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Relationship between Length Processing and Time Estimation in the Context of Müller-Lyer Illusion 2014, 37(3): 514-520.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4833KB) ( )   Time processing and space processing are closely connected in mental representation. Two kinds of relationships between temporal and spatial distance processing are evaluated. On the one hand, variations in spatial distance influence processing of time to the same degree that variation in time influence judgments of spatial distance. On the other hand, spatial length disturbs estimated time, while duration has no effect on space processing, which produce an asymmetric interference. Most studies have verified this asymmetrical interference when subjects are required to attend length or duration of a line. This asymmetry might be caused by mental metaphor because we more often speak and think about time in terms of space while do not represent space with the aid of temporal information. However, under the complicated reality situation, pepole's perception of length is likely affected by surroundings to lead a distorted perception. Müller-Lyer illusion is one kind of these length illusions. When length illusion is generated, how the relationship between length information processing and time estimate becomes? Time estimates is affected by subjective length illusion, or only distorted by physical length of Müller-Lyer figure? This research conducted three experiments using time reproduction and length reproduction method. We employed full shaft and empty shaft of Müller-Lyer figure in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 respectively. The lengths of shafts included two kinds (40mm and 80mm). Each of both lengths was attached with inward–pointing (wings-in), vertical-pointing (control condition) and outward-pointing (wings-out) wings. The Müller-Lyer figure lasted 500ms, 1500ms, 2500ms, or 3500ms. Participants were required to concurrently attend temporal and spatial length information of Müller-Lyer configurations，and then to reproduce their length or duration according to response cue. These results from two experiments found that perceived duration lengthened as objective length of Müller-Lyer configurations increased, while arrow directions had no effect on estimated time. In order to explore the reason why subjective length illusion had no effect on timing, we manipulated arrow pointing wings and shaft length in experiment 3 in which time estimation and length judgments task were completed in separate block, to make physical length difference was greater while subjective length difference was limited with in the scope as in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. The result rejected the explanation that the difference of length illusion was too small. These results verified the relationship between length estimation and time estimation was asymmetrical in Müller-Lyer configuration. Additionally, we also propose the relationship between length processing and time estimation is controlled by stimuli, experimental method and the range of temporal interval. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Strokes’ Pixel Removal on Chinese Sentence Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements 2014, 37(3): 521-527.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4953KB) ( )   Chinese characters are comprised of a variety of strokes with some simple features such as dots, lines, and curves. Are all strokes within a character equally important in the character identification? There are some studies to explore this field. The preliminary results showed that beginning strokes play a more central role in character identification than ending strokes. And it was clearly the case that certain strokes are more central to successful character identification than the others. To explain such effect, a hypothesis has been put forward in the present study, “The order of writing affects the identification.” The present study was based on the study of Yan et al. (2012). But a more sensitive and accurate indicator was chose to investigate the role of stroke encoding in character identification. Instead of the number of the strokes, the present experiment tried to use the “pixel”, the basic unit made up a stroke, to examine the effect. This experiment is a 2(Removal Type: Beginning, Ending) ×3(Percentage of Pixels Removed: 15%, 30% and 50%) within-subject design. In addition to these six experimental conditions, a control condition was included in which no strokes were deleted from the characters. Thirty-five undergraduate students participated in the experiment. Participants’ eye movements were recorded with a SR Research EyeLink 2000 eye tracker. Each participant was tested individually. Global analyses were conducted based on measures of reading behavior across the whole sentence. Repeated measures ANOVAs and pairwise comparisons were carried out. All the measures showed that Chinese characters with 15% of pixels removed were as easy to read as Chinese characters without any pixels removed. However, when 30%, or more of a character’s pixels were removed, there was a robust effect in relation to the percentage of pixels removed: readers made more and longer fixations, more regressions and forward saccades, and longer total reading time when reading text with increased percentages of pixels removed. Thus, it appears that text with more pixels removed produced more disruption to Chinese reading. Also, there was a robust effect on pixel removal type. Characters with beginning pixels removed were more difficult than that with ending pixels removed. The results suggested that not all strokes within a character are of equal importance in the character identification processing. That is, a stroke is laid down during Chinese character production, to some extent at least, determines how important that stroke is in relation to character identification in reading. Strokes that are laid down early during written character production appear to be more important than strokes laid down late. And to the most important, these results supported our hypothesis that the order of writing affects the identification both in English and Chinese. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Semantic Representation For Location Words And Physical Location In Balanced Mongolian-Chinese Bilinguals 2014, 37(3): 528-535.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5752KB) ( )   Research on spatial information processing through the intermediate semantic representation is still a controversial problem. The present studies discussed whether language’s proficiency could influence bilinguals’ representation of spatial information. In both studies, we adopt the Proctor’s paradigm, which include inducer task and diagnostic task. For the inducer task, participants were instructed to make the keypress opposite to the meaning of the location words LEFT and RIGHT. For the diagnostic task, participants were instructed to make the keypress response assigned to the color of the circles, while ignoring the stimulus location. In experiment 1, 25 monolingual Chinese speakers and 25 blingual Mongolian/Chinese speakers participated the experiment. All participants completed working memory test and self-reporting questionaire of language proficiency. There is no significant difference in measure of working memory between bilinguals and monolinguals, as well language proficiency between Chinese and Mongolian is no difference in bilinguals. All programs were run on the standard computers. The location words were presented at the center of screen. The green and red circles were presented equally in random order on the right or left side. For inducer task, participants were asked to press“Z” or “/” key opposite to the location words’ meaning. For diagnostic task, participants were asked to press“Z” or “/” key according to the circles’ color while ignoring the location. Each participant performed two parts including Chinese and Mongolian language. The reaction time and accurate rates were analyzed by 2(language: words in Chinese or Mongolian)×2 (group: bilinguals or monolinguals)×2 (correspondence: corresponding or non-corresponding)×4 (block:1-4) ANOVAs. The results showed that there was a three-way interaction of language×correspondence×group for RT（F（1,48）=9.01, p＜ .01,η2 = .16）. For monolinguals, the Simon effect reversed when location words were Chinese, but not when the words were Mongolian. For bilinguals, the Simon effect influenced by Chinese and Mongolian didn’t differ significantly（t(24)= 0.37, p > .05）. In experiment 2, the method and procedure were similar to experiment 1, except that the participants were only trilinguals and participants were asked to perform unsymmetrical inducer task in Chinese, Mongolian and English. The reaction time and accurate rates were analyzed by 3(language: words in Chinese ,Mongolian or English)×2 (correspondence: corresponding or non-corresponding)×4 (block:1-4) ANOVAs. The results showed that there was a two-way interaction of language×correspondence for RT（F（2,38）=5.01，p＜ .05,η2 = .20）. The Simon effect disappeared when they were mixed with Chinese words. The Simon effect reversed when they were mixed with Mongolian words. The Simon effect weakened when they were mixed with English words. We found that the influence of Mongolian was similar to Chinese（t(19)= 0.41，p > .05）but different from English. In conclusion，these findings indicate that the proficiency of language could influence the connection strength with the shared semantic representation. The results support the notion of The Revised Hierarchical Model of Bilingual Memory Representation. Future research should be focused on the influence of second language’s using experience on the semantic representation . Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Magnitude Information on Time Perception: Evidence from symbolic magnitude and non-symbolic magnitude Zhi-Jie ZHANG 2014, 37(3): 536-541.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3937KB) ( )   Within a theory of magnitude (ATOM), a large number of studies have found that magnitude information, including number of dots, size of squares, luminance of solid squares, and numeric value of digits, have the effect on time perception, i.e. the larger of magnitude information, the longer of estimated duration. In this study, we investigated the effect of symbolic and non-symbolic number presented at same time on time estimation, or which is dominated in time estimation. A Stroop-like interference paradigm was adopted in duration comparison tasks to test the interactions exist between symbolic and non-symbolic number. When visual stimuli were presented on a computer screen, the subjects were asked to make duration or temporal interval judgments (shorter vs. longer). Arabic number (2,3,7 and 8) and size of Arabic number were operationlised as symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude in Experiment one. Arabic number (2,3,7 and 8) and quantity of Arabic number were operationlised as symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude in experiment two. A 2(Arabic number: small and large)?2(size: small and big in experiment one; quantity: less and more in experiment two)?2(duration: short and long) within subject design was used in all experiments. According to Xuan’s study, the durations paired in the experiment were 600/750,650/812, 700/875, and 750/937 ms (all conforming to the shorter/the longer ratio of 1/1.25). The response error rate were calculated in congruent (“small”/shorter and “large”/longer, “small”/shorter and “big”/longer or “less”/shorter and “more”/longer) and incongruent condition (“small”/longer and “large”/shorter, “small”/longer and “big”/shorter or “more”/shorter and “less”/longer). The repeated measures ANOVA was performed on the response error rate data across all participants. The results demonstrate similar patterns in experiment one and two. In two experiments, only the interaction of non-symbolic magnitude (size of Arabic number experiment one and quantity of Arabic number in experiment two) and duration was significant. The simple effect analysis show that a low response error rate was observed only in the non-symbolic congruent condition (“small”/shorter and “big”/longer or “less”/shorter and “more”/longer). The findings seemingly indicates that when perceiving the duration, subjects were almost ignored the magnitude of Arabic number information, but rather depend on the size or quantity of Arabic number in experiment one and two respectively. It suggests that, comparing to symbolic magnitude, non-symbolic magnitude have a dominated influence on time estimation. Together, the findings implicated that symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude has a significant effect on time perception, in which non-symbolic magnitude is dominated. This study extends this line of research to the theory of magnitude, which provides expanded and direct support for the existence of a generalized magnitude system. Key words A Theory of Magnitude, Time estimation, symbolic magnitude, non-symbolic magnitude, Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Temporal Distance on Representation of Flashbacks in Narrative 2014, 37(3): 542-548.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5011KB) ( )   Temporal dimension is very important in text comprehension. And a number of previous studies demonstrated readers tracked time information during text reading. Two hypotheses elaborate how readers deal with the flashback information in text comprehension. The chronological hypothesis indicates that readers integrate the flashback information into their representation at its chronologically appropriate position, while the background hypothesis considers that readers interpret a flashback as providing background information for the situation described before. Claus and Kelter (2006) testified both the chronological hypothesis and the background hypothesis using a probe-recognition task paradigm. Participants read short flashback texts which included four events (E1, E2, E3, E4) and the events were described in a different order (E2, E3, E1, E4). The duration of E2 was manipulated, and at the end of each passage readers was tested whether they accessed E1. The results found that E1 was much more accessible when it occurred in a relatively short time than longer, which supported the chronological hypothesis. However, the specialty of experiment materials may contribute to above results. Firstly, the temporal distance of reading text was less than a day. Leng et al (2004) found temporal distance in narrative influenced construction and updating of reader’s situational model. If enlarged temporal distance in narrative containing flashbacks, readers may choose different strategy to construct and update situational model. Secondly, there were obvious grammar markers in reading materials. The significant grammar markers for tense would give readers big time clue, which supported the chronological hypothesis. Two experiments were conducted to investigate how readers represented flashback texts with different time information in Chinese, which did not have grammar markers for tense. Experiment 1 explored how readers represented flashback information when the text was about events happened in a few hours. The result indicated that E1 was less accessed in a long duration condition compared with the short duration condition. It suggested that readers represented the text information and supported the chronological hypothesis. Experiment 2 explored how readers represented flashback information in narrative texts which described events happened in a few days, and the result indicated that there was no significant E1 accessibility difference between the long duration condition and the short duration condition. It suggested that readers took flashbacks as the background of narrative, which supported the background hypothesis. These two experiments suggested that the time information of text influenced how readers represented flashback information. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Cognitive Style on Framing Effect: An Event-related Potential Study 2014, 37(3): 549-554.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4228KB) ( )   Decision-making as an advanced cognitive activity exists in human daily life. In the past few decades, the rationality of the decision-making process has sparked enormous interest within the fields of psychology and also economy. In the contrast to the axiom of description of invariance, vast numbers of reports in the literature and results from researches have indicated that people often deviate from responses considered as being normative in many judgement and decision-making tasks, which is also known as framing effect in decision-making that different representations of the same problem do not yield the same preference or choice. Traditional research in framing effects has commonly and mainly been focused on risky choice framing effect, whereas the research on other types of framing effect and the influential factors seems to be lacking. It can be seen from previous studies that subject’s characteristics especially cognitive style plays an important role in decision-making process. In order to examine the influences of cognitive styles on decision-making of different types of framing effect, the current study used ERP technology to investigate the differences of cognitive activities and neural mechanisms between individuals with field-dependent cognitive style and field-independent cognitively respectively. The types of choice framing effect in the present study included risky framing effect, attribute framing effect, and goal framing effect. Subjects were selected based on previous questionnaire asked to make a choice by pressing the corresponding response key. Results from the analysis of the reaction time and the average amplitude of N200 and P300 in the present study showed that the average amplitudes of N200 and P300 elicited by the participants with field-dependent cognitive style are remarkably lower than the field-independent individuals, whereas the reaction time of the participants with field-dependent cognitive style are remarkably higher than the field-independent subjects. Furthermore, the average amplitudes of N200 and P300 in the left hemisphere are significantly lower than the right hemisphere, regardless of the cognitive styles. Consistent with previous studies, the present study demonstrated significant differences of decision-making between individuals with the two cognitive styles, known as field-dependent and field-independent. The differences existed not only in reaction time but also in brain activities revealed by N200 and P300. The result that higher mean amplitude of N200 and P300 elicited by the subjects with field-independent cognitive style than that of the field-dependent subjects suggest more attention resources and further cognitive processing were assigned to the information of the decision questions in individuals with field-independent cognitive style. Furthermore, the right hemisphere has been proved to play a vital role in the cognitive processing of decision-making, and the right-hemisphere dominance in early evaluation process and later-on cognitive assessment has been found in subjects with both field-dependent cognitive style and field-independent cognitive style. By integrating the research results of the present study with previous researches, two main conclusions can be drawn: First, comparing with individuals with field-dependent cognitive style, individuals with field-independent cognitive style put extra cognitive processing into the initial assessment and feedback process afterwards; Second, the right hemisphere plays a vital role in the cognitive processing of decision-making in subjects with both field-dependent cognitive style and field-independent cognitive style. Related Articles | Metrics

