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The Effects of reward and self processing on memory 2018, 41(2): 258-263.  Abstract ( )   PDF (597KB) ( )   【Abstract】Reward is often defined as a kind of stimulus that can be acquired through a specific task. Previous show that rewards can improve memory processing procedure. What's more, the study found that information related to self can be better processed and memorized. As we all know, reward-processing and self-processing are two kinds of important cognitive- processing period, but there is no related research carries on the discussion about how to effect on memory at the same time. Although studies have proved that matching with reward and self both can promote the cognitive process, reward and self processing characteristics in the different level of memory processing has not examined.According to the model of parallel processing of reward and self, we assumes that reward processing and self processing can enhance memory effect at the same time. And according to the degree of participation of consciousness, we can divided memory into two levels: explicit memory and implicit memory. We want to examine the difference between self and reward processing from the different memory level. Experiments has control the interference effect of depression and self-esteem factors on memory. We proposed to adopt reward prompt paradigm, R/K paradigm and the signal detection theory to analysis the difference between reward and self processing effects on memory of explicit and implicit level.This experiment adopts Multiple-Variable Experiment. The two factors in experimental design is reward and self condition. we divide reward conditions into reward and no reward group, and self conditions into self and friend group. Experimental material comes from "The personality adjectives library". We select 160 personality adjectives about personality, including 80 positive and negative adjectives (arousal, significance degree and titer match). The experiment is carried out in a quiet lab. Subjects first fill in the relevant demographic information (gender, age), then complete the Beck depression rating scale and self-esteem scale. Formal experimental process present in the E - Prime2.0, the experiment was divided into three stages, the first stage is learning personality words , the second part is the interference phase, the third part is the memory test phase. The experimental total duration for 20 minutes.The results showed that: (1) In the level of explicit memory, reward and self processing promoted the memory effect, reward effect is significantly,p<0.001，ηp2= 0.373; self–reference effect is significantly,F(1,32) = 24.170，p<0.001，ηp2=0.329; Interactions effect of reward and self is marginally significant, F(1,32) = 3.227，p = 0.082，ηp2= 0.092; According to the previous literature, reward processing can promote cognitive process. In order to verify the reward of self-reference effect to strengthen, we define:b1= self reward group - self without reward；b2 = acquaintances reward group - acquaintances without reward Paired sample t test was carried out on the b1and b2, t (32) = 1.798, p < 0.05, We found that b1 significantly greater than the b2, the date illustrates the reward can enhance self-reference effect. (2) We found self-advantages in the implicit memory, but no reward processing effects on memory. Main effect of self conditions is significantly, F（1,32）=13.57，p<0.01，ηp2=0.304; Reward conditions is no significant main effect, F（1,32）=0.09，p=0.76; Reference conditions with reward conditions interaction effect is significantly, F（1,32）=4.898，p< 0.05，ηp2=0.136. Then ,we use simple effect analyze found that under the condition of reward, self-reference effect of implicit memory is significantly higher than acquaintances reference conditions, F（1,32）=13.17，p<0 .01. Under the condition of non-reward, implicit memory of self-reference effect is significantly higher than acquaintances reference conditions, F（1,32）=64.39，p<0.01; Under the condition of self, reward effect is not significant, F（1,32）=2.56，p>0.05. Conclusion: self relevant stimulus to promote the processing of implicit and explicit memory, reward stimulation only influence memory effects, the results support the independent parallel model, namely in the different level of memory, reward processing and self-reference processing has different processing mechanism. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Timing Features of the Three-domain Disgust Emotions 2018, 41(2): 264-271.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1921KB) ( )   Disgust, an emotion motivating withdrawal from offensive stimuli, protects us from the risk of various pathogens and socio-moral violations. According to the three-domain model of disgust, pathogen disgust, sexual disgust and moral disgust are three major subtypes of the disgust emotions; disgust is considered as a heterogeneous construct consisting of multiple subtypes with distinct characteristics. Previous studies have endeavored to investigate the neural basis of pathogen disgust and moral disgust. However, it is worthwhile to systematically compare the neural underpinnings across the three subtypes of disgust with a special interest in finding out the individual differences of the disgust emotions . Therefore, in the current study, we examined the dynamic neuro-cognitive mechanisms underlying the three domains of disgust by recruiting undergraduates with different aggression level as participants. We utilized a 4 (stimulus types: pathogen disgust, moral disgust, sexual disgust, neutral) × 2 (groupss: group with high aggression level vs group with low aggression level) mixed design. The electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded while participants performed a modified oddball task. The materials consisted of 40 deviant stimuli (10 pathogen disgust, 10 moral disgust, 10 sexual disgust, 10 neutral) and standard stimuli (pseudo words). Before the formal experiment, the aggression level was measured among participants by using the Buss-Perry aggression scales. Then 21 subjects were selected for the high-aggression-level group and another 20 subjects for low-aggression-level group. During the lexical decision task, participants were asked to indicate whether the visual stimulus was a word or not by pressing “d” or “k” on a keyboard with their left or right index finger. Every trial started with a central fixation for 500 ms, which was followed by a blank screen with a jittered duration between 500 ms and 1000 ms. Then the stimulus (i.e., disgust or pseudo word) was presented at the center of the screen for 2500 ms, and could be terminated by making a response. The trial ended with a blank screen with a duration of 1000 ms. We mainly analyzed ERPs elicited by pathogen disgust, moral disgust, sexual disgust and neutral deviant stimuli. The visual inspection of the grand-average waveforms suggested three time windows of interest for full analysis: 130 to 190ms, 300 to 350ms and 400 to 600ms. The mixed measure ANOVAs were conducted on the average amplitudes of the three time windows. The ERP results showed that the main effect of the stimulus types was significant for each time window. In the time window of 130-190ms, the average amplitudes of the pathogen disgust stimuli and moral disgust stimuli were significantly more positive than that of the neutral stimuli. In the time window of 300-350ms, the average amplitudes of the moral disgust stimuli was significantly more negative than that of the pathogen disgust stimuli and sexual disgust stimuli; the pathogen disgust stimuli elicited larger average amplitudes than the sexual disgust stimuli. In the late time window of 400-600ms, the average amplitudes of the sexual disgust stimuli was significantly more negative than the pathogen disgust stimuli and the moral disgust stimuli. However, the two groups with different aggression levels demonstrated very similar neural patterns when processing the three types of disgust in each of the three time windows. Thus no evident individual differences for the neural processing of disgust emotions were obtained in this study. Taken together, this study have shown that the temporal characteristics of the pathogen disgust, moral disgust and sexual disgust are distinct. The findings suggested that the three different types of disgust emotions can be identified and distinguished in the time course of processing.. On the while, we, in the current study, provideneuro-cognitive evidence for the heterogeneity of the three-domain disgust, and help to understand the neural mechanisms of the disgust emotions in a more comprehensive manner. Further studies are needed to continue to examine theneural processing of the disgust emotions in the individual level. Related Articles | Metrics

