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Thoughts on psychological problems with Chinese characteristics Ye-Zhen SONG 2018, 41(4): 770-775.  Abstract ( )   PDF (331KB) ( )   Abstract Social psychology with Chinese characteristics should respond to the social problems different from those in Europe and America arising from the unique process of social transformation in China, and solve the specific social problems arising from the process of reform and development, so as to establish the research of psychology with Chinese characteristics. The psychology oriented by natural science is based on the essence of human beings, and it is more universal all over the world. the psychology oriented by social science can embody the Chinese characteristics of psychology. There are two ways to ask questions with Chinese characteristics: one is to ask questions from general research to thinking about the extended meaning of research conclusions; Second, under the background of social governance, the " endogenous" type puts forward the psychological problems of social governance. The problem of Chinese characteristics in the study of psychology with Chinese characteristics is a realistic problem which is " endogenous" in the process of building socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new period, embedded in the overall goal of deepening reform in an all-round way and the overall layout of " five in one". " endogenously" to put forward the psychological problems with Chinese characteristics has two meanings: first, we should start from the reality and specific problems in the process of social transformation in China, put forward the academic problems with practical care and solve the specific difficulties in social development; Second, we should have deeper humanistic care and spiritual care, and respond to the social problems caused by the great changes of contemporary Chinese people's spiritual level formed by the social transformation and social change from the psychological point of view. After putting forward the psychological problems with Chinese characteristics, how to solve these problems? The study of psychology with Chinese characteristics should choose the appropriate research method according to the characteristics of the problem on the basis of learning from western psychology research methods. The development of western psychology has gone through a process of changing from " subjectivism" with introspection as the main method to " objectivism" with empirical research as the main method. In the study of specific problems, not one-sided opposition to the use of empirical research methods of western psychology, or into a " qualitative and quantitative methods bimodal confrontation situation", but should be based on practical problems, research stage to choose " suitable" causal explanation method. As far as the development of psychology is concerned, extracting and solving practical problems from the process of China's deepening reform and social transformation in an all-round way can stimulate the " research interest" of Chinese psychologists, make Chinese psychology better " make a valuable explanation to the social psychology of the Chinese people in the transitional period", and better promote the " localization of social psychology in China"; At the same time, through " promoting the spiritual significance of China's social transformation in the world", promote the status of Chinese psychology in the world, and Europe and the United States psychology for equal dialogue. As far as China's social development is concerned, by transforming social reality problems into psychological research problems and solving these problems through psychological methods, we can provide practical assistance for the realization of the overall goal of deepening reform in an all-round way and the promotion of the " five - in - one" general layout, provide practical suggestions for building a well-off society in an all-round way, and provide feasible paths for the formation of people's happiness and sharing the fruits of social development under the " people - oriented" strategy. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Modulation of Semantic Relation on the Neural Mechanism of Associative Recognition 2018, 41(4): 776-781.  Abstract ( )   PDF (949KB) ( )   Previous research has revealed two different old/new effects, the early mid-frontal old/new effect (a.k.a. FN400 component) and the late parietal old/new effect (a.k.a. LPC component), which reflect dual-process model’s two processes of familiarity and recollection respectively. Though associative recognition is thought to be more based on recollection rather than familiarity compared to item recognition, recent studies have confirmed that familiarity makes greater contribution to associative memory when to-be-remembered items of a pair have a stronger semantic relation. However, it remains unclear whether the modulations of different subtypes of semantic relations on the old/new effect of associative recognition are different. The roles of the processes of familiarity and recollection of a single item that belongs to a pair also require further investigations. Using event-related potential technique (Neuroscan), the current study aimed to explore the modulations of different subtypes of semantic relations on the waveforms of associative recognition. The current experiment was a within-subject design, which had semantic relation and paired type of pictures as variables, the levels of semantic relation were thematic and taxonomic relations, and the levels of paired type of pictures were new pair, old pair, rearranged pair, and “old + new” pair. A total of 22 right-handed adults, aged 23.83 ± 5.21 years, participated in the current experiment. In the experiment, 672 named pictures (336 pairs) which were all from Hemera Color Gallery served as stimuli, and the procedure was conducted via the continuous recognition paradigm. During the whole experiment, participants were instructed to study paired pictures with two different semantic relations (thematic and taxonomic relations) and to make discriminations among new, old, rearranged, and “old+new” pairs. The results showed that, under both thematic and taxonomic relation conditions, the FN400 component (during 350–500 ms) that related to familiarity process was confirmed for old, rearranged, and “old+new” pairs. In other words, compared to new pairs, more positive-going waveforms were confirmed over frontal region for old, rearranged, and “old+new” pairs. Under the thematic relation condition, reliable LPC component (during 500–650 ms) that related to recollection process was observed for old, rearranged, and “old+new” pairs. That is to say, more positive-going waveforms over parietal region were elicited by old, rearranged, and “old+new” pairs than by new pairs. For the taxonomic relation, the LPC component was only elicited by old pairs, showing more positive-going waveforms over parietal region for old pairs versus new pairs. To conclude, the old/new effect differences between the studies of current pictures and previous words indicate that the old/new effect of associative recognition is not only semantic-relation-sensitive but also stimulus-specific. The old/new effect differences between the pairs of thematic relation and of taxonomic relation indicate that the old/new effect of associative recognition is sensitive to semantic relation. The old/new effect elicited by “old+new” pairs suggests that its effect can be affected by the familiarity of a single item of this type of pairs. These results reinforce the dual-process model. Related Articles | Metrics

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Impact of Movement Speed and Direction on Human Performance in Time to Contact Estimation 2018, 41(4): 782-788.  Abstract ( )   PDF (806KB) ( )   This study aims to explore the impact of speed of motion and direction of motion on human performance in time to contact (TTC) estimation. Based on the occlusion paradigm, a testing software of TTC estimation was developed, in which a ball first appears at a peripheral position of the computer screen, and then moves with a constant speed toward the center of the screen, which is marked by small red cycle whose diameter is the same as the moving ball. The ball is visible at first, after moving for a period, it enters a dark circle and becomes invisible. The participant has to imagine the motion of the ball under the dark circle, and judge when it will reach the center for the screen, and press a key to indicate the judgment. The visible distance, the occlusion distance (radius of the dark circle), the speed of motion, the direction of motion can all be configured in the testing software. 34 participants, aged between 21 and 30 years, volunteered to complete the TTC estimation experiment, the experiment used a 3-level speeds of motion (relatively slow, relatively medium, and relatively fast, being 50, 100, 150 pixels/s respectively) × 4-level directions of motion (upward, downward, leftward, and rightward) design. The visible distance, the occlusion distance were kept constant during the experiment, being 170 pixels and 180 pixels, respectively. The four directions may also be categorized into two directions in the analyses: the vertical direction and the horizontal direction, when no significant difference was found between the upward motion and the downward motion, and between the leftward motion and the rightward motion. Performance indices such as deviation rate, absolute deviation rate, underestimate rate, overestimate rate and hit rate in TTC estimation were analyzed. Deviation rate (DR) is defined as (TE-TR)/TR, where TR (short for time required) is the time interval for the ball to move from the edge of the dark circle to the center of that circle, it is the value of occlusion distance divided by speed; TE (short for time estimated) means the time interval from the time when the ball first enters the dark circle to the time when the participant presses the key to indicate his estimation. Absolute deviation rate (ADR) is defined as |(TE-TR)|/TR. When DR is between -0.05 and 0.05 for a trial, the estimation is defined as a hit; when DR is higher than 0.05, it is defined an overestimate of TTC; when DR is smaller than -0.05, it is defined an underestimate of TTC. Hence, the hit rate, overestimate rate and underestimate rate can be calculated. Results showed that the accuracy of TTC estimation, indicated by the absolute deviation rate, was significantly lower in the relatively slow speed condition compared to that in the two faster conditions. In the relatively slow speed condition, the absolute deviation rate of the participants in TTC estimation of the vertical motion was significantly greater than that of the horizontal motion; meanwhile, the underestimation rate of TTC was significantly higher than that of the overestimation rate. In the two faster speed conditions, no significant differences were found in the absolute deviation rate between vertical and horizontal motion; no significant differences were found between participants' underestimation rate of TTC and overestimation rate of TTC. Those results suggest that in the settings of the current experiment, the impact of speed of motion on performance indices of TTC estimation was relatively strong, while the impact of direction of motion was relatively weak. Meanwhile, the impact of speed of motion and direction of motion showed significant interactions. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Positive Emotional Feedback on Attentional Capture 2018, 41(4): 789-795.  Abstract ( )   PDF (923KB) ( )   Attention, as an internal psychological state, is an important psychological condition for people to acquire knowledge, acquire skills, complete various intellectual tasks and perform practical tasks. In the external environment, a large amount of information is processed by individuals every day, but the ability of the brain to process information is limited. Which objects are preferentially processed need a selection process.Attention selects stimuli for cognitive processing, and the mechanisms that underlie the process of attentional selection have been a major topic of psychological research for over 30 years. It has been well documented that attentional selection can proceed both voluntarily, driven by visual search goals, and involuntarily, driven by the physical salience of stimuli. In 2013, Anderson provide a conceptual framework for attentional control that emphasizes the need for stimulus selection to promote the survival and wellbeing of an organism. Anderson argued that although goal-driven and salience-driven mechanisms of attentional selection fit within this framework, a central component that is missing is a mechanism of attentional selection that is uniquely driven by learned associations between stimuli and rewards. He described what value-driven mechanism of attentional selection was , and describe how this mechanism functions independently of the well-documented salience-driven and goal-driven mechanisms. He think by arguing that reward learning modifies the attentional priority of stimuli, allowing them to compete more effectively for selection even when non-salient and task-irrelevant. Anderson (2011), Liu Li (2016) used the learning-test paradigm to prove the role of money reward in capturing attention. The study shows that reward learning is flexible, not only the money reward can predict the value of priority, social emotional also show a high priority attention. Based on literature, we found that: (1) In research on value-driven attention capture, money reward was the same as social mood that can capture attention at home and abroad ; (2) Rewards play an important role in shaping behavior. Reward frequency plays an important role in shaping behavior or capturing attention. In Anderson's emotional feedback experiment, the positive emotions and the neutral emotions are the same frequency . (3) If there is no emotional feedback, whether multiple exercises in the learning stage as a strong interference stimulus can capture the attention in the test phase. OBJECTIVE: To explore the effect of positive emotion on attention capture by three experiments in the "learning-test" paradigm. Methods: Experiment 1, the learning stage of the subjects to red or green small circle in the direction of the line to respond, to give positive emotions or neutral emotional feedback, the establishment of green or red and positive emotions or neutral emotions between the link, the test phase Green or red round as a disturbance to stimulate the positive emotions and neutral emotions to capture the attention of the situation. Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 are the same as Experiment 1, and the difference is in the emotional feedback of the learning stage: Experiment 2, the learning stage of the subjects after the reaction, no emotional feedback; Experiment 3, change the learning stage positive emotions and neutral emotional feedback picture The frequency of occurrence, to explore the impact of the frequency of attention on the capture of the impact. Results: (1) Compared with neutral mood, positive emotions capture more attention (Experiment 1); (2) In the absence of emotional feedback, the stimulation of multiple exercises as a disturbance stimulus also captures the attention (Experiment 2); (3) Positive emotions affect the priority of attention while being affected by the frequency of emotional images (Experiment 3). Conclusion: Positive social mood capture attention, both in line with value-driven attention to the capture mechanism, but also from top to bottom target-driven mechanism at work; emotional picture frequency will also affect the emotional feedback on the attention of the capture. Related Articles | Metrics

