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    20 May 2023, Volume 46 Issue 3 Previous Issue    Next Issue

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    Age Differences on Parafoveal Processing in Chinese Reading: Evidence from Word N+2 Preview Benefit
    He Liyuan, Bai Yu, Zhao Xing, Liu Nina, Wang Yongsheng, Wu Jie,
    2023, 46(3): 514-521. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (776KB) ( )  
    Parafoveal processing plays an important role in reading, the information obtained from parafovea is used to begin pre-processing upcoming words and to guide where to move the eyes next. Evidences have showed that parafoveal processing makes an important contribution to skilled and more effective reading. Older adults read more slowly than young adults and also show reduced peripheral visual processing in non-reading tasks. This raises the possibility that visual declines in later life limit older adults’ parafoveal processing. Consistent with this view, studies found that older adults obtain less rightward parafoveal information compared to young adults. Similarly, other studies using the boundary paradigm suggest eye movements are disrupted more for young than older adults when rightward parafoveal information is denied, consistent with older adults processing parafoveal information less effectively. However, several studies provide conflicting findings showing no such age differences, especially about the word N+2 processing. Accordingly, we conducted an eye movement experiment to assess parafoveal preview benefits for word N+2 in Chinese younger and older adults during sentence reading. 40 older adults (aged 66.23±1.83 years) from a community and 40 undergraduates(aged 20.13±1.18years) from a university participated in our experiment. Two groups of participants were asked to read 60 sentences which were presented using the boundary paradigm, with an invisible boundary placed after word N (two-character word), followed by two single-character words (word N+1 and word N+2). Prior to a reader making a saccade that crossed the boundary, word N+2 were shown normally (identical previews) or as invalid previews replacing with a visually similar pseudo-character. The sentences were therefore shown in one of two preview conditions, which reverted to normal as soon as a saccade crossed the boundary. We analyzed the data for sentence and three word regions (including word N, word N+1 and N+2) using Linear Mixed-Effects Models. The results showed that older adults read more slowly compared with young adults, by having more and longer fixations, making more regressions and shorter forward saccades. Moreover, the delayed parafoveal-on-foveal effect occurred for both young and old adults, showing that participants spent shorter fixation time on word N+1 under the condition of identical preview of word N+2 compared to pseudo-character preview, and skipped word N+1 more frequently. However, there was no age difference on the size of effects. Most important, we found age differences on the preview benefit of word N+2, due to an word N+2 preview effect for young adults but not for older adults. Consequently, the preview benefit from word N+2 in parafovea for older adults showed up when they processed the word N+1 but not word N+2. Then we reanalyzed the data for word N+2 when word N+1 was skipped and fixed respectively, and found that younger adults showed robust preview benefit regardless of word N+1 was fixed or not, but older adults did only when word N+1 was skipped. In summary, both older and younger adults can process up to two words parafoveally, however, older adults have difficulty in using the information obtained from word N+2 in parafovea. These findings shed light on revealing age-related reading difficulty in Chinese, and indicated that older readers’ parafoveal processing is impaired which might result in inefficiency word processing as well as the saccade targeting.
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    Do the bilinguals have better level of conflict monitoring?