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Animacy Effect in True and False Recognition Memory 2018, 41(2): 272-277.  Abstract ( )   PDF (516KB) ( )   Purposes: The animacy effect refers to the positive influence of animate stimuli on memory. This effect is found in free recall, recognition and cued recall tasks. Some researchers put forward the animate monitoring hypothesis, assuming that animate stimuli probably attract more attention and get better remembered. However, other researchers argued that the organizational structures of animate stimuli lead to the animacy effect, which is known as the categorical hypothesis. It is not clear about the difference between the effects of animacy and category on true and false memory. Thus, the present research discussed the mechanism underlying anmiacy effect and tried to distinguish the difference between the effects of animacy and category on true and false recognition memory. Moreover, this research examined how long the two effects could last. Procedures: The research included two experiments. The materials were the same in the two experiments, including 30 words for animate things, fruits and inanimate things in multiple categories, respectively. There were 24 subjects in the experiment1 and 56 subjects in the experiment 2. Experiment 1 examined the memory advantage of animacy under the situation where the stimuli were presented by blocks according to their category attribute (e.g., presenting all animate things and then all fruits) and the orders were counterbalanced. Experiment 2 examined the memory advantage of animacy under the situation where the stimuli were presented pseudo-randomly to prevent the same category attribute to appear in succession. This manipulation could avoid subjects to use the categorical encoding strategy. In order to examine how long the effects last, the final recognition test was taken immediately after the distractor phase or one day after learning in experiment 2. Both experiments consisted of three phases: study phase, distractor task phase and test phase but the distractor task phase was replaced by a 24-hour interval in the delayed-test group in experiment 2. During the study phase, participants were asked to remember the words presented in the center of the screen, each for 3s after a fixation for 800ms. Then participants finished a 5-min distractor task in which they made mathematical calculations, followed by a recognition task. For the recognition task, participants were instructed to recognize the just-studied and new lists of words and the words would not disappear until participants responded. Results: (1) When the categorical attribute was apparent, the effects of animacy and category on true recognition memory were equivalent; (2) When the categorical attribute was not apparent and the recognition test was taken immediately, the effect of animacy on true recognition memory was strongest. However, when the final recognition test was taken one day after learning, the effects of animacy and category on true recognition memory were equivalent again. (3) The category effect facilitated true recognition memory and created more false recognition memory while the animacy effect only facilitated true recognition memory; (4) The category effect and animacy effect were both found in the immediately-test group and delayed-test group. Conclusions: (1) The mechanisms underlying the category effect and animacy effect are different; (2) The mechanism of animacy effects on true and false memory are different; (3) Both category effect and animacy effect can last for more than 24 hours but animacy effect declines faster. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Facial Expressions of Pain on Subsecond and Suprasecond 2018, 41(2): 278-284.  Abstract ( )   PDF (651KB) ( )   The aim of the current study was using a temporal generalization task and a temporal bisection task to explore whether facial pain could affect subsecond (200~800 ms) and suprasecond (1400- 2600 ms) time perception. Twenty six participants (fifteen males) participated in bisection task, which consisted of two blocks with different stimulus durations (200~800 ms vs. 1400~2600 ms), the order of them was counterbalanced across participants. In the block with 200~800 ms durations, the block consisted of a learning phase which used a “short” (200 ms) and a “long” (800 ms) anchor duration, a traing phase and a test phase involving seven probe durations (400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400 and 1600 ms). The participants were initially presented with the “short” and “long” anchor durations in the form of a light brown rectangle randomly. Then they were trained to press D/K keys to indicate whether the presentation duration of the rectangle was more closer to “short” or “long” anchor duration. A feedback was given after each response. In the test phase, participants were told that the rectangle would be replaced by faces and no feedback presented. Each participant completed 140 trials presented randomly. In another block, the material and the procedure were similar to 200~800 ms condition, except using 1400 ms and 2600ms as “short” and “long” standard duration and 1400,1600,1800,2000,2200,2400,2600 ms as comparison durations. To verify whether the effect of facial pain on time perception was stable. Other twenty six participants (nine males) took part in generalization task, which used a basically same procedure and materials as the time bisection task, without the standard durations was replaced to 500 ms in 200~800 ms condition and 2000 ms in 1400~2600 ms condition, as the demand was changed to judge whether the present duration was "same" or "different" to the standard duration. In temporal bisection task, the results pertaining to PSE revealed a significant main effect of duration , a significant main effect of facial expression, and a significant duration × face interaction, Subsequent Simple-effects Analysis showed that, in subsecond range, the PSE on facial pain was significantly lower than facial neutral, and in suprasecond range, the PSE on facial pain was also significantly lower than facial neutral. The analysis of WR just found a significant main effect of duration. The results tell a subjective lengthening effect produced by the perception of pain faces in both subsecond range and suprasecond range. In tempotal generalization task, the results pertaining to PSE revealed a significant main effect of duration and a significant main effect of facial expression, while the duration×face interaction was nonsignificant. A Paired Samples t-test showed that, in suprasecond range, the PSE on facial pain was significantly lower than facial neutral, while no significant difference was found between pain and neutral faces in subsecond range. The analysis of WR just found a significant main effect of duration. The results suggested a subjective lengthening effect produced by the perception of pain faces in suprasecond duration. It could be speculated that, in temporal bisection task, facial pain could accelerate the rate of the pacemaker because of its high arousal, and make the switch close quickly or open lately, or keep it at a relatively stable closed state, resulting a relatively long subjective duration. While in temporal generalization task, the effect of pain expression on temporal perception was just found in suprasecond range, it may because the arousal effect on timing was diminished as this task demands subjects remember the standard duration. Considering that different contribution of arousal and attention will change based on the time elapsed since the onset of the emotional event. These results suggest a major role of arousal mechanisms involving in subsecond time perception and both arousal and attention mechanisms in suprasecond time perception in the effect of facial pain expressions on time perception. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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From fixed to flexible: To reconsider the impact of Affect on Cognition 2018, 41(2): 285-291.  Abstract ( )   PDF (363KB) ( )   The relationship between affect and cognition has always been a key issue in psychology research, and over the past 50 years or so, there is a general “truth” in this field that cognitive consequences of positive and negative affect are generally insisted to be fixed. Immense amounts of empirical research revealed that positive affect is thought to trigger heuristic processing, a global focus and widened attention, while negative affect is thought to elicit systematic or elaborated processing, a local focus, and narrowed attention. Some relevant accounts have already been raised accordingly, and each of them has its explanation for this phenomenon. Then there has been a trend in latest literatures, however, a growing number of research demonstrates that the above relations could be reversed in some certain situation. When varying the psychological context, positive affect may also lead to detailed processing and a narrowed focus, and negative affect may lead to heuristic processing and a broadened focus. That is to say, not all research is consistent with this well-known “truth” and the relationship between affect and cognition is not fixed but flexible. Therefore, the most critical work about relationship between affect and cognition at present is how to explain these two opposite propositions. For the sake of regulating this paradox, a compatible account named Affect-as-Cognitive Feedback(AACF) has been invented by Isbell and his colleagues (2013) which is derived from the Affect-as-Information account(AAI). The core point of this account is that there is information contained in affect and the function of the information is to signal the value of accessibility thoughts or cognitive-processing style which was available in individuals’ minds. Positive affect confers positive value on accessible thoughts and processing inclinations, facilitating their use, while negative affect on the contrary confers negative value on such thoughts and inclinations, inhibiting their use. Thus, the AACF account implies that the impact of affect on cognition should be flexible in that its evaluative information depends on the momentary accessible mental content, and a fixed or dedicated connection between affect and cognitive-processing styles should be denied. We then reviewed evidence consistent with the view that a flexible impact of affect on cognitive-processing as a result of the relative accessible strategies. Such flexibility was shown for several outcomes for which evidence of a dedicated connection is usually assumed and seems robust, including attentional scope, impression formation, moral reasoning, and the implicit-explicit attitude correspondence. Compared with other accounts which support the flexible impact of positive and negative affect on cognitive-processing, AACF has its unique advantages on explanation effect and application range. Finally, we reviewed several expand directions for future studies combined with the AACF account. Subsequent researches should focus on the conceptual nature of affect and cognition to verify the necessity of this account, as well as the internal mechanism that why would consequence of positive and negative affect is respectively corresponding to adoption and abandonment of accessible strategies. The above exploration would shed light on affect-cognition research and make a better understanding of the affect-cognition relationship. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Encoding Mechanism of SPT Effect: Item-Specific and Item-Relational Information 2018, 41(2): 292-297.  Abstract ( )   PDF (289KB) ( )   It is well established that recall and recognition scores are enhanced when the participants are instructed to perform the action during encoding(subject-performed tasks, SPT), compared to the standard condition in which they only read or listen to the phrases(verbal tasks, VT). That is, compared with　verbal tasks, the superior memory performance in subject-performed tasks is known　as SPT effect．SPT effect was so significant and prevalent that it attracted great attention of　researchers. Consecutively, four theories - the non-strategic processing theory, the multimodal　encoding theory, the motor encoding theory and the episodic integration theory were proposed to explain SPT effect. Based on the above analysis, we considered that the divergences were that whether SPT enhances item-specific information or relational information. A large number of researchers have made a series of discussion to solve the divergence, which becomes the focus of current researches. Therefore, in order to explore the encoding mechanism of the SPT effects, this research combed the related researches about the item-specific information and the relational information. In the aspect of item-specific information, this paper analyzes the item-specific content of SPT enhanced, the research methods adopted and the reasons for SPT enhancing item-specific processing. Specifically, researchers adopted different test methods, and they all agreed that the action could advance the item specific information. In other words, the integration of action phrase as well as the specific information of the verb and noun, were enhanced when action were performed. The action phrases become more distinct, so in subsequent tests, the performance was better under the SPT encoding condition. In the aspect of rational information, the paper sorts out the relationship between the situations, the relationship between the project and the environment, and the role of the association in the SPT effect. The previous researches considered that the action does not improve the processing of episodic rational information, nor relational information associated with environment. However, there are differences but for category association, only three studies showed that SPT can enhance the category association processing, and a large number of studies have found that SPT does not promote the category association of information processing. Even when the word structure is obvious or inform the individuals the word structure, the use of VT on the category related information is better than that of SPT. As discussed above, researches using ARC scores to calculate categories of relevant information, which caused the different conclusions. Therefore, future researches can try to use different research methods to explore whether the category related processing contributes to the SPT effect. Although SPT can enhance the specific processing, but studies have not explored deeply. This mainly reflected in the following aspects. First, SPT enhanced the specific information of the verb and noun, whether there is a difference in quantity. Second, the reason why SPT advances the processing of item-specific information is inconsistent. Third, the relationship between the encoding and retrieval needs to be discussed. Therefore, the future researchers can further study the above aspects. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Limits to the Attentional Boost Effect: the Moderating Influence of Negative Emotion 2018, 41(2): 298-304.  Abstract ( )   PDF (680KB) ( )   The attentional boost effect (ABE) refers to the counter-intuitive finding that the detection of infrequent targets in a divided-attention condition enhances memory of images co-occurring with targets, as compared with images co-occurring with frequent distractors (Swallow & Jiang, 2010). Previous studies have shown that the ABE also applies to verbal materials but had small or no effect on low-frequency (LF) words or orthographically distinctive (OD) words. The present study is to test whether the ABE be moderated by the unusual properties of stimuli, by manipulating another distinctive property of the to-be-remembered stimuli: negative emotion. The present study includes two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants encoded a long sequence of neutral or negative words or images (500ms/ item), while simultaneously monitored the color of a small circle (100ms) located under each word or a small square (100ms) located at the center of each image. Participants were required to remember the words or images and pressed a spacebar whenever they detected occasional targets (red circles or black squares) among more frequent distractors (green circles or white squares). In a later recognition test, stimuli co-occurring with targets and distractors were mixed with new stimuli for an old/new judgment. Experiment 2 further manipulated the arousal of the negative stimuli, and was divided into two conditions: low-arousal and high-arousal negative stimuli paired with targets and distractors. Thirty-four undergraduates participated in Experiment 1 and thirty undergraduates participated in Experiment 2. All experimental procedures were programmed in Presentation 0.71, and run on a DELL Dimension 8200 computer with a 19? monitor (1024×768 pixels). The main results were as following: (1) In Experiment 1, the ABE was significant for neutral stimuli [F(1,33)=39.45, p<.001] and for negative stimuli [F(1,33)=9.99, p=.003], with the recognition being better for target-paired stimuli than for distractor-paired stimuli. More important, the ABE was smaller for negative-emotional stimuli than for neutral-emotional stimuli [F(1,33)=9.808, p=.004, ηp2=.229], indicating the moderating influence of negative emotion on the ABE. (2) In Experiment 2, the ABE was significant for low-arousal negative stimuli [F(1,29)=14.04, p=.001], whereas there was no hint of an ABE for high-arousal negative stimuli [F(1,29)=.10, p=.754], that is, the ABE had no effect on the high-arousal negative stimuli. These results confirm and extend previous results suggesting that the ABE could be moderated by the distinctiveness of memory materials. The unusual nature of negative stimuli attracts greater attentional resources during the encoding. As a consequence, the transient attentional enhancement occurring as a consequence of target detection in the ABE paradigm might have minimal or no effects on these distinctive items. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Application of Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy in Understanding the Brain Mechanism of Social Interaction 2018, 41(2): 305-311.  Abstract ( )   PDF (299KB) ( )   Humans are social animals. Regardless of whether you are talking to others, working together on a project, or having a conversation, you are practicing social interactions. According to the content, social interactions can be divided into non-verbal interactions, verbal interactions, and mixed interactions. This process also includes verbal or non-verbal emotional exchange. Understanding the brain mechanism of social interaction could potentially provide guidelines for better social interactions. As early as 2002, Brothers has put forward “the social brain hypothesis” according to the complexity and diversity of social activities of primates. He believes that animals, including primates, have the neural mechanism to know and understand other individuals, and the mechanism can help individual to quickly deal with all kinds of information produced in the process of interacting with other individuals in the society, so as to achieve the purposes of communication with high quality. However, due to the limitation of the previous research technology, most of the experimental paradigms presented individual stimulus through computer screen, or let the participants interact with an imaginary partner, and then study the brain response and neural mechanism of the target subjects. Although researchers have explored a series of brain regions that constitute the human brain by studies of lesion subjects, brain imaging, and electrophysiological techniques, such as the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the mirror neuron system and so on, it is still not clear that how to play and how to transfer the information between the brain in the dynamic and real-time social interaction. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy imaging is a convenient and friendly technology which provides an important technique support for studying the brain mechanism of social interaction in the natural setting. fNIRS is an emerging brain functional imaging technology, which uses blood volume and oxygenation as the carrier of information in the brain tissue, in order to understand local brain activity by measuring distribution and changes of blood volume and blood oxygen in the cerebral cortex. The present study describes the application of fNIRS in understanding the neural basis of three types of social interactions: verbal, nonverbal, and mixed social interactions. In the past decade, fNIRS hyperscanning were used by many researchers to measure changes in several cortical regions during social interaction, including frontal lobe, parietal lobe, and temporal lobe. However, largely because of different tasks used and different brain regions measured, their results are not consistent. We discuss the inconsistency of results and suggest the future research directions. First, future studies should improve the technology of functional near-infrared spectroscopy imaging itself and polish the data analysis and evaluation methods. Future studies need to develop advanced fNIRS devices to cover larger brain regions. We should construct a generalized predictive model to investigate the deep brain activity inferred from surface brain signals according to functional connectivity. Second, future research should refine and enrich the task paradigm used to study the brain mechanism of social interaction. And future research should use a more standardized control condition to control other variables. Finally, we need to focus on the application of technology integration in this field, providing multimodal evidence for the exploration the brain mechanisms of social interaction. By taking advantage of multi-modal functional brain imaging techniques, providing converging evidences, we could learn deeper of the neural basis of social interaction. Related Articles | Metrics

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Interaction of Stimulus Quality and Frequency on N400 in Chinese Characters: Evidence for Cascaded Processing Alisa 2018, 41(2): 312-317.  Abstract ( )   PDF (772KB) ( )   Decades of repeatedly found additive joint effects of stimulus quality and frequency comprise a challenge to the IAM which predicts an interactive joint effect, but evidence for the separation of orthographic and semantic processing. We propose that the separation result from the phonology processing that could function as a “barrier” in alphabetic languages, which does not occur in Chinese language processing. This study investigated the joint effect of stimulus quality and frequency on N400 in Chinese characters which is an better index of semantic processing to test the IAM and the discrete processing of the multistage activation models.Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a delayed character-matching task without semantic priming in 19 healthy native Mandarin-speaking Chinese volunteers. The experiment took a 2 stimulus quality (highly blurred vs. slightly blurred) × 2 frequency: (high vs. low) within-subjects design. During the task, blurred target characters were first presented, followed by an intact probe character that either matched or mismatched the target character in identity. The participants were asked to press a button to judge whether the target, the stimulus, was in identical to the current probe regardless of their font and blurredness. There were 320 trials in a procedure and all of them were delivered in five blocks of 64 trials each and the four experimental conditions (80 trails each) were equally assigned at random to every block. The behavioral data showed a significant interaction of stimulus quality and frequency on RT with a slower RT in the highly-blurred condition than the slightly-blurred one for low frequency, but not for high frequency. The ERP data showed a large negative-going wave that was similar to N400 and higher for highly blurred than for slightly blurred stimuli near 400 ms post-stimulus onset with a broad scalp distribution. The largest blurredness effects were located in the right centro-parietal sites in a temporal window of 400 ms to 500 ms. More importantly, analyses exhibited a significant two-way interaction of stimulus quality and frequency in the centro-parietal scalp regions. Secondly, there was a larger negative-going wave in a time window of 200 to 300 ms, which was similar to N250. Its amplitude was higher for highly-blurred stimuli than for slightly-blurred stimuli regardless of frequency. However, no interactions of blurredness and frequency were significant ，and in conclusion, the N400 blurredness effect which is larger for low frequency suggests that the stimulus quality can modulate the N400 because of cascaded processing. More importantly, an interaction of the stimulus quality and frequency on both RT and N400 suggests that strong cascaded processing in Chinese characters recognition, and provides evidence for the IAM but against the multistage activation model. Meanwhile, N250 amplitude was referred to larger for highly-blurred stimuli than for the elicited slightly-blurred ones. This N250 effect of stimulus quality was interpreted as reflecting the mismatch in pattern between internal target representation and the stimulus input. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Directed Forgetting Effect of Emotional Memory 2018, 41(2): 318-323.  Abstract ( )   PDF (280KB) ( )   Most of researches consistently agree that memory enhancement effect is always activated by emotional stimuli. Then, how does the emotional feature of stimulus impact on intentional forgetting is still in argument. At present, directed forgetting (DF) paradigm, which including item method and list method was often adopted to explore the behavioral and cognitive neuroscience mechanism of intentional forgetting of emotional memory. Two distinct viewpoints from these researches dispute about whether the DF effect can be enhanced or weakened by emotional stimulus. One viewpoint suggests that this effect could not only be produced, but also be enhanced by emotional stimulus. Evidence from both behavioral and cognitive neuroscience studies showed that more selective coding could be obtained by emotional stimulus than by neutral one under remember condition, but the similar inhibitory occurred in both emotional and neutral stimulus under forget condition. The other viewpoint argues that DF effect could be weakened, even inhibited by emotional stimulus. Evidence showed that more attentional resource could be occupied by emotional stimulus than by neutral one, which leads to the enhanced memory of emotional stimulus and hard to forget. To summary the current literature, both objective factor with material types, emotional valence/arousal and subjective factor with emotional state of participants are involved in the important impacts of production of DF effect and its stability. Previous studies, for the material types, consistently indicated that compare with pictures, more stable and significant DF effect could be detected while words as experimental materials. Therefore, future studies need to select experimental material properly based on the aim of each study. The valence and arousal, as we know, are important dimensions of emotion. Most of results showed that there is a stable DF effect under neutral stimulus condition. Similarly, this effect could be detected under positive emotional stimulus condition. Further, there is no significant difference of effect cost between neutral and positive emotional condition. The DF effect, in contrast, can be influenced under negative emotional stimulus condition. In particular, this effect would be enhanced while participant is familiar with negative emotional stimulus. It would be weakened, conversely, while the arousal of negative emotional stimulus is high level. Furthermore, the emotional state of participant is also an important impact of the DF effect. Most of previous studies focused on the participants with mood disorder, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and so on. Few studies with normal participants suggested that there is an interaction between emotionality of stimulus and emotional state of participant has impact on the DF effect. This kind of study, however, was lack of efficient monitory to the induced effect of participant’s emotion. Hence, future studies need to focus on the validity of effect of induced emotion, and ensure that whether the DF effect can be influenced by emotional state of participant or not. Directed forgetting is one of important components in the research field of memory. It partly reveals the mechanism of intentional forgetting. Further, researches on the DF of emotional memory are a benefit supplement to this field. According to review current literature, this paper highlights the importance of research on DF of emotional memory, and also proposes the constructive opinion to future studies. Related Articles | Metrics