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Which Memory Buffer does the Implicit Learning Mechanism of Nonlocal Dependencies Use: Evidence from Neural Network Simulations Fei-Fei LI Liu Baogen 2018, 41(4): 796-802.  Abstract ( )   PDF (811KB) ( )   In implicit learning literature, a basic question concerning how knowledge of structures and regularities is learned is whether the learning mechanism uses a temporary storage buffer, and, if so, what the nature of the buffer is. Recently, Li et al.(2013) found that people acquired unconscious structural knowledge of both Chinese tonal retrogrades and inversions. Moreover, inversions were implicitly learnt more easily than retrogrades, pattern predicted by implicit learning using a first in-first out buffer rather than a last in-?rst out buffer. However, because Chinese Tang poetry uses an inversion, knowledge participants were likely exposed to as children, it is not clear whether prior expectations of structure instantiating inversions could over-ride the effect of what type of buffer the system uses. The network doesn’t have prior knowledge. Accordingly, the present study investigated whether the Simple Recurrent Network (SRN), that used a buffer to allow learning of nonlocal dependencies, could learn tonal inversions and retrogrades and replicate the advantage of inversions over retrogrades. The SRN was tested on the same materials and procedures as Li et al. (2013). The networks were assigned to four cells of two training conditions (trained vs. untrained) by two rules (inversion vs. retrograde) design. The simulations were carried out using all possible permutations of the parameter values, resulting in 150 different models for each group. The materials were strings of tonal syllables. Each string consisted of 10 different tonal syllables, where the tone types (pings and zes) of first five syllables predicted the tone types of following five by forming an inversion or a retrograde. In training phase, 144 grammatical strings were used for two trained groups. In test phase, four groups of networks were presented with 48 test sequences (half grammatical and half ungrammatical), and their ability to predict the next tone in the predictable second five elements was used as an index of performance. T-test (with Bonferronni correction) showed that trained networks performed significantly better than untrained networks for both inversion and retrograde groups, suggesting that the networks possibly learnt the two rules. Moreover, for both trained and untrained groups, inversion group performed significantly better than retrograde group. The performance difference between inversion and retrograde for trained networks was greater than that for untrained networks, indicating that inversions were implicitly learnt more easily than retrogrades. Further, the effects of learning were calculated by subtracting the z-scores of the untrained networks/participants from that of the trained networks/participants. A substantial number of the SRNs fell within the area covered by the human data (m ± 1se)(15/150 for inversion, 38/150 for retrograde), suggesting that the SRN could match the characteristic performance of human participants. To conclude, consistent with the results of human experiments, the present simulations showed that: SRN could learn the two nonlocal dependencies, and tonal inversions were implicitly learnt more easily than retrogrades, tentatively suggesting that functionally a first in-first out memory buffer is more likely to be involved in implicit learning of nonlocal dependencies. Thus the present study provide new evidence and a new perspective for exploring the implicit learning mechanism of nonlocal dependencies. Related Articles | Metrics

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Role of selective attention in artificial grammar learning ——respond to two questions in Eitam et al.(2009) 2018, 41(4): 803-808.  Abstract ( )   PDF (515KB) ( )   Eitam, Schul, & Hassin, 2009; Eitam et al., 2013; Tanaka, Kiyokawa, Yamada, et al., 2008 demonstrated selective attention is indispensable in artificial grammar learning. Nevertheless, Eitam et al. (2009) pointed out there existed two thoughtful questions. Firstly, due to the complexity of artificial grammar, the learning of selected grammar might exhaust cognitive resource with the result that ignored grammar had little resource to be learned. Secondly, the ignored grammar might have been learnt without being detected in the test phase. Therefore, we designed the complexity of artificial grammar (complex grammar A & B vs. simple grammar C & D) and the types of illegal sequences (illegal sequence a vs. illegal sequence b) to examine both possibilities above. Sequences of inner color and sequences of outer color with different grammars were presented simultaneously. Two groups of participants were instructed to only memorize the sequences of outer color with grammar A and grammar C, respectively; anothers, also respectively, the sequences of inner color with grammar B and grammar D. That means each group of participants need to pay attention to the inner (outer) color of each sequence, and then indicate the color of the inner (outer)-color block that immediately preceded the last stimulus using the response color matrix. All participants were random successively tested on the grammar underlying the selected and the neglected training sequences. They were asked to categorize each sequence which may come from 10 novel legal sequences , 10 illegal sequences a and 10 illegal sequences b as grammatical or not. Results showed that there was a significant Attention Direction×Complexity of Grammar interaction, F(1, 54) = 10.74, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.17. Participants who were tested on selected grammar showed significant difference on correct rate between simple grammar (0.64 ± 0.14) and complex grammar (0.56 ± 0.10), F(1,54) = 6.98, p < 0.05. While testing the ignored grammar, the scores gained from simple grammar (0.47 ± 0.11) showed no significant difference to the scores gained from complex grammar (0.52 ± 0.09), F(1, 54) = 3.84, p = 0.06. This indicated that the learning of the simple grammar rules chosen to be noted have a certain grammatical advantage over the learning of selected complex grammatical rules chosen to be noted. What′s more, no matter the illegal sequence was a or b, there was no reliable difference between probability level and the scores of the grammatical rules that had been neglected. It meant that even if the complexity of the grammar chosen to be noted was reduced, the ignored grammar could not be successfully learned. Participants who classified sequences based on selected grammar showed reliable learning as compared to chance, but participants who were tested on the ignored grammar were not. Moreover, a mixed-model analysis of variance revealed a significant Attention Direction×Ungrammatical Sequence interaction, F(1, 54) = 5.80, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.096. This analysis revealed that there was no significant difference for participants who classified sequences based on selected grammar between the condition of illegal sequences a and the condition of illegal sequences b, F(1, 54) = 3.51, p = 0.07, so did participants who classified sequences based on neglected grammar, F(1, 54) = 1.23, p = 0.27. The results above ruled out the two prossibilities which came from Eitam et al.( 2009), also showed the effect of selective attention on AGL. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Color and Shape Working Memory on Non-spatial Inhibition of Return 2018, 41(4): 809-815.  Abstract ( )   PDF (595KB) ( )   Responding to a target that presented at the cued location is slower than responding to a target that presented at the uncued location. It reflected a well-known spatial inhibition of return (IOR) effect. Object-based IOR appeared when the target was displayed on the cued object. Recently, several studies found a kind of non-spatial IOR (e.g., color IOR and shape IOR). Previous researchers used the dual-task paradigm combining the typical IOR paradigm with some working memory (WM) tasks. They found that the spatial IOR would be eliminated when a spatial WM task was involved in the dual-task paradigm. However, the spatial IOR still existed when it contained a non-spatial WM task. They suggested that spatial IOR is partially modulated by the spatial WM system. Some studies have found that the shape IOR is modulated by the shape WM; the color IOR is modulated by the color WM, but not modulated by the shape WM. However, the evidences of the relationship between the non-spatial IOR and WM were still not sufficient. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the non-spatial IOR (e.g., color IOR and shape IOR) was modulated by the WM tasks (e.g., shape and color WM tasks). Our hypotheses were that the color and shape IOR could not be modulated by the color or shape WM; the performances of target discrimination could be modulated by the color and shape WM. In Experiment 1, a 3 (WM conditions: without WM vs. color WM vs. shape WM) × 2 (color congruencies of the cue and target: congruent vs. incongruent) within-subjects design was adopted. The cue and target were color stimuli in this dual-task paradigm. In each trial, participants were firstly required to pay attention to the cue and conducted a WM task. Then they were instructed to discriminate the color of the target. In the last, there was a memory test for the WM task. The discriminating RTs and accuracy data were collected from 26 participants (8 males, 18 females, with mean age of 23.2±1.6). In Experiment 2, a 3 (WM conditions: without WM vs. color WM vs. shape WM) × 2 (shape congruencies of the cue and target: congruent vs. incongruent) within-subjects design was adopted. The same participants in Experiment 1 took part in the Experiment 2. The procedure was identical to the Experiment 1, but the cue and target were the shape stimuli. Participants were instructed to discriminate the shape of the target. The order of two experiments was random. The results revealed that: (1) in Experiment 1, color IOR was found in all WM conditions; in Experiment 2, shape IOR was found in all WM conditions; (2) the differences between the magnitude of color IOR in color WM and the magnitude of color IOR in shape WM were not reliable. The differences between the magnitude of shape IOR in color WM and the magnitude of shape IOR in shape WM were not reliable. But the discriminating RTs in the color and shape WM conditions were longer than it was in the without WM condition. In summary, the present study concluded that: (1) the color IOR and shape IOR existed in the color WM and shape WM conditions; (2) there was no difference between the magnitude of color IOR in color WM condition and the magnitude of color IOR in shape WM condition. There was no difference between the magnitude of shape IOR in color WM condition and the magnitude of shape IOR in shape WM condition. However, the color and shape WM tasks required an additional response time to discriminate the color or shape of the target relative to the condition without WM. Key words: working memory, non-spatial inhibition of return, color, shape References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Application of Eye Tracking Technology in Value-Directed Metamemory 2018, 41(4): 816-821.  Abstract ( )   PDF (294KB) ( )   Abstract: When people encounter information with different values and different importance, the ability to selectively encode and retrieve more important information is essential for effective learning (Castel, Benjamin, Craik, & Watkins, 2002). The remembering process which people selectively encodes and retrieves important information is Value-Directed Remembering. However, researchers proposed that the process of value-directed remembering contains not only memory process, but also metacognitive process (Yan & Jiang, 2013; Jiang, 2016). Therefore, Jiang (2016) clarified the definition of value-directed metamemory, which includes the monitoring and controlling processes, occurs when people encounter a large amount of information and need to allocate more attention resource to high value items selectively, as well as coordinate the memory process to give them higher priority, keep them in working memory, and later retrieve them successfully. Firstly, this paper summarized research questions in value-directed metamemory which researchers concerned. More specifically, the present summary focused on how value can have a profound effect on monitoring and controlling process. For example, during the learning process, how people select items and allocate their study time to achieve their study goal. In addition, the age differences and individual differences of value-directed metamemory also aroused widely concern. Secondly, we introduced the framework of value-directed metamemory and analyzed the relation between monitoring part and controlling part of it. The monitoring part focused on how value, reward or importance has an effect on metacognitive predictions and their accuracy. However, the controlling part concerned how people select high value items and allocate more attention resource to them. Thirdly, we analyzed the reason why researchers applied eye-tracking technique in value-directed metamemory. On the one hand, from the view of research field, it is essential to use a kind of tool to record the strategy controlling process directly. On the other hand, the eye-tracking technique has the advantages of (1) without interference, (2) high ecological validity, and (3) being suitable for young children subjects. So more and more researchers use eye-tracking technique to investigate the controlling process of value-directed metamemory. Fourthly, the eye tracking indexes which have been adopted in value-directed metamemory were outlined, such as item selection, study time allocation, and learning processing. For example, some research used the first fixation count of each AOI and the proportion of fixation count as the index of item selection. Besides that, we also illustrated how they used these indexes for specific purpose in their research. Finally, we summarized other indexes which were used in some other related research areas and discussed how they can be used in value-directed metamemory. These indexes can be further developed in the future, such as item selection, study time allocation, study efficiency and encoding pattern. For example, saccade latency is a sensitive indicator of item selection. Researchers have found that value or reward has a significant effect on it. So we can investigate item selection between different value conditions by comparing the index of it. In summary, a conceptual framework of value-directed metamemory and the application of eye tracking technology in it were outlined. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Belief in a Just World on Depression: The Serial Mediating Roles of Gratitude and Self-Esteem You-Zhi Song Yuan Tian Zong-Kui ZHOU Shuai-Lei LIAN 2018, 41(4): 828-834.  Abstract ( )   PDF (609KB) ( )   Abstract Belief in a just world (BJW), proposed by Lerner and Simon, refers to the idea that people are motivated to believe that they live in a just world where everyone gets what they deserve and deserves what they get. Belief in a just world provides people with alternative strategies for coping with challenges and critical life events and it had been widely used to explain individuals’ emotional adjustment and mental health. Ample research has been done and showed strong correlations between BJW and constructs, such as, depression, life satisfaction, forgiveness, and optimism. Research also revealed that belief in a just world promotes just actions. The function of BJW is based on the “personal contract” between individuals and their social environment, by which people believe that they get deserved repayment from others for their just behaviors. On the one hand, the perception of being treated justly by others may enhance levels of gratitude attributing benefits to other people. And gratitude, as the literature suggests, may further be associated with lower levels of depression. On the other hand, the consistency between individuals’ just actions and the social contract may bring more positive evaluations towards themselves. In addition, many studies have showed that high self-esteem protects people from depressive disorders. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion also suggests that positive emotions can broaden people’s momentary thought and build their personal resources. It implies that gratitude, as a positive moral affect, may positively predict self-esteem which can been seen as a personal psychological resource. Thus, the present research hypothesized that BJW would be correlated with depression, and both gratitude and self-esteem, would play important mediating roles in the relationship between BJW and depression. To investigate the relationship between belief in a just world and depression, as well as its underlying mechanism, a sample of 1049 high school students were recruited for the study. They were required to complete a battery of questionnaires, including Belief in a Just World Questionnaire, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Gratitude Questionnaire as well as the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Date were collected and analyzed with SPSS 22.0, and the bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap method was used to analyze the serial mediating roles of gratitude and self-esteem between BJW and depression. The results indicated: (1) the correlations between each pair of BJW, gratitude and self-esteem were significantly positive, but BJW, gratitude and self-esteem were negatively correlated with depression. BJW had no direct effect on depression, but BJW significantly predicted gratitude and self-esteem; gratitude significantly predicted self-esteem; both gratitude and self-esteem significantly predicted depression. (2) The effect of BJW on adolescents’ depression was explained by three indirect paths: the simple mediating role of gratitude, self-esteem, respectively, and the serial mediating role of both gratitude and self-esteem. In sum, these findings highlight the complexed mechanism underlying the relationship between BJW and depression. Belief in a just world predicts adolescent depression through mediating roles of gratitude and self-esteem. Individuals who have a strong dispositional belief in a just world would maintain higher gratitude and self-esteem, but finally have lower level of depression. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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How does the Cognitive Function change among Chinese elderly people: a Latent Growth Curve Modeling 2018, 41(4): 835-841.  Abstract ( )   PDF (947KB) ( )   Abstract In recent years, the cognitive function of the elderly people has gradually become the focus of psychology, many scholars have analyzed the cognitive function in elderly people from many aspects, but most of the studies were cross-sectional studies, there was little from the perspective of longitudinal research. As we all know, the cognitive function of the elderly was a dynamic process, whether the dynamic process of cognitive function in the elderly was consistent with the results of the cross-sectional studies was unclear. In this study, we aimed to investigate the trend of cognitive function in the elderly people and the differences between individuals. In addition, we further examined what factors would lead to the differences between individuals. The data were derived from the CLHLS, in this study, we used the 4 waves of the data (2002, 2005, 2008, 2011) to investigate the trend of cognitive function in the elderly people and the cognitive function of the subjects were measured using the MMSE scale. In this study, a total of 1834 subjects were included after deletion of the missing values. In addition, the method we used in this study was the latent growth curve model. The latent growth curve model was a method which often used for longitudinal research, it can not only get the overall trend of cognitive function of the elderly, but also get the individual differences of cognitive function. In order to realize the trend of cognitive function of the elderly, we constructed an unconditional latent growth curve model. In addition, based on the result of unconditional latent growth curve model, we further constructed a conditional latent growth curve model to examine what factors would lead to the differences between individuals. In this study, we added time-invariant (gender, years of schooling, smoking and drinking) and time-varying (activities of daily living) covariates to the conditional latent growth curve model to research the influences on cognitive function. Firstly, the results from unconditional latent growth curve model showed that the declining trend of cognitive function in the elderly people was non-linear. That is to say, as time going on, the cognitive function in the elderly people was getting worse and during the survey period, the rate of decline was also different. Secondly, we explored the conditional latent growth curve model. For intercepts, we found that the activities of daily living was negatively predicted cognitive function; Years of schooling predicted cognitive function positively; Gender and drinking predicted cognitive function negatively; smoking has no significant effect on cognitive function. For slope, we found that years of schooling and drinking would positively predict the rate of change in cognitive function of the elderly people. In conclusion, the declining trend of cognitive function in the elderly was non-linear, the higher activities of daily living and the years of schooling were the protective factors of cognitive function in the elderly people. The initial cognitive function of women was significantly lower than that of male, and the cognitive function of non-drinkers was significantly lower than that of drinkers. Related Articles | Metrics

