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Optimization of event-related design in functional magnetic resonance imaging: a two stage approach Ce MO 2013, 36(6): 1282-1290.  Abstract ( )   PDF (589KB) ( )   Related Articles | Metrics

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The Experimental Research about the Influence of Anxiety on Conscious Retrieval and Unconscious Retrieval of Image Information 2013, 36(6): 1291-1295.  Abstract ( )   PDF (335KB) ( )   The goal of the present study was to examine the influence of trait anxiety, priming anxiety and no anxiety on conscious retrieval and unconscious retrieval. This study also tried to explore the psychological mechanism that the memory bias about image information varied with anxieties. By Trait Anxiety Questionnaire of State-trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), we chose 20 trait anxiety subjects and 40 non anxiety subjects who were divided into priming anxiety group and control group. The experiment materials were 60 positive pictures, 60 negative pictures and 60 neutral pictures. Contribution rates of conscious retrieval and unconscious retrieval were assessed by the PDP Procedure put forward by Gruppuso, and so on. The results showed that: (1) Whether in unconscious retrieval or in conscious retrieval, the memory scores of the trait anxiety group on negative pictures were better than ones on positive pictures and neutral pictures, while the memory scores of the priming anxiety group on negative pictures were a little better than ones on positive pictures only in unconscious retrieval. (2)The unconscious retrieval scores of the trait anxiety group were much better than their conscious retrieval scores on negative pictures, while the unconscious retrieval scores of the priming anxiety group and the control group on negative pictures were slightly better than their conscious retrieval scores. We found no significant difference between the unconscious retrieval scores and conscious ones of the priming anxiety group and the control group on any kind of pictures. (3) The conscious retrieval scores of the trait anxiety group were slightly better than the priming anxiety group and higher than the control group on negative pictures, while the scores of the priming anxiety group were slightly better than the control group; the conscious retrieval scores of the trait anxiety group were lower than the priming anxiety group and the control group on positive pictures, while the scores of the priming anxiety group were slightly lower than the control group. (4) The unconscious retrieval scores of the trait anxiety group were better than the priming anxiety group and the control group on negative pictures and neutral pictures, while the scores of the control group were slightly better than the trait anxiety group and the priming anxiety group. Our conclusion are as follows: (1) Whereas anxiety has some impact on conscious retrieval and unconscious retrieval of image information, unconscious retrieval is most sensitive to trait anxiety and conscious retrieval is most sensitive to no anxiety. (2) The unconscious retrieval of negative pictures is closely related with trait anxiety and little with priming anxiety and no anxiety. (3)While trait anxiety obviously promotes conscious retrieval and unconscious retrieval of negative pictures but hinders retrieval of positive pictures, priming anxiety promotes conscious retrieval of negative pictures. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Emotional and Adequate Information on Reasoning: the Moderation Effect of Time Pressure Jessica GAI Chu ZHOU 2013, 36(6): 1296-1300.  Abstract ( )   PDF (330KB) ( )   Dual-process theories of reasoning posit two distinct but interactive processes that compete for control of the response that participants make in reasoning tasks. Heuristic system is an automatic belief-based system that is characterized as rapid, implicit, associative, and heavily contextualized. While analytic system is a demanding logic-based system that is described as slow and sequential but capable of abstraction and generalization. The present study investigated the potential influence of characteristics of information on both heuristic and analytic system, and the moderation effect of time pressure. With a 2 (passive information vs. active information) × 2 (adequate information vs. inadequate information) between-subject design, we examined how the emotional and adequate information influenced the heuristic system and analytic system respectively. The current sample consisted of 121 students, 61 for experiment 1 and 60 for experiment 2, and participants were required to perform a syllogistic reasoning task that was about the description of unconventional emergency. In experiment 1, participants made reasoning response without any time limit, while in experiment 2, they had to response under time pressure. Our hypothesis was that adequate information had significant effect on analytic system, while emotional information had significant effect on heuristic system, and both effects were modulated by time pressure. According to dual-process theories, two indices, logic index and belief index, were calculated respectively to reflect how heuristic system and analytic system work. The logic index measures the difference between acceptance of valid and invalid conclusions: the bigger the index, the more logical the responding. And the belief index similarly measures the difference in acceptance of believable and unbelievable conclusion: the bigger the index, the more belief bias is observed. In experiment 1, for logic index, MNOVA showed a significant main effect of adequacy of information, F(1, 57)=4.295, partialη2=0.07, p<.05. Participants’ logic indices were significantly higher when they were provided adequate information. For belief index, MNOVA showed a significant interaction between emotion and adequacy of information, F(1, 57)=4.507, partialη2=0.073, p<.05. As predicted, when adequate information was provided, the belief indices of participants who obtained positive information were significantly higher than those who obtained negative information. In experiment 2, for logic index, MNOVA showed a significant main effect of emotion of information, F(1, 56)=4.281, partialη2=0.071, p<.05. Participants’ logic indices were higher when they faced with positive information. However, for belief indices, no main effects and interaction were found. These findings indicated that both emotional and adequate information had effects on reasoning, and the effects were modulated by time pressure. The adequacy of information influenced reasoning process mainly through analytic system, while emotional information could influence both analytic and heuristic system. In other words, compared with negative information, positive information facilitated heuristic system under no time pressure condition, but facilitated analytic system under time pressure condition. The results were discussed under dual-process theories. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Mechanism of Involuntary Intrusive Anxiety：An Experiment of Threat Information Subliminal Priming Effect 2013, 36(6): 1301-1306.  Abstract ( )   PDF (414KB) ( )   In the interpretation of involuntary intrusive anxiety, psychologists tended to emphasize the importance of unconscious stimulation. Unconscious processing of threat is a type of automatic processing that is especially relevant to the core symptoms of pathological anxiety and may contribute to the experience of what is perceived as free-floating anxiety in generalised anxiety disorder (Mathews & Mackintosh, 1998). But social phobia, panic and obsessive-compulsive disorder are related to consciousness processing of threat, which are called intrusive thoughts (Li & Zinbarg, 2007). The association between conscious and unconscious threat processing remains unclear. Using subliminal affective priming paradigm, we studied the threat information subliminal priming effect and the moderating role of trait anxiety on it. 38 participants took part in the experiment. In the emotional Stroop task and awareness check, Chinese word sets (including dangerous words and neutral words ) were presented subliminally and supraliminally while the baseline did not present words so corresponding stems could be used to assess baseline completion. Subliminal, supraliminal, and baseline trials were presented in a random order. Each trial began with a word and/ or a mask using the same timing, word lists, colours, and font parameters as in the emotional Stroop task. Following the question (‘‘What’s the word?’’), participants either attempted to report the word or said ‘‘no’’. If a participant ever correctly reported a word in the subliminal condition (as happened for seven subjects), data from all trials were excluded. In the words completion participants were instructed to complete the stem to the first word to come to mind using the Chinese character presented while excluding any word just seen. Given the possibility that the stem led to conscious awareness of the word, the instruction to exclude the word when producing a completion provided a further safeguard against contamination by conscious perception of a word. We hypothesized subliminal word perception could elicit unconscious processing and result in an increased likelihood of using that word in the stem-completion task and there was interaction between trait anxiety and word valence on priming. The results were: (1) The hit rate of the target word in the subliminal trials was significantly higher than the baseline condition; (2) For the high TA group, the priming effect of dangerous words was significantly higher than that of neutral words, while for the low TA group, the priming effect of neutral words was significantly higher than that of dangerous words. We concluded that subliminal priming effect was significant and the unconscious processing of threat information of high TA group enhanced the conscious processing of the threat information leading to the involuntary intrusive anxiety. The findings support the notion that unconscious processing of threat among highly anxious individuals tends to break through into consciousness. A scenario whereby unconscious threat processing among highly anxious individuals leads directly to intrusive anxious thoughts may constitute an important mechanism responsible for the development and maintenance of anxiety. Related Articles | Metrics

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Working Memory Content-based Visual Selective Attention——The Adjusting Mechanism of Background Color Ai-Jun WANG Yang Zhang 2013, 36(6): 1307-1311.  Abstract ( )   PDF (322KB) ( )   The item that matched the content of working memory (WM) could affect the orientation of visual attention, namely visual attention turned to choose the space or objects that were maintained in WM. According to the theory of optical complementary color, when the two colors of complementary pairs appear at the same time, it can cause the high contrast, and forms the largest bright in color vision. So in present study, according to the theory of contrast effect of complementary color, we adopt the experimental paradigm that combines the memory task with the visual search task, and introduce the background color to highlight the color of memory item and search target, thus it influences the visual selective attention that is based on the content of WM. In present study, we designed the two single factor bi-level within-subject experiments to separately operate the background color on the color of memory item and search target, in order to investigate whether there is a strong automaticity on the content of WM guide visual attention. In memory task, the participants were required to memorize the color of the memory sample. After that, the visual search display was presented. Search sequences consisted of six colored squares with a gap on their sides, the participants had to indicate which side of the target had a gap quickly and accurately. At the end of the trial, a single colored square was presented as a memory test probe. The participants had to judge whether or not the color of the probe was identical to the color of the memory sample. In experiment 1, the color of backgrounds and memory items were complementary color from beginning to end in order to highlight the memory items. In experiment 2, the color of backgrounds and target were complementary color all along to highlight the target. The results were as follows: (1) On the condition of operating the colors between background and memory items, the effect of the contents of WM was significant, and the RTs were significantly longer in the match condition than in the mismatch condition, t(1,11)=3.027, p<0.05. This finding supported that the memory-matching object had a privileged status to capture attention, even when there was absolutely no benefit for subjects to bias attention in favor of the memory match, and this capture had a strong automaticity. (2) On the condition of operating the colors between background and target, the effect of the contents of WM was not significant, and the RTs between the match condition and the mismatch condition did not reach the significant level, t(1,11)=1.76, p=0.106. We suggested that when target had a salience in vision scenes, the items that were maintained in WM could not capture visual attention. Therefore, the item that matched the content of WM could direct visual attention automatically, but that direction had certain conditions. Related Articles | Metrics