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6~8 Children's Potential Motives for Fair Behavior : The Role of Social Signaling 2018, 41(2): 324-329.  Abstract ( )   PDF (485KB) ( )   Fairness is an important feature of human resource sharing that promotes unselfish behavior in a wide range of contexts, previous research suggests that children develop an increasing concern with fairness over the course of development. Research with adults suggests that the concern with fairness has at least 2 distinct components: a desire to be fair and a desire to signal to others that they are fair. Across two experiments, we examine whether children’s developing concern with behaving fairly toward others may in part reflect a developing concern with appearing fair to others. We investigate whether children are influenced by social signaling, and then examine whether children develop a tendency to cloak their unfair decisions under social signaling—becoming more likely with age to choose procedures that allow them to be unfair without appearing unfair to others. In Experiment 1, we examined 270 children aged 6 to 8 years old behaved fairly toward others, the effect of social signaling on children's fair behavior under three kinds of information available conditions, includes social signaling condition, no social signaling condition, other conditions with no social signaling. we investigated whether children are willing to choose unfair outcomes for others, when they believe an experimenter will not know they are being unfair and when they can gain resources for themselves by being unfair. A 3×2 pearson chi-square test on the three conditions in all ages revealed a significant effect of condition, 6 years old, χ2 =13.30, df=2, p<0.01; 7 years old, χ2 =22.50, df=2, p<0.001; 8 years old, χ2 =11.25, df=2, p<0.001. A 3×2 pearson chi-square test on the three age groups in different conditions revealed a significant effect of ages in the no social signaling condition, χ2 =4.94，df=2，p<0.05. No significant age differences was found in other conditions. In Experiment 2, we examined whether children are concerned with appearing fair to others using a different procedure and also examined whether children’s willingness to use procedures that obfuscate their unfairness from others increased with age. 300 children that aged 6 to 8 years old could assign themselves a good or bad prize. They were given the option of simply choosing which prize they wanted or flipping a coin behind a curtain and then telling the experimenter whether they have won the good prize or the bad prize. A binomial sign test on those children who immediately chose a prize rather than flipped the coin, revealed that children are more likely to choose the good prize than the bad one (83.2%, 114 out of 137, P<.001)，6 years old children (87%, 52 out of 60, P<.001), 7years old children (87%, 39 out of 45, P<.001), 8years old children (72%，23 out of 32, P<.05), As age increased, the percentage of children that choose the good prize is decreased significantly. Among children who chose to flip the coin, 68% (111 out of 163) reported winning the good prize, a percentage significantly greater than 50% (P<.001), this result didn’t differ across age groups. Conclusions are drawn as follows: the studies provide converging evidence using different paradigms that children’s fair behavior is at least partly motivated by a desire to appear fair to others. children are fair when their allocation decisions were transparent to others. However, in keeping with social signaling models, children were systematically less fair when transparency is decreased. Many children chose to flip a coin rather than selfishly take the better reward for themselves, but some ignored the outcome of the coin and allocated the better reward to themselves. Overall, the results of these experiments suggest that as children grow older they become increasingly concerned with appearing fair to others, which may explain some of their increasing tendency to behave fairly. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Relationship of Parental Educational Level and Adolescents’ Academic Adjustment: The Mediating Effects of Parenting and Parent-Adolescent Communication 2018, 41(2): 330-336.  Abstract ( )   PDF (738KB) ( )   Academic adjustment is a harmonious status which is achieved by learners experiencing learning environment and adjusting themselves constantly. In the cultural context of China, there is a special meaning of achieving academic success. Children usually try their best to perform well in studies to bring honor to their family. Achieving academic adjustment has received much attention from researchers. Previous researches indicated that parental educational level was a crucial factor of predicting adolescents’ academic adjustment. Paying attention to the mechanism through which parental educational level has an effect on adolescents’ academic adjustment is helpful for answering the question of how they connecting with each other. According to the Family Investment Model, as a kind of human capital, parental educational level would not transmit from parents to children automatically. It would be transmitted by parent-adolescent interactions. Parenting and parent-adolescent communication were two vital forms of parent-adolescent interactions. Therefore, they may be two crucial mediating factors. The present study was to explore the relationships between parental educational level and adolescents’ academic adjustment and the mediating effects of parenting and parent-adolescent communication. The present study also explored whether there were gender differences, location differences or grade differences in the direct effect model and mediating model. In the current study, 716 high-school adolescents from grade 10 and grade 12 in Shandong province were investigated. As academic adjustment is conceived as comprising characteristics, we use latent variable that incorporate the behavioral and motivational aspects. Academic achievement was used to represent the behavioral aspect. Utility of education and utility value of mathematics and Chinese were used to represent the motivational aspect. The participants finished a self-reported questionnaire on parental educational level, utility values of mathematics and Chinese, utility of education, academic achievement, parenting styles and parent-adolescent communication. All of the measures showed good reliability. The present study conducted correlation analyses, structural equation modeling and multiple-group analyses by using SPSS 16.0 and Mplus 7.0. The main findings of the present study were as follows: (1) Significant correlations existed between parental educational level, parent-adolescent communication, the acceptance/involvement dimension and strictness/supervision dimension of parenting, and three dimensions of academic adjustment. (2) Latent structure equation modeling revealed significant prediction of parental educational level on adolescents’ academic adjustment. Parent-adolescent communication and the acceptance/involvement dimension and strictness/supervision dimension of parenting mediated the associations between parental educational level and adolescents’ academic adjustment. (3) No gender, location or grade differences were found in the mediating model. By elaborating the mediating effects of acceptance/involvement and strictness/supervision dimension of parenting and parent-adolescent communication, the present study enriches the literature of the relation between parental educational level and adolescents’ academic adjustment. In addition, the current study provides additional support for the Family Investment Model. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impaired Transformation Ability between Symbolic and Non-symbolic Numerical Magnitude for Developmental Dyscalculia 2018, 41(2): 337-343.  Abstract ( )   PDF (801KB) ( )   Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a special category of learning disability, with almost 3%-6% school-age children affected in the world. DD children have two basic features: (1) the development of number processing and calculating lags heavily behind normal achievement (NA) children; (2) other cognitive abilities, such as intelligence, verbal ability and working memory, develop well. DD has negative effects on children not only in learning but also in daily life. Children who suffer DD are frustrated a lot when learning mathematics, leading to their negative attitude to mathematics. The relationship between children and their teachers or parents also can be hurt awfully. In addition, DD will influence children’s career in the long run. The cognitive mechanism of DD has sparked some controversy among researchers. The defective number module hypothesis proposed that humans were born with a “number module” and used an internal “numerosity code” that represented and manipulated numerosities exactly. The children with DD might suffer from a “defective number module” which led to a range of difficulties in learning arithmetic. However, some different voices could also be heard. For example, Roussell found that the Arabic number processing was badly impaired among DD children. At the same time, the non-symbolic number processing kept intact for DD children. Thus, Roussell proposed the access deficit hypothesis, and he insisted that DD children had difficulty in accessing number magnitude from symbols rather than in processing numerosity per se. In the current study, we used a number comparison paradigm to explore the cognitive mechanism of DD. Nineteen second graders with DD and twenty six NA second graders completed the experiments. In the experiment 1, participants were asked to compare numerical magnitude under three different number formats conditions (non-symbolic, symbolic , mixture of non-symbolic and symbolic). The results showed that symbolic rather than non-symbolic numerical processing was impaired in DD children. Furthermore, the transformation of symbolic and non-symbolic number magnitude was also terribly impaired. In the experiment 2, Chinese characters were used instead of dots materials. We designed this to verify whether 1) Chinese characters processing was damaged among DD children; and 2) the impaired transformation existed in two different symbolic number magnitude. However, results indicated that a deficit was found in Chinese characters processing and there were no evidences supporting the transformation impairment between Chinese characters and Arabic numbers in DD Children. Therefore, the impaired transformation existed only in symbolic and non-symbolic numbers. Our results have important implication in both theory and practice for studying on DD. Theoretically, the results favor the impaired access deficit hypothesis, based on impaired symbolic number processing ability and intact non-symbolic processing. Meanwhile, for the first time the current study finds that the transformation ability between symbolic and non-symbolic number magnitude of DD children is weakened. Practically, our findings would be beneficial for interventions of DD children. The transformation ability is so important that the curriculum designed for DD children should focus not only on symbolic number processing, but also on how to establish strong connection between non-symbolic and symbolic magnitude. Related Articles | Metrics

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Approximate Number System Acuity of Primary School Students: Developmental Tendency and its relationship to Inhibitory Control and Mathematical Ability 2018, 41(2): 344-350.  Abstract ( )   PDF (871KB) ( )   Abstract Humans and animals have a system which approximately represents the number of objects or events in a nonverbal way. This system is called the Approximate Number System (ANS), and was found to improve with age. A number of studies have shown a positive correlation between ANS acuity and mathematical ability. Recent research suggests ANS acuity's contribution to mathematics ability might be affected by individuals’ ability of inhibitory control. However, it is still unclear what role the inhibitory control plays in this relationship. With regard to this issue, there are three main purposes in this study. 1) To explore how ANS acuity develops among primary students; 2) To examine whether ANS acuity correlates with the mathematical ability in primary school stage; 3) To examine whether inhibitory control is a mediating factor between ANS acuity and mathematical ability. A hundred and seventy-two rural pupils who were in grade 1 (50 students, age 7.11 ± 0.73 years), grade 3 (55 students, age 9.00 ± 0.50 years), and grade 5 (67 students, age 11.29 ± 0.61 years) participated in this study. They were arranged to complete the Chinese Students Basic Math Ability Test Scale, Stop-signal task, and non-symbolic magnitude comparison task to measure their mathematical ability, inhibitory control ability, and ANS acuity respectively. Specifically, the mathematical ability test was a class centralized testing, and the test time was strictly controlled. Besides, the stop-signal task and non-symbolic magnitude comparison task were intensively measured in a computer class for the grade 3 and grade 5 students, while the grade 1 students were measured individually. Results revealed that 1) with age, pupils’ ANS acuity generally improved, but from grade 1 to grade 3 the improvement was relatively slower than other grades, while from grade 3 to grade 5 pupils' ANS acuity improved rapidly, p<0.01; 2) ANS acuity(w of negative sequence ), inhibition control (SSRT) and mathematical abilities were significantly correlated with each other, p<0.05; 3) after controlling age, pupils' mathematical ability was positively predicted by ANS acuity (w of negative sequence) as well as the ability of inhibitory control (SSRT) (ps<0.05); 4) the relationship between mathematical ability and the ANS acuity (w of negative sequence) was partially mediated by the ability of inhibitory control, and the mediation effect accounted for 19.53% of the total effect. The findings of the present study are consistent with previous research, which were mainly conducted among preschoolers or adults. Although some researchers claimed that the influence of ANS acuity on mathematics ability might be affected by the inhibitory control, rare empirical study testified this hypothesis. This study adopted primary school children as participants and was an extension to previous study. We investigated the development of ANS acuity and its relationship with mathematical ability, as well as the role of inhibitory control in this relationship. As the conclusion, 1) in primary school, students' ANS acuity continues to improve with age; 2) both ANS acuity and inhibitory control ability can positively predict the mathematical ability among primary school students; 3) inhibitory control ability can partially mediate the relationship between mathematical ability and ANS acuity. These findings may be helpful to improve mathematics?teaching?and learning in primary school. Related Articles | Metrics