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Relations Between Maternal Negative Emotion and Preschooler's Externalizing Problem Behavior :The Moderating Effects of Home Chaos 2018, 41(4): 842-848.  Abstract ( )   PDF (602KB) ( )   Abstract Much research indicated that maternal negative emotion was associated with children’s behavioral outcomes. However, a major limitation of the literature is that hypotheses have been largely restricted to parent-driven effects, and the limited research focusing on child-driven effects has been primarily based on clinical samples. On the one hand, it is unclear as to the extent to which the findings from clinical samples can be generalized to the normal developmental samples. On the other hand, it is also difficult to tell whether the small variability in the behavior of normal developmental children could lead to maternal different negative emotion and the small variability in the maternal negative emotion could also lead to different children’s externalizing behavior. Moreover, home environmental quality may play an important role in parent-child interaction. As one important dimension of the home environment, the home chaos may moderate the intensity of the relationship between maternal negative emotion and children's externalizing problem behavior. Therefore, the first aim of this study was to investigate the bidirectional relationship between children’s externalizing problem behavior and maternal negative emotion among normal developmental preschool children in China through a one -year longitudinal study. The second aim was to explore whether home chaos would act as a moderator in above relation. A total of 251 Chinese preschoolers (49% boys) and their mothers participated at two time points: spring 2015(T1) and spring 2016(T2). Strength and Difficulty Questionnaires was used to measure children’s externalizing problem behavior, and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale was used to measure the maternal negative emotion, and Confusion, Hubbub and Order Scale was used to assess the home chaos level. The results from cross-lagged models indicated that (1) after the family socioeconomic status and child gender were controlled, maternal negative emotions and children's externalizing problem behavior maintained high stability across two years, and children's externalizing problem behavior at T1 positively predicted maternal negative emotions at T2. However, maternal negative emotions at T1 cannot predict children's externalizing problem behavior at T2; (2) home chaos significantly moderated the effects of children's externalizing problem behavior at T1 on the maternal negative emotions at T2, but did not moderate the effects of maternal negative emotion at T1 on children’s externalizing problem behavior at T2. Specifically, compared with those in the low-chaos families, children’s externalizing problem behavior would more strongly predict maternal negative emotions one year later in the high-chaos families. In addition, home chaos also moderated the stability of children’s externalizing problem behavior, the higher the home chaos, the more stable the children’s externalizing problem behavior over two years. In conclusions, the relationship between maternal negative emotions and young children's externalizing problem behavior is mainly manifested as child-driven effects, and the home chaos could moderate such relationship. Related Articles | Metrics

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The perceptual span of second graders in Chinese primary school 2018, 41(4): 849-855.  Abstract ( )   PDF (609KB) ( )   Perceptual span, which refers to the amount of information that can be acquired during a single fixation in reading (McConkie & Rayner,1975),provides the robust evidence of the efficiency of using parafoveal information.Chinese is a logographic language. There were studies which investigated the adults’ perceptual span of Chinese readers (Inhoff & Liu 1998; Pan, Yan, and Laubrock, 2017). There has been few studies to investigate the perceptual span of the second graders in Chinese primary school so far. The second grader is at the stage of learning to read, which is a critical period in reading development. The present study aims to provide the basic data to construct the reading model adapted to children and to supply pedagogical implication to teachers in the domain of teaching reading. The present study was 2(Grade:grade2,college students)×5(Window size:NP,L1R1,L2R2,L3R3,FL) mixed experiment design. Moving-window paradigm was used in this experiment. The Grade was between-participants design,while the window size was within-participant design.Participants were composed of 30 second graders recruited from a Tianjin elementary school and 25 undergraduates from a University in Tianjin. Six stories were made up with 60 sentences. They were chosen from different versions of Chinese textbook for grade two. Both the second graders and adult participants were asked to read the same materials. Reading fluency test and reading comprehension test were implemented for the second graders. Eyelink 1000 plus with a sampling rate of 1000HZ was used to record eye movement and to collect eye movement measures(reading rate, average fixation duration, rightward saccade amplitude). The result showed that grade 2 is more slower in reading speed compared to adults, and they have shorter rightward saccade amplitude and longer average fixation duration.The perceptual span for grade is 1-2 characters to the right of fixation. Using the median-split procedure to divide the primary students into faster readers (M=118 characters/minute)and slow readers (M=104 characters/minute) according to their reading speed in FL condition to explore the influence of reading speed on perceptual span. There is significant difference between the two groups in terms of reading speed (t=6.042, p<0.001).The result showed that the perceptual span for both groups is 1-2 characters to the right of the fixated characters. We also calculated the correlation between reading tests and eye movement measures. The result showed that there are significant correlations between reading fluency, reading comprehension and eye movement measures. Both reading speed and rightward saccade amplitude are significantly correlated with academic achievement. In conclusion, the perceptual span for second grader is 1-2 characters to the right of the fixated character while the perceptual span for the adult is larger than three characters, indicating that children may not take advantage of the parafoveal information as efficiently as the adults. Both the faster and slower readers have the same perceptual span, but there are significant differences for the two groups in terms of reading speed and rightward saccade amplitude. This may be the case that faster and slower readers could take in the same amount of information from the same region, but faster readers can process the information more effectively. Some eye movement measures are significantly related with the reading fluency, reading comprehension and academic achievement, indicating eye movement measures are related with students’ reading ability. Related Articles | Metrics