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Didn’t hear? “Heard”: Evidence from auditory imagery neural mechanisms Xi-Shan HUANG 2013, 36(6): 1312-1316.  Abstract ( )   PDF (304KB) ( )   Auditory imagery is the introspective persistence of an auditory experience, including one constructed from components drawn from long-term memory, in the absence of direct sensory instigation of that experience. In recent years, researchers became much more concern about the study of auditory imagery. According to the kinds of sounds that can generate the auditory imagery, we classified auditory imagery researches into three types, verbal auditory imagery, musical auditory imagery and environmental auditory imagery. With the development of modern technology and cognitive neuroscience, researchers explored the activated brain areas when the auditory imagery emerged from these three different types of sounds. Recent finds of verbal auditory imagery suggested that auditory cortex and brain regions associated with attention, verbal monitoring and articulation were more activated when healthy subjects imaged verbal stimuli, while patients with schizophrenia who were prone to verbal hallucinations which Broca and Wernicke areas increased activity exhibited an attenuated deactivation in left superior temporal gyrus which was associated with verbal monitoring. It implicated that the left superior temporal gyrus was one of the key regions through which healthy people can discriminate verbal imagery from auditory stimuli. In musical auditory imagery researches, the superior temporal gyrus, as well as areas of the frontal lobe, parietal lobe and supplementary motor area were activated in musical auditory imagery and represented hemispheric processing asymmetries. Further, there were evidences that parietal cortex played an important role in mental reversal of imagined melodies as well as other mental transformation tasks, such as mental rotation in the visual imagery. In addition, EEG studies showed that musical auditory imagery interacted with music perception and encoded pitch and loudness information of music. There was existence of hemispheric processing asymmetries in environmental auditory imagery which depended on the secondary auditory cortex rather than the primary auditory cortex. And we compared the similarities and differences of the brain areas between auditory imagery and auditory perception. There were large numbers of brain regions overlap between auditory imagery and perception, but not all. At the end, there is some advice for the further researches. Obviously, researchers attempted to find out the association of auditory imagery and perception. Although they were similar in the neural mechanism, they were different, which we should unfold the specific mechanism of auditory imagery. Auditory imagery is an important element of cognitive processing related to language, music, and other environmental stimuli, but the studies of environmental auditory imagery are deficient. Moreover, auditory imagery activated brain regions associated with other cognitive processes, such as attention, memory and self-control. It indicated auditory imagery had common connection with other cognition function. It is worthy to explore the relationships between auditory imagery and other cognitive processes for elucidating the main mechanism of auditory imagery. Notably, there were substantial findings of mental transformation in visual imagery, while it was limited in auditory imagery which was a crucial skill to music implement. Finally, studies of auditory imagery neural mechanism have its clinical application value since abnormalities in cognitive processing related to auditory imagery are exhibited in or contribute to psychopathology. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Effect of Masking Material on Percetptual Span in Chinese reading Guo-Li Yan 2013, 36(6): 1317-1322.  Abstract ( )   PDF (393KB) ( )   Perceptual span refers to the area of effective vision from which useful information can be obtained during a fixation in reading (McConkie and Rayner, 1975 ; Rayner and Pollatsek, 1989;D. Shen et al.,2008). Research has demonstrated that skilled adult readers of Chinese obtain useful information from an asymmetric region extending roughly 1 character spaces to the left of fixation to about 2–3 character spaces to the right of fixation. To determine the size of the perceptual span, the classic gaze-contingent moving-window technique was developed (McConkie and Rayner, 1975 ). In this technique, the text outside a pre-defined window around the point of fixation is masked by Xs or scrambled letters. Thus, wherever the reader looks, the text is visible within the window, but outside the window the text is disrupted in some way. By varying the masking material, the researcher have found the perceptual span is different in English and other alphabetic writing systems In the present study gaze-contingent moving-window technique was used to explore the effect of masking material on perceptual span of Chinese reading. 26 college students participated. Their eye movements were recorded with a SR Research EyeLink eye tracker. 130 sentences were presented in seven viewing conditions (R1、R2、R3、R4、L1R4、L2R4 and whole line) to examine the perceptual span of college students in different masking conditions. The results showed: (1) Compared with symbol masking condition, the reading efficiency in character masking conditon was lower, average fixation time was longer and saccade amplitude was smaller. (2) The participants could obtain useful information from an asymmetric region extending roughly 1 character space to the left of fixation to about 2–3 character spaces to the right of fixation in the symbol masking condition, and the perceptual span extended 1 character space to the left of fixation to about 3–4 character spaces to the right of fixation in the character masking condition. In summary, the perceptual span is larger but the reading efficiency is lower in the character masking condition than those of symbol masking. Perhaps character is more approriate to be used as the masking material to study the perceptual span in Chinese reading. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Single-page and Multi-pages Presentation Designs on User Search Performance and Satisfaction of Web Message 2013, 36(6): 1323-1327.  Abstract ( )   PDF (300KB) ( )   The current study examines the differences in user performance and satisfaction within two general types of webpage information presentation (i.e., single-page and multi-pages). The results provide several empirical suggestions related to webpage design. Two experiments were conducted with 46 participants. The materials used in present study were simulation of web pages, which contains picture and text organized in identical layout. In Experiment 1, we examined the effect of different types of multiple webpage presentation on participants’ task performance and subjective rating. Four types of multi-pages pagination were tested: pagination with a linear count of page chunks, pagination with drop-down selection of page chunks, pagination with direct-enter text box, pagination with forward and backward buttons. Each participant underwent 12 webpage relevant tasks in each page presentation condition first. Participants then were asked to judge these web pages based on their own preference with paired comparison paradigm. The results showed that no significant difference was observed in accuracy, however, there was significant difference among 4 types of pagination both in task completion time (p < .01) and in subjective preference paired comparison(p < .01).The post hoc analysis of completion time indicated that participants spent shortest time in linear count of page chunks design (841ms, p < .01). Direct-enter text box had the longest completion time (1884ms, p < .01). No significant difference was found between forward and backward buttons and drop-down selection of page chunks (1484ms and 1537ms, p > .05). For the preference, linear count of page chunks was most preferred by subjects (81, p < .01). In Experiment 2, we further investigated the effect of page presentation on task completion performance and subjective rating by manipulating task difficulty. Each participant completed 14 search tasks, half of them were judged as easy tasks, while the other half belonged to hard ones. In easy tasks, subjects were asked to find the target information whose exact names were given. In hard tasks, participants find the target information according to some description. Following the searching tasks, each participant filled a satisfaction questionnaire with 5-point Likert scale from 4 aspects: information accessibility, subjective feeling, amount of information, and layout preference. The performance results showed higher accuracy in multi-pages than in single-page presentation (93.80% and 88.60%, p < .05). In addition, the performance difference webpage presentations were influenced by task difficulty, which demonstrated a better performance only in the hard task (89.05% and 78.10%, p < .01), but not in the easy one (98.57% and 99.05%, p > .05).The completion time showed similar results as those of accuracy. For the ratings, multi-pages was scored higher than single-page in each aspect. These results taken together indicate that the pagination with a linear count of page chunks is the best multi-pages design in both performance and subjective satisfaction. In terms of information presentation, multi-pages tends to be superior in both performance and preference to single-page. In summary, multi-pages with a linear count of page chunks is an optimal design of web page. Related Articles | Metrics

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I See, therefore I Am ?——A Perspective from Rubber Hand Illusion of Self Body-ownership 2013, 36(6): 1328-1332.  Abstract ( )   PDF (329KB) ( )   The ‘rubber hand illusion’ is a perceptual phenomenon. In 1998 Botvinick and Cohen provided the first description of the rubber hand illusion. In the classical RHI experiment the subjects was seated with their left arm rested on the table. A standing screen was positioned beside the arm to hide it from the subject’s view while a realistic life-sized rubber hand was placed in front of the subject. The subjects’ eyes fixed on the artificial hand while experimenter used two small paintbrushes to stroke the rubber hand and the subject’s hidden hand, synchronizing timing as closely as possible. After a short period, subjects completed a two-part questionnaire and proprioceptive drift measure. (The result showed that)Subjects reported feeling a sense of ownership of the rubber hand and proprioceptive drift towards the rubber hand. Subsequent experiments have been done by researchers after the classical RHI experiment. The materials, stimuli presentation, participants selection and other aspects of the experiment have been improved in different ways. The change of the classical experiment resulted in a tremendous new findings. The mechanism of the RHI still needs more research. What we know is that there are two possible explanations on the RHI. First one involved the pure multisensory integration. Many researchers think that the rubber hand illusion reflected a three-way interaction between vision, touch, and proprioception. Second one considered the RHI is modulated by top-down influences originating from the representation of one’s own body and bottom-up processes of multisensory integration. Evidences suggested that RHI can be influenced by many factors. Firstly, the “spatial limits” is an important phenomenon in the RHI. If the distance between the rubber hand and the participant’s own hand was too larger, the strength of the rubber hand illusion was signi?cantly reduced. Secondly, the occurrence of RHI is affected by anatomical and postural constrains. If the dummy hand was placed in an anatomically implausible position, the RHI effects are abolished. The extent of the RHI depends on the alignment between the actual position of the subject’s hand and the seen position of the dummy hand. Thirdly, many studies showed that the spatiotemporal pattern of stimulation influences the RHI. The necessary condition for the inducement of the illusion is the presence of synchronized and spatially congruent visual and tactile stimulation. This illusion does not occur when the rubber hand is stroked asynchronously with respect to the participant's own hand. The future research should stress in the participant selection, research strategy, self explore and will probably have many important clinical applications, and for example, using a modi?ed version of the rubber hand illusion can not only promote the amputation patients to integrate artificial limb into the body schema, but also help consciousness to control and manipulate prosthetic. The rubber hand illusions will promote paralysis patients and stroke patient's physical and cognitive rehabilitation. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Mechanism of Trust in Risk perception: Symmetry or Asymmetry? 2013, 36(6): 1333-1338.  Abstract ( )   PDF (404KB) ( )   In 1993, Slovic developed “asymmetry principle” of trust by contrasting trust degree of college students to positive and negative events, that is to say, negative events has a much stronger effect on decreasing social trust than positive events on increasing it; “trust is much easier to destroy than to create.” He thought it was because of some negative psychological tendencies. Siegrist and Cvetkovich(2001) called them “negativity bias”. White et al.(2003) proposed the other two explanations: extremity bias and confirmatory bias. Over the past ten years, different researchers replicated Slovic’s classic study, continually and deeply explored asymmetry principle by different types of information and hazard, as well as pre-attitude. Their results partly supported asymmetry principle. They concluded that asymmetry would be influenced by many issues like pre-attitude. In certain conditions, trust would be symmetry. Therefore, they pointed that asymmetry was not general attribute of trust, but special representation on some conditions. Earle、Cvetkovich、Siegrist etc refuted asymmetry principle by framework of trust, suggesting that trust included social trust and confidence. The former was based on shared values, obeying similarity principle, thus it was resilient, symmetry; the latter was based on objective behavior standards. Once events were incongruent to these standards, confidence would be destroyed, thus it was fragile, asymmetry. Earle et al. concluded that, previous researches mainly aimed at confidence, resulting in asymmetry principle. They considered that social trust was the key point of studies on trust. This paper pointed that, the reason why Slovic developed “asymmetry principle” of trust is that, he didn’t differentiate social trust and confidence; and he chose nuclear power which is high risk hazard and public couldn’t accept at all. Thus, any information about nuclear power would affect public trust, especially negative ones. The researchers followed replicated and expanded Slovic’s classic study. Though they got some valuable results on conditional asymmetry, they were still based on asymmetry principle and negativity bias, and didn’t notice the construction of trust. Thus their contribution is limited. Earle et al. suggested that trust was symmetry because they were aware of the definition or structure of trust, aiming at social trust rather than confidence. And they analyzed it by three models——SVS Model, TCC Model, and Function Model. Their work promoted theoretical exploration of trust. In a word, the reason why there was contradiction like “asymmetry” and “symmetry” was that, there were differences on the definition or framework of trust. The former saw trust as unidimensional rather than multidimensional developed by the latter. No matter trust is symmetry or asymmetry, in real risk management, we should make great efforts to quest for measures to improve public social trust and confidence, promote the development of technology, enhance the level of life, and stabilize risk management. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Facial Expression and Gaze Direction in Attentional Orienting 2013, 36(6): 1339-1346.  Abstract ( )   PDF (420KB) ( )   Abstract Changeable aspects of faces, such as gaze shifts and facial expressions, provide human with powerful social signals that permit inferences about the internal states and intentions of others. It is important for observer to understand how facial expression and gaze direction change in social situations. In order to investigate the problem, the current study adopted spatial cues paradigm to examine the impact of concurrent changes in cue and target emotion and their interactions with gaze shifts during attentional orienting. Each trial consisted of a dynamic neutral face cue stimulus and a neutral word target in the first experiment. Subjects should look at faces gazed ahead in the first frame for 300ms. The second frame consisted of a left, direct, or right eye gaze for 300 or 700ms. Subjects were to determine where words would appear in the third frame. The goal was to confirm gaze cuing effect. During the second experiment，the only difference was face cues. Fearful and happy expression faces adopted in the second frame. Participants’ reaction was the same with that in the first experiment. We obtained the results suggest there was gaze cuing effect in neutral and emotional faces in both stimulus onset asynchrony. But only in long stimulus onset asynchrony, the difference of cuing effect amount was significant between fearful and neutral faces as well as fearful and happy faces. But happy face isn’t significantly different from neutral one. So gaze and emotional expression may be processed in separate streams at first. Facial expression took precedence over gaze direction with respect to its early effect. Then facial expression and gaze direction interacted after some time. Besides behavioral data，Event-related Potentials(ERP) data acquisition by 128 electrode cap link with Net Station showed the main effect of emotion appeared in P1 triggered by expression cues. The amplitude of P1 induced by fearful faces was bigger than the other two expressions. It showed fearful expression indicated potential dangerous in environment. So observers needed more attentional resources to react appropriately. The brain components of P1 and N1 evoked by target reflected main effect of cuing effect. The P1 and N1 amplitude was bigger when the target was opposite the position cued by faces. In sum，the current study illustrated that how individuals process attentional orienting in different emotional faces when they can’t predict the outcome of environment. ERP analysis also showed that the emotion and direction of gaze separated in early stage. And then they interacted after full processing. This research explored the time course integration of facial expression and gaze direction which has not been studied before. The behavioral and ERP results provided us new evidence of different effects about gaze direction and expression. It helped us describe the physiological mechanisms in human brain of joint attention and social reference. Related Articles | Metrics