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Latest developments on the eye movement study of children’s reading development in foreign countries 2018, 41(2): 351-356.  Abstract ( )   PDF (296KB) ( )   Recently, eye tracker technology has been extensively used to investigate developmental reading in foreign children，which becomes the hot point in the study of reading domain. This article aimed to summarize the research findings deriving from developmental reading using eye tracking system at abroad. This paper reviewed these achievements which include general reading questions, word processing, text comprehension and relevant theories of reading to reveal the typically developmental characteristics in reading when children grow up. Then, several issues about how to choose statistical analyses, how to screen reading materials as well as consider study designs were discussed to provide guidance for eye movements study of developmental reading in China. A great number of researches in adult reading have made us informed of what happens to their cognitive process during comprehension. However, few investigations about developmental reading in children are conducted. Eye tracking technology can record the eye movements of individuals when reading moment by moment, suggesting how readers fixate upon the information and allocate their attention. Therefore, this method make it convenient to inspect the cognitive mechanism underlying the nature of reading in children. Eye movements in reading can effectively reveal the developmental change about how a novice become a skilled reader. As the age increased, children became more elaborated in reading and their eye movements became more effective. Children tended to show less fixation duration and times, less regressions and higher skipping rate, as well as larger saccade amplitude during reading. Children began to replicate the eye movements characteristics of adult around their 10-11 years old. Reading beginners performed poorly related in reading speed and comprehension. Several studies investigated the reason to suggest that children have limited perceptual span of reading compared to adults. Three western studies in this article found that children can attain the word information in phonology or orthography level from parafoveal region after the second grade. Lexical access level is key to determine the quality of reading. Sub-lexical attributes such as phoneme, morpheme and orthography as well as whole lexical attributes with respect to word frequency and length were include to examine the word processing in children. Young children developed typical phonological knowledge in reading and used it to process words. What’s more, primary students decoded the language in the whole word way. However, the sizes of word frequency and length effects for children were larger than adult readers, which might imply that children identify words in less automatic way than skilled readers, with smaller process unit. When parsing the sentence structure, children could recognize the plausibility of syntax and predict the upcoming objects effectively by using the thematic roles , but were less able to process the pragmatic information as adults did. As a whole, children were less competent to integrate sentence structure and meaning with matured individuals. Referring to comprehending passages, reading tasks modulated the attentional allocation across the text of children. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Development of Primary School Children’s Ability of Procedural Fairness Cognition and Its Attribution Orientation 2018, 41(2): 357-363.  Abstract ( )   PDF (464KB) ( )   According to the literatures on procedural fairness cognition, some researchers have provided the evidences to support the idea that high school students, college students and adults attach importance to procedural fairness. But until now, there is little research exploring primary school children’s procedural fairness cognition. In addition, the existing findings in the western world can not be directly extended to the eastern cultural environment without empirical test, because of the great differences between eastern culture and western culture. Based on these reasons, this research systematically examined the development of primary school children’s ability of procedural fairness cognition. First of all, a procedural fairness cognitive scenario story was collected and veri?ed as the measure material for developmental characteristics of procedural fairness cognition in the following study. The main content of the scenario story was to assume that the participant’s class won in a broadcast gymnastics competition, and that the school should select 10 students from the class to go to the amusement park as a class reward. The scenario story included three kinds of procedural information (have equal voting rights, have voting rights yet not equal, non-voting right) and two kinds of outcome information (positive, negative). Through scoring and explaining the reasons for the three procedural information in two different outcomes, the children’s procedural fairness cognition was examined. After a series of tests, we found that the measure material’ construct validity was .75 and its internal consistency coef?cient was .89. Then the procedural fairness cognitive scenario story was used to investigate the developmental characteristics of ability of procedural fairness cognition and its attribution orientation in different procedural information of 150 primary school children from 1, 3, 5 grades. The results were as follows: (1) The score of primary school children’s ability of procedural fairness cognition showed a gradually improving trend with the growth of grade. Three grades of primary school children could judge whether the procedure is fair when they had the clear procedural information. The procedural fairness judgment of grade 1 children was more influenced by the outcome information, and with the improvement of their moral judgment and cognitive ability. (2) Both the score of primary school children’s ability of procedural fairness cognition in the case of having equal voting rights and having voting rights yet not equal were signi?cantly higher than that in the case of non-voting right. and the score under the negative outcome information was significantly higher than that under the positive outcome information. When the children had the clear fairness procedural information, their fairness judgment was less affected by the outcome information, otherwise the latter was easy to be affected by the outcome. (3) With the growth of the grade, the procedural fairness cognitive attribution of primary school children decreased in the outcome-orientation and authority-orientation, while increased in the procedure–orientation. The attribution in the ability-orientation increased with grade, and then decreased gradually after grade 3. The research shows that primary school children’s ability of procedural fairness cognition develops with age and is influenced by procedural information and outcome information. The procedural fairness cognitive attribution of primary school children is more and more inclined to procedure–orientation with age. Related Articles | Metrics

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Brief Exposure to Two-Player Video Games Stimulates Young Children’s Peer Communication and Prosocial Behavior 2018, 41(2): 364-370.  Abstract ( )   PDF (627KB) ( )   An increasing number of young children play video games at a very early age. Whereas studies have documented the negative effects of video gaming by young children, recent evidence suggests that playing video games may facilitate peer interaction and foster prosocial behavior. However, no systematic investigation has been made to examine the potential effects of video games on young children’s social development. The aim of this study is to exam whether brief exposure to two-player cooperative/competitive video games may promote young children’s peer communication and prosocial behavior. Sixty 4- to 6-year old children (34 boys) participated in this study. They were divided into two age groups: 30 younger preschoolers (Mage = 5.18, SD = .26) and 30 older kindergarteners (Mage = 6.04, SD = .29). Based on participants’ nominations of all their friends, the children were grouped into 30 pairs matched by gender and no friendship relationship. Each pair of children was randomly assigned to play a two-player cooperative or competitive game. After rating the affection for their partners and playing the games for 5 minutes, the children answered a battery of questions, including: (1) how much they liked their partners then, (2) how much they would like to play video games again with their partner or another same-gendered non-friend partner, and (3) which tangram puzzle they would assign to their current partner or a different non-friend partner. One day after the experiment, the children nominated all their friends again. This same socio-metric measurement was repeated in another 80-day follow-up interview to explore the long-term effects of video games on peer relationships. We used a 2 (test time: pretest vs. posttest) × 2 (game type: cooperative vs. competitive) × 2 (age group: younger preschooler, older kindergartener) design to evaluate children’s affection for their partners. We also used a 2 (game type: cooperative, competitive) × 2 (age group: younger preschooler, older kindergarteners) × 2 (communication target: current partner vs. new partner) design to assess children’s prosocial behavior and their willingness to communicate and collaborate with their counterparts. We obtained the following results: (1) After co-playing two-player video games for 5 minutes, children liked their partners more than they did before the game, and they preferred their current partner over a new partner for future games. One day after the experiment, all children nominated their video game partner as their new friend even though the partner was not a friend prior to the game; the new friendship lasted more than 80 days. (2) Compared to those who played competitive games, children who played cooperative games liked their partner more dearly. For the competitive game players, winners liked their partner more than did losers. (3) Compared to younger preschoolers, older kindergarteners liked their partner more dearly and were more willing to play with the new partner. (4) Children exhibited more helping behavior towards their partner than they did towards the new non-friend partner. These findings imply that brief exposure to appropriate two-player video games, such as cooperative games, may serve to promote young children’s peer communication and prosocial behavior towards their partners. Related Articles | Metrics

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Violate Knowingly? Factors and Psychological Mechanism of Intentional Unethical Behavior YATING WANG 2018, 41(2): 371-377.  Abstract ( )   PDF (612KB) ( )   Intentional unethical behavior is characterized of breaking the daily standards and deviating from the moral compass consciously, which is currently widespread in the public fields and private spaces and give rise to immense economical price and social cost. In this paper, we draw a process model of generating intentional unethical behavior from the perspective of self-concept maintenance theory and moral dissonance theory, which depicted the inducing factors and potential pre-violation and post-violation psychological mechanism. In psychology, behavioral ethics, management, as well as cognitive neuroscience field, loads of researchers have explored factors that would lead individuals to violate social norms consciously, conducting intentional unethical behavior, in specific culture and social contexts. This paper reviewed the influence of both individual factors and context factors on intentional unethical behavior respectively. Individual factor referred to characteristics or attributes possessed by people, including cognitive factors, personality factors, physical factors and unconscious factors. Context factor meant the external features people perceived in the process of perception of the outer world, including surrounding settings, warning cues, time cues and interpersonal interaction. What’s more, previous papers showed that most of individual factors, in essence, drove people to behave unethically because of improving motivation of gaining self-interest and impairing or exploiting self-control resources, during which context factors would buffer or enhance the effect. But how did these factors exert impact on people’s intentional unethical behavior? Two competing motivations, that is the motivation of maintaining moral self-concept and of grabbing the external interest, of human played a vital role. When facing temptations which would give us practical benefits by unethical behaviors or violations, in fact, people firstly perceived threats to moral self-concept. The motivation of maintaining the positive image of “I am a good person” would be reinforced and then pre-violation self-justification strategies (such as tokens preference, self-serving altruism and moral licensing) were expected to be adopted to buffer the inner conflict, which could help individual to find a balance or equilibrium between the two motivating forces. Eventually they would conduct unethical behavior in comfort zone, where they gain some financial benefit from behaving unethically but still maintain their positive self-concept in terms of being moral individuals. That means people would consciously avoid minor unethical behavior which would not take substantial and significant external interests for individual as well as major unethical behavior which would be at the expense of changing positive self-concept. After conducting unethical behavior, moral self-concept would be threatened and thus motivation of maintaining positive self-image would be activated again. In this situation, through specific post-violation self-justification strategies (such as moral cleansing, moral disengagement, motivated forgetting and moral hypocrisy), moral self-concept would eventually be protected and maintained. Future researches are expected to give more emphasis on exploring behavioral and psychological mechanisms, especially understanding and avoiding unethical behavior in the perspective of mental motivation and being aware of unconscious factors and processes. At the same time, longitudinal tracking method and unethical behavior that appeared in the Internet context are supposed to be paid more attention in the future. Related Articles | Metrics