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Dissociation between Incongruity Detection and Resolution in Humor Processing 2014, 37(3): 555-558.  Abstract ( )   PDF (2926KB) ( )   Although recent studies have elucidated cognitive and affective neural correlates of humor processing, they weren’t able to distinguish between the incongruity detection and incongruity resolution proposed by incongruity-resolution theory. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, using a new caption-cartoon paradigm, three experimental conditions (humorous, nonhumorous, and unrelated cartoons) were designed to investigate the dissociation between detection and resolution of incongruity. The flow of stimulus presentation in each trial was as following. First, a fixation point (+) appeared on the center of the screen for 2 s, then the character context was presented for 2 s. After a variable time (2 or 4 s) of blank screen, the cartoon picture was presented. Subjects were required to make a “humorous/nonhumorous/unrelated” judgment about the relationship between the cartoon picture and the prior character context, and were instructed to press “1” key for pictures which they felt humorous with their right index finger, “2” key for pictures which they felt nonhumorous with their right middle finger and “3” key for pictures which they felt unrelated with previous caption context with their left index finger. Finally, after a variable time (2, 4, or 6 s) of blank screen, the next trial began. There were 3 runs and each had 45 trials, 15 trials for each condition. The different conditions in each block were displayed pseudo-randomly. The fMRI results showed that, comparing humorous to nonhumorous cartoons, activations were found in the left superior frontal gyrus (SFG), left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), left middle temporal gyrus (MTG), left amygdala, left and right precuneus, and right superior temporal gyrus (STG), etc. which were consistent with other fMRI studies about humor processing and corroborated the validity of the caption-cartoon paradigm. Most interestingly and importantly, comparing unrelated to nonhumorous cartoons, it showed activation in the right insula. This result suggested that the insula might be associated with incongruity detection. According to these results, the neural correlates of detection and resolution of incongruity might be separated in this study. We discussed the role of insula in context of its cognitive effect and proposed the insula and amygdala might covary contributing to incongruity detection within humorous cartoon processing. In addition, comparing nonhumorous to unrelated cartoons, the fMRI results showed the activation in left MFG and right medial frontal gyrus, right SFG, and right precuneus, etc. However the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) area, which was activation in comparison of humorous to nonhumorous cartoons, was not activated. Because in comparison of nonhumorous to unrelated cartoons, there was no processes about incongruity detection and incongruity resolution but general resolution process of relationship between captions and cartoons, it is reasonable that the frontal areas and precuneus are associated with general resolution process and the TPJ area was involved in incongruity resolution process. Consistent with these analysis, the frontal areas, precuneus and TPJ area were not activated in comparison of unrelated to nonhumorous cartoons, because unrelated cartoons involved neither general resolution process nor incongruity resolution process. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Mechanism of Collaborative Inhibition: Evidence from The Encoding Phase Xiping Liu Huan ZHANG 2014, 37(3): 559-566.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5727KB) ( )   The Collaborative Inhibition refers to that at the retrieval stage, when individuals work together as a collaborative group they recall more than any one individual. However, collaborative group recall less than the polled, non-redundant answers of the same number of individuals working alone (a nominal group). There have been a number of studies on this topic since it was found two decades ago. Researches have also given models to explain this effect. Psychologists suggest that collaborative inhibition may be due to the cognitive factors such as retrieval strategy disruption or retrieval inhibition. According to the former hypothesis, each group member develops an idiosyncratic organization of study information based on his or her unique past knowledge and experiences, thereby bringing a somewhat unique retrieval strategy to the collaborative situation. Retrieval disruption occurs because individuals must listen to others’ output that is misaligned with their own retrieval plans, such disruption lowers each member’s recall during collaboration. While according to the latter one, a speaker's selective recounting of memories shared with a listener will induce both the speaker and the listener to forget unmentioned, related material more than unmentioned, unrelated material. This hypothesis suggested that listening to a speaker remember selectively can induce forgetting of related information in the listener. The present article makes a review about those studies, with special focus on the two models with the introduction and analysis of recent studies in details. There were three experiments in this study. Experiment 1 had a 2 × 2 × 2 three-factor mixed design, adopted a twice retrieval paradigm, by controlling the original organizational strategy in collaborative groups, to form the collaborative identical and divergent organizational structure groups. Results suggested that within the collaborative identical organizational structure groups, the collaborative inhibition was showed up and the final individual recall performance was bad; while within the collaborative divergent organizational structure groups, the collaborative inhibition wasn't showed up and the final individual recall performance was good. Experiment 2 also adopted a twice retrieval paradigm, and controlled the study repetition to explore the collaborative recall performance in these two conditions: participants studied categorized word lists once or twice times. Results showed that study repetition improved retrieval organization in recall in this experiment, this was consistent with the findings of Pereira-Pasarin & Rajaram(2011). Results also suggested that no matter studying once or twice times, the collaborative inhibition was eliminated in their final individual recall. Furthermore, experiment 3 used the hard materials, and found the similar results to experiment 2. This result supported the idea of retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis. Participants disrupted each other original organizational strategy in collaborative recall performance. And the result did not give a support to the conclusion that participants had been inhibited when hearing others' recall items. This is not identical with the retrieval inhibition hypothesis being based on the explicit methods. Related Articles | Metrics

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Types and Neural Mechanisms of Visual Anticipation Xu CHEN 2014, 37(3): 567-572.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4621KB) ( )   Visual anticipation is the ability to make accurate predictions from partial or incomplete sources of visual information. The paradigms of visual anticipation include the classical and expert- novices types. The classical paradigm refers to the following processing mechanism. Infants are instructed to watch a series of pictures in the darkness. These pictures were showed on the computer screen and appearing interchangeably on the left or right side of the screen. Researchers expect infants to learn on a fixed rule, namely, to judge desirably on the following occasion: when a picture shows up one time on the left, it is sure to appear on the right the next time; when a picture shows up one time on the right side, it is sure to appear on the left the next time. By repeatedly doing so, anticipations can be shaped inside by infants and their speed of perception can be boosted. The expert- novices paradigm is underpinned by a number of evidence from the sport psychology research. This paradigm selects expert and novice sport players respectively in terms of criteria proposed by expert and novice subjects. These players are labeled as the expert group and the novice group. Then they are asked to perform relevant tasks anticipated, such as to predict the contingent position for the ball to arrive at in accordance with the posture the opponent takes at the moment of shooting it. There are mainly three kinds of visual anticipation: size and location anticipation of an object, structure visual anticipation of an object and goal visual anticipation of behavior. Individuals can make use of visual information to predict certain properties of an object, for instance, location and size of an object which is held in hand. Besides, they can also apply visual anticipation to the structure of an object. Researchers asked infants aged between five and fifteen months to grasp small balls in groups of four, which are much similar in shape and size but different in structure. Two small balls made of hard plastic are stiff in structure whereas the other two small balls made of supple plastic are structurally soft. Infants’ power of grasp is assessed before they touch these small balls for the first time. Individuals can also employ visual information to predict the targets of action, which are referred to as distinct functional target position of an object when it is used by an individual to carry out an action. For example, at the time when you pick up a cup of water for a drink, the functional target positioning of the cup is at your mouth; likewise, when you take out your cell phone to give a call, the functional target positioning of the cell phone is at your ear. The neural mechanism of visual anticipation takes the ventral and dorsal stream of the nerve system as the core, in which the ventral stream is responsible for the behavioral perception under specific situation whereas the dorsal stream is relevant to the visual guidance of action. The double-channel system of visual anticipation ought to emphasize the impact of interaction between the ventral and the dorsal stream of the nerve system. This system is founded on the mechanism which is as follows: the ventral stream of the nerve system is responsible for the behavior perception under particular situations while the dorsal stream of the nerve system is related to the visual guidance of action. Later and further study after the previous one reveals that the ventral stream of the nerve system is relevant to the situation-related support such as choice of motion mode whereas the dorsal stream of the nerve system is associated to the controling rules such as control of motion. These two nerval circuits mentioned above exhibit varying influence on experts and novices, in which the ventral stream of the nerve system is more essential to novices while the dorsal stream of the nerve system is more critical to experts. On the other hand, the nerval basis of visual anticipation is also involved in the parahippocampal cortex, the retrosplenial cortex, the bilateral orbitalfrontal cortex, and the central-part, dorsolateral and ventrolateral frontal cortexes, among which the parahippocampal cortex and the retrosplenial cortex are in relation to the processing procedures of the contextual links, the bilateral orbital frontal cortex is responsible for processing of associative information and the frontal-cortex relevant cerebral areas are chiefly in charge of preparation and control of the behavioral responses. Future research should explore more deeply the relation of the dorsal stream and ventral stream of the nerve system, study further on the categorization of visual anticipation, research into visual anticipation but with an ecological approach, detect the neural foundations of visual anticipation from the perspective of neural network and examine the impact of visual anticipation on the behavior and action of infants. Related Articles | Metrics