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Spatial–temporal association of response codes effect：Evidence from manual and saccadic responses 2013, 36(6): 1347-1354.  Abstract ( )   PDF (475KB) ( )   The spatial–temporal association of response codes (STEARC) effect reflects a space-related representation of time (mental time line) with a genuine left-to-right orientation. Alternatively, it may simply reflect an over learned motor association between time and manual responses. In this study, we want to explore STEARC effect under different response conditions, i.e. manual and saccadic response. There are two experiments in this study. Experiment 1a and Experiment 1b tested the STEARC effect using horizontally arrayed left/right responses by manual and saccadic responses respectively. Experiment 2a and Experiment 2b used vertically arrayed bottom/top responses by manual and saccadic responses respectively. The stimuli consisted of the two types of time words (past vs. future), which were displayed in the center of a computer monitor. Manual or saccadic response latencies were recorded. The Lenovo computer was used to records manual data and the SMI EyeLink-2000 systems was used to track saccadic response. In experiment 1, there was a interaction between response side and time words. Left-hand responses were faster than right-hand responses of the past words, Right-hand responses were generally faster than left-hand responses of the past words. There was also a interaction between saccadic and time words, past words responses were faster to the left saccadic, future words responses were faster to the right saccadic. In experiment 2, there was a interaction between response side and time words. Past words responses were faster of the top key, future words responses were faster of the bottom key, there was also a interaction between saccadic and time words, past words responses were faster to the up saccadic, future words responses were faster to the down saccadic. In addition, the error rate results support our hypothesis. The result suggest that that the time–space associations consistently found by manual and saccadic response conditions, which cannot be caused by preferred and overlearned manual motor associations. Our findings support the interpretation that in two response conditions, space-related magnitude representations are automatically activated and modulate efficiency a horizontal or a vertical motor response. The present results also suggest that time map is a preferred explanation for STEARC, not a mental timeline. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Targets’ Marking Types on Multiple Object Tracking Performance Zhang Xuemin 2013, 36(6): 1355-1362.  Abstract ( )   PDF (544KB) ( )   MOT (Multiple Object Tracking) begins with an experimental paradigm developed by Pylyshyn and Storm (1988) and becomes an active and challenging research topic today. It is a widely used paradigm in the study of capacity-limit and object-based attention. Much like MOT, MIT (Multiple Identity Tracking) in which each object carries a unique identity is used to study more complicated cognitive processes, such as identity recognition. In previous studies, MOT and MIT tasks were usually presented in visual modality, for example, when marking the objects to be tracked during the cueing phase, the targets would flash a few times or there were squares occurred outside the targets, which were both by visual forms. However, in the real world, people usually receive various kinds of information from multiple sensory modalities. Especially when lacking visual information, people will rely more on the information input from auditory or other sensory modalities. The present study investigated the effect of visual marking and audiovisual cross-modality marking of targets on participants’ tracking performance. The present study included 2 experiments and compared the effects of four different marking type on people’s tracking performance. The four different marking types are visual-parallel marking, visual-sequence marking, auditory-sequence marking (audiovisual cross-modality marking) and audiovisual double-modality marking respectively. In the visual-parallel marking condition, objects to be tracked flashed a few times simultaneously, while in the visual-sequence marking condition, the targets flashed one by one. In the auditory-sequence marking condition, the observers first heard the sound of numbers (experiment 1) or characters (experiment 2) inside the objects, and then searched for the location of the targets according to the identity of the targets heard before. And in the audiovisual double-modality marking condition, the observers not only saw the flash of targets but also heard the identity of targets. Experiment 1 found that when there’re 4 to-be-tracked targets, people’s tracking performance in visual-sequence marking condition was the best among the four marking types. And when there’re 5 to-be-tracked targets, participants’ tracking performance in audiovisual double-modality marking condition was the best. Experiment 2 demonstrated that when there’re 4, 5, or 6 to-be-tracked targets, people’s tracking performances in visual-parallel marking condition and visual-sequence marking condition were better than that of auditory-sequence marking condition. The present study showed that tracking accuracy of visual-parallel marking and visual-sequence marking was significantly higher than that of audiovisual cross-modality marking. It suggested visual marking was more effective than audiovisual cross-modality marking in MOT, and parallel or serial processing didn’t affect the tracking performance. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Iffects Of Item Difficulty And Reward On Self-paced Study Time 2013, 36(6): 1363-1368.  Abstract ( )   PDF (336KB) ( )   How people allocate study time? Agenda-Based Regulation proposed by Ariel, Dunlosky and Bailey(2009), assumes that learners construct and execute agendas which play a core role in study time allocation. The present research was conducted to further explore the internal mechanism of the construction of agendas by examining the effects of item difficulty and item reward on self-paced study time. Experiment 1a and 1b were conducted to exam the effects of item difficulty and item reward on self-paced study time respectively. There were 20 senior high school students taking part in Experiment 1a. Participants were asked to learn 30 noun-noun paired associates in Chinese. On one trail, the cues of three pairs were presented on computer screen and the targets of pairs would be display when they clicked on the pairs. One of the item pairs was easy, one was of medium difficulty, and one was difficult. The study time allowed for each trial was 10s. The results showed that participants devoted more of their study time to the difficult items than the medium and easy items. There were 18 senior high school students taking part in Experiment 1b. Participants were asked to learn 27 noun-noun paired associates in Chinese.The rewards of learning items were randomly assigned to the three pairs of each triad. Each triad was made up of one pair with 5 points, one pair with 3 points and one with 1 point. The same procedure uesd in Expeiment 1a were used in Experiment 1b. The results showed that participants allocated more study time to 5-point items than 3-point and 1-point items. The purpose of Experiment 2 was to investigate whether there existed a trade-off process when learners developped their agenders by manipulating the item difficulty and item rewared. We conducted two kinds of learning condictions, which were manipulating within subjects. This experiment found that participants spent more study time on 1-point difficult items and 5-point medium items than 5-point easy items in the “5-point medium item” condiction, and allocated more study time on 1-point difficult items than 1-point medium items and 5-point easy items in the “5-point medium item” condiction. The results indicated that there existed a trade-off process in the self-paces study for learners, which was based on the principle of achieving task goals as efficiently as possible. These results were in accordance with the agenda-based regulation model (ABR) regarding the study time allocaion. Not only the item difficulty but also the item reward could affect the agenda construction and execution. Further more, These findings provided more evidence for the internal mechanism of the agenda construction of ABR framework (in terms of using the region of proximal learning) . Related Articles | Metrics