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Cognitive mechanism of interpersonal neural synchronization during social communication 2018, 41(2): 378-383.  Abstract ( )   PDF (276KB) ( )   Social interaction is the foundation of information communication, however, the underlying neural underpinnings of it is still an open question. The article aims to elaborate its behavioral and neural dynamics. Recently, many neuroscientists use a neuroimaging technique called ‘hyperscanning’ to investigate this issue. This technique is collecting data by simultaneously recording the hemodynamic or neuroelectric activities of multiple subjects. Many studies have discovered interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in some specific brain regions during real-time interaction between or among human. Therefore, neuroscientists adopted INS as an index to investigate the mechanism of social interaction. According to some major findings and theoretical assumptions of social cognition in the field of neuroscience, neuroscientists put forward a dual mechanism neural framework for social understanding. They proposed that social understanding must be achieved via at least two mechanisms (Theory of Mind and Mirror Neuron System), which are capable of parallel information processing in the brain. The first mechanism (Mirror Neuron System) suggests that representations of others are mapped onto an observer’s representations of these same schemas in order to understand them, revealing the neural mechanisms of simple motor perception and imitation during social communication from a neurophysiological perspective. The second mechanism (Theory of Mind) requires semantic analysis of a given social situation to understand others and most likely involves conscious processes, revealing the neural mechanisms of inferring mental state of others during social communication from the theory perspective of social cognitive. Previous studies found some synchronized brain regions were partly coincident with the speculated brain areas of Theory of Mind and Mirror Neuron System, indicating that communication processes activated one or two mechanisms and caused controversy on cognitive mechanisms, which may be resulted from the form of communication (verbal or nonverbal communication). Therefore, from the aspects of verbal communication and nonverbal communication, we briefly summarized recent studies of INS during social interactions. However, due to the complexity of social interactions, INS during different task may active different brain areas that belong to Theory of Mind or Mirror Neuron System. This may be influenced by many communication factors, such as communicative purpose, objects, form or content. Specifically, INS was observed during implicit social interaction without communication purpose (communication purpose); INS of subjects with autistic spectrum disorder was reduced compared with normal subjects (communication object); INS during face-to-face communication was stronger than other modes of communication (communication form); INS was increased during cooperation task but not during competition (communication content). In short, the two mechanisms are both involved in social interaction or the understanding of others. It suggests that maybe researchers should put their eyes on what systems are activated, and in what way, rather than trying to find out which system is the only one that exists. And, future researches should pay more attention to the following aspects. First, whether these two mechanisms showed INS in different brain regions due to purpose, objects, form or content of communication. Second, how these two mechanisms worked together or separately in different tasks and situations. These can not only discover the cognitive mechanism of INS, but also provide a reference for the study of groups with cognitive deficit. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Cultural Differences in Overconfidence Wan-Min YE 2018, 41(2): 384-389.  Abstract ( )   PDF (302KB) ( )   Overconfidence refers to an individual's overestimation of the accuracy of his/her judgment. The cultural differences in overconfidence is an important issue that ensure transnational organizations make effective communication and rational decision-making. The classical paradigm to study this problem is general knowledge question and actual situational issues.The study using general knowledge question consistently found that Eastern subjects were significantly more overconfident than subjects of Western culture . In recent years, researchers have paid more and more attention to whether the results of the study of general knowledge question can be extended to the decision-making of actual situational issues. Actual situational issues is a variant of the general knowledge question. Actual situational issues is closer to the reality and often involves future events which results are unknown to anyone else, such as weather, stocks, or games issues. The study using actual situational issues found that Westerners are more overconfidence than Easterners or no significant difference between them. The explanation of ‘Easterners are more overconfidence than Westerners’ mainly includes cognitive customs and educational systems, which correspond to both micro and macro perspectives. From a micro perspective, a large number of researchers are concerned about the thoroughness of thinking about problems, also known as the argument recruitment model, that is, people in the face of a problem, often in each option to find supporting and opposing evidence, and then assess the comparative advantage of evidence. Choosing the right option and confidence assessment is based on thinking about the quantity?and?quality of arguments. From a macro perspective, the interpretation of the educational system argues that cross-cultural differences in the educational system influence the cross-cultural differences in the adoption of the argument, leading to cross-cultural differences in the level of overconfidence. The Chinese education system encourages students to inherit rather than criticize traditions, especially to encourage memory; and the American education system encourages students to engage in critical thinking and challenge their own views with others. The emphasis on critical thinking in the West makes them find more opposing evidence in making judgments, reducing the tendency to overconfidence, and the Chinese tend to find evidence of their initial judgment and are therefore more overconfidence. However, there is still a lack of explanation about ‘Westerners are more overconfidence than Easterners’ . Finally, the reasons for the different research results are discussed, and the validity of the explanation is further explored. The results of the research on the use of general knowledge question are different from those of actual situational issues, which may be related to task form, task difficulty or sample selection. In recent years, the study using actual situational issues has drawn the result that Westerners are more overconfidence than Easterners or have no significant difference between them. There is still no uniform explanation for these results, which may be related to the collective-individualistic culture, education or the level of economic development. An in-depth discussion of the cultural differences in overconfidence can not only help people in different countries to better understand and grasp the essence of the cultural differences in overconfidence in order to discern irrational decision-making, but also guide people's daily judgments and decision making to avoid decision-making mistakes. Therefore, the study of the cultural differences in overconfidence has important theoretical and practical significance. Related Articles | Metrics

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Trust or Defence? The Enhancing Effect of Perceived Social Mindfulness on Cooperative Behavior during Interactive Game Kai DOU Yan-Gang Nie 2018, 41(2): 390-396.  Abstract ( )   PDF (675KB) ( )   Cooperative behavior is crucial to human’s sustaining development. However, how such behavior occurs and how to maintain this behavior are still less commonly explored. These questions have attracted much focus from different realms such as psychology, biology, economy, and neuroscience. On a day-to-day basis, cooperative behavior can be conceptualized as a decision which is made based on the cognition of others’ (both groups and individuals) psychological state, emotions, and behavioral intention during interpersonal dynamic processes (including both group-level and individual-level). A number of prior researches have proved that, some motivation factors, such as award pursuit, punishment avoidance, desire to gain reputation and exclusion avoidance, benefit the occurrence of cooperative behaviors. In addition, individual differences, such as orientation of social value, sex difference and self-control are crucial prediction source of cooperative behaviors. However, cooperative behaviors in real life often occur in the process of actual interpersonal interaction and interactive information from opponents will certainly influence individual's cooperative behaviors. For example, facial attractiveness and racial characteristic may influence individual's cooperative behaviors through psychological perceptions. Currently, research on factors that influence cooperative behaviors mainly focus on external motivations and individual differences of decision makers, but there are few studies that have examined how actors’ behaviors influence individuals’ cooperative behaviors. Social mindfulness refers to one’s attention towards and protection and satisfaction of others’ autonomous needs in the processes of interpersonal interactions. This construct provides a novel angle for investigating the dynamic processes underlying cooperative behavior. A simulation behavioral experiment was conducted in real contexts of interpersonal interaction, aimed to reveal how and why the behavior agent’s social mindfulness would affect recipient’s cooperative behavior in the perspective of trust. This experiment was a single factor experimental design, 110 participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (i.e., 55 participants for high social mindfulness condition; 55 participants for low high social mindfulness condition). SoMi Paradigm was used and individual’s levels of social mindfulness was manipulated by setting the proportion of Player A’s (i.e., confederate) selection of “unique object” and “not unique object”. Trust game was used to measure the level of trust opponent, and public goods game (PGG) was used to test participants’ cooperative behavior. The result showed that regardless of being a receiver or an observer, participants playing with confederate high in social mindfulness were more prone to contribute more resources in PGG. The results of mediation analysis indicated that trust partially mediated the association of social mindfulness with cooperation. Specifically, participants trusted more people with higher levels of social mindfulness, and believed more that they would not betray them, and therefore were more willing to put more resources in public account to maximize collective gains. In conclusion, the current research demonstrate that trust is a crucial mechanism that explain behavior agent’s social mindfulness and recipient’s cooperative behavior. In other words, social mindfulness provides cues of developing trust during interpersonal processes and reduces one’s motivational defense, which leads to the possibility of cooperation and win-win benefit. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Perceived Organization’s Political Climate on Work Alienation: Mediating Role of Self-determination Motivation Ming-Hui LIANG Yi LingFeng 2018, 41(2): 397-402.  Abstract ( )   PDF (451KB) ( )   Alienation is an important topic in organizational sciences of the west. Employee alienation is emerging rapidly in china’s workplace. A large number of studies have linked employee alienation to both individual differences (e.g., achievement, work ethic) and structural predictors such as role stressors, leader dimensions (e.g., supportive leadership), job design (e.g., task variety), and work context (e.g., formalization, centralization). However the alienation’s nomological network is still somewhat unclear. In this study, a negative organizational factor—perceived organization’s political climate and a new psychological mediation—self-determination motivation of work are considered to explore the forming mechanism of work alienation in China’s context. In the present study, the self-report data were collected from 226 employee participants of 8 enterprises and institutions in Shanghai, China, by convenient sampling survey using Perceived General Organization’s Political Behavior Scale, Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale and Work Alienation Scale. Correlation analysis and the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used to reveal the relationships of the variables. The Work Alienation Scale contains two dimensions: personal alienation and social alienation. The results showed that: (1) organization’s political climate perceived by Chinese employees was positively correlated with personal alienation (r = .685, p < .01) and social alienation (r = .628, p < .01). And it was negatively correlated with self-determination motivation of work (r = -.322, p < .01). (2) Self-determination motivation of work was negatively correlated with personal alienation (r = -.413, p < .01) and social alienation (r = -.278, p < .01). (3) The path coefficients of SEM were significant from perceived organization’s political climate to personal alienation (.65, p < .001), social alienation (.65, p < .001) and self-determination motivation of work (-.33, p < .001). (4) The path coefficient of SEM was significant from self-determination motivation of work to personal alienation (-.21, p < .001), while to social alienation was weak and not significant (-.08, p > .05). SEM showed that the self-determination motivation of work played a partially mediating role in the relationship between perceived organization’s political climate and employee’s personal alienation. The present study not only examined the relationships between perceived organization’s political climate and work alienation, but also found the mediating role of self-determination motivation of work, which expanded the related areas and enriched the original theory. As a negative interactive organizational factor, the organization’s political climate is an important predictor causing feelings of work alienation. Workplace full of political behaviors can cause employees negative senses of separation or estrangement extending to one’s self-image (personal alienation) and social relationships (social alienation). And the self-determination motivation of work is a psychological mediation mechanism which understands the formation of employee’s personal alienation to work activities. That is to say, the employee’s personal alienation experience to work is partly due to the weakening effect of the organizational political atmosphere on employee’s self-determination motivation of work. But the employee’s social alienation experience to social relationship is mainly due to the direct effect of the organizational political atmosphere perceived by employees in the working world. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Depression on Social Decision-Making Zhen-Hong HE 2018, 41(2): 403-409.  Abstract ( )   PDF (311KB) ( )   Depression is associated with poor interpersonal and social functions. To improve the social dysfunction is the key component of successful intervention in depressed patients. Therefore, the review of this topic can further our understanding and promotes potential clinical practice. To understand depressed patients’ interpersonal and social dysfunction in the context of social decision-making, an advantage is that researchers can use game theory paradigms from neuroeconomics to examine interpersonal and social dysfunction in patients with depression. Ruff and Fehr (2014) proposed three classes of situations in social decision-making. First, it refers to assess how other individuals' valuation or feedback affect the agent’s own well-being (“social feedback” for short). This class of social decision-making includes situations in which the agent experiences social rewards or punishments from oth?ers, such as social acceptance or social rejection. The second class concerns situations in which an individual vicariously values choice options and outcomes for another individual, i.e., vicarious experience of social rewards and punishment, vicarious social decision-making, and vicarious social learning (“vicarious valuation” for short). The third class comprises situations in which an individual values his or her behavior in a reference frame of normative social principles (“social principle” for short). Based on the three classes of aforementioned situations, the current review summarized recent behavioral and fMRI studies on social decision-making in healthy adults as well as in patients with depression. For the situation of "social feedback", depressed individuals showed social anhedonia for positive social interaction and social reward, which may due to reduced response from the nucleus accumbens. In contrast, patients had increased sensitivity to negative social interactions, such as social rejection or exclusion, which is associated with increased activation in the neural network of social pain. For the situation of "vicarious valuation", although we found no direct deficits in depression, depressed individuals showed deficits in empathy (which is relevant to vicarious reward and punishment) and theory of mind (which is relevant to vicarious decision-making and vicarious learning). For the situation of "social principle", when depressed individuals guided their behavior to comply with normative social principles (e.g. fairness, cooperation, altruism), these individuals demonstrated maladaptive behaviors, such as hyper-altruism and reduced cooperative behavior. According to the previous results reviewed above, this paper proposed three unsolved problems and associated possible solutions. First, although depressed individuals showed multifaceted anhedonia, such as reduced rewarding experience of desire, anticipation, motivation, effort and pleasure, most of current studies used money as incentives. We argued that a shift from monetary to social stimuli is needed in clinical research to improve our understanding of social anhedonia in depressed individuals. Second, it is not clear whether the observed neural responses are causally necessary for social decision-mak?ing. The combination of non-invasive brain stimulation tools, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), and brain imaging methods can resolve this issue. In this context, researchers can investigate the causal effect of rTMS on the behavioral changes in the stimulated brain regions. Third, the hyperscanning technique which has a high ecological validity is suggested to be used in the future social decision-making studies; because it allows the inter–human experimental designs and can simultaneously record neural activities of interactive subjects. Related Articles | Metrics