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Resilience and Self-Concept of Adolescent Students: One Year Cross-lagged Regression Analyses 2018, 41(4): 856-861.  Abstract ( )   PDF (711KB) ( )   Many researches on resilience have seen the emergence and development of positive psychology in recent years. Resilience has been used to represent the individual’s capability of survival and adjustment after experiencing serious traumatic. There is no consensus about the psychological scientific definition of resilience, however most researchers agreed that the definitions of resilience are based on two core concepts: that is adversity and positive adaptation. Adolescence is a period of life marked by changing and fast development. In fact, few developmental periods are characterized by so many changes at so many different levels as adolescence. These changes are associated with pubertal development and the emergence of reproductive sexuality; social role redefinitions; cognitive, emotional, and moral development; and school transitions from junior to high school, or from high school to university. For different groups of adolescence, what are the characteristics and respective features of resilience? And what are the influence factors of resilience for different ages of adolescence? There are no clear answers for those questions. The research focused on the differences of resilience between high school and college students, as well as the features of resilience developing trend. A total of 369 adolescence in Shanghai, China participated in the two waves of data collections 260 first year high school students were chosen from one public high school in Shanghai (with 148 girls, and average age was 187.01±4.64 months). And 109 university students were chosen from one general university in Shanghai (with 98 girls, and average age was 236.58±6.30 months). Resilience was assessed by Chinese version of Resilience Scale (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, CD-RISC). The coefficient of internal consistency was .91. Self-concept was assessed by the Chinese version of Self-description Questionnaire II (SDQ II), which included eleven factors, such as adolescents self-concept of language ability, mathematics ability, general attitude towards school, physical strength, appearance, relationship with opposite sex friends, relationship with same sex friends, relationship with parents, honesty and reliable, emotional stability, and general self-concept. The coefficients of internal consistency for the factors were .83- .91. The first wave of data collection was carried out about one month after the students entered the school, and after one year, the second wave of data collection was carried out. The results showed that: (a) Resilience improved significantly within the first year (F(1, 366） = 16.35, p < .01, ηp2 = .04）. (b) Cross-lag regression analysis showed that self-concept（β = .04, p < .05）, concept of appearance (β = .26, p < .01), self-concept of body strength (β = .18, p < .05), self-concept of peer relationship (β = .25, p < .05), and self-concept of Heterosexual peer relationship (β = .23, p < .05) predicted significantly resilience one year after controlling gender, ages. It was concluded that the positive feelings of self-concept and self-concept of appearance, body strength, peer relationship and heterosexual peer relationship would improve the resilience. Related Articles | Metrics

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The cognitive processing mechanism of the bias response in reasoning and judgment: does the conflict detect failure or heuristic intuition inhibits failure? yan AI 2018, 41(4): 869-875.  Abstract ( )   PDF (783KB) ( )   Humans are always biased in their reasoning, judging and decision making. A critical question to answer these bias responses is that the biases arise from the participants’ failure to detect the conflict between heuristic processing and analytical processing, or from their failure to inhibit the dominant heuristic intuition? There are two different views on the efficiency of the detection process. Evans and Kahneman claim that the conflict detection between intuitive response and standard logical rule is typically quite lax, causing failure to engage in analytical processing and modify the default intuitive response. But other scholars, including Sloman and Epstein, claim that the monitoring is flawless because the two processes parallel competitive process. People know and perceive the conflict between the two responses; however they can't successfully suppress the dominant intuitive response between the two reactions. The purpose of this study is to verify whether the bias response is from the failure of the conflict detection or the failure of suppression. Participants solved a total of 20 base rate problems and conjunction Fallacy problems on the computer, half of which was basic ratio problems and the other half was conjunction principle problems. Two types of problems were presented: (1) conflict problems, containing stereotypes that conflicting the large base-rate group or stereotypical description; (2) non-conflict problems, containing stereotypes that matched the large base-rate group or stereotypical description. After making a judgment, participants were asked to grade confidence in their response from a scale of 1 to 5. SPSS19.0 is used to analyze the following data such as participants’ accuracy; response confidence; response latency and conflict detect size between the conflict and non-conflict problems. The results show that participants’ accuracy in solving conflict problems is significantly lower than that in solving conflict problems. Most of the participants made a heuristic response to the conflict condition and neglected the basic ratio and the probability of conjunction principle. If there is no conflict detection between intuitive response and standard logical rule, there should be no difference between conflict problems and non-conflict problems in response confidence and response latency. However, the response confidence in solving conflict problems was significantly lower than that in solving non-conflict problems and response latency on the conflict problems was significantly longer than that in the non-conflict problems. These show that participants did not completely neglect base-rate and conjunction rule and they detect the conflict between the intuitive response and standard logical rule. The differences in response confidence and response latency between conflict and non-conflict response are the manifestations of conflict detection. That implicates conflict detect successfully. However, does it mean that all of the people detect the conflict effectively? If not, what about the percentage of the people who successfully detect the conflict? The result of detection size implies that people do not always successfully detect conflict. Some can detect conflict but others are not sensitive to the conflict. Moreover the conflict detection ratio of the conjunctive problem is higher than the base rate problem. We can summarize that the results of response time and response confidence on the reasoning tasks support the hypothesis of the inhibition failure which assumes that people’s bias response in reasoning due to the failure to inhibit the dominant heuristic intuition. The result of detection size shows that some people were flawless in the conflict detection process, however some of them were very lax and it is varied from tasks. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Passive Social Network Site Use on Depression: Chain Mediating Effect Analysis 2018, 41(4): 876-882.  Abstract ( )   PDF (680KB) ( )   Social networking site (SNS) has become one of the most influential and popular social applications in the information age because of its openness, archiving and interactivity, and the impact of SNS use has also become a focus of relevant research scholars. Teenagers are the most active users in SNS, so it has important influence on the establishment of interpersonal relationship, self-concept development and psychological social adaptation for teenagers. In recent years, the SNS as a potential risk factor for depression in adolescents has been taken seriously by researchers at home and abroad, but findings remain inconsistent: increase the risk of depression VS alleviate the symptoms of depression. There are studies that suggest that different types of social networking sites, such as active use and passive use, may be the leading cause of inconsistencies in previous studies, and scholars should explore the specific SNS use, such as passive SNS use “how to influence” individual psychology. Therefore, this study intends to explore the influence of passive SNS use on depression and its mechanism. Rumination and core self-evaluation are introduced as two variables to study the relationship between passive SNS use and depression as well as the possible mechanism underlying the relationship between passive SNS use and adolescents’ depression, and this study focused on the chain mediating role of both rumination and core self-evaluation between passive social network site use and adolescents' depression. A survey research method was adopted in which the Passive Social Network Site Use Scale, the short form of Ruminative Responses Scale, the Core Self-Evaluations Scale as well as the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale were administered to 673 middle school students. Data was collected and analyzed with SPSS 17.0, and the bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap method was used to analyze the chain mediating role of both rumination and core self-evaluation between passive social network site use and adolescents' depression. The results indicated: (1) The relationships between each pair of passive social network site use, and rumination as well as depression, were significantly positive. However, passive social network site use, rumination as well as depression were all negatively correlated with core self-evaluation. Passive social network site use not only had direct effect on depression, but also could significantly predict rumination and core self-evaluation; rumination could significantly predict core self-evaluation; both rumination and core self-evaluation could significantly predict depression. (2) Passive social network site use not only had direct effect on depression, but also could affect adolescents’ depression through three indirect paths: through the mediating role of rumination; through the mediating role of core self-evaluation; through the chain mediating role of both rumination and core self-evaluation. The present study highlights the chain mediating role of both rumination and core self-evaluation in the effect of passive SNS use on adolescents’ depression. It may contribute to our better understanding of how passive social network site use impacts adolescents’ depression from the Rumination Responses Theory and Vulnerability Model. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Power on Stress-coping Behavior Tendency: The Mediating Effect of Cognitive Appraisal Fan LIU Ge ZHENG Yu-Fang ZHAO 2018, 41(4): 890-896.  Abstract ( )   PDF (525KB) ( )   Abstract Power is conceptualized an ability to control or influence other's feeling, thoughts, or behaviors. Although researchers have tested the relationship between power and behavior, the relationship between power, cognitive appraisal and behavior in stress situation has not been reported. It is important to understand why some people perform well under stress. In reality, people can observe that some individuals view the situation as a challenge and perform well, but for others it is a threat and perform poorly. Thus the current research aimed to fill the gap with two experiments. The experimenter hypothesized that the activation of stress will lead to different cognitive appraisals and challenge/threat experiences by high-power and low-power participants, meanwhile opposite tendencies and behaviors will emerge in the two group participants. Considering the correspondences between power, cognitive appraisal and behavioral tendencies, we proposed such a hypothesis that cognitive appraisal will be a mediating variable of power and behavioral tendencies in stress situation. Experiment 1 recruited 60 participants, they were randomly assigned to either high-power condition or low-power condition. Participants in high-power condition were asked to recall an event in which they had power to control others, and in the low-power condition they recalled event about they were controlled. To make stress, we told them they need to make a five minutes speech in front of an expert. Before the speech, participants need to complete threat/challenge assessment items, and after the speech, they done the Sense of Power Scale and BAS/BIS Scale. Participants’ physiological reactions, such as HR, MAP and CO were measured during the whole process. The results showed that the physiological reactions of high power condition are signi?cant different with low power condition，and demonstrated that cognitive appraisal mediate the effects of power on stress-coping behavioral tendencies. A total number of 75 college students took part in experiment 2. This experiment design was same with experiment 1, but added the real behavior variable which measured by black jack game. The result also demonstrated the mediating effect of cognitive appraisal between the power priming and behavioral tendencies. In addition, we found out that high power participants’ coping behaviors are signi?cant different with low power participants, the former had more approach behavior and the latter had more inhibition behavior. To sum up, both the results of two experiments showed the effect of power in the stress situation:(a) high-power led to challenge but low-power led to threat;(b)meanwhile, high-power activated behavioral approach tendencies and approach behavior, yet low-power activated behavioral inhibition tendencies and inhibition behavior.(c)there was a mediating effect of Cognitive Appraisal in stress situation on relations between power and behavioral tendencies. This research expands the cognitive-appraisal theory and the Approach Inhibition Theory. It reveals that power could influence behavioral tendencies by Cognitive Appraisal in stress situation. Related Articles | Metrics