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Unconscious Spacial Representation of Physical Size and Cover Area Lin-Cheng HU 2013, 36(6): 1369-1374.  Abstract ( )   PDF (366KB) ( )   It is found that number comparison task and physical stimuli comparison task share the same process mechanism(Gallistel & Gelman, 2000). Unconscionsly, Dehaene, Naccache et al., (1998)and Naccache & Dehaene(2001) reveal that the unconscious semantic priming exists in number process. Hence the question is whether unconscious process exists in the process of number physical properties. The current study aims at whether priming effect and SNARC-like effect exist in the physical properties comparison task. Adopting masked priming procedure of Naccache and Dehaene (2001) , experiment 1 explore whether SNARC and priming effect exist in both number comparison task and number physical size comparison task. Subjects’ task is to compare sematic magnitude between target stimuli and standard stimuli. Subjects must either compare the sematic magnitude of numbers with 5 or compare the physical size of numbers with the physical size of 5. The presentation of stimuli and collection of responses were controlled by E-Prime software(PST software, Pittsburgh, USA). The experiment consists of 480 experimental trials. Each trial consists of senven events. First, present a blank cross on white screen; second, present standard stimulus 5 for 500 ms; third, present random letters as forward masking; fourth, present the priming stimulus for 43 ms or 33ms; fifth, present backward masking for 71 ms; sixth, present target stimulus for 200 ms; seventh, present some meaningless letters (e. g. , GMavBE) to suggest subject to react. Statistical analysis indicates that SNARC effect is significant，F (1, 19) =7.05; MS=141913.64; p=0.008，the reaction speed of accordant group is faster than that of disagreement group(335 ms vs. 344 ms). The main effect of priming time is significant, F (1, 19) =3.94; MS=79336.68; p=.047. When priming time is 33 ms, SNARC effect is significant, F (1, 19) =12.43; MS =239654.57; p=.000, while priming time is 43 ms, SNARC effect is not significant, F (1, 19) =.07; MS =1356.13; p=.80. The results of experiment 1 indicate that in both number comparison task and number physical size comparison task, SNARC effect, SNARC-like effect,priming effect and Stroop effect exist in 33 ms priming condition. SNARC effect exists not only in number sematic comparison task unconsciously, but also in the task of number physical size comparison. Experiment 2 is same with experiment 1 except for experimental materials. In Experiment 2, the number cover space replace the number physical size in Experiment 1. Statistical analysis indicates that the main effect of comparison task is significant, F (1, 20) =26.306; MS=370412.874; p=.000. The speed of number semantic comparison is 21 ms faster than that of number physical size comparison. SNARC effect is significant，F (1, 20) =24.756; MS=348579.132; p=0.000，the reaction speed of accordant group is faster than that of disagreement group(287 ms vs. 308 ms). Stroop effect is significant, F (1, 20) =6.608; MS=93038.800; p=.01, which means there is interaction between number semantic and number cover space in the comparison task. When smaller number combines with smaller cover space and bigger number combines with bigger cover space, reaction speed is faster, on the contrary, reaction speed is slower. The results indicate that SNARC-like effect, priming effect and Stroop effect also exist in number cover area comparison task in 33ms priming condition. To sum up, under 33 ms unconscious priming condition, there are SNARC effect, SNARC-like effect，priming effect and Stroop effect in number sematic comparison task and number physical size comparison task. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Nature of Implicit Self-esteem: Evidence from Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) 2013, 36(6): 1375-1382.  Abstract ( )   PDF (519KB) ( )   Researches have shown increasing interest in implicit self-esteem in the past few years because it was demonstrated that implicit self-esteem was one of the most important components of the self and had many clinical implications. The main indirect tool used to measure implicit self-esteem these years was Implicit Association Test (IAT). However, IAT had some limitations in measuring implicit self-esteem, the most important of which was that it can only detect a relative attitude toward oneself contrast to his/her attitude toward others instead of his/her pure implicit self attitude. The Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) developed by De Houwer (2003) could solve this problem. With randomly sampled 109 undergraduate students as subjects, using the EAST (De Houwer, 2003) developed in recent years as a indirect measure of implicit attitude, this study focused on the effectiveness of EAST on implicit self-esteem measurement and hence explore the nature of implicit self-esteem. The results indicated that: (1) people were prone to associate themselves with positive evaluating or feelings and associate others with negative evaluating or feelings, which indicated the nature of implicit self-esteem; (2) the implicit self-esteem effect could be expected to be unconscious positive evaluation for the self; (3) the implicit self-esteem effect was significantly stronger on trials where the self-referent stimulus was the name of the participant than on trials where the self-referent stimuli were generic words, demonstrating that names were more representative for the concept self than self-referent generic words; (4) participants’ implicit attitude toward others’ names was less negative than their implicit attitude toward other-referent generic words, indicating they held relatively neutral attitude toward others’ name, which had some Chinese culture implication. The present study demonstrates that EAST is valid to detect implicit self-esteem and it can measure individuals’ intensity and direction of implicit attitude toward themselves and others. EAST provides a new valid instrument for the studies on implicit self-esteem, although there is some suggestions to be followed when researchers are using it. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Chinese Two-Character Words‘ Phonological Associates on False Memory Wen-Mei SUN Hai-Lun LIU 2013, 36(6): 1388-1392.  Abstract ( )   PDF (301KB) ( )   Using the DRM paradigm, previous studies found semantical false memory. In recent years, experiments with Chinese characters as materials have been conducted to probe the phonological false memories. However, they haven’t arrived at the unified conclusion. So the present study aims to have a further exploration on the effect of false memory induced by Chinese two-character words’ phonological association. 　　The experiment was carried out on computers using the E-prime software and collectively conducted with 48 undergraduate students as the subjects. In the experiment, subjects were presented with 8 lists of Chinese two-character words and the task was to judge whether each testing item was “old” or not. The E-prime software recorded the results of judgment automatically. There were two types of phonological associates. Half of the lists contain words which belong to first-word associates with the first characters having the same syllables and the last characters having the same initials. While the other half contain words which belong to last-word associates with the first characters having the same initials and the last characters having the same syllables. Test materials included three types of words: studied items which were presented at the study phase; un-presented critical lures which were phonologically associated with the studied items and the intruding items which had no relationship with the studied items. 　　A 2(types of phonological associates) ×3(types of test words) within subjects ANOVA reveal significant main effects of both the two independent variables. For the types of phonological associates , F(1,47)=7.784, p<0.05, and for the types of test words, F(2,94)=474.932, p<0.05. The false recognition rate of the critical lures is significantly higher than that of the non-studied intruding items, and is close to that of the Chinese single-character words, but is significantly lower than the studied ones’. It shows that: (1) Chinese two-character words’ phonological association does have an effect on false memory. (2) The phonological false memory effect induced by the two-character and single-character words are close but are low compared with the semantical and orthographical false memory. (3) False recognition rate for the first-word associates is significantly lower than that of the last-word associates. 　　These results demonstrate that Chinese phonological association can induce false memory, which confirm the findings of Chinese single-character words’ phonological association(Qu & Ding, 2010). But because the activation mechanisms for the semantical and phonological false memory are different. Phonological false memory resulted from low level perceptual-based processing is not so robust and will not be enhanced with the increase of the strength of phonological associates. The present study also suggests that first-word associates and last-word associates have different effects. Future researches need to be done to study the distinctive characteristics on Chinese phonological false memories. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Context Cuing on Retrieval of Source Memory 2013, 36(6): 1393-1398.  Abstract ( )   PDF (390KB) ( )   The encoding specificity principle indicates that memory performance is affected by the degree of overlap between the learning context and the test context. Retrieval is facilitated when test conditions match encoding conditions, and this is called “context cuing effect”. The context cuing effect in item recognition was found quite unstable. Some researches proposed that only the ‘‘ensemble information'’ meaningfully integrated and bind uniquely with the item information could be an effective context cue. But so far, most studies in this area focus on the context cuing effect on item memory, few researches were conducted on the context cuing effect on source memory. The present study was conducted to examine in what kind of conditions the context cuing effect does appear when there were multidimensional source memories. In detail, whether the associativity of multidimensional source memories could generate context cuing effect in the retrieval of source memory and whether cue load would affect that course were investigated. Two experiments were conducted. Neuter words composed of two Chinese characters were used as items and background colors were used as context cue. In experiment 1, background locations were used as another dimension of source memory. Twelve college students took part in the experiment executed on a P4 computer. The experiment adopted a 3×3 with-in subject design. Three cue validity conditions (match, mismatch, new) and three cue load conditions (1:1, 1:2, 1:3) were arranged. In the stage of study, a word with a colored background rectangle was present on one location of a watch plate. Participants were instructed to remember the word, the color and the location. And then participants did a task to distract their attention for 90s. In the stage of test, a word with a colored background rectangle was present in the middle of the screen, and participants were asked to judge whether the word was old or new. If they judged that the word was old, then they were asked to point the location where the word was present in the stage of study with mouse. Accuracy rate of response of the location of the old word was recorded. The procedure of experiment 2 was the same as experiment 1 except the dimension of source memory which was background shape. The results indicated that (1) main effect of cue validity condition was not significant in experiment 1 which means background color could not become the context cue to the location source; (2) main effect of cue validity condition and cue load were all significant in experiment 2 which means background color could be used as an effective cue to the background shape; (3) context cue effect decreased as the increase of cue load in experiment 2. The results show that context cue effect could be generated by the associativity of source memories in the retrieval of source memory, which means remembering information of one source dimension will facilitate recalling information of another source dimension when the associativity of the two source dimension is high. Low cue load could promote the emergence of context cue. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Perceptual Interference Effect in Chinese Characters and Words of Low Frequency 2013, 36(6): 1399-1403.  Abstract ( )   PDF (296KB) ( )   Abstract The perceptual interference effect of memory refers to the phenomenon that masked presentations of English words during encoding counter-intuitively results in improved later memory. However, this effect is basically found with English words of high frequency. Further, controversies remain unsolved regarding how this effect is explained. More recently, a reverse effect has been found with Chinese characters of high frequency: characters that are followed by a mask are difficult to recognize in later test. This counter-effect of perceptual interference provides evidence against current theories of the interference effect. This counter effect has been suggested to reflect the reliance of Chinese characters on orthographic processing for semantic (deeper) processing during encoding, compared with English words and Chinese characters. Using a “study-test” paradigm, two experiments were run to examine this later suggestion with Chinese characters and double character compound words of low frequency. 384 Chinese characters (Experiment 1) and 384 compound words (Experiment 2) were presented to 55 native speakers of Mandarin（29 in experiment1, 26 in experiment 2） as participants in one of following 3 interference conditions in study phase. Specifically, a 500 ms prompt “+” was first presented, and then a character (or compound word) was either presented continuously for 2500 ms, or briefly (for 110 ms or 260 ms) and then followed by a mask of random stokes for the remaining time. The participants were then required to read the stimulus presented on the screen aloud. All the characters and compound words in the study portions were presented randomly. After a distractor task, the participants were given a yes-no recognition test. Two experiments were both run on DELL computer using E-prime software. As a result, the accuracy rate of character-recognition test was significantly higher and the RT was shorter in the no-mask condition than in other mask, especially stronger mask conditions (Exp. 1), whereas, no differences in both accuracy rate and RT of word-recognition test between any two conditions are significant (Exp. 2). In conclusion, counter interference effects occur for Chinese characters regardless of frequency, but not for Chinese compound words. It is again suggested that deeper processing for memory in Chinese characters more relies on orthographic processing than on phonological processing. Related Articles | Metrics