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Visualization of the mental imagery-- a new approach of mental imagery study 2014, 37(3): 573-580.  Abstract ( )   PDF (6345KB) ( )   Over the past decade fMRI researchers have developed increasingly sensitive techniques for analyzing the information represented in BOLD activity. The current understanding of the goal of many fMRI studies has been achieved by extracting representation information from analyzing fMRI data in some specific region of the brain rather than just comparing the activation difference among experiment conditions. Multivariate pattern analysis is one of the methods which have recently emerged as a promising computational technique in neuroimaging studies. Recently, multivariate pattern analysis method based on fMRI technology was widely used in the field of the neuroscience, which significantly changed the related question and methods of the studies of cognition. In specific, the multivariate pattern analysis method will be deeply applied to the study of mental imagery with the aim to improve the research of the essence and its related function of mental imagery processing. In this study, we introduced the principle and the history of multivariate pattern analysis method. In detail, we showed the advantage of the multivariate pattern analysis method when compared with that of the traditional method such as the fMRI analysis based on general linear model. Then we introduced the different stages of the multivariate pattern analysis in the neuroimaging studies including the classification, identification, and reconstruction. In the aspect of the classification, the researchers focused on analyzing data from the decoding perspective, one attempts to determine how much can be learned about the sensory stimuli, cognitive state, movement and so on, where the linear classifier such as the support vector machine and linear fisher classifier was widely used. In the aspect of the stimuli identification, the researchers interested on how to understand how activity varies in different brain regions when there is concurrent variation in the world by analyzing fMRI data with the encoding model such as the general linear model. On the aspect of the image reconstruction, the correspondence relationship between the stimuli properties and the neural activity pattern was built, then the Bayesian model was applied to reconstructed the visual image of the stimuli from the neural activity pattern in brain. Taken together, we indicated the develop process and the logic of the three stages. Based on this, we introduced the dilemma of the mental imagery study, and the necessity of the application the multivariate pattern analysis method in the studies of mental imagery. Then we specifically analyzed the advantage of application of multivariate pattern analysis in mental imagery study, in specific we discussed the basis of the approach of visualization of the mental imagery from the fMRI brain activity pattern. In this article, we introduced the basic claims of the perception prediction theory in the field of mental imagery that mental imagery serves to activate most of the same brain regions involved in the visual perception to modulate the visual stimuli processing, where the lateral occipital complex region is the critical regions. This study proposed that the realization of the visualization of the mental imagery will contribute to providing the new viewpoint and method for the field of mental imagery. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Neural Generators of Error-Related Negativity 2014, 37(3): 581-586.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4586KB) ( )   Error-raleted ERP component–error-related negativity (ERN) is one of the primary barometers of error monitoring when the individuals make wrong reaction. First, the researchers ensure that participants have appropriate amount of error, only in this way can elicit obvious ERN amplitude. As a result, most researchers will adopt experimental duties with larger conflict. Now, investigators mainly adopt experimental paradigms include Eriksen Flanker task, Stroop task and Go/No-Go task, and one of the most common tasks is Eriksen Flanker task. In the overview, this review summarized the neural generators of error-related negativity from the healthy and the some special subjects through literature consulting. The special groups include anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) part-injury patients, anxiety and sleep deprivation subjects, patients with mental illness as well as behavior and substance addiction. 　　Many researchers were tried to gave explanations for the neural generators of ERN, conflict monitor theory, mismatch theory and reinforcement learning theory were the most representative interpretations among such explanations at present. These dominant theories from different angles to account for the neural bases of ERN, while, the above-mentioned theories were not completely mutually exclusive each other. 　　Recently, the accurate areas of the brain that control the error monitoring are still controversial. Most researches believed that ERN was located in cingulate gyrus. It is need to note that the activation time of cingulate gyrus does not always simultaneously during error monitoring. E.g. Edwards and colleagues jointly employed Independent Component Analysis and EEG, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) had found that the ERN1 was associated with activity in the caudal ACC and lateral prefrontal cortex while the ERN2 was associated with activity in the rostral ACC (the ERN1 component (48 ms) occurred 38 ms earlier in time than the ERN2 component (86 ms) ), so the caudal ACC and lateral prefrontal cortex engaged prior to the rostral ACC during error-monitoring. However, other researches revealed that other parts of the brain were activated (such as insula, intraparietal suleus, pre-supplementarymotor area). There is a saying that the morphological structure decides function, because there is a complex neurological contact between cingulate gyrus and other brain regions–Pre-supplementarymotor area accept nerve fibers projection from a large number of neurons of prefrontal cortex area (Brodmann 46) , premotor cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. Steinhauser and Yeung had found that the amplitude of the ERN may co-vary with error awareness. Similarly, the cingulate gyrus, the putative generator of the ERN, was actived on both reported and unreported errors, whereas the anterior insula was specifically modulated by error awareness. The insular cortex, due to its cytoarchitectonic layout and its functional as well as structural connectivity, was perfectly suited to play a key role in error awareness. Therefore, ERN potential is likely to be more comprehensive manifestation of brain electrical activity in the head rather than the single performance of a particular brain region. 　　Besides, the neural generators of error-related negativity was influenced by the factors like the task of the experiment, participants＇age and level of the sensation and so on. Activited error-related encephalic regions exist markedly differences between the Reaction Conflict task and the Reinforcement Learing task in the same study, and the activation level of accurate positions in the ACC is difference. Changes in ERN amplitude reflect developmental changes in the brain, possibly reflecting the continued maturation of the medial prefrontal cortex (includes ACC), meanwhile, individual＇s congnitive ability is also in development, and people who has better working memory span has the larger ERN amplitude in the error trials. There exist studies had found that activated brain regions caused by the true errors exist differences even under different level of consciousness. Participants who realized their own mistakes appear error-related dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activation levels increased significantly, comparison with the subjects who did not realized their own errors. However, some studies had shown that the posterior cingulate cortex emerge significant activation. In the future, investigators should take full advantages of Dynamic EEG Recording and Analysis System for discovery and diagnosis of abnormal brain waves, in other words, promote the results of researches from laboratory to clinical practice. Next, researches of the neural underpinnings of error monitoring should conduct stimulus of combination of visual, audio multi-channels as experiment materials. In addition, researchers should be insight into the researches which are indexed by ERN as drug relapse predictor in order to improve the extrapolation of the validity of related researches. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Word Spurt: A Milestone in Early Language Development──A Longitudinal Study on Five Mandarin-speaking Children 2014, 37(3): 587-592.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4205KB) ( )   Word spurt is characterized by a sudden rise of vocabulary growth toward the end of one-word stage, typically around one and a half years old, when the child has a vocabulary of about 50 words. Many researchers have reported vocabulary spurt in early lexical development according to parental reports as well as longitudinal case studies. Previous studies usually analyze word spurt from a single language or non-language perspective, and there is no systematic investigation of children’s linguistic features around word-spurt. In Chinese, a few studies focus on the early lexical growth, the distribution of early lexical categories and the using frequency of early vocabulary, which also have not provided sufficient information to probe into the characteristics of early lexical, syntactic and semantic development around word-spurt time. Based on the longitudinal data of five Mandarin-speaking children, this paper explores word spurt in children’s early lexical, syntactic and semantic development. The data on early lexical development showed that for five children, a sudden increase in vocabulary was witnessed at 18 months. Children’s naming insight was the foundation for the achievement of a capability to handle grammatical relations, as these results confirmed a close link between the onset of word combinations and word spurt in terms of relative chronology. The two-word stage symbolizing the occurrence of early syntax began for the children around 17 months, almost the same time with word spurt. A longitudinal study on early semantic development showed that the acquisition of meanings for five kids was a quick process. Children’s first overextension occurred at 9 months, and overextension was highly restrained before 16 months. Then, overextended words reached the highest number around 18 months, petering out gradually until the end of the second year. On the whole, less than 7% of the children’s vocabulary was overextended. In addition, basic-level words constituted almost all the early common nouns, which displayed the conceptual primacy of basic-level words in early lexical development. The elaboration of noun hierarchies consisted mainly in the addition of subordinate-level words, with the first appearing at 17 months. The gradual disappearance of overextensions and the addition of subordinate-level words around word spurt implied a change of word-referent abilities during this period. After that, there was a great improvement of children’s word-referent mapping abilities. In sum, it appeared that 18 months was a milestone for children’s early lexical, syntactic and semantic development. It was around this time that children displayed a series of great changes: a rapid growth of vocabulary; an occurrence of word combinations; a gradual disappearance of overextended words and a gradual increase of subordinate-level words. Word spurt marks not only a quantitative change of vocabulary, but also a qualitative change in children’s whole language system. Related Articles | Metrics

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Development of Adolescents’ Romantic Relationship Incidence and the Relationship among the Influential Factors 2014, 37(3): 593-600.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5418KB) ( )   Romantic relationship is formed through the communication between couples, including intimacy, passion and commitment. Romantic relationship is an important milestone in the development of social relations for teenagers. To them, there’s a qualitative difference between romantic relationship in its early stage and that in its later stage. Romantic relationship in its early stage is the love of companionship and closely related to friendship, while its later stage involves the strong feelings of intimacy, commitment and sexual love. Even though psychological studies on adolescent romantic relationship has a history of only a few decades, psychologists think that it is a major characteristic of adolescent social relations and has very important effects on their development of independence, identification, capacity of intimate actions and conflict resolutions. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of adolescents’ romantic relationship. However, currently in China, the majority of the studies on this issue are introductions or syntheses of educators’ experiences, whereas empirical studies are few. The adolescents’ romantic relationship is a key feature of their social worlds and influenced by their family and peer factors, and it is closely related to their academic achievement. To invest whether the implicit attitude about the romantic relationship and the attachment of parent and peer are important influence factors to the happen of romantic relationship in adolescent. And we explore the relationships between the romantic relationship and the academic achievement. It’ll provide the theoretical basis and practical guidance for the early interference and education of adolescents’ romantic relationship. Therefore, this study attempts to have a comprehensive discussion on the influences of such factors as individual implicit attitude, parental and companion attachment on the inclination of adolescent romantic relations, thus provide psychological directions and practical guidance for early intervention of adolescent romantic relations. By means of combination of experiments and questionnaire, we study 204 adolescents aged 12～18 year old. Firstly, we design the Implicit Relational Association Procedure (IRAP) to invest the development status of the happen of romantic relationship in adolescent. Secondly, through the Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT) , we invest the age characteristics and gender differences of implicit attitude about the romantic relationship. Meanwhile, adolescents accomplish the questionnaire of “ The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) ”, in order to research the prediction of implicit attitude about the romantic relationship and attachment of parent and peer on the happen of romantic relationship in adolescent. Thirdly, the questionnaire of “ The Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) ” are assigned to the students. And we also collect their academic achievement in order to explore the relationship between adolescents’ romantic relationship and academic achievement. The results show that(1) There is distinct grade difference in the adolescents’ development of the incidence of romantic relationship and the Grade One in high school is the critical period. With the development of grade, the overall trend is increasing at first and then a slightly downward. There is no significant gender differences in boys and girls.The boys’ overall score is slightly higher than girls’.(2) Adolescents’ implicit attitude about the romantic relationship has a significant difference in grade. With the development of age, the supportive of romantic relationship is increasing, but a slightly downward in Grade Three in high school. And there is no statistical significance in boys and girls.(3) The occurrence of romantic relationship has significant negative correlation with the score of the attachment of mother. And the happen of romantic relationship also has significant negative correlation with the score of the attachment of peer. The attachment of mother can predict their happen of romantic relationship in certain degree. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Age-related differences in emotion regulation effects under various emotional stimuli 2014, 37(3): 601-609.  Abstract ( )   PDF (6138KB) ( )   Adolescence is considered as the time full of “storm and stress” and characterized by fluctuations of mood states. Two laboratory experiments were conducted to elucidate the differences of up-regulation and down-regulation effects between adolescents and adults toward emotional stimuli of various valence (positive/neutral/negative) and arousal (high/low). It’s hypothesized and verified that adults have larger regulation effect size than adolescents. 　　Study 1 used a 2（age: adolescents/adults, between subject）? 3(emotional valence: positive/negative/neural, within subject) ? 3(emotion regulation strategy: up regulation/down regulation/no regulation, within subject) mixed design. The Reactivity and Regulation-Image Task (REAR-I Task; Carthy, Horesh, Apter, Edge, & Gross, 2010) was utilized upon 35 adolescents and 35 adults to exam their up-regulation and down-regulation effects of positive, neutral, and negative emotional stimuli. Results showed that: (1) besides the similar effects of negative emotion up regulation between adolescents and adults, the other three regulation effect sizes were larger in adults than in adolescents. However, negative emotion up regulation by definition is not an adaptive kind of emotion regulation; (2) effect sizes of emotion regulation in adults were from medium to large. Specifically, in the negative emotional condition, adults presented a fairly large effect size (0.91) of down-regulation. The regulation effect sizes of adolescents were from small to medium. 　　Study 2 further differentiate emotion stimuli into high-arousal group and low-arousal group by the SAM paradigm（Bradley & Lang, 1994）. Then REAR-I Task was utilized upon 59 adolescents and 59 adults to exam their up-regulation and down-regulation effects towards different valenced (positive/neutral/negative) and aroused (high/low) emotional stimuli. Results showed that: (1) effect sizes of high arousal emotion up regulation and low arousal positive emotion up regulation in adolescents and in adults were similar; (2) effect sizes of down regulation in adults were all larger than in adolescents. Specifically, in high arousal negative emotion down regulation condition, the effect sizes of adolescents were near to the large effect; (3) effect sizes of up-regulation were similar with the effect sizes of down-regulation in adolescents; on the contrary, down-regulation effect sizes were larger than the up-regulation effect sizes in adults; (4) when up-regulating high arousal emotions, effect sizes of adolescents were larger than adults. When making down-regulation, effect sizes of adults were larger than adolescents. 　　 Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Gratitude on Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction 2014, 37(3): 610-616.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5056KB) ( )   Life satisfaction is an important construct in positive psychology. Considered to be the key indicator of subjective well-being, life satisfaction is a subjective evaluation of overall quality of life (Proctor, Linley, & Maltby，2009；Sun, Zheng, & Yu，2009, 2010; Watkins, Woodward, Stone, & Kolts, 2003). Life satisfaction is more than just an outcome of various psychological states, it is also an in?uential predictor of psychological states and psychosocial systems (Proctor et al., 2009). Life satisfaction is associated with depression, self-esteem, self-efficacy, suicide, substance abuse, violence behavior and academic achievement. It is very necessary to explore factors that influence life satisfaction and the effect mechanism of factors on life satisfaction. The present study was to investigate whether perceived social support mediated the relationship between gratitude and life satisfaction, and stressful life events moderated this mediation effect. Participants were 1319 adolescents (677 boys and 642 girls) who attended middle and high schools, and they completed gratitude questionnaire, perceived social support questionnaire, stressful life events scale, and life satisfaction questionnaire. The results indicated that: (1) perceived social support partially mediated the relationship between gratitude and life satisfaction. Gratitude not only directly influenced life satisfaction, but also indirectly influenced life satisfaction through perceived social support. (2) stressful life events moderated the mediated effect of perceived social support. That is, stressful life events moderated the second path of the mediation. The indirect associations between gratitude and life satisfaction would vary as a function of stressful life events. The relationship between perceived social support and life satisfaction was significant when levels of stressful life events were low, whereas, the relationship between perceived social support and life satisfaction was not significant when levels of stressful life events were high. For adolescents low in stressful life events, higher perceived social support led to higher life satisfaction. In contrast, for adolescents high in stressful life events, there was no significant effect of perceived social support on life satisfaction. With stressful life events increasing, the effect of perceived social support on life satisfaction weakened. Perceived social support served as a stress-vulnerability factor. Therefore, the effect of gratitude on adolescents’ life satisfaction was moderated mediating effect. The present study not only revealed how gratitude influenced life satisfaction, but also revealed when this effect was stronger. These findings had important theoretical and reference value to increase adolescents’ life satisfaction. Firstly, we should attach importance to the effect of gratitude on life satisfaction. Secondly, we should help adolescents to improve the level of perceived social support, and adequately reduce adolescents’ stress. Related Articles | Metrics