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Does Electronic Wallet Make One Spend More? ：Mental Accounting of Mobile Payment 2018, 41(4): 904-909.  Abstract ( )   PDF (490KB) ( )   Researchers found users’ switch from cash payment to mobile payment and we will have a cashless society. many studies were interested in overspending of using non-cash payment methods such as credit cards and debit cards. But few research paid attention to overspending of mobile payment. Mental accounting has been proved to be associated with irrational economic decisions. However, there weren’t enough studies on mental accounting of mobile payment. Therefore, the present study hypothesized mobile payment and cash payment as two different mental accountings, and mental accounting of mobile payment makes one spend more. We also hypothesized that mental accounting effect of pocket change doesn’t exist so that people no longer tend to control their spending of 100 yuan while the effect of windfall gains with mobile phone red packet still exists, resulting in more spending and greater preference for hedonic goods in the mobile payment accounting. 114 undergraduates were recruited in three experiments. In Experiment 1, 47 participants (14 males and 33 females, mage=21.19) were divided into two groups. The experimental group used mobile payment, meanwhile the control group used cash payment to choose goods displayed on the computer screen by E-prime. In Experiment 2, 35 participants (17 males and 18 females, age=21.29) were divided into two groups. One group was given 100 yuan once. Meanwhile another group was given four times but the total amount was 100 yuan. Participants all used mobile payment. In Experiment 3, 32 participants (17 males and 15 females, mage=19.51) were divided into two groups. One group was given windfall gains via WeChat red packets, the other group was given money via regular accounts. Both groups used mobile payment to choose groceries like Experiment 1 and 2. Experiment 1 showed mobile payment group spent significantly more than cash payment group (p<0.01). In the same way mobile payment group had more frequent buying behaviors (p<0.01). Mobile payment users chose more utilitarian goods than cash users (p<0.01). Experiment 2 showed mobile payment users given money four times, non-significantly spent more money than the other users who were paid off once (p=0.277). In Experiment 3, “Windfall gains” group spent more (p<0.01) and bought more frequently (p<0.01) than “regular gains” group. For hedonic goods, “windfall gains” group also spent more money (p<0.01) and bought more frequently (p<0.05). Conclusions are: (1) Mobile payment and cash payment belong to different mental accountings. The former of mobile payment is more inconspicuous of finances going down than cash payment. Using mobile payment makes one feel less pain and spend more money. Besides, Consumers are much willing to spend cash on utilitarian goods. (2) In the mental accounting of mobile payment, the principle of “control major, ignore minor” is not prominent. Participants didn’t tend to control their consuming of large money. (3) Mobile payment accounting exists the windfall gains effect with mobile phone red packets. With windfall gains, the consumption sum is higher and participants inclined to hedonic consumption. Key words mobile payment, mental accounting, pain of paying, cashless society Related Articles | Metrics

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The Mechanism of Influence of Policy Implementation Deviation Degree on Public’s Local Governments Responsibility Judgment yun zhou 2018, 41(4): 910-915.  Abstract ( )   PDF (639KB) ( )   In today’s society, there have been various mass disturbances emerging in an endless stream, due to local governments’ policy implementation deviation that is injurious to the public interest. Such disturbances have imposed severe damages on social stability and governmental reputation. The further the local government deviates its original intention and goal for policy making, the severer the consequence it brings to the public. For this purpose, this paper discusses the way that local governments’ policy implementation deviation influences on public’s responsibility judgment on local governments. This paper conducts a questionnaire survey on 728 citizens from 4 counties including Xingzi County and Anfu County in Jiangxi Province. This paper adopts 5 questionnaires, including questionnaire on local governments’ policy implementation deviation degree, questionnaire on public’s attribution for self-control of local governments and questionnaire on public’s judgment on local governments’ intention, as well as Mplus software for data collection. The results have shown that: (1) public’s judgment on local governments’ intention and public’s attribution for self-control of local governments intermediated the relationship between policy implementation deviation degree and public’s responsibility judgment on local governments; (2) policy implementation deviation degree also has an effect on the public’s moral responsibility judgment on local governments through the intermediary chain of public’s judgment on local governments’ intention→public’s attribution for self-control of local governments. After comparing the effect size between the mediating effect of public's judgment on local governments’ intention for policy implementation deviation degree and public's responsibility judgment on local governments, as well as the mediating effect of public's attribution for self-control of local governments policy implementation deviation degree and public's responsibility judgment on local governments, it is found that the mediating effect of the former is larger. The policy implementation deviation degree can not only has an effect on public's responsibility judgment on local governments through the mediating effect of the public's judgment on local governments' intention, but also affect public's responsibility judgment on local governments through the mediating chain formed by public's judgment on local governments' intention and public's attribution for self-control of local governments. It is clear that in case there is policy implementation deviation for governments, the effect of public's judgment on local governments' intention on public's responsibility judgment on local governments is larger than that of public's attribution for self-control of local governments. The results of this study play an enlightenment role for local governments to deal with the crises triggered by policy implementation deviation. When faced with such crisis, local governments can not only guide the public to make uncontrollable attribution for policy implementation deviation. Moreover, they’d spare no efforts to release good intentions of the local governments to the public, enabling them to believe that the deviation in policy implementation is unintentional. The public should be guided to believe that the local governments are “well-meaning but misguided” rather than intentional. This is aimed at relieving public’s responsibility judgment on local governments and subsequent moral outrage and aggressive behavior on this basis. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Factors Influencing Rumor Transmission: Characteristics of Circumstances, Contents, Transmitters and Recipients 晓哲 彭 Fang Cui Hong LI 2018, 41(4): 916-921.  Abstract ( )   PDF (325KB) ( )   What makes rumors viral? How users respond to rumors in social media? Why some people rationally evaluate the credibility and content of rumors, whereas some other people transmit rumors in an irrational manner? These are academic researcher's current concerns about rumor. Rumor is defined as “unverified and instrumentally relevant information statements in circulation that arise in contexts of ambiguity, danger or potential threat, and that function to help people make sense and manage risk” (DiFonzo & Bordia, 2007: 13). Previously, as Allport and Postman described in the basic law of rumor, the spread of rumor is decided by the multiplication of “importance” and “informational ambiguity”. As the understanding of rumor extended, more factors or characteristics are demonstrated in the recent research about rumor. The present review summarizes recent research on rumor processing and transmission. In the present review, three dimensions, that is, circumstances, contents, people (including transmitters and recipients) which primarily influence rumor transmission are identified and introduced. First, rumors arise in ambiguous or threatening situations. Second, characteristics of contents, such as rumor valence and repetition influence rumor transmission. Specifically, negative, or high arousal pictures/contents, as well as repetition facilitate rumor transmission. Third, considering rumor transmitters, highly credible sources facilitate rumor transmission. Considering rumor recipients, both cognitive characteristics and personality impact susceptibility to rumor or rumor transmission. Specifically, attentional bias, false memories, personality traits such as trait anxiety, as well as motivations, and recipients’ beliefs, may result in bias or distortion in responses to rumors. For example, compared with less anxious individuals, highly anxious individuals transmit are more likely to transmit rumors. Besides, individuals high in “Need for Cognition”, or with greater intuitive thinking, were also found to more willing to pursue the rumor. Furthermore, believing in paranormal theories, conspiracy, unwarranted beliefs, and pseudoscience claims are found to be positively correlated. In contrast, affirming control, open-mindedness, and analytic thinking were found to reduce beliefs in conspiracy theories, respectively. These findings increase insight in ways, such as promote analytic thinking to counter the widespread acceptance of rumor (misinformation). Methods used in rumor transmissions are further discussed. Surveys and interviews are primarily used in previous studies about rumor processing and transmission. The experiments which manipulate factors are limited. Besides, a wealth of previous studies relied on self-reports. More experimental evidences in controlled settings are needed to investigate the mechanism and neural correlates underlying rumor processing and transmission. Last but not the least, Internet-based social networks including social networking sites and APPs provide opportunities for information transmission, as well as rumor spreading. In recent years, computational resources and massive social media data give rise to a wealth of studies investigating human behaviors. For example, a series of communication research questions are investigated using computational social science methods. Correspondingly, the rumor spreading processes can also be simulated, modelled, and predicted in various network topologies, or by using new frameworks. Besides, a growing body of research questions in the communication-relevant domain is increasingly being explored by using brain imaging approaches, such as electro-encephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This “brain-as-predictor-approach” can be used to predict people’s attitude and behavior change, correspondingly to predict rumor transmission. Future studies about rumor transmission can benefit from the availability of brain imaging techniques and massive social media data analysis. Related Articles | Metrics

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A study on the mechanism of ethnic contact promoting ethnic interaction Cheng-Hai GAO Ming-Gang WAN 2018, 41(4): 922-928.  Abstract ( )   PDF (557KB) ( )   In 1950s, the social psychologist Allport put forward the famous intergroup contact hypothesis, namely between groups if can meet some conditions (i.e., equality social status, common goals, cooperation and support system), a simple contact can reduce the prejudice and improve intergroup relations. Over the past 60 years, the researchers carried out a large number of studies about the mechanism that intergroup contact reduces prejudice. From the current research results, intergroup contacts can reduce prejudice, mainly because intergroup contact leads to individual changes in cognition and emotion, Changes in cognition, include intergroup contact can increase the knowledge about out-groups, reduce the negative stereotype and the negative expectations for intergroup interaction, weakened the in-group identity and bias, and make the individual perceive more commonality to ingroup and outgroup; in the emotion, it can reduce the intergroup anxiety level, with the increase of empathy towards other groups, other factors include group identity, personal threat, intergroup threat and so on. although researchers have made fruitful work on the mechanism of intergroup contact reducing prejudice, it still needs to be improved and developed. First of all, the researchers found some mediator variables that the intergroup contact reduces the bias , but these study is scattered, lacking integration between the mediator variables, such as negative stereotypes and intergroup anxiety, it is because the individual hold negative stereotypes toward out-group members lead to intergroup anxiety, so a possible mechanism that intergroup contact reducing prejudice is: intergroup contact reduces negative stereotypes, thus reduces intergroup anxiety, and ultimately reduces the bias, this is a hypothesis in this study need to tested; secondly, Allport advocated the intergroup contact hypothesis has been fully verified, but another point of view, the essentialism beliefs towards social group is an important personality characteristics that lead to prejudice, but the researchers have not incorporated the essentialism beliefs into the study of the mechanism of contact reducing prejudice. The author argues that intergroup contacts can weaken the essential beliefs held by people, thereby reducing prejudice. In this study, 321 minority college students were selected as subjects, the ethnic contact (with Han), contact attitude, ethnic identity, ethnic essentialism, ethnic stereotypes，intergroup anxiety and other variables were investigated, from a perspective of integration, this study explores the mechanism of ethnic contact promoting ethnic interaction. The results show that: ethnic contact through reducing intergroup anxiety and ethnic identity, weaken the negative stereotypes and ethnic essentialism thus indirectly promote ethnic relations, ethnic identity. Ethnic identity plays a significant mediating role between ethnic contact and ethnic essentialism, and negative stereotype plays a mediating role between ethnic contact and intergroup anxiety, the results verified the hypothesis of this study. This study enriches the theory of intergroup contact reducing prejudice, and finds a new mediator variable, which has guiding significance for promoting the practice of ethnic relation. Related Articles | Metrics