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Impact of Time Perception on Intertemporal Choice in the Older Adults 2018, 41(2): 410-415.  Abstract ( )   PDF (295KB) ( )   Intertemporal choice is a decision-making process that involves tradeoffs between costs and benefits at different points in time. It has been a hot topic in multiple disciplines. However, it is much less known how intertemporal choice changes with the growth of age. A majority of studies found that older adults displayed more preference for delayed, bigger rewards over immediate, smaller rewards compared to younger adults. The current review mainly, but not exclusively, focuses on the way in which age-related differences in time perception impact intertemporal choice. First, subjective perception of time interval can explain multiple discounted-utility anomalies better than objective time interval. As we age, subjective time becomes faster, and degree of time compression becomes higher. There are several interpretations to the age-related changes in time perception. (1) The “internal clock” slows down when individuals age. (2) The occurrence rate of important or novel life events decrease with age. (3) Cognitive resources decrease with age, which constrains individuals’ capacity to monitor time. (4) Wealthy life experience in older adults also promotes the feeling that a certain interval is not so long. Second, previous studies have found that older adult perceived lower time cost than younger adults, which might cause their underestimation of the value of immediate rewards. There are several interpretations to this phenomenon. (1) Older adults’ wealthy life experience and knowledge help them reduce their inner uncertainties about life and make them more optimistic. (2) The deterioration of sensory function weakens the pleasure of getting immediate rewards and reduces the uncomfortableness in the process of waiting for delayed rewards. (3) Old adults regulate emotions more frequently and effectively, which helps them cope with negative emotions caused by delaying gratification. Third, the socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) asserts that people perceive their future life time incrementally decreases after they step into their later life, which results in a chronicle shift in their life goals. Specifically, younger adults prioritize future-oriented knowledge-seeking goals, while older adults increasingly prioritize present-oriented emotional goals. As a consequence, older adults develop better emotion-regulation abilities to fulfill their emotional goals. The shift in life goal and motivation resulting from age-related changes in time perception may contribute to better self-control of impulsivity, better skills in dealing with emotions, and higher levels of optimism among older adults, and thus making older adults more willing to wait for delayed rewards compared to younger adults. In short, time perception is an important factor that results in age-related changes in intertemporal choice. However, we also acknowledge that there are other factors which may dynamically and interactively influence younger and older adults’ intertemporal choices. Future research needs to figure out how these factors dynamically interact with each other. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Acute Psychological Stress Effect on Memory: the Moderating Effect of Resilience 2018, 41(2): 416-422.  Abstract ( )   PDF (547KB) ( )   Stress has become an omnipresent aspect of modern life. Nowadays, young adults are vulnerable to acute psychological stress in modern competitive society since it poses serious threat to memory performance in daily working and learning. Psychological stress has traditionally been defined either as a stimulus (often referred to as a stressor) to the person with laboratory shock or loss of job, or as a response characterized by physiological arousal and negative affect, such as anxiety. It is well established that acute psychological stress has an immense impact on cognition among healthy populations. However, previous research exploring the interaction between the level of acute psychological stress and cognition has not received enough attention. Furthermore, the role of resilience between acute psychological stress and memory among healthy adults has also long been ignored in previous research. Resilience, as a crucial facet of mental health, plays an essential role in acute psychology and subsequent cognitive processing. In addition, resilience, as a positive mental characteristics, is beneficial to people in adversity. However, little is known about how acute psychological stress interacts with memory among the population of healthy young adults, especially how acute psychological stress and memory are modulated by resilience. The present study aims to investigate the effect of acute psychological stress on memory and the moderating effect of resilience on psychological stress and memory. Fifty-six healthy volunteers were randomly assigned to two groups, with 36 participants (28 females, 8 males) in the stress group and 20 participants (18 females, 2 males) in the control group. The control group directly entered into a 15-minute memory test after a 5-minute rest. The stress group began with a 5-minute rest and then made a self-report of their subjective stress levels, the time point of which was termed as A1. The stress group immediately incorporated the questionnaire Connor Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and subsequently were exposed to TTST for an addition 11-minute. Participants of the stress group then self-reported their current subjective stress levels again, the time point of which was termed as A2. Finally they entered into the memory test of 15-minute and then made self-report subjective stress level, the time point of which was termed as A3. According to score in TSST, the stress group was subsequently divided into the high-stress group and low-stress group according to their subjective report of stress level. One-way ANOVA of memory indicated that the main effect of psychosocial stress was significant (F(1, 55) =18.23, p < .01, η2= .25), and the memory in the stress group of acute psychological stress was poorer than that of the control group. We then carried out repeated measures ANOVA of subjective stress level, comprising the within-subjects factor Measurement Time Point (3：A1, A2, A3) and the between-subjects factor Stress (high stress group vs. low stress group). Results showed that the main effect of time was significant (F (2, 68) = 41.33, p < .01, η2 = .55) and both A1 and A3 were significantly lower than A2 in the level of psychological stress (p < .01). Secondly, the main effect of group was also significant (F (1, 34) = 61.44, p < .01, η2 = .64), the higher stress group had a significant higher subjective level of psychological stress than that of low stress group. Additionally, one way ANOVA of memory in the stress group revealed that there was significant main effect on memory (F (1, 35) = 31.22, p < .01, η2= .48 ). The higher stress indicated poorer memory performance than that of low stress. Finally, a hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to investigate the moderating of resilience in relationship between psychological stress and memory performance. Results revealed that higher psychological stress predicted a significantly worse memory performance (β=-4.585, p <.001), while higher resilience predicted significant better memory performance(β=.152, p <. 001). The interaction between psychological stress and resilience revealed a significant positive effect in memory performance (β=.307, p<.01). To our knowledge, the present study firstly attempted to explore how resilience moderates the relationship between acute psychological stress and memory performance. Our findings corroborated well with theory of cognitive resource distribution and reallocation. Resilience is believed to be involved in the coordination process of cognitive resource reallocation. It is therefore indicated that resilience can be a potential factor to improve people with higher acute psychological stress in our daily life. Hopefully, our findings in the current research could provide a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism underlying the interaction of memory performance and psychological stress. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Predictive Relations between Decisional Balance of Smoking and Action Planning to Quit: A Moderated Mediation Model 2018, 41(2): 423-429.  Abstract ( )   PDF (700KB) ( )   The number of smoker in China is still large while most of them are unlikely to quit smoking. It has indicated that the action planning to quit smoking is significantly predicted by perceived risk of smoking. In fact, perceived pros and cons of smoking are coexistent for smokers. It is unknown about the relationship between decisional balance of smoking and action planning to quit smoking. Additionally, the dynamic process of smoking cessation from motivation to action often have multiple stages. The Rubicon model differentiates the process into four stages: predecisional phase, preactional phase, actional phase, and postactional phase. The conceptualization of two different mindsets that correspond to the predecisional phase and preactional phase are deliberative and implemental respectively. Accordingly, the smokers might weigh the pros and cons of smoking, which increasing willingness to quit (i.e., predecisional phase), and then make plan to quit (i.e., preactional phase). Moreover, future orientation which refers to the process that individuals think and plan for the future, plays an active role in substance abuse and healthy behavior. Given these, the present study aimed to investigate the prediction of decisional balance of smoking to action planning to quit smoking among smokers and the mediated role of willingness to quit, also to investigate moderated role of future orientation on the predictive relation between decisional balance of smoking and willingness to quit as well as relation between decisional balance of smoking and action planning to quit. Questionnaires were used to test hypotheses and a total of 340 current daily smokers participated in the present study. The questionnaires included the Decisional Balance Scale, Scale of Consideration of Future Consequences, and Willingness to Quit Smoking Questionnaire, Plan to Quit Smoking Questionnaire. The mediation and moderation analyses were conducted by using PROCESS macro for SPSS. The results indicated that: (1) The decisional balance of smoking significantly and positively predicted action planning to quit smoking among smokers. (2) The relationship between the decisional balance of smoking and action planning to quit smoking was mediated by willingness to quit smoking. Willingness to quit smoking, which was positively and significantly predicted by decisional balance of smoking, positively associated with action planning to quit smoking. (3) The moderated effect of future orientation on the relationship between the decisional balance of smoking and action planning to quit was marginally significant. For the smokers with lower level of future orientation, the decisional balance of smoking positively predict quitting plan; while for the smokers with higher level of future orientation, the relationship between them was insignificant. (4) The moderated effect of future orientation on the relationship between the decisional balance of smoking and willingness to quit was not significant. These findings were indicated that smokers experienced the predecisional phase and preactional phase from making decision to planning to quit smoking. It is critical transition point for action to quitting smoking. Meanwhile, the dynamic process of planning to quit smoking was moderated by future orientation. Further studies should use multiple methods and construct diverse models to explore the underlying mechanism of process of quit smoking. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Black-White Metaphor on Behavior of Integrity 2018, 41(2): 430-434.  Abstract ( )   PDF (346KB) ( )   Not only in western countries but also in China, people often connect white with goodness as well as connect black with badness.Such connection of black-white to moral concept can be seen in many adages,such as “white person” is used to describe someone who is clean and honest. According to concept metaphor theory, conceptual metaphor is defined as a mapping of associative links between corresponding elements of dissimilar concepts. The researches of moral from the view of metaphor theory have proved the connection of black-white with moral. While integrity as an important part of moral, we are going to explore the connection between integrity and black-white. According to Chinese traditional culture, the concept of integrity include two dimensions that is “honesty” and ”trustworthiness”. Moreover, several researches on the trait of integrity have explored the structure of integrity in Chinese culture. Therefore we will carry out our study in two dimensions to explore the influence of black-white metaphor to both honesty and trustworthiness. Both of the experiments were one factor within-subject design. We recruited 65 individuals to join our study, and the task presentation realized by E-prime 1.1. In study 1, we adapted the deception game developed by Gneezy, to ask the participants to finish the information send-receive task as an information-sender. In the task participants should decide whether to send their counterpart a truthful or deceptive message. These messages was presented on black or white background randomly. And record the number of truthful message sent by participants. In study 2, We modified the trust-game task. In this task participants should judge how much money will the trustee give back to investor as a spectator. Similar as study 1, the tasks were presented on black or white background randomly. And we will record the number that participants think the trustee will give more than the initial investment back to the investor. The results of study 1 showed that, when the tasks were presented on white background, participants will choose to send more truthful messages than presented on black background. The difference is edge significant,p=.087. The results of study 2 showed that compares to black background, when the tasks presented on white background, participants tend to think the trustee will give more than the initial investment back to the investor.The?differences?between the?two?condition of the?study?were striking,p=.002. All together, we proved the connection between integrity and the color of black and white, the color of the background can influence both of the honest behavior and trustworthy behavior. So we can see there’s psychological reality of “integrity is white, bad faith is black”. Such a color representation of integrity concepts exists at the behavior level. The finding extend the view of research about integrity and metaphor. According to Chinese traditional culture, integrity consisted of two factors: honesty and trustworthiness. However in the past years, researches about integrity only focus on the dimension of honesty, but ignore the dimension of trustworthiness. Our study aims at making up for the theoretical flaw in integrity. Furthermore our study enlarges the researches about metaphor by explore the black and white metaphor representation of integrity concepts and its influence on behavior of integrity. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Role of Stimulus Ecologicalness and Genders in Understanding Kind versus Hostile Intentions 2018, 41(2): 435-440.  Abstract ( )   PDF (635KB) ( )   Previous studies have mostly focused on the process of understanding single individual’s neutral or innocent intentions. The ecological validity of stimuli which were used before, such as point-lights, geometries and virtual cartoons, was not as high as that of photos or movie clips. Recent years, the intention researches have begun to study the emotional intentions performed by two or multiple individuals’ whole body movement. The photos and movie clips used in the experiments were captured from the real figures by digital camera. However, the role of stimulus types and genders playing in the intention understanding still remains unclear. In order to address this issue, we carried out the experiment to explore the behavioral cognition characteristics underlying the process of understanding interactive intentions. One hundred college students participated in the experiment. Half of them (25 males and 25females) were randomly assigned to complete a standard intention inference task to discriminate kind, hostile and non-interactive intentions from each other which were displayed by two virtual cartoon figures, while the other half (25 males and 25 females) were assigned to understand those intentions displayed by photos. It should be noted that the photos which were captured from two male and two female college students were taken by a digital camera. The cartoons were professionally drawn by an excellent undergraduate majoring?in?fine arts according to the photos. The physical characteristics of cartoons and photos in the formal experiment matched very well. The mean accuracy and reaction time were analyzed using 2(stimulus ecologicalness: cartoons and photos) × 2(subjects’ gender: male and female) × 2(actors’ gender: male and female) × 3(intention types: kind intention, hostile intention and non-interactive intention) repeated ANOVA test. The stimulus types and subjects’ genders were between-group factors, while the actors’ gender and intention type worked as within-group factor. The accuracy and reaction time of the participants were recorded when they performed the intention inference task. There was a main effect of stimulus ecologicalness on accuracy, which demonstrated a better performance on photos compared with that of cartoons. The main effects of actors’ genders on accuracy and reaction time were also very significant, which demonstrated a remarkable male advantage. The results also indicated the highest accuracy and fastest reaction time for hostile intention among the intention conditions displayed by both cartoons and photos. It is consisted with the negative bias theory. The analysis also revealed an interaction effect between subject’s gender and stimulus type on accuracy. And a marginal interaction effect between subject’s gender and stimulus type on reaction time also existed. It should be noted that an interaction effect between actors’ gender and intention types was found on reaction time. The hostile intention displayed by male actors showed a faster reaction time than that displayed by female actors, while there was no significant difference on kind intention displayed by male and female actors. In conclusion, the current study demonstrates that whatever the virtual cartoon figures or real persons are, the behavioral processing may vary with different types of social motor intentions, and is also modulated by the actors’ gender. Related Articles | Metrics