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Adolescent School Maladjustment: The Role of Family Cohesion and Family-based Moral Emotion and Responsibility 2014, 37(3): 617-624.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5774KB) ( )   Research has shown that moral emotions are related to adolescents’ school adjustment and problems. However, it is unclear how the family plays a role in affecting adolescent family-based moral emotion and responsibility, which in turn influence school adjustment. This study examined age and gender differences in moral emotion and responsibility based on family moral events, and, more important, how family cohesion, family-based moral emotion and responsibility were related to adolescent school adjustment including externalizing behaviors and academic problems. The participants included 755 adolescents in 4?6?8 and 10 grades from 3 schools in Shanghai. The children were asked to complete questionnaires concerning moral emotions and responsibilities based on family moral events (adapted from Brown, et al., 2008). Theyalso reported on family cohesion using the revised FES-CV (Zou,et al., 1991). Teachers were asked to rate the school-related externalizing behaviors and academic problems for each participant using the teacher–child rating scale (adapted from Hightower et al., 1986). 　　The multivariate analysis yielded the following results. There were significant effects for age, F（15,2051）=12.89, Wilk’sλ=.92, p<.001, η2=.08; for gender, F（5,743）=5.11，Wilk’s λ=.90， p<.001，η2=.03；for Age * Gender interaction, F（15,2051）=1.86.，Wilk’s λ=.96，p<.05，η2=0.01. Girls had significantly higher scores than boys on family-based responsibility and cohesion. Boys displayed more externalizing behaviors and academic difficulties than girls. Grade 4 students seemed to be an important time in adolescent development of school adjustment. Boys at grade 4 had more school problems than girls. Regression analysis showed that family cohesion positively predicted family-based responsibility (β＝.09，SE= .018，p<.01), and family-based moral emotions (β＝.10，SE= .02，p<.01). Family-based responsibility predicted externalizing behaviors (β＝.10，SE= .041，p<.01)and academic problems (β＝.08，SE= .042，p<.01). However, family-based moral emotions did not predict school outcomes. Regression analysis and structural equation modeling also revealed that family-based responsibilities were associated with family cohesion and school problems ( χ2(25)=64.10，CFI=.97，TLI=.96，SRMR=.03，RMESA=.05). Family cohesion positively had direct and indirect effects on school problems. In addition, family-based responsibilities partially mediated the effects of family cohesion on school problems. These results help us to understand the role of Chinese family in the development of family cohesion, family-based moral emotion, responsibility, and school adjustment. The study also has implications for family-based prevention and intervention Related Articles | Metrics

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A Meta-Analysis of Self-Worth Scale for Adolescents 2014, 37(3): 625-632.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5681KB) ( )   The multidimensional multilevel self worth model for adolescents developed by Huang (1998) is a representative and widely adopted self-esteem model in China. Based on this model, a 13 factors Self-Worth Scale for Adolescents was designed. This questionnaire included: global self-worth (6 items); individual self-worth (5 items); social self-worth (5 items), and other individual and social sub-self-worth factors, they are interpersonal, psychological, moral, physiological, and family (4 items in each factor). In the last decade, there were more than one hundred studies used this instrument to study the Chinese adolescents' self-worth. However, there is no article until now making a comprehensive review on those findings, although some of the findings contradict each other. Besides that, the multidimensional multilevel model not only allowed us to test the gender difference and age characters of the self-esteem as some existed reviews, but also provided us to test those topics both in general and specific level. In current study, meta-analysis was introduced to systematically re-analyze datum of Self-Worth Scale for Adolescents collected from researches published from 1998 to 2011 in China. The results of meta-analysis showed that the adolescents' self-worth has improved in the last decade. Compared with the national norm of the self-worth scale, adolescents reported higher self-worth in all dimensions and levels; male and female both reported higher self-worth than the national gender norms respectively, however, no reliable gender differences were found in all self-worth factors. After categorized all the data into three age groups, different age patterns were found: for the undergraduates, their self-worth higher than the corresponding national norms; senior high school age students' individual-oriented special psychological and social-oriented special mortal self-esteem were lower than the norms; junior high school age students' individual-oriented special psychological and social-oriented mortal, physiological interpersonal self-esteem were lower than the norms. We also analyzed some variables that potentially affect results out of the adolescents' self-esteem data, such as region of the sample, the year and quality of publication, purpose of study, and so on. There are no systematic effect was found contributing the variation of the adolescents self-esteem. So we got our main finding of this study: with the age increased, the self-worth (self-esteem) of today’s Chinese adolescents raised, there are no gender differences generally; the sample publication quality and purpose have no effected generally on self-worth. Based on the findings in the current study and the features of the papers used the self-worth scale for adolescents, we suggest more studies using this instrument should be introduced to explore the out of school youth’s self-esteem; the instruments should be used more in multi variables analysis, experiment studies, and in more formal way that fulfills the requirements of psychometrics. Related Articles | Metrics

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Impact of Perspective Taking on Deviant Behavior Online: The Mediating Effect of Moral Disengagement 2014, 37(3): 633-638.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4108KB) ( )   Nowadays, the internet has become an indispensable part of people’s lives. In the internet, college students’ may engage in various kinds of deviant behaviors. Morality is an important aspect to consider when explaining the occurrence of deviant behavior. But how college students’ morality influences their deviant behavior on the internet constitutes a hitherto unstudied issue. In the moral domain, Bandura’s social cognitive theory of human agency offers an inclusive conceptual framework within which the moral dimensions of deviant behavior can also be described. Thereby, individual with high levels of moral disengagement may tend to report more deviant behavior on the internet. Perspective taking is the process of imagining the world from another’s vantage point or imagining oneself in another’s shoes. From cognitive development to moral reasoning, perspective taking is considered the foundation of human social capacity and is recognized as a critical ingredient in proper social functioning. Perspective taking consistently increases liking, interaction satisfaction, and helping behavior. A wealth of research has also shown that perspective-taking affects cyber bullying and aggression. Therefore, the aim of this present study was to examine the relationship between perspective taking and college students’ deviant behavior on the internet, and the mediation of moral disengagement in contemporary China. The present study tested the hypotheses using the method of questionnaire survey. A total of 424 undergraduates from two universities participated in this survey. The questionnaires used in the study were: interpersonal reactivity index, moral disengagement scale, and scale for adolescent internet deviance. The results were as follows: (1) College students’ deviant behavior on the internet was not serious. However, the frequency of inflammatory, pornographic and deception behaviors in boys online was significantly higher than that in girls. (2) Perspective taking was negatively related to moral disengagement (r=-.34, p<.001), and deviant behavior on the internet (r=-.32, p<.001). But perspective taking was positively related to moral disengagement (r=.56, p<.001). (3) Perspective taking had a negative effect on college students’ deviant behavior on the internet (?=-.23, p<.05). However, moral disengagement mediated the relation between perspective taking and deviant behavior on the internet. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the findings from the study were discussed. It was argued that the findings enriched the theory of moral disengagement by confirming the mediating role of moral disengagement in the relationship between perspective taking and deviant behavior online. It suggests, based on the findings, that we could decrease the college students’ deviant behavior on the internet by improving their perspective taking, and reducing their moral disengagement. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Development Trends of Communication Apprehension and Chinese University Students’ Facing-Audience Communication Apprehension 2014, 37(3): 639-642.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4108KB) ( )   The aim of this paper is to review the concept, classifications, measurements, influencing factors and treatments of communication apprehension (CA) in order to gain insight into the researches of communication apprehension overseas and its development in China. Scholars from home and abroad carry much work on the study of communication apprehension. McCroskey, an American scholar who is the first to use CA in a publication, classifies communication apprehension and develops Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) to investigate communication apprehension. His studies raise great interest of research in the communication field and a great many researchers study the causes and development, measurements, and treatments of CA. Gradually, researchers from other countries, as well as American researchers are conducting indigenous studies of CA. Many researches of CA in China focus on university students. Meanwhile, a Chinese psychologist put forward a new concept named facing-audience communication apprehension (FACA) in 2007, FACA include 4 aspects, and they are platform apprehension, interview apprehension, affairs-handling apprehension, and group-within and outside-campus communication apprehension. In 2011, the Chinese University Student’s Facing-Audience Communication Apprehension Scale was developed to investigate Chinese university students’ FACA, which provides a new insight into the psychological health of Chinese university students. Researchers find that the phenomenon of CA was common among people, and people with high CA are handicapped by their CA in studying, working and living. Some researchers study the causes of CA and propose their theories. They seem to agree the four main causes of CA are reinforcement, lack of skills training or acquisition, modeling, and genetic predispositions. Meanwhile, other researchers also find some major elements in the situation that can result in increased CA, such as novelty, formality, subordinate status, conspicuousness, unfamiliarity, dissimilarity, degree of attention from others and so forth. The study of FACA found university students’ gender, grade, major, seniority among brothers and sisters, family’s financial situation and parents’ education degree are the main influencing factors of why they get FACA. The existing conditions of CA and FACA review demonstrate the need for continued research in CA filed. Since causes and development of CA have been widely studied and agreed upon, and reliable measurement instruments have been designed and tested. In the following study, researchers should focus on the treatment of CA, and apply the right theory into practice. The three most frequently used methods for treating CA are skills training, systematic desensitization, and cognitive modification. Along with the development of research, studies find methods like collaborative learning, digital video technology, and group treatment can decrease the degree of CA efficiently. In addition to methods mentioned above researchers put forward a new approach according to Chinese national condition, that is counselors, teachers, the student union and Party and Youth League organizations in universities should play a full part in reducing university students’ FACA. In conclusion, studies about CA at home and abroad mostly focus on university students, other people especially the children and adolescents as well as the diversity of research method should be taken into account. Meanwhile, study will be more meaningful if the research achievements of CA and FACA would be applied to practical problems. Related Articles | Metrics