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Exploring the Effect of Coworkers' Idiosyncratic Deals on Employees' Work Withdrawal Behavior: Based on the Perspective of Equity Theory Jing Xiong Yu-Shuai CHEN 2018, 41(4): 929-935.  Abstract ( )   PDF (773KB) ( )   With the intensification of the global labor market competition and the individuality of the employees in the contemporary organization, idiosyncratic deals（i-deals） has gradually attracted the attention of the western scholars. As a non-standardized work arrangement with attractive and incentive nature, i-deals can cater to the needs, preferences and expectations of employees, also it provides a practical way to retain the core talent. Empirical studies have showed that i-deals can not only improve i-dealers’ positive affect like organizational commitment and career satisfaction, but also elicit their extra-role behaviors (e.g., voice behavior and helping behavior). However, the existing research relatively ignored the negative impact of i-deals on third-party employees. In order to bridge this gap, this paper explored the influence of coworkers' i-deals on employees' work withdrawal behavior and its associated underlying mechanisms from the perspective of fairness theory. Sample of our study were collected from part-time graduate students of a university located in Guangzhou. To avoid the common method bias, we took three time points to collect data. At Time 1, participants were asked to report their demographic information, perceived the coworkers’ i-deal, and social exchange. Then we continue to ask those participants to evaluate their own psychological contract violation and work withdrawal behavior in Time 2 (two weeks later) and Time 3( four weeks later).We finally got 201 valid questionnaires. Through a series of regression analysis and bootstrapping method, we got three conclusions: (1) Coworkers' i-deals was positively related to employees' work withdrawal behavior; (2) Such relationship was partially mediated by employee psychological contract violation (3) The degree of social exchange between employee and organization moderated the relationship between coworkers' i-deals and employees’ psychological contract violation, such that this relationship was weaken when social exchange was low. The results of this study provide several important theoretical and practical implications. First of all, by exploring the impact of coworkers' i-deals on employees' work withdrawal behavior, this study extend the research on the negative effect of i-deals on the third-party employees, and deepens our understanding of the influence of i-deals. Secondly, by examining the mediating role of psychological contract violation, this study promotes the understanding of the potential mechanism of coworkers' i-deals to predict the effect of employees' work withdrawal behavior. Thirdly, we further examine the moderating effect of the relationship between employees and organizational social exchange, revealing the unique boundary conditions of the differences in the psychological contracts. Beyond the theoretical implications highlighted above, there are also some practical strategies that organizations can use to minimize negative feedback from those who haven't. On the one hand, organizations should pay attention to the development of social relations between employees and organizations, so that employees are more loyal, and trusty. On the other hand, i-dealers should appropriately increase their citizenship behavior in order to restore the sense of imbalance of "pay-return" of third party employees. Finally, the limitations of this study and the direction of future research are discussed. Related Articles | Metrics

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Pilots’ Risk Perception: Conception, Measurement and Theoretical Orientation Wen-Qiang LI Hong-Yu CHEN 2018, 41(4): 936-941.  Abstract ( )   PDF (609KB) ( )   In modern aviation, risk management is a prerequisite skill for pilot due to the nature of aviation activity. The perception of risk is the key component of risk management, and has a vital impact on flight safety. In addition, the pilots’ risk perception can effectively predict the involvement of flight accidents and safe operation. Firstly, the risk perception is different from the general perception. Some researchers proposed that the risk perception was the recognition of risk inherent in a situation, and risk perception might be mediated by characteristics of different situations and different individuals. Some studies proposed that the risk perception was essentially a cognitive activity, which identified the inherent risk in various situations, including accurate external circumstances and the difference of personal abilities. Secondly, this study introduced the measures of evaluating risk perception of pilots, which included the explicit self-reports and IATs (implicit association tests). Two explicit self-reports were put forward by Hunter and Pauley. Hunter used the risk perception-other measure and risk perception-self measure to assess the risk perception of pilots. The CWS (Cochran-Wsiss-Shanteau) parameter was implemented in Pauley’s study. IATs were used to investigate pilots’ risk perception and risk behaviors in some researches. Furthermore, some researchers also applied flight simulators to evaluate the perception of risk. And the advantages and disadvantages of these methods are comparatively discussed in this work. Thirdly, two theoretical orientations about the risk perception of pilots, namely the cognition theory and organizational culture theory are discussed. In the cognition theory, previous works have been summarized, which introduced risk perception to the field of aviation psychology. From the cognitive theory’s point, the researchers have studied the pilots’ risk perception from the perceptive of cognitive process. The situations that present a high level of risk for one person may present a low risk for the other. According to the results of traffic psychology study, researchers proposed that the pilots’ risk perception was a three-stage process, and included risk identification, risk assessment and behavior tendency. The organizational culture theory studied the pilots’ risk perception from the point of view of safety. Organizational culture is an organization's core values and business model, which refers to the values committed by all staff, behavioral norms, group consciousness, customs and habits. It is practiced through the work ethics of employees, interpersonal relationship orientation, team spirit, attitude towards risk, initiative and responsibility. Aviation psychologists proposed that different organizational cultures lead to different hazards’ perceptions and decision-making, and a stronger safety culture can reduce the occurrence of accidents. Finally, future research can explore pilots’ risk perception from the perspective of cognition and culture. In the theory of cognition, the model proposed in a previous study pointed out that the risk perception of pilots was a three-stage process. However, the model lacked empirical evidence. For future work, researchers should design experiments to explore the process of risk perception. With regards to culture, some researchers proposed that the risk perception was difference among various culture environments. In addition, research on social theory (from where the culture originates) and pilots’ risk perception is not enough. Therefore, the future study should explore the relationship between social theory and pilots’ risk perception. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Curvilinear Effect of Abusive Supervision on Voice: The Moderation of Value And Gender 2018, 41(4): 942-948.  Abstract ( )   PDF (757KB) ( )   The environment organizations face is becoming increasingly dynamic, complicated and competitive. In this situation, managers by themselves have been unable to solve all the problems organizations have faced. Therefore, it is very important for the survival and development of organizations to make the best of employees’ wisdom and to encourage them to actively participate in management. An employee’s voice is a source of organizational innovative ideas and is helpful to maintain and promote organizational competitiveness, and it has been taken into account by more and more scholars and managers. Organizational researchers have devoted great attention to uncovering factors that influence employee’s voice. Many studies showed that leaders’ behavior is an important influence factor of employee’s voice behavior. For example, transformational leadership, authentic leadership and authorization can promote employees’ voice behavior. However, in practice, leaders’ abusive supervision is far more prevalent than their constructive behaviors, and the forms of abusive supervision are varied, damaging the interests of both employees and organizations (Sun and Ling, 2010). But, extant research mainly focuses on the linear effect of abusive supervision on voice, yet surprisingly little is known of the curvilinear effect. Based on activation theory, this study built and tested the curvilinear effect model of abusive supervision and voice. And the paper also tested the role of value and gender. The questionnaires, which were collected for a short-term training class in batches, were delivered and completed on the spot. We collected 290 questionnaires in total, and 249 valid questionnaires were ultimately included in this study, and the valid rate was 85.86%. The participants were drawn from several industries in Beijing, Inner Mongolia and Shanghai, including banking, electronics, real estate and so on. Among our sample, females account for 49.40%. Participants with a high school diploma and below account for 2.00%, participants with some college education account for 16.10%, participants with a bachelor’s degree account for 65.100%, participants with a graduate degree account for 14.50% and others are not represented. In the sample, 63.90% are married. The average age of participants is 32.20 (SD=7.09), and the average organizational tenure is 6.93 years (SD=7.00). We used SPSS22.0 and Mplus6.12 to analyze the data. First, we assessed the discriminant validity of the key variables through a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and examined the common method variance. Afterwards, we used hierarchy regression to test our hypotheses. Results showed that abusive supervision had a curvilinear relationship (inverted U-shaped) with voice. Moderate abusive supervision increased employees’ voice behavior. A lack of abusive supervision or presence of highly abusive supervision can cause decrements in employees’ voice. Gender moderated this curvilinear relationship. The relationship between abusive supervision and voice is stronger for male than female. The main theoretical contribution of our study is that the present study empirically found the curvilinear relationship between abusive supervision and voice, which enriched our understanding of the relationship between abusive supervision and voice. The other contribution is that we determined the moderation effect of gender. This enriched our knowledge of boundary conditions about abusive supervision and voice. In practice, measures should be taken to reduce abusive supervision but not zero abusive supervision to make best of advantages of abusive supervision. The key is to master the rule of “degree”. Secondly, leader should notice that not a leadership style suitable for all employees. Employee’s personal characteristic could also affect abusive supervision’s leadership effectiveness. Leaders need to use different abusive supervision for male and female employees. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Curtain of Material Desires: Influence of Materialism on Pro-Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors 2018, 41(4): 949-955.  Abstract ( )   PDF (860KB) ( )   With the development of economy and the increase of population, the ecological environment has been destroyed seriously and environmental problems have become increasingly prominent nowadays. The ecological crisis is a deeply internal crisis of values that are the psychological representations of what people believe is important in life. If individuals are under a higher pro-environmental value, they will show more pro-environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behaviors. But nowadays, pro-environmental value is not in the dominant position in the society, while another opposite value — materialism is more popular, especially in China. By combing the existing research results at home and abroad, this article summarizes and analyzes the relationship between materialism and pro-environment attitudes and behaviors, and also explains the possible mechanisms. Materialism can predict pro-environmental attitudes negatively, including cognitive components, such as the cognition of environmental problem severity and the causes, the relationship between human and nature, the priority between environmental protection and economic development, and also including behavioral intentions, such as the responsibility of protecting the environment and willingness to protect the environment. Materialism can as well as negatively predict public sphere pro-environmental behaviors, recycling and conservation that can be classified in private sphere pro-environmental behaviors. According to Schwartz’s value model, pro-environmental behaviors are inconsistent with the connotation of materialism, that is to say, materialism can directly reduce pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. On the other hand, according to the value-belief-norm theory, materialism can reduce pro-environmental attitudes and further affect the pro-environmental behaviors, that is to say, pro-environmental attitudes play a mediating role between materialism and pro-environmental behaviors. As for green consumption, another kind of private sphere pro-environmental behaviors, its relation with materialism is controversial among existing results. Some studies found that there are cultural differences. Specifically speaking, in the developed countries, materialism negatively predicts green consumption, but in the developing countries, materialism positively predicts green consumption because materialists are more sensitive to social norms so that they would show higher levels of green consumption behaviors that are in line with social norms. At the same time, green consumption owes conspicuous features that can cater to needs of materialists in the developing countries. So materialists will be more likely to buy green products for potential profit to improve their image and status. Future researchers should expand the empirical research. Such as enhancing casual studies between materialism and pro-environmental behaviors. The research methods in existing studies are single and most are questionnaire results are cross-sectional, correlation between variables, so further research should seek to expand the research paradigm and method to clarify the relationship between materialism and pro environmental attitudes and behaviors effectively. And also it is important to increasing the exploration of internal possible mechanisms. Future research can be explored from the perspectives of cognition such as pro-environment self-efficacy and self-control, and emotion, such as place attachment. In addition, researchers should also apply theories and empirical results to the real life and put forward feasible suggestions to improve the actual pro-environmental behaviors. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Comparison of Three Methods for testing Multilevel Mediation Fang Jie Zhong-Lin WEN 2018, 41(4): 962-967.  Abstract ( )   PDF (875KB) ( )   Because few sampling distributions of mediating effect are normally distributed, in recent years, some asymmetric interval methods such as parametric residual bootstrap, Monte Carlo methods, and Bayesian methods have been developed and proposed for analyzing multilevel mediation. These approaches do not impose the assumption of normality of the sampling distribution of mediating effects. However, little is known about how these methods perform relative to each other. This study conducts a simulation using R software. This simulation examines several approaches for testing 2-1-1 multilevel mediation with fixed slope. Four factors were considered in the simulation design: (a) sample size of level two ( =10, 20, 30, 50, 100); (b) sample size of level one ( =10, 20); (c) parameter combinations (a=b=0, a=.39 and b=0, a=0 and b=.59, a=b=.14, .39, .59); (d) method for testing multilevel mediation (Monte Carlo method, parametric percentile residual Bootstrap method, bias-corrected parametric percentile residual Bootstrap method, Bayesian method with informative prior and Bayesian method with non-informative prior). A total of 60 treatment conditions were designed in the 4-factor simulation. 500 replications were generated for each treatment condition. For the Bootstrap method, 1,000 bootstrap samples were drawn in each replication. For the Monte Carlo method, 5,000 samples were drawn in each parameter with normal distribution. For the Bayesian methods, 11,000 Gibbs iteration were implemented in each replication, 10,000 posterior samples of the model parameters were recorded after 1,000 burn-in iterations. The methods were compared in terms of (a) Relative mean square error, (b) TypeⅠerror rate, (c) Power, (d) Interval width, (e) Interval imbalance. The simulation study found the following results: 1) the performance of Bayesian method with informative prior were superior to that of the other methods in terms of Relative mean square error. 2) The Power of the Bayesian method with informative prior was the highest among all the methods. However, extra power comes at the cost of underestimation of Type I error. Power of bias-corrected parametric percentile residual Bootstrap method was the second greatest, with elevated Type I error in some conditions. 3) The performance of Monte Carlo method was superior to that of the other methods for Type I error. 4) Interval width of Bayesian method with informative prior is the smallest among different methods. Interval width of Monte Carlo method was the second smallest. 5) Interval imbalance of Bayesian method with informative prior is smallest among different methods. The simulation results indicated that 1) when informative prior was available, Bayesian method was recommended to analyze mediation. 2) If informative prior was not available, Monte Carlo method should be adopted to analyze mediation. Related Articles | Metrics