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Experimental Research on the Effect of Psychological Distance on Risky Choice Framing Effect 2013, 36(6): 1404-1407.  Abstract ( )   PDF (266KB) ( )   Construal Level Theory (CLT) is a social cognitive theory which was used to account for how psychological distance affects thought and decision making. From the perspective of CLT, this study explored how psychological distance affects the likelihood of risky choice framing effect. The study examined the effects of CLT on risky choice framing effect by conducting a 2(construal level: high vs. low) × 2(task frame: positive vs. negative) between subject factorial experiment from four dimensions (time, space, social distance, and probability) of psychological distance. Each dimension has four situations. It includes 16 situations in all. Every participant should finish one of the situational questionnaires randomly. The results showed that effect of risky choice framing effect was more significant in the high construal level condition than the low construal level condition. Specifically, participants in high-level construal condition conduct abstract processing and show more significant framing effect. Participants in low-level construal condition, in contrast, focus on concrete message and are more sensitive to the frame message. In addition to case of the high probability, risky choice framing effect was significant in each condition of the rest dimensions, which reflect the stability of framing effect. The outcome is consistent with our hypotheses. The results of this study provided evidence of the close connection between CLT and framing effect. In sum, construal level can influence the risky choice framing effect. Future study should pay attention to the mechanism of this interesting phenomenon. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Brain Function of Chinese Character Font Size and Phonological Processing between Literate and Illiterate Subjects: an fMRI Study 2013, 36(6): 1408-1412.  Abstract ( )   PDF (365KB) ( )   Chinese is a logographic language system that differs from alphabetic languages, and some of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying Chinese logographic reading also differ from those underlying alphabetic word reading (Tan, 2000, 2001). Our recent studies (Wu, 2007; Cai, 2007) have found functional segregation in the left inferior frontal gyrus, in which the dorsal regions are related to automatic access to an articulator representation at the syllable or phoneme level, and the ventral parts are related to lexical or semantic processing. However, it is still unknown whether education level effects the neural activation associated with the processing of Chinese. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the effects of education level on brain activation related with Chinese character font size and phonological processing of Chinese. Specifically, we designed two fMRI experiments with illiterate and literate subjects to assess the issue. In experiment 1, thirteen literate and thirteen illiterate subjects participated the visual Chinese characters and simple figures discrimination tasks. Subjects were asked to view the character or figure pairs and discriminate whether the characters or figures of each stimuli pair were the same or not using response keys. In experiment 2, the Chinese character voice and pure tone discrimination tasks were performed with twenty-six subjects. The subjects were also asked to press the response keys to discriminate whether the voice of characters or the pure tone pairs were the same or not. The results of behavioral measurement and fMRI analysis showed that stronger activations of Chinese literates than illiterates during language processing. In the experiment 1, we observed that the brain network of Chinese character font size processing in the left middle frontal gyrus (BA9), the left superior temporal gyrus (BA22) and the left inferior parietal gyrus (BA39). In the experiment 2, we observed that the brain network of Chinese phonological processing in the left middle frontal gyrus (BA6), the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (BA47), the bilateral superior temporal gyrus (BA21/22), the left middle temporal gyrus (BA38) and the right inferior parietal gyrus (BA40). As conclusion, Chinese character have different processing pattern than the English processing pattern in the human brain and literacy may affect brain plasticity by enhancing its cognitive valence during Chinese language processing. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Mediating Effects of Social Comparison on the Relations between Achievement Goal and Academic Self-Effect: the Evidence from the Junior High School Students 2013, 36(6): 1413-1420.  Abstract ( )   PDF (485KB) ( )   Achievement goal theory is a prominent social cognitive theory of motivation, and it is an advanced problem of achievement goal study. Recently, researchers divide achievement goal into four types in the study field: mastery approach goal, mastery avoidance goal, performance approach goal, and performance avoidance goal. Social comparison was that the individual compared his character quality, standpoint and behavior with those of others. It is a common social psychological phenomenon for human being. Academic self-efficacy is the representation of self-efficacy in academic field, reflecting the individual’s academic ability faith. A series of previous studies have investigated the role of achievement goal, social comparison, and academic self-effect separately, and some of which further examined the relations between the two variables as mentioned above. There are few studies, however, to investigate the relations among all the three variables. In the present study, we examined the relations among the achievement goals, social comparison and academic self-efficacy, especially to investigate the mediating effect of social comparison between the relationship of achievement goals and academic self-efficacy. There are three scales mentioned in the current study: Achievement goals Orientation Scale with four dimensions (mastery approach goal, mastery avoidance goal, performance approach goal, and performance avoidance goal), the parts of Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measures including upward comparison and downward comparison, and Academic Self-Efficacy Questionnaire composed by the self-efficacy of learning ability and learning activity. 847 questionnaires were sent out to 4 junior high schools in Hunan Province, and 724 of which have been recovered, with the valid recovery rate of 85.48%. There were 336 males and 388 females. All of data was analyzed by the software of SPSS 15.0. Correlation analyses showed that the master approach goal and performance approach goal positively correlated with upward comparison, learning ability self-efficacy and learning activity self-efficacy, and negatively correlated with downward comparison. Secondly, there were another two negative correlations as follows: the master avoidance goal negatively correlated with study behavior self-efficacy, and the performance avoidance goal and downward comparison negatively correlated with academic self-efficacy. Furthermore, the performance avoidance goal positively correlated with downward; and upward comparison positively correlated with academic self-efficacy. The mediating analyses showed that the relations among master approach goal, performance approach goal and study ability self-efficacy were mediated by upward comparison partially; otherwise, downward comparison not only mediated with the relations between performance approach goal and study ability self-efficacy partially, but also mediated among master approach goal, performance approach goal, performance avoidance goal and study behavior self-efficacy. As described above, we argued that, for junior school students, their achievement goals had an effect on their academic self-efficacy with a direct way. Besides, the academic self-efficacy was affected by the achievement goals indirectly as well. Related Articles | Metrics

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Word Learning with Social Attention Cues in Children with Autism: Evidence from eye movements Wei JING GUO wenbin 2013, 36(6): 1421-1427.  Abstract ( )   PDF (449KB) ( )   Many literatures about word learning argue for the importance of joint attention, while previous researches indicate that children with autism disorders (AD), unlike their typically developing peers, do not automatically orient their attention to social attention cues. Then, do deficits in social cognitive skills impede children with AD to capture social attention cues to learn words? This research investigated the ability of learning words via social attention cues in verbally-able children with AD by eye-tracking technology. We recorded the eye-movements of 18 verbally-able children with AD (M ages=134.83 months) and their typical peers matched on verbally and non-verbally intelligence (M ages=71.61 months), while completing word learning tasks in three conditions: in the No Gaze condition, the speaker in the video straightly gazed at and faced the camera; in the Subtle Gaze condition, she gazed at the target object and straightly faced the camera; while in the Salient Gaze condition, the speaker not only gazed at, but also faced the target object. Behavioral data showed that children with AD were able to take advantage of gaze cues to detect the referents of novel words no matter whether gaze cues were accompanied with head direction or not, which indicated that AD children had the same proficiency of word learning skill via gaze cues as their typical peers did. Eye movement data results showed that: 1) the frequency of gaze following (the times of saccades from face to target objects) in AD children were lower than TD children; 2) the proportion of duration on eye region (fixation to eye region/ fixation to face region) in AD children were higher than TD children; 3) there were no differences between two groups in proportion of fixation to the target objects (fixation to target objects/ fixation to target and non-target objects) and proportion of gaze following (saccades from face to target objects/ saccades from face to target and non-target objects). The results indicated that the same gaze-following behavior may involve different underlying mechanisms: the gaze-following in AD children may be volitional and inductive behaviors, while the gaze-following in TD may be reflexive and spontaneous behaviors. The volitional and inductive gaze-following suggested that the style of processing social information in children with AD were different compared with TD children. Children with AD could not flexibly distribute attention resource according to changes in social scene. They captured social information with the analytic way of feature process and lacked the understanding of the social meaning of social information. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Self-concept on Autobiographical Memory: Evidence from Comparing Tibetan with Han Adolescents 2013, 36(6): 1428-1434.  Abstract ( )   PDF (467KB) ( )   This study examined the difference in the relationship of autobiographical memory and self-concept between Tibetan and Han adolescents. A total of 136 Tibetans and 139 Han Chinese adolescents in middle school from 7 to 10 grades participated in this study. Using self-concept priming paradigm, we collected participants' self-concept information by asking participants to answer the question "who I am”. The participants in each race were randomly assigned to three self-concept priming groups: independent orientation group, interdependence orientation group and control group. After finishing the self-concept priming task, participants were presented two clue words, and were asked to report autobiographical events. Participants’ language ability was assessed with vocabulary subscale of Wechsler Intelligence Scale. The results showed that: (1) The participants in independent orientation priming groups in each race reported more independent orientation contents, and the participants in interdependent orientation priming groups in each race reported more interdependent orientation contents. (2) The self-concept priming effect on autobiographical memory for Tibetan adolescents were different from that of Han adolescents. There was not significant difference in social orientation between three priming groups for both races adolescents. While self-concept priming can affect autonomous orientation in autobiographical memory narrative contents more stongly for Han adolescents' than for Tibetan. (3) We conducted an ANOVA of 2 (race: Tibetan vs. Han) × 3 (self-concept priming groups) with race and priming groups as independent variables and with the number of social events in autobiographical memory as dependent variable, language as covariate variable. The results showed that there was a significant main effect of race, F (1, 269) =3.59, p = .059. There was a significant main effect of priming groups, F (2, 269) =13.97, p < .001. There was a significant interaction effect of race and priming groups, F (2, 269) =3.36, p < .05. Analyses indicated that there was a weak effect of self-concept priming on autobiographical memory for Tibetan participants and a strong effect for Han adolescents. Regression analyses showed that For Tibetan, when age, gender and language were controlled for, the social-self ratio in self-concept cannot significantly predict the other-self ratio in autobiographical memory. For Han participants, when age, gender and language were controlled for, the social-self in self-concept can significantly predict the other-self ratio in autobiographical memory, B = .11, Beta = .22, ΔR2 = .048, Fchange = 6.43, p = .01. The findings indicated that earlier cultural construction can affect autobiographical memory for Tibetan adolescents. This sutdy showed that there exists cultural difference in the relationship between autobiographical memory and self-concept. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Risk Preference and Information Integrity on Information Process of Career Decision Making Jun Yang 2013, 36(6): 1435-1440.  Abstract ( )   PDF (366KB) ( )   Risk preference is a result-based trait. Seldom research have tried to link the process variables to it. Current study focuses on the relationship between risk preference and information process. Also, information integrity is regarded for its potential influence. In this study, the mouselab technology was used to explore the difference and similarity in information processing mode of high and low risk preference individuals. The subjects were 31 junior and senior students, including 16 high risk preference students and 15 low risk preference students selected according to a former career decision making questionnaire over 125 college junior and senior students. The selected 7 cues appeared in the mouselab rows, and 3 options appeared in the mouselab columns. Among the 7 cues, the former 6 cues were used to describe the option itself, and the last one was used to represent the possibility of getting the job. The study used a 2×2 (high risk preference/low risk preference) × (all information can be discovered/few information is unknown) design. Risk preference was tested between subjects, and information integrity was tested within subjects. The recorded dependent variables were as follows: (1) acquisition of information, the total click of one mouselab; (2) the mean hit rate of each cue; (3) depth of search, DS= the number of opened cells/the total number of cells. The results of the experiment showed that: (1) low risk preference individuals took more attention on the cue presenting the possibility of getting the job than high risk preference individuals; (2) when some information were missing, individuals tended to rely more on the cue presenting the possibility of getting the job; (3) the information integrity had no specific impact on information process and potential decision strategy; (4) the amount of information searched to make a decision had no significant change among different conditions although the useful information obtained was different. Current study discovers a potential linkage between risk preference and information process. The different risk preference may be due to the difference preference in obtaining or using the possibility information of a decision problem. Related Articles | Metrics