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On Emotional Forecasting Accuracy of Teacher in Typical Education Situations Hai-Bin WANG 2014, 37(3): 643-648.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4488KB) ( )   This article makes a systematic investigation on emotional forecasting accuracy of teacher on the basis of the typical education situations through three studies. The three studies were conducted in the school to the scene, including two stages of teachers' predicted emotion measurement and students' emotional experience measurement, which take the design of teacher-student paired study. We invite 21 teachers to predict the tense feeling of the paired 8 or 10 students in the 1st study; and 16 teachers forecast two paired students’ pleasant and shame mood when faced with different parenting style in the 2nd one. The third group has 18 teachers and the corresponding number students, and the teachers forecast the students’ positive high-arousal and positive low-arousal emotions when they are subject to positive expectations. The three studies have multi-samples, are cross-situational, and take different emotion measurement methods, which show that: in a typical situation of education, teachers fail to accurately predict student emotions, and there appear apparent bias in their prediction; what’s more, compared with the basic emotion, teachers predict more inaccurately to students’ complex emotions ; compared with positive low-arousal emotions, teacher predict more inaccurately to students’ positive high-arousal emotions. Despite of inaccuracies of teachers' emotional forecasting to students’ emotion, there is not obvious overestimation or underestimation of trend. The research is close to current educational practice, has good ecological validity, and tries to explore the emotion measurement method, accuracy of statistical indicators, but there are also certain limitations, i.e. a small amount of samples. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Working Memory Capacity, Context Constraint and Sentence Length on L2 Vocabulary Learning yu-ting TANG 2014, 37(3): 649-655.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5097KB) ( )   Studies show that reading is one of the most effective ways of vocabulary-learning, no matter whether you have been exposed to the target language or not. It has been proved by some researchers that L2 learners may acquire the meanings of novel words from sentence context while reading. But neither have they compared the difference of subjects’ performance between different types of sentence length nor different types of context constraint, and therefore their works left us with questions. As a matter of fact, context constraint is such a powerful factor that it can has great impacts on semantic and syntactic processing in sentence comprehension according to some studies. We propose that both context constraint and sentence length are important factors in indirect vocabulary learning. Furthermore, Working memory has been considered as an important part in some advanced cognitive processes, such as: reading, comprehension, reasoning, etc. Some studies do find some relationship between working memory capacity and L2 word knowledge, language production or vocabulary semantic extraction, but there is still no study focusing on the role of working memory while learning words via reading. In this study, we presented an experiment to explore whether working memory capacity, sentence length and context constraint affect the performance of vocabulary learning while reading in L2, and how exactly they work. We tested three different age groups with average ages of 14, 17 and 21 respectively. All subjects were required to finish a vocabulary-learning task after the working memory operation span task. We made reading materials differing in 3 types of sentence length and 2 types of context constraint, and divided the subjects of each age group into two groups according to their working memory span scores. For those who come from the middle or the eldest age group, the results show that working memory capacity do have a significant relationship with their performance in the vocabulary-learning task. While in the condition of mid-length and long sentence, subjects got significant higher scores in the vocabulary-learning task when the context was restricted much more strictly. And in contrast to subjects of the youngest group, the longer the sentence mid and elder aged subjects read, the worse they did in the vocabulary-learning task when the context was not that restricted. Evidence of this study offered strong support for the hypothesis that working memory plays an important role in indirect vocabulary learning and its impact won’t be diminished no matter what kind of reading materials is involved. In other words, we may make vocabulary learning much easier via working-memory-related training. Additionally, our findings in reading materials suggest controlling sentence length and context constraint of study materials can also achieve the same effect. More specifically, the more strictly context was restricted, the more efficient L2 vocabulary learning can be. Related Articles | Metrics

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Influence of the Presentation of Source Problems on Cognitive Load and Analogical Reasoning SONG GUANGWEN Shu-Juan Ma 2014, 37(3): 656-660.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3610KB) ( )   With 176 third-year junior high school students as subjects, the influence of presentation of source problems on cognitive load and analogical reasoning were studied using a 2×2×2 matching block experimental design. 　　Randomly select 230 third-year junior high school students. There are 176 students whose basic reasoning abilities are similar screening by Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices. Divide them into 8 groups according to the final achievement in Chinese. The experimental material is arranged as follows. There are two similar articles of the war: one is a story of the general attacking the castle; the other is a story of the commander taking command. And there are two similar articles of putting out the fire: one is a story of the red rescue team putting out the fire; the other is a story of the neighbors putting out the fire. Select one story from the war and one story from putting out the fire, and the two stories constitute the dissimilar materials. Each story was adapted to a clear structure and an unclear structure. Finally there ware 8 stories. Four kinds of the materials of this research are: similar content, clear structure; dissimilar content, clear structure; similar content, unclear structure; dissimilar content, unclear structure. Radiation problem as the goal problem were used. There are 8 groups of this experiment, and each group randomly receives one of the four materials (see table 1). Five minutes later, the materials and distribute inductive questionnaire among the inductive group were collected. Ten minutes later, collect the inductive questionnaire and distribute the goal questionnaire (including cognitive load questionnaire and radiation problem) among all the subjects. Cognitive load measurement tool is the Self-reported invested mental effort scale. Participants report the mental effort they invest in learning and understanding the experimental material by themselves. Use SPSS13.0 statistical software package to process and analyze the collected data. 　　The results showed that: (1) All of the method of summary, the similarity of the source problems' contents and the clarity of the source problems' structure had significant impacts on cognitive load (p<.05, p<.001, p<.001), and there were no significant interaction among them. (2) The method of summary and the clarity of the source problems' structure had significant impacts on analogical learning (p<.01, p<.05), but the similarity of the source problems' contents did not have significant impact on analogical learning (p>.05). However, there were significant interaction among them (p<.05). In conclusion, the results of this study indicated that problem-presenting mode and inductive method had significant influence on cognitive load and analogical learning. So, if instructional design was the same to all the students, it would cause part of students have heavy cognitive load and the other part of them have to process redundant information. Therefore, individual instructional design was needed. More choices of textbook compiling and teaching plan design can be considered to provide for the students. Students can choose learning situation according to their own ability. Related Articles | Metrics

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Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts Complex Information Learning : to Eat A Cutting Wisdom? 2014, 37(3): 661-667.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5287KB) ( )   Abstract Taking tests enhances learning. But what happens when one cannot answer a test question—does an unsuccessful retrieval attempts impede future learning or enhance it? Although the study has demonstrated that unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance learning, it has two major limitations. First, studies of unsuccessful retrieval attempts have been based almost exclusively on memory for cue-target pairs. The second major limitation of research on unsuccessful retrieval attempts is that it does not inform us about whether testing enhances the transfer of learning. 　Three experiments were conducted to investigate whether the unsuccessful retrieval complex meaning material would enhance retention and transfer learning, and the effect of the feedback timing as well. Participants in 3 experiments read an essay about Respiratory System, which consisted of eight paragraphs, the paragraphs contained either a single fact or a single concept, question was developed for each fact and concept. In Experiments 1 and 2, Participants in the test condition allowed 10 min to answer the questions. At the end of 10 min, participants given the text passage and told to study it for 8 min. Participants in the extended study condition were given 18 min to study the passage. Participants were then immediately administered the Final test, which consisted of 8 same questions from the initial test conditions (Experiments 1)or 8 new inferential questions (Experiments 2)to assess transfer. The first two experiments, the test group with delayed feedback .Therefore, added a condition of immediate feedback in Experiments 3, subjects were presented with the individual facts or concepts immediately after answer each question. 　Any items that participants answered correctly on the initial tests were removed from the following analyses of final test scores .The findings showed that (1) In Experiments 1, significant main effects of learning condition and type of question were found，F(1,55)=6.491，p<.05，ηp2=.106, F(1,55)=13.072，p<.05，ηp2=.192 respectively, with the test condition and the factual questions exhibiting better recall accuracy. An independent samples t test examined the effects of learning conditions by comparing factual and conceptual questions . For the factual questions, test group resulted in better final test performance than did the study group, t(55)=1.825，p<.05, while the conceptual questions attempt did not show such facility. (2) In Experiments 2, there was a main effect of learning condition, F(1,45)=10.19, p<.05，ηp2=.185. For the factual questions, test group resulted in better performance than did the study group, t(45)=3.059，p<.05. For the conceptual questions, there was no difference between the test and study group. (3) In Experiments 3, significant main effects of feedback timing were found, F(2，64)= 6.946，p <.001，ηp2=.178. Post Hoc revealed that the group of delayed feedback produced greater transfer than both the immediate feedback group and study group, ps <.05. For the factual questions, there was a significant effect of feedback timing, F(2，64)=8.282, p<.05, delayed feedback produced greater transfer than both the immediate feedback group and study group, ps<.05. 　Our study revealed that: unsuccessful retrieval of factual questions enhanced retention and transfer learning, and followed by delay feedback produced greater transfer than did immediate feedback and repeated studying; while the conceptual questions attempt did not show such facility. These results demonstrated that followed the unsuccessful retrieval attempt of factual knowledge, given learners delayed feedback can enhance retention and transfer learning; and for the conceptual knowledge which represented higher difficulty, it could be a boundary condition of unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance learning. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Role of Variability and Prior Knowledge in Learning from Comparing Multiple Examples 2014, 37(3): 668-677.  Abstract ( )   PDF (6443KB) ( )   Researchers have consistently shown that studying multiple examples is more effective than one example to promote learning because the comparison evoked by comparing multiple examples is generally good for learning. Not all comparisons, however, may equally be effective. Principles found in the literature for designing multiple examples remain ambiguous. This paper reviews experimental studies on learning from comparison of examples and identifies issues that have not been resolved: (a) how similar or different examples should be to facilitate learning, and (b) the role of students’ prior knowledge in example-based learning. First, contradictory findings have been reported regarding how similar or different multiple examples should be in order to facilitate learning. Examples are generally analyzed from surface (irrelevant) features and structural (relevant) features. Surface features, such as names, objects, numbers, and story lines, are irrelevant to goal attainment; structural features, such as underlying mathematical procedures, rules, solutions, and principles, are relevant to goal attainment. It is unclear regarding how similar multiple examples should be in terms of surface and structural features. On the one hand, examples with different surface features were shown to help the learner focus on structural features, increase germane cognitive load, and induce a schema; superficially similar examples might confuse structural features with surface features and thus spoil schema construction and future problem solving. On the other hand, providing superficially similar examples does not overburden the learners’ working memory and can help them discern and align the structural features; highly variable examples might make the underlying structural commonalities difficult to be noticed. Second, it is also unclear regarding the role of students’ prior knowledge in learning from comparing multiple examples. Researchers found that (a) students with low prior knowledge did not benefit from comparing multiple examples, especially the complex and unfamiliar examples; (b) students with high prior knowledge benefited from comparing any example variability whereas students with low prior knowledge benefited from comparing only highly variable examples; (c) students with higher prior knowledge benefited more from comparing high-variability examples whereas students with lower prior knowledge benefited more from comparing low-variability examples; and (d) there was no interaction between students’ prior knowledge and example variability. The review addresses these limitations of existing literature and provides recommendations for example design according to our empirical studies. First, example design should focus on aspects and features that are critical for student learning, and use the distinction of critical/uncritical instead of surface/structural adopted by existing cognitive studies. Second, students may need to separately discern each critical aspect before they can benefit from comparing simultaneous variation of these aspects. Simultaneous variation is likely to overwhelm students and thus to be harmful for learning if they have not separately discerned each critical aspect. Third, students with different levels of prior knowledge may perceive different aspects of examples as critical for their learning and thus benefit differently from the same instruction. Examples should be designed according to aspects that are critical to specific students. Suggestions for future research are provided. Related Articles | Metrics

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The system of dynamic model of inter group emotion transmission 2014, 37(3): 678-682.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3465KB) ( )   With the development of economics and the acceleration of social transformation, social contradictions become increasingly prominent. Mass-Emergency (ME) is in the spotlight. A plenty of previous studies paid close attentions to ME’s size, information transmission and feedbacks, and also its generation mechanism. Few studies focused on emotions. Even so, how emotions transmit and turn into intergroup emotion was never concerned. ME is the Externalizing Representations of intergroup emotion, and the spreading of intergroup emotion is the power source of ME. Thus aiming at the mechanism of intergroup spreading, trying to build a model which describe the law of intergroup emotion spreading will be significant for dealing with and forecasting ME.Based on system dynamic and emotion theories, this study modeled dynamic mechanism of intergroup emotion-transmission, and named it as “intergroup emotion-transmission model” (INET). It described the mechanism of intergroup emotion-transmission which concerned 3 kinds of person during the transmission: spreaders, ignorant and stiflers. This model inherited merits and took fully disadvantages of former models into account. Using computer simulation and psychological experiments, this study tested basic hypothesis and ecological validity of INET. The experiment was conducted in a computer lab, participants were from 20 classes, amount to 614 colleage students were recruited, 3 participants of each class were randomly selected, MP3 material which was used to trigger emotins was presented to the 3 participants, after the presentation, they can choose to transmit the MP3 to other participants or not, and then report back their choics to experimenter. Experimenter recorded the proportion of the number of the 3 kinds of persons mentioned above every 80 seconds and 3 line charts were drawn to which the Simulation results compared and the error between experiment and simulation data were calculated. Results showed that social sharing and second sharing of emotion, emotional contagion, degrees of intimate and trust between group members were 3 significant factors which could describe the system of dynamic mechanism of spreaders ignorants and stiflers properly: the proportion of spreaders was climb up and then decline; the proportion of stiflers was climb up with a slowing down speed; the proportion of ignorants was decline. The results of this study provided scientific basis both for dealing with and forecasting ME. Related Articles | Metrics