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A method for Q-matrix specification based on the reachability matrix wenyi Wang Shu-Liang DING 2018, 41(4): 968-975.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1323KB) ( )   Cognitive diagnostic assessment has two phases, like a statistical pattern recognition and classification methodology. The first phase is feature generation, followed by classification stage. Q-matrix corresponds to the feature generation phase in statistical pattern recognition. Feature generation is of paramount importance in any pattern recognition task. Therefore, Q-matrix plays a very important role in establishing a relation between latent attribute patterns and ideal response patterns. In practice, a Q-matrix is difficult to specify correctly in cognitive diagnostic assessment and misspecification of the Q-matrix can seriously affect the accuracy of both item parameter estimates and the classification of examinees. The existing methods including the δ method, the γ method, the Q-matrix refinement method, and maximum likelihood estimation method relies on estimates of examinees’ attribute patterns and its classification accuracy. It is not suitable for the case of a test with a short test length because the short test is seldom used to obtain high classification accuracy. The purpose of this study is to propose a method for Q-matrix specification. We assume that a cognitive requirement for multiple skills within an item is conjunctive - that is, answering the item correctly requires mastery of all the skills required by that item. We consider two expected or ideal response matrices, denoted by ERMQ and ERMR. ERMQ or ERMR can be generated from a reduced Q-matrix or a reachability matrix and the universal set of attribute patterns under the conjunctive assumption. Then any column of the ERMQ can be expressed by the columns of the ERMR under the logical AND operation. This is because the augment algorithm in the generalized Q-matrix theory provides the useful fact that any column of the reduced Q-matrix can be expressed by the columns of the reachability matrix under the logical OR operation. A simulation study was conducted to investigate the performance of the new method under three factors (sample size, item parameters in the reachability matrix, and item parameters for the raw items with unknown q-vector) under the deterministic inputs, noisy “and” gate (DINA) model. Simulation results show that the performance of the new method is promising in terms of correct recovery rates of q-entries and correct classification rates of examinees’ attributes. There listed some major results: (a) the average correct recovery rates of q-entries is above 0.90, when guessing and slipping parameters of items in the reachability matrix and raw items are less than 0.20 and 0.3, respectively, (b)the average difference is very small between the correct classification rates of attributes obtained from the nonparametric classification approach based on the true or simulated Q-matrix and the estimated Q-matrix, (c)for an independent structure with 5 attributes, a relatively small sample size of 120 is required through random sampling that is often easy to attain, (d)the new method only needs subject matter experts to specify a Q-matrix for a part of test items which corresponds to the reachability matrix. One conclusion of this study is that the new method will play a very important role in assisting subject matter experts in Q-matrix specification. Related Articles | Metrics

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Four New Item Selection Strategies Based on Attribute Balancing in CD-CAT 2018, 41(4): 976-981.  Abstract ( )   PDF (946KB) ( )   Cognitive diagnostic assessment can reveal examinee’s knowledge state which is very important for remedial teaching, and computerized adaptive testing (CAT) is a new mode of testing which is more efficient than the traditional paper and pencil testing. As a combination of cognitive diagnostic and computerized adaptive testing, the cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive testing (CD-CAT) have gained more and more attentions by educational institutions. Item selection strategies is a fundamental component of CD-CAT, most item selection strategies didn’t consider about balanced coverage of the attributes. As a matter of fact, attribute balancing can make toward adequate coverage of every attribute and improve pattern correct classification rate. The literature review revealed that Cheng(2010) studied the item selection strategies based on attribute balancing, and proposed the MMGDI method. The other existing item selection strategies based on attribute balancing was the MGCDI method, which combines modified MMGDI with CDI. The MMGDI method and the MGCDI method can only ensure that each cognitive attribute was measured by roughly similar numbers of items. This paper proposed four new item selection strategies based on attribute balancing in CD-CAT. The new item selection strategies were revised maximum global discrimination index method (RMGDI), revised maximum cognitive diagnosis index method (RMCDI), RMGDI based on standard error of attribute (SE-RMGDI), RMCDI based on standard error of attribute (SE-RMGCDI), respectively. The RMGDI method and the RMCDI method can ensure that each cognitive attribute was measured by roughly similar numbers of items, yet the SE-RMGDI method and the SE-RMCDI method can ensure that each cognitive attribute was measured with roughly similar measurement accuracy. Two monte carlo simulation studies were conducted to compared new item selection strategies with the MMGDI method and the MGCDI method. The simulation results showed that: (1) Under the fixed-length CD-CAT, all the new item selection strategies based on attribute balancing were better at pattern correct classification rate than the traditional MGCDI method except when the testing length was 12, and only RMGDI, SE-RMGDI and SE-RMCDI method performed better than the MGCDI method when testing length was 12. Compare with the traditional MMGDI method, the SE-RMGDI method and the SE-RMCDI method performed better in pattern correct classification rate when the testing length was longer than 5, instead the MMGDI method was the best item selection strategy when the testing length was shorter than 5. (2) the PCCR of the RMGDI method was higher than the existing item selection strategies based on attribute balancing under variable-length CD-CAT, the test efficiency and the comprehensive performance of four new item selection strategies were better than existing item selection strategies based on balanced attribute coverage under variable-length CD-CAT. (3) In general, the performance of SE-RMGDI method and SE-RMCDI method was the best among all selection strategies based on attribute balancing, and the SE-RMCDI method was more recommended when the length of the fixed-length CD-CAT was short or the requested precision of the variable-length CD-CAT was lenient, instead the SE-RMGDI method had a better performance when the fixed-length CD-CAT was longer or the variable-length CD-CAT requested more stringent precision. Related Articles | Metrics

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A Contrastive Study of Polytomous Attribute and Binary Attribute in Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment Peida ZHAN WANG lijun 2018, 41(4): 982-988.  Abstract ( )   PDF (2940KB) ( )   Abstract Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment models has defined attributes as binary until Karelitz (2004) proposed an Ordered Category Attribute Coding (OCAC) framework. This approach assumes that there are Mk steps before an examinee mastering the highest level of a polytomous attribute. It can provide more diagnostic information for researchers. Karelitz (2004) and Peida Zhan, Yufang Bian and Lijun Wang (2016) suppose that a polytomous attribute’s (Lk+1) levels similar to Lk binary attributes which partly satisfied linear hierarchy. The purpose of this study is to prove the relationship between them by comparing the estimation accuracies of the polytomous attribute model and the binary attribute model. In this study, Pa-DINA was chosen to represent the polytomous attribute model, and DINA was chosen to represent polytomous attribute model. The independent variables are: sample size(500/1000), test length(30/50), the number of polytomous attribute(3/5), the highest level of polytomous attribute(2/3). Therefore, there are 16(2×2×2×2) experimental conditions. The dependent variables are: estimation accuracies of attribute parameters (ACCR and PCCR) and noise parameters (bias and RMSE). The steps of this study are as follows: 1) produced a group of data by Pa-DINA with R under every experimental conditions; 2) used the data and Pa-DINA to estimate the parameters of polytomous attribute model; 3) converted polytomous attributes into binary attributes; 4) used the same group of data and DINA to estimate the parameters of binary attribute model; 5) computed Pa-DINA and DINA’s estimation accuracies (ACCR and PCCR); 6) compared Pa-DINA and DINA’s estimation accuracies separately. The results indicate that: 1) The attribute parameters’ estimation accuracies of two models are about equal when the number of polytomous attribute is no more than 3. 2) The attribute parameters’ estimation accuracies of two models tend to be unequal when the number of polytomous attributes is increased to 5. 3) Among all independent variables, only when the number of polytomous attribute grows from 3 to 5, the decrement of attribute parameters’ estimation accuracies of Pa-DINA are smaller than DINA’s, and the decrement of PCCR is remarkably bigger than the decrement of ACCR. 4) In Pa-DINA , the estimation accuracy of si is lower than gi which is about equal to the high estimation accuracies of two noise parameters in DINA. This study proves that, to some extent, the relationship between polytomous attribute and binary attribute is as mentioned above indeed. And they are more dissimilar with the increasing of the number of polytomous attribute. In the field of education and psychometrics, researchers are suggested to use polytomous attribute model to estimate parameters directly if experts believe it is unnecessary to convert polytomous attributes into binary attributes in a study. In order to get more accurate results when data analysts have no alternative but to transform polytomous attributes into binary attributes, this study suggests giving priority to Zhan’s thought of equivalent conversion. Related Articles | Metrics

