore. Illustrated with ordinary mathematic problem solving, this paper investigated the methodology and algorithm of automated item generation in CD. Findings showed: (1) Item parameters generated by computer were highly consistent with the parameters in mode; (2) The testing characteristics of different items generated by the same item mode were almost the same; (3) The abilities consequences obtained by two different auto-generated test were highly correlated (r=0.811), and cognitive diagnosis obtained by the same tests were highly consistent. All these verified that the methods and algorithm of automated item generation in CD were feasible, and they could work efficiently, which provided a mechanic reference and support of the automated item generation in CD area. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Comparison of Methods for Estimating Confidence Intervals of Coefficient α Zhong-Lin WEN 2013, 36(1): 216-223.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Under the assumption that the item errors in a tests are uncorrelated, if coefficient α is high enough to be accepted, then test reliability is also acceptable. In such case, using coefficient α to evaluate the test reliability is the first choice, because calculating coefficient α is much easier than calculating composite reliability, even though the latter is more precise in evaluating test reliability. For a test, coefficient α is an unknown population parameter. It is often estimated by the sample coefficient α, a point estimator of the population coefficient α. Point estimate of coefficient α contains limited information and could not give how far it could be from the population coefficient α. The confidence interval of coefficient α can provide more information. Thus, a better appraisal of the test reliability is confidence interval of coefficient α, which provides the precision of the sample coefficient α. We briefed ten methods for estimating confidence intervals of coefficient α. Having excluded three methods that were poor performance in the previously research, we compared the left seven methods by a simulation study. The seven methods being compared include: Fisher, Bonett-02, Bonett-10, Koning-Franses exact, ID asymptotic, Koning-Franses asymptotic and ADF methods. Four factors were considered in the simulation design: (a) distribution of items (normal, uniform, χ２(3) and χ２(6); (b) the number of items on the test (p=3, 7, and 14); (c) sample size ( n=50, 100, 300, 500, and 1000); (d) the methods for estimating the confidence interval of coefficient α (seven methods described above). Totally, 60 treatment conditions were generated in terms of the above 4–factor simulation design (i.e., 60=4×3×5×7). Confidence interval coverage (%) and the bias of the lower limit of confidence interval were used to compare the results of the simulation study. A method is better when the corresponding confidence interval coverage is closer to the preset confidence level (e. g., 95%), and when the corresponding lower limit of confidence interval is closer to zero. The results of the simulation study showed that Bonett-10 and Koning-Franses exact methods performed better than the others, whereas Fisher and ADF methods performed worse. Bonett-10 and Koning-Franses exact methods can be easily calculated by using the sample coefficient alpha, the number of items, sample size and F critical value. Therefore, these two methods were recommended for estimating the confidence interval of coefficient α. We used an example of a unidimensional test to illustrate how to calculate confidence interval of coefficient α with Bonett-10 and Koning-Franses exact methods. When confidence interval of coefficient α is considred, Wen and Ye’s (2011) guideline for evaluating test reliability is still valid, with replacing coefficient α by confidence interval of coefficient α. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Attentional Control, Anxiety and Emotion on Intrusive Memory in Traumatic Individual 2013, 36(1): 224-228.  Abstract ( )   PDF   This study aimed to investigated the influence of attentional control, anxiety, as well as emotion on intrusive memory in traumatic individual. In the first experiment study, a total of 26 undergraduates took part in the experiment to evaluate the physiological arousal and emotion change after seeing the traumatic film of Road Traffic Accident(RTA).At the beginning of the experiment, all subjects saw the traumatic film, at the same time, through recording the physiological index of skin temperature (ST)，respiration（RSP）, skin conductance ( SC ), heart rate ( HR ) and Blood Volume Pulse(BVP) to examine the physiological arousal induced by the film. Besides, through evaluating the emotion of anger, surprise, happy, calm, disgust, sad before and after the film to examine the emotion change induced by the film. The findings indicated that the film of RTA can effectively induced the physiological and emotional change, so it can serve as traumatic event. In the second quasi- experiment, 95 undergraduates took part in the questionnaire survey, at last, 83 effective questionnaire was analysed. Firstly, All subjects filled in the Attentional Control Scale(ACS), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory(STAI), before measurement of Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scales(PANAS-R). Then, subjects saw the traumatic film, after seeing the film, subjects completed the aftertest of PANAS-R, and the experimenter explained the recording method of Intrusion Diary. After two days, subjects returned Intrusion Diary, and completed the questionnaire. According to these scores, attentional control was negatively correlated with intrusive memory, and attentional control could negatively forecast intrusive memory(β=-0.475). Meanwhile, intrusive memory was positively correlated with state anxiety, trait anxiety and before measurement of negative emotion, and before measurement of negative emotion could positively forecast intrusive memory(β=0.374). Besides, attentional control was negatively correlated with state anxiety, trait anxiety, and was positively correlated with positive emotion before the film. State anxiety and trait anxiety was positively correlated with negative emotion before the film, and was negatively correlated with positive emotion before the film. According to comparing all scale scores of high and low attentional control groups, the two groups had prominent difference on state anxiety, trait anxiety and negative emotion before the film. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Meta-analysis of mental health of Pilots during the past decade lifang DENG 2013, 36(1): 229-234.  Abstract ( )   PDF   A Meta-Analysis of Mental Health of Pilots during the Past Decade Deng Lifang (Institute of Psychology and behavior，Beihang University, Beijing 100191) Abstract Although the mental health status of the Chinese Pilots has been highlighted by many researchers, the results of these researches are contradictory. There are different control standards about the mental health status of Pilots and different control standards may come to different conclusions, resulting in lack of comparability among different research. What’s more, as the years goes by and with the development of society, the mental health status of Pilots of the different periods are different. Thus, their mental health status remains unclear. So this article aims to investigate the mental health status of the Chinese Pilots during the past decade, which includes two aspects. One is that, as time going on, what happened to the mental health state of Chinese Pilots? The other is that compared with the general adult norm, what about psychological health state of Chinese pilots and are there any differences in it among different types of pilots? In this study, 20 literatures pertaining to the mental health status of the Chinese Pilots were used, and 5070 Pilots in China were surveyed. All the literatures researching the mental health of pilots during the 2001 to 2010 had used the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) as a judgment test tool. We analyzed the literatures by the way of Meta-analysis and cross-temporal meta-analysis. The results showed that (1) The SCL-90 scores of the Chinese pilots increased in 2000-2001. During 2001 to 2009, The SCL-90 date showed a U-shaped curve, the lowest scores in 2005 and reached a peak in 2009. The scores of the factors anxiety, interpersonal, sensitivity, depression and fear have changed remarkably during the 10 years. (2) The mean effect size of all the factors in The SCL-90 concentrated between-0.27-0.46. Further, the factors of somatization, depression, anxiety and horrorare had no significant different with the general adult norm and the other five factors had significant different with the general adult norm and the scores of the other five factors are obviously lower than the norm. (3) The correlation analysis results between different pilot types (Civil aviation and military pilots) and the factors of the SCL-90 showed that the Civil aviation pilots’ mental health level is lower than the military pilots, but the difference did not reach significant level （0.0690.05）。 Therefore, to enhance the pilots’ mental health education, to improve the ability of adaption and international cooperation is imminent. In addition, the management should give pilots the appropriate decompression as soon as possible and based on the findings to establish the relevant supporting measures to ensure flight safety and improve their treatment. Key words Pilot, SCL-90, Meta-analysis, cross-temporal meta-analysis References | Related Articles | Metrics

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An Analysis of the Concept of Psychological Harmony 2013, 36(1): 235-239.  Abstract ( )   PDF   This paper aims to explore the concept of psychological harmony from the perspective of positive psychology as well as the relationship among the psychological harmony and mental health, self-consistency and congruence, and subjective well-being. Psychological harmony is a kind of unified and relatively stable relationship which among the psychological elements and all the elements that directly influences it in the overall sense of harmonization. Psychological harmony included four subsystems, internal mental harmony, mental harmony between individuals and matters, interpersonal mental harmony and body-mind harmony. There was no original relationship between the psychological harmony and the positive psychology in terms of the background and the research context. But its connotation in essence belongs to the category of positive psychology. Psychological harmony exists in the linkages among two or more psychological elements and focus on horizontal relationships between them. But mental health focus on the overall functional status or characteristics emerged from the interaction of all the psychological elements. The connection between psychological harmony and mental health is that both of them require the coordination among all kinds of psychological elements. Mental health including psychological harmony and the psychological harmony is the important content of the mental health and the reflection of it. The differences between the psychological harmony and self-consistency and congruence are that they are subordinate to different