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Group Size, Leadership, and Group Organizational Citizenship Behavior 2013, 36(6): 1441-1446.  Abstract ( )   PDF (338KB) ( )   As the pressures deriving from the need to develop new business models in dynamic, uncertain and complex environments and the need for innovation are increasing, many organizations find the use of groups efficient and productive. One type of behavior that may contribute to the effectiveness of groups is group members’ citizenship behavior. Focusing on groups, citizenship behaviors need to be investigated at the group level. With respect to understanding group organizational citizenship behaviors (GOCB) in organizational settings, Work-group size is a crucial factor to be included. Many studies have demonstrated that individual organizational citizenship behaviors are strongly related to leadership. China has historically been regarded as a case of collectivism. In general, the group orientation at work is emphasized in collectivist cultures. Therefore, GOCB is likely facilitated by Chinese culture. It seems that investigating the influence of group size and leadership on GOCB is a natural step to take. GOCB and leadership are targeted as group phenomena, and therefore should preferably be measured at that level. Based on the referent-shift consensus model, GOCB and leadership scale was employed to the survey. Data were collected from a survey of 501 employees at 37 organizations in mainland China. The hypotheses identified the group as the unit of analysis, so all variables are aggregates of individual responses to the group level of analysis. Justification for aggregation is provided by the demonstration of agreement within settings rather than differences across groups. A well established procedure to assess the factor structure of a scale at multiple levels of analysis is multilevel confirmatory factor analysis which was applied to the data for GOCB and leadership. Results showed that the factor loadings of the items were stronger at the between (i.e., group level) than the within (i.e., individual) levels of analysis. These findings indicated that GOCB and leadership can be analyzed at group level. After fitting the multi-level confirmatory factor analysis model, research hypotheses were tested at the group-level. Results from the sample confirmed the negative relation between group size and GOCB (p < .001) and positive relationship between C and M dimensions of CPM model and GOCB (p < .001). There is no significant link between P dimension of CPM model and GOCB (p > .05). With increases in group size, the psychological distance between individuals can increase. It would be expected less exhibition of GOCB as the psychological distance between group members increases. Chinese culture focuses on moral leadership. C dimension of CPM model implies considerable moral standing on the part of the leader. Without this, it is difficult to conceive how followers could be motivated. Generally speaking, Chinese leaders are perceived more people-oriented than task-orientated. This could be the reason for the M’s positive effects on GOCB and P’s weak influence on GOCB. The outcomes of this study are relevant for management. Faced with the complex and uncertain nature of today’s workplace, managers should become more aware of the effects of their moral practice and consideration on the willingness of employees to engage in GOCB. Administrators should not forget that group size is one of the key elements to encourage employees’ GOCB. Related Articles | Metrics

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How can Macau Residents Stay Gambling Free: Risk Aversion or Regret Aversion? 2013, 36(6): 1447-1450.  Abstract ( )   PDF (237KB) ( )   What makes people shy away from risk, risk aversion or regret aversion? The current empirical evidence is mixed. Based on the domain-specific perspective, this paper pointed out that not all risks are created equal, whether decision makers are risk aversion or regret aversion is domain-specific. To test this hypothesis, we conducted this study in Macau, the largest casino city in the world. A total of 370 Macau adult residents with gambling experience completed a questionnaire survey dealing with thirteen types of gambling. The results showed that the negative effects of risk perception and anticipated regret on gambling behavior were domain-specific. Participants have not shown themselves to be consistently risk averse or regret averse across different gambling types. In the first category domain which included Baccarat and Greyhound Racing, both risk aversion and regret aversion worked together to lower participants’ gambling frequency. In the second domain of Roulette and Stud Poker, it was risk aversion that was responsible for participants’ unwillingness to bet. In the third domain which included Mahjong and Paikao, it was regret aversion that was responsible for the lower gambling frequency. In the fourth domain of Fantan, Cussec, Horse Racing, Chinese Lottery, Football Lottery, Blackjack, Slot Machines, neither risk aversion nor regret aversion was responsible for participants’ unwillingness to bet. Our findings indicated that neither risk aversion nor regret aversion can uniquely explain an individual’s risk-taking behavior consistently. Instead, which factor plays a greater role in lowering gambling frequency—regret aversion, risk aversion, or both—is itself dependent on the type of gambling involved. These findings could be useful for the further understanding of individual’s risk-taking behavior. Practical applications for problem gambling prevention and advertising appeal were given by providing a basis for understanding the role that cognitive and emotional factors play in different types of gambling. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Reward Value Orientation on Performance Feedback Effectiveness 2013, 36(6): 1451-1458.  Abstract ( )   PDF (533KB) ( )   Although performance feedback has been given great importance in fostering employee self-efficacy that provide access to performance and other positive outcomes, contrasting views still exist on the effectiveness of performance feedback based on factors like the variation of individual differences, feedback characteristics, and task situation features, etc. However, the potential impact of other organizational institutions on feedback effectiveness was overlooked previously. Reward system may affect the benefit individual obtained from feedback, for the value orientation implied in reward changes individual cognition and behavior pattern in task, and it also influences the effectiveness of those feedback messages. Recent studies have provided evidence suggesting that specific incentive style subliminally activates particular awareness of the inherent value in task situation. In this view, merely reminders of the concept of money or honor – two kinds of typical incentive styles - could change personal cognition and interpersonal behavior. On the one hand, money is linked to a focus on personal inputs and outputs in a transactional term, which may manifest behaviorally as an emphasis on personal performance. In terms of that, individuals reminded of money are more interested in self-achievement, and possess a market-pricing orientation toward the interactions with others. They trade resources on the basis of equity, which underlies cost/benefit analyses, in which a person consider what he or she will receive in return before enacting a given behavior. On the other hand, honor represents affirmation and praise to individuals who comply with the rules of the common society. As it is the most typical form of social approval, sense of honor makes individuals obliged to follow and protect the social norms. Besides, interpersonal harmony is the core element of traditional system of social values in China. As a result, the emphasis on credit and reputation could arouse desire to satisfy the collective needs of sustaining cohesiveness and shaping solidarity. Accompany with this value orientation difference produced by incentive styles, individual self-concept tend to vary in accordance with the inner state of the incentive styles. Specifically, the market-pricing mode stresses the concept of private self, while social norms emphasize the concept of collective self. Since it is demonstrated that people prefer, more rapidly respond to , and are more sensitive to information that is in consistent with their self-concept, it seems reasonable that feedback message will be accepted and utilized more efficaciously by individual when the feedback adjusts its target according to the individual self-concept. As a consequence, the performance feedback designed based on reward system will effectively increase individual self-efficacy, and further promote the performance efforts, and lead to preferred outcomes eventually. In this study we discussed the interaction of performance feedback and incentive style in the process of promoting task performance and cooperation. We conducted a field study among undergraduate students to test our hypothesis. Data were collected in 2 rounds of surveys during 20 days in a large-scale urban event. All participants were volunteers in this event. 231 useable responses were available in total after matching data from two rounds of surveys with a response rate of 57.8%. We measured the independent variables (task performance, back-up behavior, knowledge sharing, and self-efficacy) in the 2 rounds of surveys. The first round survey was conducted approximately 1 week after the event starts (Time 1).The second round was conducted immediately when 2 weeks’ work ended (Time 2). While we manipulated incentive style (money/honor) and performance feedback (personal/collective) right after the first survey conducted. The results of this study show that incentive style and performance feedback have an interaction effect on task performance（F(1,226) = 4.35, p = .038））and cooperation behavior （back-up behavior：(F(1,226) = 12.52, p < .001), knowledge sharing(F(1,226) = 16.66, p < .001)).While self-efficacy has an mediated moderation effect in this process. Specifically, when monetary incentives were adopted, personal feedback improved task performance and increased cooperation more than collective feedback. In contrast, collective feedback produced higher task performance and cooperation when honor incentives were adopted. Meanwhile, self-efficacy moderated this process. Based on this result, we suggest administrators be cautious of the value message underlying the reward system. And it is recommended that organization should implement management styles that are in accordance with its culture background in order to facilitate sustainability of the organization. Related Articles | Metrics

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Psychological contract breach, job satisfaction, and voice behavior: The moderating effect of neuroticism 2013, 36(6): 1459-1463.  Abstract ( )   PDF (308KB) ( )   Abstract:Researchers and practitioners are most concerned about why employees do not speak up in organizations. Previous studies have explored this issue from both individual and organizational perspectives. To fill these research gaps, this study examined the mediating role of job satisfaction and the moderating role of employees’ neuroticism. 750 survey questionnaires were distributed among employees from manufacturing, trading and technical firms in Zhejiang Province. 627 questionnaires were returned, for response rates of 83.6%. After we had deleted unqualified ones, a total of 551 questionnaires were remained and constituted the sample for this study. In terms of statistical strategies, we employed regression analysis and moderated mediation analysis to examine hypotheses. Results showed that 1) psychological contract breach was negatively related to voice behavior (β=-.093, p<.05); 2) Job satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and voice behavior (β=.094, p<.05); 3) Neuroticism moderated the indirect effect of psychological contract breach on voice behavior through job satisfaction. That is, job satisfaction mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and voice behavior only among employees with high neuroticism. This study makes an important contribution to the literature on voice behavior. By integrating the negative factors at both organizational and individual levels, we extended existing knowledge of why employees do not exhibit voice behavior. Our findings also offer several practical implications. First, our results highlighted the negative effect of psychological contract breach on employees’ voice behavior. As such, managers should focus their energy on building and maintaining employees’ psychological contract, thus reducing their perceptions of psychological contract breach. In addition. Finally, from a selection standpoint, our finding suggests that selecting employees with low neuroticism may be necessary to increase the likelihood of employing staff with high level of voice behavior. Related Articles | Metrics

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Meta-Analytic Method for Composite Reliability of A Unidimensional Test Zhong-Lin WEN 2013, 36(6): 1464-1469.  Abstract ( )   PDF (325KB) ( )   Meta-analysis has become an indispensable tool for reaching accurate and representative conclusions about topics of interest within a body of literature. Meta-analysis can also play a very important role in designing new researches. Meta-analysis is one way to obtain more narrow confidence intervals. The confidence interval for the average parameter value will often be considerably narrower, and hence more informative, than the parameter confidence interval obtained from a single study. An increase in external validity is an added benefit of averaging parameter estimates from multiple studies (Bonett, 2009). Test reliability is often used to reflect measurement consistency and stability. Haase (1998) referred to meta-analysis methods of reliability estimates as reliability generalization. Meta-analysis of reliability estimates may be used to obtain more accurate reliability estimates (narrower confidence intervals). Composite reliability can better estimate reliability by using confirmatory factor analysis (Bentler, 2009; Green & Yang, 2009; Wen & Ye, 2011). Meta-analysis of composite reliability can better evaluate test quality. There are three statistical models to do meta-analysis: the constant coefficient model, the random coefficient model, and the varying coefficient model. In general, compared to constant coefficient or random coefficient models, varying coefficient model is recommended to do meta-analysis, which can be used in a much wider range of problems. Under varying coefficient model, we proposed a method to compute point estimate and confidence interval for the average composite reliability coefficient of a unidimensional test. To evaluate the confidence interval for the average composite reliability coefficient obtained by our proposed method, a simulation study was conducted to assess the performance of our proposed method under a wide range of conditions. Four factors were considered in the simulation design: (a) the number of study (m=5, 10, and 20); (b) the number of items on each test (k=3, 6, 10, and 15); (c) factor loading (.5–.7，.7–.9, .5–.9); (d) sample size (N=200–500, 500–1000 and 200–1000). In total, 108 treatment conditions were generated in terms of the above 4-factor simulation design (i.e., 108=3×4×3×3). The simulation results indicated that the performance of our proposed method was remarkable in that its true 95% coverage probability was very close to 95% for all of the 108 conditions. In no case did the coverage probability drop below 94.9%. We recommended that our proposed method could be adopted to estimate the confidence interval of composite reliability for meta-analysis. We used an example of a unidimensional test to illustrate the use of our proposed method to obtain a narrow confidence interval for the average composite reliability across the six study populations. Related Articles | Metrics