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Exploring Cognitive Diagnosis Retrofitting and Further Analyses of Language Proficiency Testing: The Case of the Guangzhou English Achievement Examination Yan-Ting LIN Huilin Chen 2018, 41(4): 989-995.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1183KB) ( )   Cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) can provide meaningful diagnostic information about individuals’ knowledge state. Recently, retrofitting CDMs to language tests is increasingly popular. However, existing studies on the topics suffered some issues, largely due to incomplete validation procedures, missing item-level fit measures and superficial analyses. For these reasons, this paper intended to accomplish three tasks. First, it intended to revise validation procedure and strategy based on previous research, and then to verify the validity of the proposed procedure. Second, it intended to retrofit an achievement examination with CDM and to conduct in-depth analyses based on revised validation procedure and strategy. Third, it intended to investigate the language characteristic of English learning among middle school students. The test materials of this study come from the 2015 Guangzhou Middle-School English Achievement Examination. They include sentence completion and reading comprehension, with about 40 items in total. Data of 2718 students from this examination were analyzed. This research compared two Q-matrixes constructed on the basis of the examination syllabus and expert panel separately, and found that former Q-matrix was less appropriate for cognitive diagnosis. With the revised validation procedures and item-level fit measures, we found that the ability attribute definitions based on the examination syllabus were excessively broad but should be more specific. In comparisons, the attribute set and Q-matrix based on expert panel can be appropriately retrofitted and validated with the procedures and fit measures. Meanwhile, this study further analyzed the retrofitting test and found that: a) proficiency classifications based on attributes distribution and total score were different in determining whether a student was passing or not. Whether this was a special case or not can be a topic of further study; b) the attribute mastery probability showed that student mastery was good in general. The mastery probability of attribute AR3 was the lowest and the hierarchy of attribute AR3 indicated that students need to pay more attention to learning it; c) there was no significant gender difference on mastering attribute AR4. But there were significant gender differences on the other probability (ts (1, 2716) > -2.51, ps <.012) and girls’ level of mastery was significantly better than boys’. Therefore, boys should strengthen their English study; d) the attribute distribution of attribute patterns of Language Knowledge and Application showed that the attribute profile “11111111” was the largest proportion (29%). The attributes profile “1111” of Reading Comprehension accounts for 23%. It reflected that the relationships among language attributes are interrelated, and provided another evidence for fitness of the G-DINA model in diagnosing the language test or language skills; e) to test the external validity of our results, the students' listening and writing performance were used as external criteria for evaluation. It showed that the correlations with most attribute probabilities were statistically and substantively significant, suggesting good external validity. In general, this study can lay a foundation of further developing language proficiency testing for cognitive diagnosis purpose. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Attentional Bias Training on Negative Emotional Bias of Patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder 2018, 41(4): 1003-1009.  Abstract ( )   PDF (845KB) ( )   Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a common neurosis disorder characterized by sustained nervousness and anxiety with no definite reasons. The processing of attention plays an important role in the pathogenesis and maintenance of anxiety disorder. Some Studies indicate that anxiety individuals have attentional bias towards threat stimuli, which is the key factor of leading to anxiety. Attentional Bias Training (ABT) is a method of using a systematic training task to change this attentional bias. With the help of ABT such as a modified version of the dot-probe task , we can train individuals with anxiety to direct attention away from negative stimuli, which in turn alleviates symptoms of anxiety. Using a modified dot-probe task, the study aims to examine whether the method can modify the negative emotional bias of patients with GAD and relieve their anxiety, meanwhile, analyze the still unclear mechanisms of ABT. Thirty-six patients with GAD were randomly allocated into training group and control group, they need to complete pre- and post- assessment which include emotional assessment and attentional bias assessment, and training task. The attentional bias training comprised a modified dot-probe task where pictures of faces with either a disgust or neutral emotional expression cued different locations on the computer screen. In training group, a probe that participants responded to always followed neutral faces that paired with a disgust face. In the control group, the probe appeared with equal frequency in the location of the disgust and neutral faces. The pictures of faces are real facial expressions selected from the Chinese Facial Affective Picture System. The Positive Affect and Negative Affect scale (PANAS) and State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) were chosen to assess the emotion states of the participants. E-prime program was used to present stimulus and record the reaction time. The statistical data was analyzed with SPSS16.0. The results showed that the negative attentional bias score and negative attentional disengagement score were significantly lower in training group than in control group. It is reflected that the effect of ABT was definitely found in correcting the negative emotional bias of patients with GAD, and this effect obtained is based on reducing the difficulty to disengage attention from negative stimulus. Besides, the post-tested Positive Affect score were higher than the pre-tested score in training group, and the State Anxiety score were lower than the pre-tested in two groups. In summary, we can draw the conclusion that the attentional bias training is effective in modifying the negative emotional bias of patients with GAD and alleviating their anxiety states. Furthermore, it is revealed that these effects are acquired mainly through improving the ability of the patients with GAD to disengage attention from negativity. Related Articles | Metrics

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Five-Level Hierarchy of Subject with Mind based on the Five-Aggregate Model in Buddhism Chun-Hui SUN Chengzhi FENG 2018, 41(4): 1010-1016.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1349KB) ( )   The rapid development of researches on artificial intelligence has proposed a potential but strong demand for highly systematic psychology theory. As Buddhism is considered to be a rigorous and logical oriental psychology system, the Five-Aggregate Model, which is the thread of Buddhism Psychology, is elaborated detailedly in this article to analyze the structure of an ideal artificial intelligence. In the Five-Aggregate Model, activities of a subject with a mind were divided into five aggregates (khandas), which are rūpa (physical matter and body), vedanā (feelings, or affect valence, to be precise), sa??ā (perception, or cognition of conceptions), sa?khāra (volition), and vi??ā?a (phenomenal consciousness). To clarify the question that how to build an artificial intelligence subject within the principles of Five-Aggregate Model, a five-level hierarchy of Subject with Mind was presented. At the Physical Level, a subject with mind shall provide the material environment and the sensors of rūpa, reflect vedanā changes by facial or body expressions, produce physical or verbal behavior in the control of sa?khāra, and display the processing of vi??ā?a. At the Manifesting Level, a subject with mind should be able to manifest real-time activities of the eight kinds of vi??ā?a, which contains the activities of other levels. At the Psychological Level, a subject with mind should execute psychological processing functions to generate data of vedanā, sa??ā and sa?khāra, and characterize the contents and objects of these functions in material, abstract, verbal or relational forms. The System Level and the Storage Level correspond with deep processes of the seventh and eighth vi??ā?a, especially the eighth one called ālaya-vi??ā?a, which actually was the noumenon of the whole world. At the System Level, a subject with mind should arrange and organize the operations of the whole system with four main functions. The first is to provide the processing of whole system with a tag of "Myself" to the Manifesting Level. The second is to control the environment to reward or punish this subject according to the history of its behavior. The third is to generate and record data into the Storage Level, while the fourth is to convert these data into actual activities of any level in this system. Finally, at the Storage Level, a subject with mind should store several types of data that the other levels may use. These data includes: 1. basic attributes and existing forms of physical matter, 2. drivers of sensors and operators of the Physical Level, 3. functions to realize the law of physical world, 4. functions of psychological processes, 5. functions to characterize psychological data, 6. decoding solution of physical or psychological data, 7. manifesting solution of the former, 8. the connectionist network from physical data to psychological processes, 9. the network between psychological processes, 10. the network from psychological processes to physical or verbal operations, and 11. the functions of the System Level, et al. In conclusion, the Five-Aggregate Model is not only a systemic description of human mental processes, but also a framework that can be introduced into the area of artificial intelligence studies, which may reunite Psychology with AI research. Related Articles | Metrics

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The relationship and theoretical model of inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning 2018, 41(4): 1017-1023.  Abstract ( )   PDF (470KB) ( )   Reasoning is a kind of cognitive process related to high-lever thinking activities. People can evaluate the relationship between the premise and the conclusion through different reasoning process.In the psychological field,inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning are two main aspects of reasoning psychology. The process of launching new specific conclusions according to general principles is called deductive reasoning.Inversely,inductive reasoning is the activity of thinking that induces general rules from specific things or phenomena.Existing studies focus on the nature and characteristics of the two types of reasoning, but only a few articles discuss on the relationship between the two and the underlying cognitive mechanism.However, it is no doubt that the relationship between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning has become a key issue in the field of reasoning psychology.There are several theories supposed to reveal the relationship between inductive and deductive reasoning. For example, “single process theory” supports that inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning share the same cognitive process and based on the theory, “single dimension signal detection model” constructed. According to this model, valid propositions have greater intensity than invalid propositions deductive reasoning requires more support than inductive reasoning in the strength of evidence, shown as the judgment standard of deductive reasoning is higher than inductive reasoning.So the only difference between induction and deduction is the difference in reaction criteria. The opposite view comes from the “dual process theory”, which holds that inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning are two different cognitive processes.The studies of cognitive neurophysiology ,which provide strong evidence for this theory, has found that activation of brain regions is not exactly the same in the two reasoning processes and the two kind of reasoning affected by different heuristic and analysis process. More specifically,Induction and deduction are both influenced by the two mechanisms of analysis and inspiration, but the proportion is different: inductive judgment may be more affected by the fast heuristic process than analysis process, because the fast heuristic process only use context and the similarity of the information, and doesn’t need to judge whether the proposition in logic is valid or not; On the contrary, deductive judgment more affected by the slow process of analysis, the analysis process contains is a more cautious,usually more accurate reasoning. The “two dimensional signal detection model” supports the dual process theory and represents two angles of logic and similarity. According to this model,the subjects also need a standard to make inductive or deductive judgments,in order to distinguish the strong and the weak of the credibility, the valid and the invalid of the proposition. So the difference between the two kind of reasoning is the relative weights of similarity and logic, which reflected in the slope of the judgment standard.That is,deductive reasoning emphasizes the angle of logic in higher degree and has slower slope in decide boundary than inductive reasoning. ,Compared with the one dimensional signal detection model, the two dimensional signal detection model allows the accuracy of inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning have different judgments(i.e. hit rates) ,regardless the change of standard .To some extent,the two dimensional signal detection model can explain the relationship between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning better. Based?on?the?comprehensive?analysis?of?previous?studies,we summarize the theories and mechanism about the relationship of inductive and deductive reasoning and try to put?forward?our?own?viewpoints?and?cognition.We propose that future research can focus on the time course of reasoning, and use new paradigms to analysis the similarities and differences between the inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning.What’s more,different research methods ,such as event-related potentials(ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) ,should be taken to provide more convincing evidence for these theories and signal detection model . Related Articles | Metrics