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Association of Effort, Reward and Overcommitment with Work Burnout among Chinese Nurses under New Effort-reward Imbalance Model 2018, 41(2): 441-446.  Abstract ( )   PDF (732KB) ( )   Abstract: Presently, there are some limitations on the verification of new effort-reward imbalance (ERI) model as follows. Firstly, covariation between variables may happen when effort, reward and overcommitment were entered at the same level in multiple linear regression analysis in some studies. Secondly, there is little research reporting the comparison of the influence on health outcomes among the three variables. Lastly, the results regarding the moderating effect of overcommitment on the relationship between ERI and health outcomes (e.g., work burnout) are inconsistent in the previous studies. The inconsistency might be because ERI is not the characteristic work stress of the investigated samples. Additionally, female nurses are typical population with high ERI and work burnout in China. This study aimed to validate the new ERI model among nurses. It hypotheses that effort, reward and overcommitment can independently predict work burnout and their prediction roles are different, and that the effort-reward ratio can positively predict work burnout, and that overcommitment can moderate the relationship between the ratio and work burnout. This study randomly recruited 456 female nurses from nine hospitals in Nanjing, Jiangsu. Effort, reward and overcommitment were measured with Chinese version of the effort-reward imbalance scale, and work burnout with Chinese version of Maslach burnout inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) including three dimensions, emotional exhaustion, cynicism and professional inefficacy. Mplus6.11 and SPSS20.0 were utilized for the test of common method bias and multiple linear regressions that are conducted to examine the independent effects of effort, reward, overcommitment and the effort-reward ratio, and the moderation effect of overcommitment in association with the effort-reward ratio and work burnout. In this study, there was not heavy common method bias between ERI and MBI-GS scales after examining one-factor, two-factor, four-factor and six-factor models where two-factor model set ERI one factor and MBI-GS as another factor, and four-factor model set the two dimensions with bigger correlation coefficient in ERI or MBI-GS scale as one factors, and another dimension as one factor. The results revealed that effort positively predicted emotional exhaustion and cynicism and negatively predicted professional efficacy. Reward negatively predicted cynicism and positively predict professional efficacy. Overcommitment positively predicted emotional exhaustion and cynicism. Among the three factors, effort showed the strongest prediction role and reward did the weakest prediction role. The effort-reward ratio positively predicted emotional exhaustion and cynicism, and negatively predict professional efficacy. Overcommitment moderated the influences of the effort-reward ratio on emotional exhaustion and professional efficacy. Specifically, the effort-reward ratio had stronger prediction role among the nurses with lower overcommitment levels than those with higher overcommitment levels. In conclusion, these results strong support new ERI model. Related Articles | Metrics

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Hazard Perception in Young Drivers: the Role of Hazard Types 2018, 41(2): 447-452.  Abstract ( )   PDF (393KB) ( )   Although experienced drivers outperformed novice drivers in several hazard perception studies, little was known about the influencing mechanism of hazard types on young drivers’ hazard perception performance. In this study, 27 young novice drivers and 22 young experienced drivers were asked to complete a hazard perception task, where they were asked to respond quickly when a potential hazard was detected. The hazard in the clips was either an overt hazard with continuous visibility or a covert hazard with interrupted visibility during their materialization. The results revealed that young experienced drivers reacted to covert hazards and overt hazards faster than young novice drivers. The experience-related differences in response latency to overt hazards was due to faster processing after the initial fixation, while experienced-related differences in response latency to covert hazards was due to faster detection rather than differences in processing time. Additionally, hazard types influenced young drivers’ eye movements with overt hazards were significantly fixated more time than covert hazards. These findings provided some implications for the hazard perception test and training for young drivers. Related Articles | Metrics

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An Item Discrimination Index and its Application in Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment on a Classification-Oriented View wenyi Wang Shu-Liang DING 2018, 41(2): 453-458.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1190KB) ( )   The existing studies suggested that item quality is closely relevant to the number of attributes required by an item, item parameters, and the prior distribution of attribute patterns in cognitive diagnostic assessment. Several studies focused on the design of Q-matrix and showed that items required only one attribute are important for classification. There are some works provided two basic set of item discrimination index to measure discriminatory power of an item. The first one is based on descriptive measures from classical test theory, such as the global item discrimination index, and the second index is based on information measures from item response theory, including cognitive diagnosis index (CDI), attribute discrimination index (ADI), modified CDI and ADI. Results showed a strong relationship between these indices and the average correct classi?cation rates of attributes. But their relationship to the indices may change as a function of the distribution of attributes. There lacks an item quality index as a measure of item’s correct classification rates of attributes. The purpose of this study was to propose an item discrimination index as a measure of correct classification rate of attributes based on Q-matrix, item parameters, and the distribution of attributes. Firstly, an attribute-specific item discrimination index, called item expected attribute matched rate (EAMR), was introduced. Secondly, a heuristic method was presented using EAMR for test construction. The first simulation study was conducted to evaluate the performance of EAMR under the deterministic input noisy “and” gate (DINA) model. Several factors were manipulated for five independent attributes in this study. Four levels of correlation between latent attributes, ρ=.00, ρ=.50, ρ=.75, and ρ=.95, were considered. Items were categorized into five groups according to the number of attributes measured by each item. Item discrimination power was set at three levels, high, medium, and low. High level meant relatively smaller guessing and slip parameters, which were randomly generated from a uniform distribution U(.05,.25). Medium-level and low-level item parameters were randomly drawn from uniform distributions U(.05, .40) and U(.25, .45). Next, 1000 items were simulated with the q-vector randomly selected from all possible attribute patterns measuring at least one attribute. Results showed that the new index performed well in that their values matched closely with the simulated correct classification rates of attributes across different simulation conditions. The second simulation study was conducted to examinee the effectiveness of the heuristic method for test construction. The test length was fixed to 50 and simulation conditions are similar as used in the first study. Results showed that the heuristic method based on the sum of EAMRs yielded comparable performance to the famous CDI. These indices can provide test developers with a useful tool to evaluate the quality of the diagnostic items. The attribute-specific item discrimination index will provide researchers and practitioners a way to select the most appropriate item and test that they want to measure with greater accuracy. It will be valuable to explore the applications and advantages of using the EAMR for developing item selection algorithm or termination rule in cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive testing. Related Articles | Metrics

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A CD-CAT Item Selection Method Containing Strategy, Knowledge State and Ability Guang MingLI Xin GuangWANG shan HU 2018, 41(2): 459-465.  Abstract ( )   PDF (510KB) ( )   Cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive testing (CD-CAT) has become an increasingly important testing mode. Item selection methods are currently one of the most pressing issues in the field of CD-CAT research. For some tasks, not only a participant’s strategy and knowledge state (KS, i.e., attribute mastery pattern) need to be diagnosed, but also his/her macro ability needs to be assessed in CD-CAT. For the sake of high efficient, item selection methods for this type of CD-CAT have to consider the above three purposes. The Multiple-Strategy Shannon Entropy (MSSHE) index (Dai et al., 2015) and Fisher information index were combined to produce two new synthetic item selection methods in this paper. The first method was the “multiple-strategy dapperness with information” (MSDWI) index method, in which the MSDWI index was the Fisher information index Multiplied by the reciprocal of the MSSHE index. The second method was the “two-step item selection method”, in which items were first selected using the MSSHE index and then selected using the Fisher information index when the test length reached a certain value. Based on the multiple-strategy reduced reparameterized unified model (MS-RRUM) and independence attributes, under different lengths of fixed-length CD-CAT and with various numbers of knowledge attributes, three selection item methods were systematically compared in the present study: the above two methods and random method. The strategy, KS and macro ability recoveries were considered as evaluation indices. Experiments were repeated 20 times using the MATLAB 2012b software package. Groups of examinees were simulated, and each group was composed of 1000 examinees. In the simulation, examinees answered the items that were selected by a certain item selection method, and their strategies, KSs and abilities were estimated. Then, the estimated values were compared with the true values. Results showed that with respect to strategy, KS and ability estimations, the two-step method always yielded the best performance when the attribute number was 4 or 6. When the attribute number was 8, the two-step method yielded the best performance with respect to strategy and KS estimations; however, the random method yielded the best performance with respect to ability estimation. In single-strategy CD-CAT which considering KS and ability estimations meanwhile, the “dapperness with information” (DWI) index method which was “in one step” was proper (Dai, Zhang, & Li, 2016). However, according to the current study, in multiple-strategy CD-CAT which considering strategy, KS and ability estimations meanwhile, the MSDWI method which was “in one step” was inappropriate. Instead, the two-step method was better. Besides, for this context, it is not proper to involve too much attributes in a single test. This study performs the CD-CAT which considering three purposes meanwhile, and provides a theoretical foundation for more complicated cognitive diagnostic modeling in future studies. A proper item selection method in this CD-CAT context has been proposed, making item selection efficient and saving item bank. Related Articles | Metrics

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A New Q-matrix Estimation Method: ICC based on Ideal Response Tu Dong-Bo 2018, 41(2): 466-474.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1294KB) ( )   Abstract Nowadays, we are not satisfied with a total score from measurement, but hope to get a informative report. As the core of new generation test theory, cognitive diagnosis(CD) attracts more and more people's attention. Since it can reveal the result form a microscopic perspective, such as individuals’ knowledge structures, processing skills and cognitive procedure etc, it would help us to take individualized teaching and promote students ' development. Cognitive diagnosis assessments infer the attribute mastery pattern of respondents by item responses based on Q-matrix. The Q-matrix plays the role of a bridge between items and respondents. Many studies have shown that misspecification of the Q-matrix can affect the accuracy of model parameters and result in the misclassification of respondents. In practice, Q_matrix is established by experts. However , different experts may provided different Q_matrices. To avoid the subjectivity from experts in Q-matrix specification and ensure the correct of Q_matrix, researchers are trying to look for objective methods. Nevertheless,existing methods need information from parameter and a large amount of computation. To simplify the method of Q-matrix estimation, this article introduces a new Q-matrix estimation methods based on ICC(Item Consistency Criterion).The logic of the method as follow: If the measurement pattern of the item A is a subset of the item B.The logic of the ICC method is that it is impossible a person get “0” score on item A,but get “1”on item B. Of course,if item A and item B have same measurement pattern. It is impossible that a person get “1”score on item A,but get “0”on item B(or, the other way around). From this logic we come up with Item Consistency Criterion. In order to improve the effect of ICC method,we come up with ICC-IR (ICC based on ideal response)method. In order to explore the effect of this method, we considered different number of participants, different number of base items and different Q-matrix whose attribute number is different. The item parameters and attribute mastery pattern of respondents are obeyed a uniform distribution. In addition, we compared with the Likelihood D2 Statistic. The Monte Carlo simulation study and real data study showed that: generally, the ICC-IR method can recover the real Q-matrix with a high rate of success. Compared with the Likelihood D2 Statistic, the ICC-IR method is better. Furthermore, the ICC-IR method is easier to understand and needs less computation. The real data study also showed that the ICC-IR method can estimate the Q_matrix with a high success rate. Besides, without the needs of parameters estimation, the method is not affected by the deviation caused by the misfit between model and data. In a word, the method is simple and effective in Q-matrix Estimation, what is meaningful to the simplification of cognitive diagnosis. Related Articles | Metrics