disciplines. The connotations are also different between them either. The means of “mind” in the psychological harmony contains one′s cognition, emotion, willing and personality. But it is just confines in the scope of personality in self-consistency and congruence. The connection between psychological harmony and self-consistency and congruence is that the latter is a vital parts the former or even the basis of it. The differences between the psychological harmony and subject well-being is that psychological harmony is focus on the unified and relatively stable relationship which among the psychological elements and all the elements that directly influence it in the overall sense of harmonization. But subjective well-being describing or reflecting a kind of emotional state which is based on cognition. Compared with the subjective well-being, the subjectivity of psychological harmony is weaker. The connection between psychological harmony and subjective well-being is that both of them reflecting the positive aspects of one′s mind. And the two variables can predict index of each other. And above all, it is the creativity of this paper to fit the concept of psychological harmony into the field of positive psychology as well as reveal the differences and connections with mental health, self-consistency and congruence, and subjective well-being. Related Articles | Metrics

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the interpretation of survival processing advantage effect 2013, 36(1): 240-244.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The effect of survival processing advantage refers to that words incidentally processed for their relevance to a survival scenario have better true recognition and recall relative to other deep processing controls and rival scenarios. There have been a number of studies on this topic since it was found five years ago, and several models which used to explain this effect turn up. The present article makes a review about those studies, which specially focus on four models with the introduction and analysis of recent studies in details: The Thematic Processing Hypothesis、The Congruity Effect Hypothesis、The Emotional Processing Hypothesis and The Nature Selection Hypothesis. According to the first hypothesis, participants who are led to carry on survival processing incline to put all the study words together on the basis of the survival theme, namely processing for the relationship of these words. As to the second hypothesis, the congruity between the processing scenario and the meaning of the study words might contribute to the prevalent survival processing advantage, which makes the words easier to remember and retrieval. According to the third hypothesis, survival processing simply leads to more arousal or emotional processing of the rated words. Increased arousal might serve as a general proximate mechanism, something that improves retention regardless of the specific context. According to the last hypothesis, a more convincing account of this effect, nature changes all the time, in order to adapt this change, the brain of our ancestors may change correspondingly, and we might be inherited a toolkit of cognitive adaptations that were designed originally to solve hunter-gatherer problems. In combination with prior studies, researches show that the theory of thematic processing、congruity effect and emotional processing seem not enough to explain this advantage, the theory of nature selection seems to explain it better, but the theory of nature selection is lake of some direct evidence. According to the nature selection theory, it may emerge several assumptions: ①The adaptation rooted in nature selection is inherited our ancestor, so infant and old people should show this effect, and it can exist through one's life. ②The nature selection restricts the role of gender, it should show the difference of the gender role when the processing scenario is aimed at the role. ③Memory is adaptive, so survival processing should retain information longer than other processing in order to serve future. ④Survival and reproduction are closely linked with each other, if reproduction scenario can produce a good retention, it can be regard as a convincing argument for the nature selection theory. Whatever happens, the effects of survival processing advantage indeed exist. For this reason, in the scene of daily life and education which are far away from the laboratory, whether survival processing can promote student's retention and has different effect on students of different age should become the focus of development and education psychologist. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Application of Dynamics and Attractor Theory in Conflict Study 2013, 36(1): 245-250.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Conflict is a process that begins with an experience of difference of clashing needs or interests – that unfolds and changes over time, and can range from extremely negative to extremely positive interactions. Addressing conflict from a dynamical perspective is a breakthrough in research on conflict in recent years. Any conflict can be treated as a dynamical system. A dynamical system is defined as a set of interconnected elements that change and evolve in time. A change in each element depends on influences from other elements. In terms of a dynamical perspective, conflict is inherently dynamical process. Unlike the traditional concepts and methods, the dynamical perspective considers conflict and conflict-related processes as a complex system. The relationship among the parties to conflict forms the specific conflict mode which decides the relationships and behavior