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Validating G-DINA Model in Language Test Diagnosis Huilin Chen 2013, 36(6): 1470-1475.  Abstract ( )   PDF (343KB) ( )   G-DINA model, a generalized model of DINA model, is a compensatory and saturated cognitive diagnostic model. The compensatory characteristic of G-DINA model caters to the multidimensionality of language tests; the saturated characteristic of G-DINA model caters to the abstractness and indivisibility of language skills. Taking the reading test, a typical form of language tests, as the case study, this paper applies G-DINA model to the empirical analysis on the PISA English reading test results of 1029 British subjects. The study verifies two hypotheses: compensatory and saturated cognitive diagnostic models can fit language tests ideally; G-DINA model, a new cognitive diagnostic model, can be applied to diagnose complicated and abstract language tests and the results of analysis can be interpreted both statistically and linguistically. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Review of Research on Conception and Measurement of Cohesion in Group Psychotherapy Xuan Jia Fan Fumin Xiaohua Lu 2013, 36(6): 1476-1479.  Abstract ( )   PDF (286KB) ( )   Cohesion is the key cure factor in group psychotherapy research area, which is the counterpart of the therapy alliance in individual psychotherapy. At the beginning of group cohesion research, cohesion is defined as attraction-to-group and interpersonal attraction, which is operationalized as interpersonal trust, attraction and involvement. With more and more understanding on cohesion, researchers began to combine different aspects to explore cohesion in multidimensional perspective. There were mainly three angles of view. One was about the structure of cohesion, based on the analysis to member-member, member-group, and member-leader relationships. Another was about the content of cohesion, such as Stokes’ viewpoint, he thought that cohesion in therapy group include the group attraction to individual member, the instrumental value of the group, and risk-taking behaviors that occur in the group; Braaten proposes a 5-factor-model of group cohesion: attraction and bonding, support and caring, listening and empathy, self-disclosure and feedback, and process performance and goal attainment. There was still a third view that exploring cohesion from both the structure and content, for example, Johnson found a three-dimensional-structure-model of cohesion, they are positive relationship, positive working relationship, negative relationship, respectively. Hornsey put forward that the social psychology theory can be integrated into group psychotherapy research, based on social identity theory and other theories, he proposed that "group identification", "in-group homogeneity", "task interdependence" and others can replace the conception of cohesion, but this construct still need further empirical support. Social identity theory provides a good perspective to explore cognitive level of group cohesion, the traditional view of group attraction lays the foundation for emotional level of cohesion, and goal congruence is helpful for exploring motivational level, all of above provide a new possibility for developing cohesion conception through the integration of these theories. There are many kinds of cohesion measurement tools developed by foreign researchers, but theories no consistency between them which result in the cohesion studies lacking comparability which leads to disadvantage influence on further research. At present, the group climate questionnaire-short form (GCQ-S), therapeutic factors inventory-cohesiveness scale (TFI), and cohesion to the therapist scale (CTS) are the tools recommended by American group psychotherapy association (AGPA) to evaluate the group process among those standardized measures to evaluate the clinical effect However, there is no consensus on the definition of cohesion, and systematic theory and model is also undeveloped. Domestic group psychotherapy researches still remain in effect research stage. It is worth domestic researchers concerning about the direction that exploring group psychotherapy process, developing assessment tools, building systematic theory and model. Related Articles | Metrics

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Study of Improving Resilience for the Earthquake Stricken Area Junior Middle School Students by Group Music Counseling 2013, 36(6): 1480-1485.  Abstract ( )   PDF (329KB) ( )   Abstract May 12th 2008, 8-grade earthquake hit Wenchuan, Sichuan Province, causing a great loss. The present study aims to improve the resilience of the middle school students in Stricken Areas 3 years after the earthquake and to enhance their resistance to adversity, fulfill their potentials and help them achieve post-trauma growth by developing a Group Music Counseling. 22 students with low resilience were chosen according to the result of the CD-RISC. After matching the genders, the students were assigned randomly into the control group and the intervention group, both of which contain 11 students (5 males and 6 females). Group music counseling was used to improve the resilience of the junior students in the stricken area. Social Support, Emotional Management, Coping Style and Goal Orientation are the 4 parts of the counseling program, and there are 10 topics from these 4 parts. Main form of group music counseling was chorus and music discussion. The intervention lasted 7 weeks. In order to test the effect of Group Music Counseling, CD-RISC, SAS, SDS, Scale of Social Support for Teens, Scale of Coping Style Scale for Middle School Students and SES and self-designed interview outline were used in pre-, post-test and follow-up survey. After the intervention, the post-test of intervention group in Resilience, Social Support, Problem-solving, Looking for social support, rationalization and Self-esteem are significantly higher than the post-test of control group. Two months after the intervention, the follow-up scores of the intervention group compared with the post-test had a slight change which was the effect of intervention had a slight drop. The follow-up scores of the intervention group compare with the pre-test scores, are also significantly higher than pre-test in Resilience, Social Support, Problem-solving, Looking for social support , rationalization and Self-esteem. Group Music Counseling can effectively improve various aspects of middle school students in stricken area, including resilience, Social Support, positive coping styles (Problem-solving, Looking for social support and rationalization) and Self-esteem. By contrast, they express lower anxiety and depression mood and less negative coping styles (Escape).The follow up survey reveals that Group Music Counseling has sustained influence on resilience. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Affect-Labeling on Traumatic Related Stimuli in PTSD 2013, 36(6): 1486-1490.  Abstract ( )   PDF (295KB) ( )   Talk therapy such as talking about one’s feelings and problems has been thought to be an effective method for minimizing the impact of negative emotional events on current experience. Recently, a number of studies of affect-labeling / matching were conducted on healthy individuals, and the neural mechanisms by which putting feelings into words may alleviate negative emotional responses have been discovered. After going through a major traumatic event, people might suffer from mental disorder to varying degrees, some people even develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And talk therapy is often used as one of the psychological intervention methods for PTSD. However, some researchers believed that using talk therapy such as critical incidence stress debriefing can worsen rather than ameliorate later trauma symptoms. Different clinical psychologists have different opinions, and the validity of talk therapy for PTSD has become one particular bone of contention. Therefore, the present study aims to explore this problem by using affect labeling paradigms. The subjects in the present study included three groups: the PTSD group who experienced the earthquake, the traumatized control (TC) group who experienced the earthquake but without PTSD and the non-traumatized control (NTC) group who never experienced any traumatic events. All the subjects performed an affect-labeling / matching task firstly and then made an odd-even decision to a digit that used a picture as background. The background pictures might be either the “target picture” which was affect-labeled or affect-matched in the preceding task or a new picture which was similar with the “target pictures”. Experiment 1 used earthquake pictures as materials and showed that the PTSD individuals responded significantly fast and accurately when the affect-labeling pictures were in the background, however, the NTC individuals responded significant accurately when the new pictures were in the background. Experiment 2 used negative emotional faces as materials and showed that the PTSD individuals responded significantly fast when the affect-matching pictures were background. However, the NTC individuals responded significantly fast when the affect-labeling pictures were background and responded significantly slow when the affect-matching pictures were in the background. These results suggested that after the affect-labeling task, PTSD individuals would inhibit the emotion of the trauma-related earthquake pictures, and it also provided scientific evidence that talk therapy is an effective treatment and intervention method for PTSD individuals. In addition, the inhibition effect after affect-matching of the negative emotional faces indicated that the PTSD individuals had the avoidance tendency to trauma-unrelated negative emotional faces. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Review of the Development of International Psychobiography Jian-Hong ZHENG 2013, 36(6): 1491-1497.  Abstract ( )   PDF (470KB) ( )   Psychobiography is a discipline which uses the psychological theories and methods to study the life story of extraordinary people. It could be viewed as a sub-discipline of personality psychology from the developmental histrory of psychobiography. The paper introduced the development process of international psychobiography for the past century, dividing it into three periods, that is, the period of case study(1910s-1970s), the period of the preliminary foundation of discipline（or the period of theoretical exploration of discipline,1980-2005）, and the period of disciplinary development(2005-present). The first psychobiographical work—“Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood”was written by Freud in 1910. ever since then, over the past 7 decades, the psychobiographical work almost had used the psychoanalytic theories to interprete the life story of extraordinary people, which is the reason why it is also called the period of psychoanalytic psychobiography. Because of the problems such as the pathological tendency of the studies, reconstruction of the history of subject’s childhood, and utterly relying on the early year experience to interprete the personality and behavior of the subjects. the psychobiographical research were widely criticized. The first theoretical book of psychobiography was published in 1982, and several other books were published later, which try to solve the above criticism from a theorical perspective. “the handbook of psychobiography” which was edited by Schultz and was published in 2005 became the hallmark of the foundation of the psychobiography, and indicates that the psychobiographical studies have entered the period of disciplinary development. In the 21st century, the development of psychobiography has become a worldwide phenomenon. Apart from the U.S.A, China and South Africa are currently the two fastest growing countries in the field of psychobiography. A lot of fruitful achievements in the theoretical research of psychobiography were made. About the data management methods, several new methods were proposed , for example, “principal identifiers of salience”(Alexander，1988，1990), “prototypical scene” （Schultz，2002，2005） and “life story model of identity” （McAdams，1996，2001）; About interpretive models or research approaches, Crosby et al.(1981) proposed two models: Causal interpretive model and coherent-whole interpretive model. Runyan(1988) proposed “the model of eight Component Processes”. Some researchers of psychobiography put forward the assessment criteria of psychobiographical work quality（Runyan，1988；Schultz，2005）. About the psychobiographical case studies, three subfields had been formed, namely, the pscychobiographical study of political figures(political psychobiography) which mainly explores the relationship among the personality of politicians, their life story and their political behavior. The psychobiographical study of psychologists, it mainly explores the relationship between the theories which psychologists proposed and their life stories. The pscychobiographical study of artists and writers, it mainly explores the relationship between their life stories and their literary or artistic works. Moreover, a new field called comparative psychobiography has gradually come into being. In China, studying in field of the psychobiography should avoid pathological tendency and pure qualitative research with artistic form, should strengthen application of psychobiography, especially, the application in the fields of psychological counselling, education and human resources management, and should embark on the psychobiographical study of Chinese outstanding psychologists. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Research on the Psychological Mechanism of Experience Peng-Cheng ZHANG 2013, 36(6): 1498-1503.  Abstract ( )   PDF (421KB) ( )   The experience, regarding human body as the medium, working with the means of "behavior or thought", taking the typical character of the interaction of cognition-emotion, is a kind of physiological and mental state which is constructive consecutively, as well as induced when facing to the objects which act on individual being significative. The research on the psychological mechanisms of experience is a effective way to grasp the connotation of experience and realize the function of experience. The psychological mechanisms of experience mainly consists of five parts. Firstly, it needs the presention of the object. Like other psychological phenomena, it essentially reflects the experience also has its corresponding psychological content. Secondly, it needs the construction of meaning. As a subject, people need objects for evoking experience. However, not all objects can make the person produce psychological experience. The world is not as simple, realized things, but as possible formation for human service that presented to us. Therefore, besides object, the other necessary condition is the object must be meaningful to people. Thirdly, it needs the changes of body. The core of it is the reaction of physiological and psychological changement. Fourth, the experience occurs. By the construction of individual meaning, the object will cause the individual corresponding physical and mental changs in the body. when the changes go into the consciousness, which be “aware”, the experience will appear. finally, Finally, with the passage of time, according to the need of the individuality and the society, The experience involves in two basic forms—explicit experience and implicit experience. Explicit experience and implicit experience are not isolated, repel each other, but the dialectical unification between them. On the one hand, they are significantly different each other; On the other hand, they are both mutual penetration and mutual transformation.From the view of the source. on the one hand, the explicit experience and implicit experience are derived from the original individual experience. On the other hand, the original experience appeared in the form of explicit experience or implicit experience, which is decided by s the definition,of timulated object, the strength of experience, individual knowledge and many other factors. From the view of procession, explicit experience and implicit experience operate according to different rules. From the view of the results, the explicit experience and implicit experience transformate each other. The research on experience and its psychological mechanism, is not only the objective requirement of emotional psychology, but the internal need of cognitive psychology for evolution; It is not only the historical development of cultural psychology, but also a way to return to the indigenous psychology. Related Articles | Metrics