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Moderated Mediation Effects Based on Structural Equation Modeling Fang Jie Zhong-Lin WEN 2018, 41(2): 475-483.  Abstract ( )   PDF (457KB) ( )   The analyses of moderated mediation effects are frequently applied to the studies of psychology, education, and other social science disciplines. A moderated mediation model is a combination of both moderation and mediation models. When a mediation effect is moderated by a moderator, the effect is termed moderated mediation and the model is a moderated mediation model. There are three common types of moderated mediation models: first-stage moderated mediation, second-stage moderated mediation, and dual-stage moderated mediation. Researchers have been searching for the most appropriate analytical method for testing moderated mediation. The observed variable regression approach has been the most popular. One critical limitation of regression approach is that regression analyses assume that variables are measured without error, which result in biased estimates of moderated mediation effect. Structural equation modeling (SEM) method has been extensively used to estimate moderated mediation effect because it corrects for measure errors. Product-indicator method was dominantly used to analyze latent moderated mediation model. There are at least two weaknesses frequently found in moderated mediation effects by product-indicator method. First, product-indicator method involve some type of multiplication of indicators to form the indicators of the latent variable that represents the product of the two latent variables, the generation of product indicators make users feel difficult to use. Second, product-indicators are not normal distributed, estimates based on normal assumption may be bias. In order to improve the above shortcomings, the researchers suggest that moderated mediation effects should be analyzed by Latent Moderated Structural Equations method. The purpose of the present study is to summary an effective procedure for analyzing moderated mediation effects based on Latent Moderated Structural Equations. LMS is a distribution analysis. Compared to analyzing moderated mediation by linear regression and product-indicator method, Latent Moderated Structural Equations (LMS) has many advantages. First, LMS uses the raw data of indicator variables directly for estimation and not require the forming of any products of indicator variables. Second, LMS account for the nonlinearity in estimating the parameters of the model. Thirdly, the simulation researches show that LMS generated unbiased parameter estimations and standard errors under the usual assumption. At the present study, we propose a procedure to analyze the moderated model by LMS. The first step is to decide how well the model would fit by running a baseline model where the latent interaction term is not included. If the SEM model is not fitted well, stop the moderated mediation analysis. Otherwise, go to the second step. In the second step, AIC or log-likelihood ratio test is used to decide how well the model would fit by running a moderated mediation model where the latent interaction term is included. If the SEM model is not fitted well, stop the analysis. Otherwise, go to the third step. In the third step, product of coefficients approach by Hayes (2013), which can be implemented easily by MPLUS and LISREL software, is recommended to analyze moderated mediation effects. It shows that the moderated mediation effect is significant if a bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap confidence interval of the targeted product of coefficients does not include zero. 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 moderated mediation effects. The programs can be managed easily by empirical researchers. Directions for future study on moderated mediation are discussed at the end of the paper. In fact, the primary criticism of the LMS approach is that it is computationally intensive. Researcher suggest that simple model with smaller number of latent variables should be used. Another option would be to use parceling to reduce the number of indicators per latent variable. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder on Adolescents' Life Satisfaction: The Moderating Role of Social Support 2018, 41(2): 484-490.  Abstract ( )   PDF (836KB) ( )   It has been documented that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is common and representative posttraumatic reactions after traumatic event (e.g., earthquake). PTSD can be considered as pathological results after trauma, involving avoidance symptoms, negative cognitions and mood symptoms, hyper-arousal symptoms and re-experiencing symptoms. Life satisfaction is an important index to measure the quality of life, as an positive psychology, life satisfaction associated with psycho - mental factors such as depression, anxiety, PTSD , etc. PTSD can have pervasive, negative effects on multiple aspects of life satisfaction. Social support is one of the most important factor may affect the relationship between PTSD and life satisfaction. The current study investigated the relationship between PTSD symptom clusters and life satisfaction among adolescent survivors after the Ya’an earthquake. Moreover, we also further explore the moderating role of social support. The connection between earthquake-induced PTSD and life satisfaction has been studied by psychologists in recent years, who insisted that life satisfaction was significantly negative associated with PTSD. Although there seems to be a clear relationship between PTSD and life satisfaction after earthquakes, previous research in this area is somewhat limited. For example, many scholars pointed out the question of how PTSD influences the life satisfaction, but few of them had paid attention to the question of how the negative association between PTSD and life satisfaction may be avoided using social support. The present study was to investigate whether different symptoms of PTSD play different roles in life satisfaction, and whether social support moderated the relationship between PTSD and life satisfaction. Participant were 397 adolescents who were selected from several junior middle schools and senior middle schools in the county of Lushan, the area severely affected by the Ya’an earthquake. Participants completed The Revised Child PTSD Symptom Scale, Social Support Questionnaire, Traumatic Exposure Questionnaire and Satisfaction with Life Scale at 2.5 years after Ya’an earthquake. The main results were as following: after controlling for the age, gender and traumatic exposures, the results found that the re-experiencing symptoms, negative cognitions and mood symptoms, and hyper-arousal symptoms have significantly negative effect on life satisfaction, and the avoidance symptoms have no significantly predictive effect on life satisfaction. Social support has significantly positive effect on life satisfaction. In addition, the results also suggest that social support don’t moderate the relationship between re-experiencing symptoms of PTSD and life satisfaction as well as negative cognitions and mood symptoms of PTSD and life satisfaction, but the social support moderate the relationship between avoidance symptoms and life satisfaction as well as hyper-arousal symptoms of PTSD and life satisfaction. Specifically speaking, compared to individual with high social support, the avoidance symptoms and hyper-arousal symptoms have stronger predictive utility for life satisfaction among the individual with fewer social support. The present study supported conclusions from other papers that the different symptoms of PTSD may play different roles in life satisfaction, and social support moderated the association between some symptoms of PTSD and life satisfaction. The results have indicated that psychologists should take notice of the changes to lessen the PTSD of adolescents, and improve the social support of adolescents after traumatic event. Related Articles | Metrics

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Mutual Empathy of Group Members and Its Relations with Group Outcome: the Application of Social Relations Model in Group Counseling Research 2018, 41(2): 491-497.  Abstract ( )   PDF (561KB) ( )   The purpose of this study was to investigate whether group members could empathize with each other and the relationship between mutual empathy and group outcome, using the Social Relations Model, which can analyze data across various levels in a group. Mutual empathy in this study includes three aspects. First is empathic level, to the extent a group member can understand other members’ thoughts and share their emotions. Second is the level of being empathized, to the extent a group member felt being understood. Third is empathic accuracy, the congruence of emotion valence between self-rating and other-rating. Fifty-three members of ten groups completed self-ratings of their own emotional status, Session Evaluation Scale, Group Therapeutic Scale and Group Anti-therapeutic Scale, and also rated other members’ emotions and how they empathize and being empathized by other group members after a group session. The data was analyzed by Triple R, a new developed software package for social relations model. The social relations model analysis on group members’ mutual empathy showed that group members’ self reports on empathic level and the level of being empathized were rather high. But there were no match between empathizing and being empathized in dyads, which suggest that group members may not empathize with each other. The correlation between significant perceiver/target effects and group outcome scales showed (1) the more one thought he or she could empathize with others, the better outcome he or she reported, and less impeded by anti-therapeutic factors (negative emotions, absence and distrust); (2) the more one felt being empathized, the less impeded by anti-therapeutic factor(distrust);(3)the more accurate others could estimate one’s emotion valence, the more he or she could benefit from therapeutic factors. The results suggest group members’ perceptions of their empathic level were important for group effectiveness, which was a unique therapeutic factor in group counseling. However, different from individual counseling, the feeling of being empathized didn’t result in better outcome and more benefits. Besides, if one’s emotion valence could be more correctly perceived by other members, he or she could also benefit more from the group. The limitations of this study were (1) the measurements of mutual empathy in this study were number-limited due to the difficulty of round-robin design, which may not reflect the variable comprehensively and further research may focus on more specific variables. (2) The group stages and group style were important variables in group counseling, but only controlled statistically in this study, future research could restrict particular group stage and style to reduce the effects of these two variables. The strengths of this study were that (1) focusing on group members’ mutual empathy, an important but ignorant factor comparing to group leaders’ empathy. (2) One of the few studies using the Social Relations Model in group counseling research. Related Articles | Metrics

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Task difficulty modulates the superiority of visual search in children with autism spectrum disorders 2018, 41(2): 498-503.  Abstract ( )   PDF (679KB) ( )   It is controversial whether the performance of visual search task in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is better than that in typically developing children (TD) or not. One of the potential reasons is the difficulty levels of visual search task they employed in each study, i.e., adult version vs. child version. Through modulating the difficulty levels with the gap of director degrees between the target stimulus and the distractions during the visual search task, the study aim to 1) test whether the superior visual search performance in ASD could be modulated by the difficulties of visual search tasks; 2) and further study the underlying mechanisms of superior performance in ASD on visual search tasks using eye-movement data analysis if it is. The study adopted a mixed experimental design with two factors: group (ASD/ typically developing children, TD) and difficulty levels of visual search task (9 levels). Eighteen children with ASD (14M/4F) and 16 IQ and chronological age-matched TD (13M/3F) participated in the current study. The participants need to determine whether there was a distraction in the screen, which is just the same as the target stimulus as soon as possible. Among all distractions, there was a main stimulus which had the least differences of director degree compared with the target stimulus. The difficulty levels of visual search task was modulated by the gap of director degree between the target stimulus and the main stimulus (9 levels: 0°、4°、8°、12°、16°、20°、24°、28°、32°) (Figure 1). Participants’ behavioral responses were automatically recorded by the computer, and their eye-movement data were tracked by an eye tracker during the whole experiment. The behavioral responses indices, response accuracy and reaction time, during the task were analyzed by mixed design ANOVA. For eye-movement data, firstly several areas of interest (AOIs) in the stimulus picture were divided: Central AOI where the target stimulus was placed; Main AOI where the main stimulus was placed; Peripheral AOI where other distractions were placed. Then various eye-movement indices including the fixations, durations of fixation and saccade paths, intra and inter-AOI (s) were analyzed respectively between ASD and TD. The study found that only under the task difficulty level of 4° gap between target stimulus and main stimulus, the accuracy of visual search task in the ASD group was significantly higher than the TD group (t (1,32) = 2.59, p < .05, ηp2 = .17) (Fig. 3). Further eye-movement analysis suggested that less regression count on central AOI (t (1,26) = -3.77, p < .005, d = 1.28), less percentage of the fixation duration on left AOIs (t (1,26) = -5.49, p < .05, d = 2.03) and less fixation duration on main and peripheral AOIs (t (1,26) = -2.13, p < .05, d = .86) have been found in the ASD group during the visual search task (Table 1). Furthermore, ASD group tended to the right side lateralization fixation during the visual search task compared with TD group (χ2 (4) = 2.17, p < .005, d = .91). The results suggest that children with ASD only show superior performance in visual search tasks if the task difficulty is sufficiently high and that the superiority in ASD in the visual search task may come from enhanced perceptual sensitivity to interference stimulation during visual searching. Related Articles | Metrics

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Level-1 and Level-2 Spatial Perspective Taking：An Overview of Behavioral Research and Theories 2018, 41(2): 504-510.  Abstract ( )   PDF (306KB) ( )   Spatial perspective taking (SPT) is an ability to mentally adopt and represent the spatial relationships from the other’s viewpoints. The purpose of this literature is to review SPT related researches and summaries the relevant theories base on two levels of perspective taking defined by Flavell (1977). (1) For the studies of Level-1 perspective taking, this review divides previous research paradigms into 2 categories: visibility judgment task, quantity judgment task. Visibility task requires participants to judge whether the target is visible for another person. Quantity judgment task asks participants to compare the quantity of targets from their own perspective and the avatar’s. Then judging whether they are the same. (2) For Level-2 perspective taking, this review divides previous research paradigms into 4 categories: recognition task, direction judgment task, map navigation task, quantity judgment task. Recognition task needs participants to imagine a scene at another observer’s position. Direction judgment has three different types of task: pointing task (judgments of relative direction), laterality judgment task, same or different task. Map navigation task demands participants to mentally navigation in a planned map. The quantity judgment task needs participants to answer the quantity of the visible item from avatar’s perspective. In addition, this literature concludes several theories to explain findings on spatial perspective taking. For Level-1 perspective taking, researchers claim that participants would use line-of-sight tracing strategy to perform judgments about the visibility of target. However, it was not clear that how people complete Level-2 perspective taking tasks. Several researches used direction judgment tasks and map navigation tasks found the behavioral performance patterns of Level-2 perspective taking has 2 characteristics: the angular disparity effect, and the back-facing advantage. To explain these effects, the researchers produced three kinds of hypothesis: mental spatial transformation hypothesis, sensorimotor interference hypothesis, spatial compatibility effects hypothesis. (1) Mental spatial transformation hypothesis states that people imagine themselves to transform to a new position, the additional transformation cost resulted the angular disparity effect and back-facing advantage. (2) Sensorimotor interference hypothesis states that the angular disparity effect is due to a conflict of sensorimotor codes, the conflict occurs when the observer’s real direction and imagine directions are incompatible. (3) Spatial compatibility effects hypothesis indicates that spatial incompatibility may contribute to angular disparity effect and back-facing advantage. Spatial compatibility indicates the position of the target objects and response key is congruent. On the contrary, spatial incompatibility indicates the position of the target objects and response key is incongruent. Response time is shorter at spatial compatibility trails. At last, this review comes up with 3 suggestions for future research. First, future research should consider which kinds of experiment tasks could accurately examine spatial perspective taking. Second, future research should explore the spatial relationship representation between multiple objects relative to observer and another person. Finally, future research should adopt more virtual reality presentation format to present experiment stimuli materials. Related Articles | Metrics