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Own-race Effect of Uygur College Students in Face Recognition: the Influence of Inter-group Contact Experience 2014, 37(3): 683-688.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4186KB) ( )   Abstract The well-known own-race effect (ORE) in facial recognition is regarded as better recognition for faces of one’s own race than others. Lots of researches focus on the relation between own-race effect and inter-group contact by comparing the white race faces to others, and generate inconsistent results. On the ground of the above reasoning, the current study is to explore whether own-race effect could be extended to the individuals who are racially homogeneous but from different ethnic groups. The influence of quantity and quality of inter-group contact on the degree of own-race effect has also been discussed. On the basis of population distribution and patterns of inter--group contact, 99 Uygur college students from different regions were therefore recruited as the participants. First, they were requested to recognize the Uighur and Han faces by using “learning-recognition” paradigm. Face stimuli were 40 female face photographs (20 Han and 20 Uygur) without outer face features. During study, the participants looked at the series of 20 faces (10 Han and 10 Uygur) presented randomly on the screen. Each face was shown for 5 sec with an interval of 1 sec. The participants were requested to remember the faces. At test, all 40 faces were presented randomly. The participants were asked to judge whether the faces were new or old, and the computer recorded the reflex index of each participant. Then they were asked to answer Social Contact Questionnaire and Individuating Experience Questionnaire (Walker & Hewstone, 2006a) to assess self-reported quantity and quality of contact. The results of repeated measures ANOVAS show a generalized own-race effect for the Uygurs. The dependent variables, such as accuracy rates, reaction times, hit rates, discrimination accuracy and response criterion, demonstrate significant own-race advantage of the Uygurs. The Uygurs with minimum interracial contact have the lowest accuracy rates but the highest false alarm rates of Han faces, while the Uygurs with maximum contact have no differences on Uighur and Han faces in accuracy rates and discrimination score. The size of own-race effect in recognition memory for each participant was also analyzed, which was calculated by subtracting other-race accuracy rates from own-race accuracy rates (Hancock & Rhodes, 2008). The results of regression analysis show that both quantity and quality of the contact can reduce the size of own-race effect. But dominance analysis shows that compared with the quantity of the contact individuating experience has greater impact on the size of own-race effect (71.86% vs 28.14%). It is also found that only 29.5% of the variance in the own-race effect is attributed to the quantity and quality of contact, which demonstrates other social variables may influence the size of own-race effect. On the basis of these findings, it concludes that own-race effect can be found not only between different races, but also between different nationalities within the same race. In addition, the current study suggests that individuating other-race experience is more effective than quantity of contact to influence the magnitude of own-race effect. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Decision Confidence in Informational Conformity 2014, 37(3): 689-693.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3271KB) ( )   When one receives information from group that inconsistent with his own decision, he may shift his decision and conform to the majority, we call this phenomenon Informational Conformity. From now, the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is still inconclusive. However, when take another look at it, Informational Conformity is also a phenomenon of decision-shifting. And according to the Two-Stage Dynamic Signal Detection (2DSD), the decision confidence may have a specific role in decision-shifting. Decision confidence reflects one's belief in the optimality or correctness of his decision, and humans often use it to adjust their decisions. 2DSD supposes that a judge does not simply shut down the information accumulation process after making a choice but continues to accumulate information to make a confidence rating. So the confidence rating is a function of the information collected at the time of the choice plus the information collected after making a choice. Thus, one's confidence rating will increase if the information collected after making a choice support his choice, and decrease if the information conflict with his choice, then their decision may be changed. Hence, this study hypothesizes that the decision confidence may have an important effect on Informational Conformity. With a modification of the JAS (judge-advice-system) paradigm, we explored the role of decision confidence in Informational Conformity. 30participants (12male), age 19-25 were recruited from undergraduate. We made 80 rectangular pictures (11.43cm*15.24cm) by CAD drawing software, and divided it into two irregular parts with a curve. Participants were asked to pick out the larger one, and rated their confidence on a scale from 1 (very uncertain) to 6 (certain) of their decision. After rating, we provided participants with the information of others’ decisions on that very picture for reference. Then they estimated their confidence rating again or shift their choice to another. At the end of the experiment, participants were given a test of Cognitive Style. The results showed that the Cognitive Style score was not correlated with the quantity of confidence ratings changed or the probability of decision shifting, implicating individuals with different cognitive styles has no difference in information taking. And we found that: (1) participants shifted their decisions and conform to the majority merely in against condition; (2) the group information had a significant influence on individual's decision confidence. When the information one received supported for his judgment, his confidence rating increased, and when the information against his judgment, his confidence decreased. What's more, compared to support information, against information caused greater changes in confidence, which suggesting a negative effect in information taking;(3) in against condition, and the degree of decline in confidence could positively predict the probability of decision-shifting. In conclusion, the findings revealed that the decision confidence played a key role in Informational Conformity.When individual receives opposing information of his initial decision from group, his decision confidence ought to be decreased, and this leads to his decision shifting, showing a conformity behavior. The findings enrich the decision theory, in addition, it also suggests that any factor could affect confidence may have an effect on one's decision, and reminds us that we should use information rationally when making decision Related Articles | Metrics

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The Additive Effect of Misattribution: Affective or Semantic? 2014, 37(3): 694-699.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3934KB) ( )   Misattribution is conceptualized as mistaking an effect of one source for the effect of another (Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005). It was not only a common phenomenon in people’s daily life, Payne et, al. (2005) also developed a paradigm of Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) and found that the affect aroused by the prime was misattributed to a neutral target. However, there is usually more than one prime of misattribution in real life. Based on the previous studies that nonconscious affect deriving from independent primes had combined effects (Murphy, Monahan, & Zajonc, 1995), the present study adopted a modified AMP paradigm to investigate whether the additive effect of misattribution was induced by two sequentially presented affective primes. Furthermore, recent AMP studies indicated that semantic misattribution also took place (e.g. Blaison, Imhoff, Hühnel, Hess, & Banse, 2012; Jones, Fazio, & Olson, 2009; Sava et al., 2012). Thus, this study used semantic priming as a contrast condition, to further exam whether the additive effect of semantic misattribution was also found. Three experiments were conducted in the present study, using the Chinese pictographs as affective or semantic primes and the Hebrew words as targets. A total of 21 undergraduate students (11 males and 9 females) without any Hebrew learning experiences participated in experiment 1 and experiment 3a, which adopted the standard AMP procedure; they were seated in front of a Pentium Ⅲ 800 computer and they were presented with the Hebrew character as a target immediately after the presentation of the Chinese pictograph as a prime, their task was to indicate whether the target word depicted a positive / negative (experiment 1) or animate / inanimate (experiment 3a) object. Participants in experiment 2 and experiment 3b were 23 undergraduate students without any Hebrew learning experiences (9 males and 14 females), who took part in the modified AMP paradigm of two sequentially present primes; they were presented with a neutral target, which was preceded by context stimuli (the first Chinese pictograph) and prime stimuli (the second Chinese pictograph) varying in terms of valence or semantic attribute, their job was to judge whether they perceived the target word to be pleasant / unpleasant or animate / inanimate respectively. In addition, all of the participants were instructed to respond quickly. The main results (see Fig. 2) were summarized as follows: (1) In the experiment 1 and experiment 3a, there were clear main effects of prime valance [F(1, 20)=26.58, p<.001, η2=1] and semantic attribute [F(1, 20)=51.79, p<.01, η2=1], which implied there were significant misattribution effects under both affective and semantic priming conditions in the standard AMP paradigm. (2) Experiment 2 revealed a main effect of the second prime valance [F(1, 22)=8.98, p<.01, η2=.82] and a significant two-way interaction between first prime valence and second prime valence [F(1, 22)=6.45，p<.05，η2=.68], indicating that the affective misattribution effect of the second prime was more pronounced when the valance of first prime was consistent with the second prime than when the valance of two primes were inconsistent, that is, the valence of the first prime and the valence of the second prime had an additive effect of misattribution. (3) Experiment 3b showed that, as a contrast condition, there were no misattribution effects in the modified AMP experiment by using two semantic primes. Base on the results of this study, the additive effect of misattribution only took place in sequentially affective rather than semantic priming. The affect aroused by the primes that was misattributed to the targets in the modified AMP presumably followed an additive function, resulting in accentuated affect for evaluatively congruent primes and reduced affect for evaluatively incongruent primes. Related Articles | Metrics

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Interpretation Bias of Ambiguous Situational Information in Shy Individuals 2014, 37(3): 700-703.  Abstract ( )   PDF (2765KB) ( )   Social interaction is significant for the sound development of personality and the successful socialization of people. As a social cognitive phenomenon, shyness is closely related to social contexts. Clark and Wells proposed a cognitive model of social anxiety, and their proposal that the negative interpretation bias plays an important role in the maintenance of the disorder is widely supported by studies later on. However, comparing with the relatively numerous researches on the interpretation bias of social anxiety and depression in the past few decades, researches on shyness in the field of psychology seem very weak. In this study, we aim to explore whether the shy have this kind of bias .What’s more, we will try to distinguish the online interpretation bias and the offline ones. In experiment1, the text material paradigm was used to explore the shy group’s off-line interpretation bias when faced with the ambiguous situational information. A sample of 60 shy individuals and 61 nonshy individuals went in for the experiment as subjects. They were asked to assess the possibility of interpretations given after the ambiguous situational information from 1-5.The two interpretations are of one positive and one negative. Ascensions of the subjects were recorded. The SPSS 16.0 was used to analyze the data.In experiment2, the modified word sentence association paradigm was used to explore the shy group’s on-line interpretation bias of the ambiguous situational information. A sample of 45 shy and 42 nonshy individuals went in for the experiment. Participants reacted to the words after the ambiguous situational information. They were required to distinguish whether the word given was approving or derogatory. Their RT to give the judgments was recorded. What’s more, the baseline RT was also measured. The baseline RT was the time they react to the word after a blanking screen. It was shown by t test that the difference between groups was found on positive interpretation in experiment 1.While when referring to the negative interpretation, that the difference is not significant. Further analysis showed the shy have no offline positive interpretation bias, also they don’t show more offline negative interpretations bias compared with the nonshy. In experiment 2, we first subtracted the RT and the baseline RT to get the ΔRT .We found that there’s no difference between the ΔRT to the negative words of the shy and the nonshy. Towards the positive words, the effect is significant. Further comparison shows that the ΔRT of the nonshy is smaller than the shy . The results of the two experiments showed: (1) the shy lack both online and offline positive interpretation bias to the ambiguous situational information. (2) The shy has neither offline nor online negative interpretation bias to the ambiguous situational information. In experiment1, the text material paradigm was used to explore the shy group’s off-line interpretation bias when faced with the ambiguous situational information. A sample of 60 shy individuals and 61 nonshy individuals went in for the experiment as subjects. They were asked to assess the possibility of interpretations given after the ambiguous situational information from 1-5.The two interpretations are of one positive and one negative. The sequence of which is randomized. Ascensions of the subjects were recorded. The SPSS 16.0 was used to analyze the data. In experiment2, the modified word sentence association paradigm was used to explore the shy group’s on-line interpretation bias of the ambiguous situational information. A sample of 45 shy and 42 nonshy individuals went in for the experiment. Participants reacted to the words after the ambiguous situational information. They were required to distinguish whether the word given was approving or derogatory. Their RT to give the judgments was recorded. What’s more, the baseline RT was also measured. The baseline RT was the time they react to the word after a blanking screen. SPSS 16.0 was used to analyze the data. It was shown by t test that the difference between groups was found on positive interpretation in experiment 1（t=11.38，df=119，p<.001，rpb2=.521）.While when referring to the negative interpretation, that the difference is not significant（t=-1.59，df=97.824，p>.05，rpb2=.025）. Further analysis showed the shy have no offline positive interpretation bias, also they don’t show more offline negative interpretations bias compared with the nonshy. In experiment 2, we first subtracted the RT and the baseline RT to get the ΔRT .We found that there’s no difference between the ΔRT to the negative words of the shy and the nonshy（t=-.43，df=85，p>.05，rpb2=.002)）.Towards the positive words，the effect is significant（t=2.17，df=85，p<.05，rpb2=.05）.Further comparison shows that the ΔRT of the nonshy is smaller than the shy . The results of the two experiments showed: (1) the shy lack offline positive interpretation bias to the ambiguous situational information. (2) The shy lack online positive interpretation bias to the ambiguous situational information. (3)The shy has neither offline nor online negative interpretation bias to the ambiguous situational information. In this article, we first explore both the offline and the online interpretation bias of the shy. Also, we tried to exclude the social anxiety from the shy before experiment through more specific standard. In addiction，we discussed the possible means to classify the shy from the social anxiety. In experiment1, the text material paradigm was used to explore the shy group’s off-line interpretation features of the ambiguous information. A sample of 60 shy individuals and 61 nonshy individuals went in for the experiment as subjects. SPSS 16.0 was used to analyze the data. In experiment2, the modified word sentence association paradigm was used to explore the shy group’s on-line interpretation features of the ambiguous information. A sample of 45 shy and 42 nonshy individuals went in for the experiment. SPSS 16.0 was used to analyze the data. It was shown by t test that the difference between groups was found on positive interpretation in experiment 1（t=11.38，df=119，p=.000， rpb2=.521）.While when referring to the negative interpretation, that the difference is not significant（t=-1.59，df=97.824，p=.115）. Further analysis showed the shy have less positive interpretations, but they don’t show more negative interpretations compared with the nonshy. In experiment 2, we found that there’s no difference between the ΔRT to the negative words of the shy and the nonshy（t=-.43，df=85，p=.666）.Towards the positive words，the effect is significant（t=2.17，df=85，p=.030， rpb2=.05）.Further comparison shows that the ΔRT of the nonshy is smaller than the shy . The results of the two experiments showed: (1) The shy lack offline positive interpretation. (2)The shy lack online positive interpretation. (3)The shy has neither offline nor online negative interpretation. Related Articles | Metrics