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Hope and Optimism: Two Kinds of Future-Oriented Positive Expectancies Hou-Chao LV 2013, 36(6): 1504-1509.  Abstract ( )   PDF (370KB) ( )   Hope and optimism are two of the most widely researched concepts within Positive Psychology. They are trait-like thoughts about future and two kinds of future-oriented positive expectations. In fact, research found good relation between hope and optimism, suggesting substantial overlap between the two constructs. Considering that, how should we best conceptualize them? Are they separate constructs, or do they reflect the same global underlying trait? A series of studies suggest that though hope and optimism have a lot of conceptual overlap, they are two essentially different concepts. Most often, hope involves thoughts about one’s goals, including the ability to generate routes to reach goals (i.e., pathways) and the motivation to use those routes (i.e., agency); while optimism is closely relate to future orientation and defined as a stable predisposition to “believe that good rather than bad things will happen”. The core concept of hope is the goal-centered agency thought and pathways thought, while the core concept of optimism is the future-oriented positive expectancy. As a consequence, the ultimate choice between distinguishing or merging hope and optimism may well depend on whether the researcher seeks to maximize predictive accuracy or simply to summarize individuals’ future orientation. As two kinds of future-oriented positive expectancy, hope and optimism are viewed as personality traits, and share a common element: beliefs about goals, but they have divergence on the way of expecting for the future and the personal control of anticipated events. Specifically hope is related directly to the personal attainment of a specific goal, whereas optimism focuses more broadly on the expected quality of future outcomes in general. The agency of hope is similar to Bandura's efficacy expectancies and pathway is similar to outcome expectancies; while optimism is similar to outcome expectancies. Optimism theory posits that outcome expectancies determine goal-directed behavior, whereas hope theory posits that efficacy expectancies (agency) are equally necessary determinants of goal-directed behavior. There are two completely opposite views on the personal control of hope and optimism to anticipated events. One believes that optimists have a greater personal control of anticipated events than those have higher hope levels. Yet another view holds that those have higher hope levels have a greater personal control of anticipated events, and higher hope levels may represent a more internal dominant locus of control, while optimists represent an external dominant locus of control. Related studies find that, compared to optimism, hope is usually a better predictor of subjective well-being and academic achievement. Future researches should pay more attention to: (1) whether hope and optimism can integrate to an overarching trait called goal attitude? (2) To verify whether locus of control plays a moderating role in the study of hope and optimism? (3) Conduct more cross-cultural and localization studies in Eastern culture, especially the applicability of existing research conclusion in Chinese population. Related Articles | Metrics

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The essential and resolution of the Crisis in Psychology SHU YueYu 2013, 36(6): 1510-1516.  Abstract ( )   PDF (502KB) ( )   Psychology is a confusing subject: First of all, if the subjects’ split is taken as a crisis, then there is no doubt, psychology is in crisis at the beginning of its birth. However, this crisis is actually accompanied psychology for more than 100 years of its development history. The crisis of psychology’s split has not been eliminated until now, but getting more serious. The separation of psychology hampers the development of this discipline seriously. The crisis of psychology is discussed in different levels. However, most people believe that this crisis is rooted in the lack of a unified methodological basis, which is resulted in disciplinary split. They did not recognize the underlying causes of the lack of a unified methodology. Therefore, the current understanding about psychology crisis is deviate. And this deviation from the crisis is not only helpless in resolving the problem, but also further-strengthening this discipline’s split. By drawing on the experience of the natural sciences history, and investigating the relationship between psychology with neighboring disciplines as well as the motivation of psychology’s birth, in the summary of the previous understanding about the crisis in psychology, results showed that, the crisis is psychology’s self identity crisis in this discipline’s development process. Self identity crisis is due to a lack of discipline identity in psychology, which roots from psychology’s theoretical basis. In particular, the development of any subject firstly based on its solid ontological foundation, and established on the basis of epistemological and methodological theory according to its body features. Then the applicative technology can be developed. However, Psychology’s development did not follow this rule: before its ontology established, the methodology has been formed and taken the place of ontology to become the standard to examine whether the disciplines develop well or not. This abnormal concept of development constitutes unreasonable theoretical basis of psychology. And in later development of psychology, this mode has seriously misled the development of this discipline. Further analysis showed that, the psychology’s separation resulted from the lack of its unified ontology - object concept. The researchers did not widely recognize the particularity of human nature, which was regarded as a research object of unique psychology discipline. Therefore the methodology consistent with its objects concept did not establish which led to the division of the discipline. Psychology, as a science to explore human nature, did not reach consensus in the view of human nature by the researchers. Therefore, without a view of human nature that most of researchers accepted, a methodological basis different from other disciplines can not be established on this basis, then psychology can not develop itself in accordance with the laws of its own. Finally, psychology put itself into a self-identity crisis. Without a unified object concept and methodology, psychology inevitably falls apart. Therefore, the solution to the crisis of psychology depends on the establishment of its disciplinary identity. In other words, a unified methodology is establish on the basis of a unified view of human nature, and then psychology can develop as the way it is as a science of human nature. Related Articles | Metrics

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Two theoretical orientations of consciousness researches in implicit learning—dichotomous and graded frameworks 2013, 36(6): 1517-1523.  Abstract ( )   PDF (493KB) ( )   Researches on implicit learning concern mainly whether the acquired knowledge could be processed consciously, thereby traditional paradigms devote much to operationalization of dissociation of conscious and unconscious processes. With the improvement of empirical tasks and measures, more and more researches have revealed the inability to obtain pure dissociation, and quantitative gradation, rather than qualitative dichotomy, appears to be more compatible with the empirical data. The phenomenology of selective compatibility reflects two different theoretical orientations on the conceptualization of consciousness in implicit learning researches: dichotomy and gradation. In this article main theoretical frameworks and empirical researches in cognitive science concerning the two orientations are introduced. As for the dichotomy framework, Global Workspace Theory appears to provide crucial theoretical guidance for researches in cognitive science, such as perception processing and implicit memory. It has also brought about considerable success in computational modeling. However, with measures of consciousness being more and more sensitive, the formerly assumed dichotomy system now suffers a failure to yield pure dissociations. Graded framework appears to take a stronger explanatory power, as a result of which a shift in theoretical orientation has emerged. The distributional representation theory and graded consciousness theory have elaborated on two critical issues in consciousness research: what is the global mental structure for consciousness and how conscious experiences arise. The distributional representation framework points out that for a representation to be consciously processed, it must have high-standard quality which can only be formed with a substantial accumulation of time in learning activities. Hence the ever-improving representations yield a demand of conscious processing along a graded scale. Otherwise the graded consciousness theory puts emphasis on conscious experiences characteristic of implicit learning. Conscious experience, or metacognitive feeling, concerns the subject experience consciously acquired in implicit learning, while the antecedent of the experience is absent from awareness. Conscious experience indicates an intermediate state in the consciousness continuum, which has obtained substantial empirical support in recent researches. It is concluded that, through an integrative analysis on the two frameworks, the dichotomous and graded hypotheses about consciousness are by no means contradictory. Chances are that they originate from different conceptualization level, i.e. functional concept and explanatory concept. A function-level conceptualization simply provides some detailed mechanism that could account for the specific function, while an explanation-level conceptualization exhibits a global structure that underlies such mechanisms as adopted at the function level. So it is reasonable to deduce that conception frameworks at the two levels exert different explanatory power on phenomenological data. Obviously the dichotomy framework mainly features function-level conceptualization and the gradation framework adheres to explanation-level conceptualization. Therefore the plight arising from the dichotomy logic, especially the difficulty to get pure dissociation in traditional researches, is now expected to be broken through within the graded consciousness framework. However, the co-existence of the two theoretical orientations provides us with different perspectives as to enrich our knowledge about implicit learning, and once effectively integrated in implicit researches, the two theoretical frameworks would shed light on a more significant understanding of consciousness. Related Articles | Metrics

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Discussion about Chomsky Outstanding Contribution to Cognitive Psychology Qiang LIU Yong-Yong CHEN huo yongquan 2013, 36(6): 1524-1529.  Abstract ( )   PDF (432KB) ( )   As everyone known, Chomsky is a famous linguist and public intellectual, but his identity as a cognitive psychologist has rarely been perceived. In fact, the philosophical and linguistic theories of Chomsky have largely contributed to the birth and development of cognitive psychology. Chomsky's radical critique of behavioral psychology promotes the birth of the first cognitive revolution and cognitive psychology, and he is the leader of the first cognitive revolution. In the method of psychology research, he praised highly rationalism which has become an important theoretical source of cognitive psychology, and at the aspect of theory, he created the transformational-generative grammar which provides relatively ideal approach to interpret the information in the human mind and language skills for children. As the leader of the first cognitive revolution, has made an indelible contribution to the birth and development of cognitive psychology. Related Articles | Metrics