rules for all parties in conflict and becomes origin and internal dynamic of conflict. The key to understanding conflict from the dynamical perspective centers on the notion of attractor. Attractor, in short, is a state or a reliable pattern of changes toward which a dynamical system evolves over time and to which the system returns after it has changed. In psychological meaning, attractor channels mental and behavioral experience into a narrow range of coherent states. The nature of attractors determines the state and evolving tendency of conflict. Therefore, intervening conflicts means to change the inherent dynamical characters of the conflict system, namely the attractor. To change the nature of a conflict system needs to establish a new pattern in which the original attractor has transited from negativity to positivity. A change in attactor can reactivate the conditions that form entirely different model of thought, feeling, and action in relations between the parties.The deconstruction of an attractor for a destructive conflict involves restoring the multidimensionality of the conflict system, introducing negative feedback loops into the relationships, and seting up a new equilibrium among conflic-related parties. In order to assess the nature of a conflict system, we can use the Attractor Software that assists us in mapping the things affecting a conflict’s dynamics – how it moves and operates over time. Specifically, it assists us in answering the following questions: What is the current state of the conflict? What is the potential for a conflict to develop in a constructive or destructive way? In general, from the dynamical perspective, a successful intervention represents that all aspects in a conflict have formed a new mental and behavior pattern along with a different psychological and social environment. The dynamical perspective on conflicts offers an innovative set of ideas and methods to comprehend and resolve conflict. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Thought of Embodied Cognition in Dewey’s Reflex Arc Concept Anna CHEN Wei 2013, 36(1): 251-255.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Embodied Cognition (EC) is a growing popular research program which is general in cognitive science and particular in cognitive psychology. The embodied cognition is featured as the emphasis it places on the role the body plays in one’s cognitive processes. Its central meaning includes the following claims: (1) one’s actions and other body-related traits (e.g. posture) have an effect on one’s cognition; (2) our understanding of the world is not an abstract proposition but fundamentally depends on our multisensory experiences with it and relevant experiences include movements, emotional events, and the processing of spatial and temperature dimensions; (3) cognition is a progress that is continuously evolutionary, developmental and environmental, rather than a kind of prior logical ability. Body movement itself reflects survival intentionality to promote cognitive development, and one’s cognition is meshed with the world. In the recent decades, embodied cognition gets more and more popular in psychology liking a ghost floating above. Actually, it has a long past instead of being a ghost. In the history of human thought, lots of thoughtful people such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Dewey have criticized dualism and put forward that the body and the mind are actually an integrated whole. The paper “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology”, wrote by Dewey in 1896 and published on The Psychological Review, containing the prototype of embodied cognition, its central meaning as following includes: (1) coordination of body movement constitutes the sensory-motor circuit; (2) in the sensory-motor circuit ,body experience based on the coordination of body movement is continuous; (3) coordination of body movement and continuity of body experience are the component of the organism which is meshed with the environment, so their ultimate goal is to adapt to the environment. Johnson (2010) has summarized that following William James and C.S. Peirce, Dewey crafts a non-dualistic, body-based theory of human cognition, a view grounded in the brain science and psychology of his day, but also remarkably consonant with so-called “embodied cognition” views in contemporary cognitive neuroscience. In the paper “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology”, Dewey emphasized that the coordination of body movement and the continuity of body experience controlled one’s sensory-motor circuit. Moreover, he also stressed that we shouldn’t study the sensory-motor circuit regardless of the environment because they were a unity. These views are consistent with the claims of embodied cognition in contemporary psychology that the body movement and body experience have an influence on one’s cognition while body, cognition and environment are a unity. Compared with the viewpoints of embodied cognition in contemporary psychology, Dewey’s viewpoints showed in the paper “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” have something new. On the one hand, Dewey stressed the coordination of body movement affecting one’s cognition instead of separating the body movement as contemporary study does. On the other hand, compared with the study of contemporary embodied cognition, he paid attention to the continuity of body experience. Finally, he considered adapting to the environment as a final goal of organism's cognition rather than a factor affecting one’s cognition. Therefore, in our future research, we can refer to Dewey’s foresight of embodied cognition. Related Articles | Metrics