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Hazard level of Warning Signal Words Modulates Attention Effect 2014, 37(3): 704-709.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4548KB) ( )   Safety sign is used to transfer potential risk information and it plays an important role in safety management. The effective warning signs could help to alert people’s attentions to a potentially dangerous target. Warning signal words that help attract attention are widely used in safety signs. Previous studies indicated that people’s attention changed with different signal words.15 commonly used warning signal words were divided into three hazard levels (high/medium/low) according to the arousal strength of the words. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the hazard level of warning signal word on the attention effect of subsequent targets. Twenty-six (13 females) right handed undergraduates or graduates from University voluntarily participated in this experiment. This paper applied the classical cue-target paradigm in the experiment. During the experiment, subjects were comfortably seated in a sound-attenuated room with a keypad fixed to a chair arm for them to make responses. There were 8 blocks and each block consisted of 30 trials. Each trial began with a fixation cross that was appeared in the center with one rectangular box on the left side and one on the right side. Then, a warning signal word as a cue was presented in either of the boxes. After cue offset, two dots as targets were presented in either of the boxes. The subject was asked to judge the arrangement (vertically or horizontally) of the dots appeared in the target pictures. At the end of the experiment, a questionnaire would be finished by the subjects to score the emotional valence of the warning signal words. This study demonstrated that (a) The significant inhibition of return (IOR) effect of attention was found in this experiment. The response time of valid trials (cue and target appear on the same side) was longer than the invalid ones (cue and target appear on different sides) ;( b) The IOR effect of attention was modulated by the hazard level (high/medium/low) of warning signal words. Concretely speaking, high- hazard words compared to medium- and low-hazard words significantly reduced the IOR effect; (c) The modulation of words’ hazard levels on the IOR effect was limited on the whole. We found that the modulation effect was significant when the targets appeared on the left, but not significant when appearing on the right side. Concretely speaking, the high-hazard words diminished the IOR effect when the targets were on the left side. Why did the words modulate the IOR effect only when the targets appeared on the left side? Our study inferred that it was due to the lateralization of brain for processing negative emotional stimuli. Thus, we suggested that the effectiveness of the warning signal words was influenced by negative emotions related to the hazard levels. Our results are consistent with previous risk information processing model of warning signs, and provide behavioral experiment evidence for previous questionnaire study. Our study made two innovations. Firstly, we investigated the effectiveness of the warning signal words from a new perspective that how the words influenced the attention effect of the potentially dangerous targets. This was different from previous warning studies which mainly focused on the characteristic of warning itself. Secondly, this study found the modulation effect of hazard level of warning signal words on the IOR effect of the subsequent target. The high-hazard words could help to reduce the IOR effect. Moreover, this modulation effect showed a left lateralization during to the negative emotion closed related to the hazard level of the warning signal words. However, our experiment was just an exploratory. Further research studying the influence of hazard levels on the effectiveness of warning signal words was needed. Related Articles | Metrics

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The expectation for enduring relationship and Norm-goal activation:Trust decision in appropriate frame Rong-Mian HUO 2014, 37(3): 710-715.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4148KB) ( )   Trust decision is studied in different research logic, and affected by various variables. In purpose of taking trust decision into a systematic thinking, this study took it into the appropriate frame. Identifying situation makes people behave appropriately because of normative goal activation. In this paper, we focus on relational signals in the initial of interactivities, and the expectation for enduring relationship as a goal activator. Based on the theoretical background, the writer gave three assumptions. First, when there is no normative goal activated, people do trust decisions on their trust propensity. Second, when there is a strong expectation for enduring relationship, people would behave at a higher trust level. Third, at the end of repeated game, the level of trust would decline dramatically. To test these assumptions, this study takes trust game as the experimental situation. Four subjects do experiment together and two of them get the investor-agent relationship randomly. All these four subjects do the experiment in separated cube. By doing this, we can reduce the effect of Chinese mianzi which is out of our research. In repeated trust game, subjects’ role would change randomly, to make the investor and agent have equal power. We manipulate three section of duration of investor-agent relation to change the expectation of enduring relationship. In one shot game, the investor-agent relation only last one round, and we take this as week situation. In repeated game, the investor-agent relationship last five rounds. At the first round of five, people have strong expectation of enduring relationship, while at the last round, people’s expectation decline. These two rounds would activate two different appropriate logic frames. In infinite repeated game, the investor-agent relation would last at 80% probability, or the relationship would be ended. To test the validity of operation, we make people answer a seven point scale “how important for you to maintain the relationship?” Lots of studies indicate trust propensity is important to trust decision. How people make trust decision in specific situation? To answer this question, subjects do a survey of trust propensity before trust game, and then measure their trust decision in specific trust game to clarify the effect of trust propensity and situational goal. After carefully analyses, we have several results. First, trust propensity and trust decision was significantly related when situation was not clearly identified, especially when the subjects play the role of investor. This indicates that individual characters has weaker influence then situational goal. Subjects who play the role of agent don’t make decision only depend on their trust propensity, but much more on the behavior of investor. The correlation of trust and trust decision isn’t significant in repeated games. Second, the importance of relationship maintaining and trust decision was significantly related. This indicates the validity of experiment operation, also shows the relation of relationship enduring expectation and the normative goal to maintain the relationship. Third, the level of trust declined significantly when the subjects found relationship would be over. The trust level in the last round of repeated game is even lower than the one shot game. It is an interesting result, which indicates social situation and economic situation may have the same effect as reward and punishment. This paper did research to set the questions “Do we make trust decision based on personal trait or situational trait?” “Whether does the expectation of enduring relationship affect the normative goal that influences the trust decision?” Based on the appropriate logic, this paper answered these questions. Maybe it is a good perspective to solve the bounded rationality in social situation. Related Articles | Metrics

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A multiple mediation model：the effect of the authentic leadership on the work engagement 2014, 37(3): 716-722.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4783KB) ( )   Work engagement is a widely concerned issue in recently years. In the past for a long time, we pay more attention to the negative side of the employee in the workshop, for example “job burnout” and “emotional exhausted” etc. With the emerging of the positive psychology, the positive side about the human arouses the interest of the researchers gradually. In the meanwhile, academic community pays more and more attention to the work engagement instead of job burnout in the past. Compared with the traditional focus on the negative side and trying to correct the bad behaviors, work engagement pays more attention to the positive side of the human nature and trys to develop these positive qualities .So, factors that can improve the work engagement have been the hot focus in the academic area. Recently, many scholars have made lot of deep researches about how to improve the employee’s work engagement. However, it is pity that there are few studies about the influence of the employees' work engagement from the aspects of leadership behavior. As a new leadership style based on the ethic element rather than talent element, authentic leadership seemly was more correspond with the Chinese traditional culture. In the Chinese traditional culture, we values ethics more than talent. Therefore, researches about the relationship between authentic leadership and work engagement make more sense in Chinese culture background. The study focuses on the authentic leadership and deeply researches into the internal mechanism that authentic leadership affect the work engagement. By the method of structural equation model with Mplus7, the study checks the mediation role of the professional identity, affective commitment and perceived organizational support between the authentic leadership and the employee’s work engagement. The result with Mplus7 shows that: (1)the professional identity plays a partial mediation between the authentic leadership and the work engagement (indirect effect β=0.256, p<0.001);(2) affective commitment plays a partial mediation between the authentic leadership and the work engagement (indirect effect β=0.247, p<0.001);(3) perceived organizational support also plays a partial mediation between the authentic leadership and the work engagement (indirect effect β=0.079, p<0.05);(4)the total indirect was also significant (β=0.582, p<0.001).When considered all the mediation variables in the meanwhile, professional identity, affective commitment and the perceived organizational support play a completely mediation effect between the authentic leadership and the work engagement, that is, the effect of authentic leadership to the work engagement is completely through the professional identity, affective commitment and the perceived organizational support. Based on the result, we can come to a conclusion that: as a leadership style focused on the ethics, authentic leadership can positive influence on the employees' work engagement through the professional identity, affective commitment and the perceived organizational support. A leader can improve the employee’s work engagement trough his or her authentic leadership. The present study contributes to the current literature and promotes our understanding about the relationships between the authentic leadership and the work engagement. Related Articles | Metrics

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Rethinking Abusive Supervision and followers’ Justice: Test of A Mediated Moderation Model ZHEN WANG Meng SONG 2014, 37(3): 723-728.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4135KB) ( )   With the increasing attention on the dark side of leadership, abusive supervision has become a prevalent topic of investigation, as it has been linked to a variety of negative outcomes including follower injustice. Recent literature has suggested that power distance moderates the link between abusive supervision and follower perceived justice such that the relationship is stronger c for followers lower in power distance. However, these research has focused mostly on follower interactional justice, leaving phenomenon of how abusive supervision affects other types of justice uncharted, neither did they explore the underlying process through which power distance moderates the correlation of abusive supervision with follower justice. To remedy this problem, the current study contributes to the literature in two important ways. Using social exchange theory as an overarching framework, we first introduce follower supervisor-directed overall justice to examine the moderating role of power distance between abusive supervision and follower justice, extending research that solely investigated interactional justice as outcome. Second, we provide leader-member exchange and test its mediated role between abusive supervision-follower power distance interaction and follower supervisor-directed overall justice, disentangling the underlying mechanism that power distance moderates abusive supervision-follower justice association. In other words, we explore abusive supervision-follower justice relationship from the perspective of a unifying conceptual framework that combines mediating and moderating effects. We examined research questions using a sample of 296 interior designers from a large home furnishing company in China. Measures with adequate reliability and validity were used to capture key variables. Results of confirmatory factor analysis showed the satisfactory discriminant validity of the variables and precluded the common method bias. Consistent with hypothesis, the results suggested the significant moderating effect of follower power distance on abusive supervision and follower overall justice relationship (b=.14, p<.01). Specifically, abusive supervision was found to be more detrimental to follower supervisor-directed overall justice for those lower in power distance (b=-.47, p<.01), compared with their counterparts (b=-.25, p<.01). Additionally, follower power distance was shown to marginally disseminate the negative effect of abusive supervision on leader-member exchange (b=.08, p=.058). It was also found that leader-member exchange mediated the link between abusive supervision-power distance interaction and follower overall justice, supporting the proposed mediated moderation model. The current study is one of the first investigations that explore the relationship between abusive supervision and follower supervisor-directed overall justice, its underlining mechanism and boundary condition. We broaden research line of abusive supervision and justice by introducing follower overall justice targeted at their supervisors. More importantly, as an urgent response to extant calling, this study illustrates the specific underling mechanism that follower power distance moderates the abusive supervision-follower justice linkage. The finding that followers lower in power distance respond to abusive supervision more strongly than do those higher, with less perceived their social exchange relationship with supervisors, as well as supervisor-directed overall justice perception has salient implications for leaders, followers and their interactions in organizational context. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Employees’ Political Self-efficacy on Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Moderating Effect of Psychological Capital Chen Zhao 2014, 37(3): 729-734.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3962KB) ( )   Political self-efficacy has been constructed based on social cognitive theory to describe the beliefs that employees hold on their own political traits with which they can achieve personal goals in political environment successfully. Employees’ perceptive comparison of their own political traits and the political environment that indicates the general level of organizational politics can be regarded as the major source of political self-efficacy. The more the confidence that employees have in their competency, the higher their political self-efficacy will be. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), one of the facilitators of organizational effectiveness, describes the out-role behaviors that are not clearly defined in formal organizational regulations and rules and also recognized by organizational reward systems. This study was designed to figure out the relationship between political self-efficacy and OCB, and the moderating effect of psychological capital on this relationship. Hypotheses were proposed based on perspectives of social cognitive theory and positive organizational behavior. The mechanism of the relationship between political self-efficacy and OCB was tested on the basis of 272 paired data collected from employees and their direct supervisors. Political self-efficacy was measured by the cumulative percentage differences of both the perceptions of their own political traits and organizational politics. The perception of political traits was measured by 16 items adopted from Machiavellianism scale developed by Dahling, Whitaker and Levy (2009), and the perception of organizational politics was measured by 9 items adjusted from Vigoda (2001). Psychological capital was measured by 24 items adopted from Luthans, Youssef, and Avolio (2006). OCB was measured by OCBI adopted from Williams and Anderson (1991) with 6 items in each scale. In order to avoid the common method variance problem in this study, two structured questionnaires, employee questionnaire and direct supervisor questionnaire, were employed as the measuring instruments. In employee questionnaire, perception of political traits, perception of organizational politics and psychological capital were included; and then OCB was evaluated the OCBI included in direct supervisor questionnaire. Results indicate that political self-efficacy had reversed U shape impact on OCB that both high and low levels of political self-efficacy are associated with low OCB, and the moderate level of political self-efficacy leads to the highest OCB. This finding not only extends and fulfills the organizational politics literatures, but also reveals practical implications for managers that they should help employees to maintain a moderate level of political self-efficacy to promote organizational effectiveness. Results also show that in addition to the positive effect on OCB, psychological capital plays as a conditional variable and moderates the reversed U shape relationship between political self-efficacy and OCB such that higher psychological capital weakens the tendency of reversed U shape impact of political self-efficacy on OCB which means that psychological capital acts as a substitute of political self-efficacy. In application, this finding suggest that managers should take psychological capital intervention as the moderating means to reduce the negative impact tendency of high self-efficacy on OCB. Moreover, theoretical contributions and shortcomings of this study are also discussed. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Analyses of Multiple Mediation Effects Based on Structural Equation Modeling Fang Jie Zhong-Lin WEN SUN PeiZhen 2014, 37(3): 735-741.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4938KB) ( )   The analyses of mediation effects are frequently applied to the studies of psychology, education, and other social science disciplines. More than one mediator may be involved when the relationship among more than three variables is concerned. For a model with multiple mediators, there are three kinds of mediation effects: total mediation effect, specific mediation effect through a specified path, and contrast mediation effects for the comparison of two or more specific effects. Compared to analyzing multiple mediators by building up several separate models with single mediator, an equivalent model with multiple mediators by structural equation modeling (SEM) has many advantages. For example, specific mediation effects can be tested in the condition controlling other mediators in the model; total mediation effect which is the sum of the specific mediation effects can be tested; contrast mediation effects can be calculated to determine the relative magnitudes of the different specific mediation effects. The purpose of the present study is to summary an effective procedure for analyzing multiple mediators based on structural equation modeling. There are at least three weaknesses frequently found in the present empirical studies involved multiple mediation effects. First, not all of the three kinds of mediation effects were considered, leading to the incomplete analyses of multiple mediation effects. Second, Sobel’s testing method was dominantly used, but the test method was based on the normality assumption that was typically violated by any kind of the mediation effects because they included the product of two parameters. Third, the computations of standard errors of multiple mediation effects often required manual calculations. At the present study, we propose a procedure to analyze the model with multiple mediators. The procedure is able to deal with both manifest and latent variables, and overcome all the three weaknesses described above. The first step is to establish a model including multiple mediators based on the theoretical frame in the field. In the second step, some auxiliary (phantom) variables are introduced into the model. These auxiliary variables will help researchers to obtain all the three kinds of mediation effects if the output of SEM software does not provide them directly. In the third step, bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap method, which can be implemented easily by MPLUS software, is recommended to analyze multiple mediation effects. It shows that the corresponding mediation effect is significant if a confidence interval does not include zero. Of course, the results of Bootstrap SEM analysis are acceptable only when the SEM model is fitted well. We used an example to illustrate how to conduct the proposed procedure by using MPLUS software. MPLUS program is attached to facilitate the implementation of bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap method to analyze multiple mediation effects. The programs can be managed easily by empirical researchers. In fact, in addition to Bootstrap method, Bayesian method also can be selected to analyze multiple mediation effects, the results of Bayesian SEM analysis are acceptable only when the SEM model is fitted well and the Markov chain is convergence. It is possible for Bayesian method to improve the power to detect mediation effects by incorporating prior information about the indirect effect. Related Articles | Metrics

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Analysis of Estimating Variance Components for Sparse Data of Test score in Generalizability Theory 2014, 37(3): 742-747.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4059KB) ( )   Missing data are easily find in psychological surveys and experiments. For example, in performance assessment, a certain group of raters rated a certain group of examinees. By this token, the data from performance assessment compose a sparse data matrix. Researchers are always concerned about how to make good use of the observed data. Brennan(2001) provided the estimating formulas of p×i design of sparse data. But in practice, there are always more than one factor which effect the experiment. Especially the factor of rater. This factor is the one which cannot be ignored in the performance assessment. The aim of this article is to find a way which can estimate the variance component of sparse data rapidly and effectively. In China, many studies only analyzed complete data. There are two demerit as following. Firstly, If missing data were encountered, researchers usually deleted incomplete records or used imputation before analysis. But using these methods to analyze performance assessment will reduce the data which can use to analyze. Secondly, the estimated value will differ along with different imputation methods. This article provided the estimating formulas of p×i×r design of sparse data, which are on the basis of the estimating formulas of p×i design of sparse data provided by Brennan(2001). This article used matlab7.0 to simulate data which were usually encountered in examination, then used GT theory to estimate variance components. We simulated two conditions respectively, small size with 200 students and large-sized with 10000 students. And then used the estimating formulas of p×i×r design of sparse data to estimate variance components, in order to test the formulas’ validity. The research showed that: These formulas could provided a good estimation of variance components. The estimated variance components approach to set values. The accuracy rates of item and rater were highest. The accuracy rates of interaction of student and item was low. The maximum bias of interaction could reach 1.5. The number of items had the most important effect on the estimation. The number of item increased only a little, the accuracy rate would increased by a big margin. These formulas could provided a good estimation when the amount of item was moderate. We also found that these formulas could used in either small or large amount of data. Either kind of data could get little bias. In performance assessment, we can increase the number of item to enhance the accuracy rate of variance components. If researchers cannot increase the number of item, they can increase the number of rater instead, this way can also enhance the accuracy rate. The number of rater cannot be to large. It can get little bias when the number of rater reach 5. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects and Influential Factors of Computerized Psychological Treatments for Depression：meta-analysis and meta-regression of randomized controlled trials REN ZhiHong Guang-Rong JIANG 2014, 37(3): 748-755.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5135KB) ( )   The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects and influential factors of computerized psychological treatments for depression. This research adopted the methods of meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis to carry out the literature search through four major data-bases as PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase and Web of Science, 50 literatures were included in the meta-analysis eventually, including 42 randomized controlled trials and 67 samples for effective meta-analysis. The sample for the research is 7920 participants, 4208 participants for computerized intervention group and 3712 participants for the control group, respectively. The results suggest that: (1) the overall effects of computerized psychological treatments for depression is 0.53, which is a medium effectiveness, the effectiveness for the subjects with 3 months tracking is 0.14, while the one with 6 months tracking is 0.16. (2) Significant differences are revealed in the subgroups analysis for the age group, depression severity, support method and measurement scales: With a more close look at the subjects, we can find out that the effectiveness for the youth group is relatively small as 0.24, while the effectiveness for adult group is relatively great as 0.59; the treatment effectiveness for the severe depression group is significantly higher than non-severe group (severe depression: d=0.73; non-severe depression: d=0.48, p=0.003). Significant differences are revealed in the treatment effectiveness for the 4 patterns of support (Face to face support group: d=0.58; Email support: d=0.70; Phone support: d=0.46; no support, d=0.40, p=0.038); Significant differences of the effectiveness are also revealed in the treatment effectiveness for the two different kinds of treatments in the measurement scales (BDI: d=0.63; CES-D: d=0.36, p=0.008); the differences are not significant in the analysis of the 3 subgroups as intervention pattern (network: d=0.54; stand-alone PC: d=0.38, p=0.13), intervention orientation (CBT: d=0.52; PST: d=0.48, p=0.55) and analytical methods (full treatment: d=0.53; intention for treatment: d=0.53, p=0.97). (3) In the total sample, the year of publication significantly affects the effectiveness of treatment (B=-0.0273, p<0.001); drop rate does not significantly affect the effectiveness of treatment for the total sample (B=0.0028, p=0.12). However, with a more complete categorization of the different samples in the measurement, we find out that drop rate significantly affects the treatment effectiveness for the CES-D samples (B=0.0106, p <0.001); intervention unit number significantly affects the effectiveness of treatment for the CES-D sample (B=0.0689, p=0.01), nevertheless, it plays no significant affects for the total samples(B=0.0016, p= 0.86) and BDI samples (B=-0.0313, p=0.08). (4) Publication bias may be seen in this study, but it is unreasonable to overthrow the existing conclusions. Funnel plot suggests that the publication bias may exist, the result from the Begg & Mazumdar’s rank correlation test shows that z=2.52, p<0.01; Egger's regression is significant (t=5.27, df=65, p<0.001), therefore, the two statistical results are significant. But the fail-safe number in the study is 7488. It means that 7488 contrary studies are required to be conducted to overthrow the existing meta-analysis conclusions. Conclusion: The computerized psychological treatments for depression manifests medium effectiveness; the age group, severity of depression, support method, measurement scale and the year of publication are of regulatory role for the overall effective of treatment. Therefore, the research on computerized psychological treatments for depression in the future should pay attention to these regulatory variables for their effectiveness to treatments. Related Articles | Metrics

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Influence of changing expression information characteristics on facial visual scanning of autistic children 2014, 37(3): 756-761.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3944KB) ( )   Previous studies have confirmed that Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties recognising emotions from facial expressions. Some scholars investigated the characteristics of visual scanning and behavior of ASD’s expression cognitive, and considered that local processing has taken in the ASD’s expression cognitive. Other scholars considered that information characteristics of expression images can influence the expression cognitive, but corresponding empirical studies are absent. By weakening information characteristics of expression images, visual scanning time of different expression images for 12-16 year-old autistic children are investigated, and the influence of changing information characteristics of expression images on the visual scanning are explored, and the mechanism of expression processing of autistic children are discussed in detail. Four kinds of expression images namely happy, sad, angry, fear are dealt by software photoshop to three effects, black and white facial images, basal highlight and angles lines, with decreasing relation of expression information characteristics. Expression images present by Tobii Studio and the duration is set as five seconds. We collect visual scanning time of expression images by Tobii T120 eye tracker. The experiment includes two parts: the first part is analyze the visual scanning time of whole face by repeated measures design of 4 (happy, sad, angry, fear) *3 (characteristic facial expression, information, information characteristics weaken weakened two), and the second part is analyze the visual scanning time of eye area and mouth area by repeated measures design of 4 (happy anger, sadness, fear), *3 (characteristic facial expression, information, information characteristics weaken weakened two) *2 (mouth, eye area). The experimental results show that: (1) the whole face scanning times of the four kinds of expression images of autism are different, the whole face scanning time of happy and sad facial expression has no significant difference（p>0.05）, and both higher than that of anger and fear(p<0.01), and the whole face scanning time of angry is higher than that of fear(p<0.01); (2) differences exist in visual scanning mode of different facial expressions for children with autism, no significant difference of eyes and mouth scanning time can be detected of happy and sad facial expression(p>0.05), while the mouth scanning time is quite longer than that of the eyes of fear and anger facial expression (p<0.01); (3)heap map show that weakening information characteristics can affect the face expression visual scanning of children with autism. With increasing the weakening degree of facial expression images, the scanning time of mouth increase while decrease for eyes. By analyzing the experimental results, conclusions are shown as follows: (1) For 12-16 years old children with autism, local processing characteristics does not appeared in the visual scanning at happy and sad expression, while for anger and fear expression images, local processing are appeared; (2) Changing of expression information characteristics influence the visual scanning of facial expression. With weakening of expression information, the visual attention of autistic children directing more to the mouth area; (3) Children with autism in the expression cognitive process is affected by characteristics of the facial expression information, and they can adjust the visual attention according to the changing of expression information characteristics to get full cognitive of expressions, and shows the conscious ability to use information processing strategies. Related Articles | Metrics