    Yu Rui, Tao Yun, Zhu Xiaoyuan, Tian Tao
    2023, 46(3): 522-529. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (364KB) ( )  
    Conflict monitoring is the system responsible for processing conflict information in the cognitive control system and it is also the basis and premise of cognitive control, which contains the process of conflict detection and resolution. Language, as the most enduring and integrated experience of human engagement, most likely shapes the structure and cognitive abilities of the brain. In recent years, the influence and shaping of bilingual experience on human cognition is a popular research field in cognitive psychology, and the related researches have been greatly increased in both quantity and diversity. To explore the effect of bilingual experience on conflict monitoring or cognitive control, researchers have constructed different theoretical models, which include Inhibitory Control Model, Conflict Monitoring Theory, Adaptive Control Hypothesis, Bilingual Anterior to Posterior and Subcortical Shift Model, and Executive Attention Model. Conflict tasks such as Flanker, Simon, Stroop and ANT tasks are often used as experimental tasks in this field, including consistency conditions and inconsistency conditions. In addition to reaction time and error rate, the indicators also examine the conflict monitoring level include the conflict effect and the consistent sequence effect. At present, whether there exists a “bilingual advantage” in conflict monitoring has aroused heated discussion among researchers. Numerous studies have proved the positive impact of bilingual experience on conflict monitoring. In recent years, many studies have further validated better conflict monitoring performance for bilinguals under certain qualified conditions. These limitations include high monitoring context, appropriate age, high L2 proficiency, interference suppression tasks and lower education level. However, another opinion is that the bilinguals have no superior performance in conflict monitoring. The “bilingual advantage” found by many studies may be due to the following reasons: confusion of demographic variables, uncertainty in the direction of causality, publication bias, statistical problems, and so on. On the one hand, the existence of these arguments demonstrates the complexity of the impact of language on cognitive function. On the other hand, previous studies show that there still exist so many problems to be solved, such as ambiguous differences between groups, too simple experimental tasks and different research methods, which may be part of the reasons for the differences in results. Investigation of this issue is an important verification of the hypothesis of brain plasticity, and an important exploration of language functionality. Therefore, it is necessary to continue the inquiry to obtain more definitive conclusions. Future researches can change trains of thoughts, no longer focus on verifying bilingual advantages, and explore the problem from the perspective that bilingual experience may affect the conflict monitoring function. In future, we should be under the guidance of theoretical models with richer connotation to adopt more longitudinal research. Besides, on the basis of the scientific division of the monolinguals and the bilinguals, we should take language similarity issue into account, and set a task paradigm that can reflect a higher cognitive level for further exploration the impact of bilingual experience on conflict monitoring function.
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    Temporal Emotion Asymmetry and its Relationship with Moral Judgment and Value Evaluation
    Xie Ruyue, Jin Lei, Hao Haiping, Du Gang, Li Xiaobao, Lyu Houchao
    2023, 46(3): 530-537. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (327KB) ( )  
    Abstract: Mental time travel refers to the faculty that allows humans to mentally project themselves backward in time to relive or forward to pre-live events. Mentally reliving past events is also known as episodic memory in the literature. Mentally reliving future events is also known as episodic future thinking. Previous studies have found that past and future mental time travels share phenomenological characteristics and activate similar brain parts. Other studies have found differences between them, with individuals leaning more towards the future. Of particular relevance to the phenomenon of future bias are studies that have examined temporal emotion asymmetry. Temporal emotion asymmetry refers to people experiencing greater affect when thinking about the future than the affect they experience when thinking about the past. This is true for both positively and negatively valenced events. Emotion differences between past and future thinking are robust and emerge early in development. Previous studies found that temporal emotion asymmetry appears to be present in children from at least 6 years onward, and once established the size of the temporal emotion asymmetry effect did not vary by age or scenario. This article explains the temporal emotion asymmetry from the perspectives of mental simulation and psychological distance. First, the difference between future and past mental simulation may be an important factor affecting the temporal emotions asymmetry. Mental simulation refers to how an individual projects himself onto different events, spaces, or hypothetical reality, a human-specific ability. Compared to simulating past events, people who simulate future events are typically based primarily on focal aspects of events to the neglect of more peripheral event features or aspects of the event context that might moderate affective impact, and this can systematically lead to overestimations of the affective impact of events in the future. Second, one reason people are more emotionally oriented to the future is that the future is psychologically closer to the past. The reduction of psychological distance leads to an increase in the intensity of emotional experience. TEA can influence temporal value asymmetry and temporal asymmetries in moral judgment. (1) Temporal value asymmetry refers to people’s tendency to value future experiences more than equivalent experiences in the equidistant past. For example, Individuals believe they should be paid more for doing the same job a month later than when they did a job a month ago. The reason why they make these asymmetrical valuations is that contemplating future events produces greater affect than does contemplate past events. (2) Logically, an unethical behavior performed yesterday should also be unethical if performed tomorrow. However, previous studies suggest that the timing of a transgression has a systematic effect on people’s beliefs about its moral acceptability. Future transgressions are judged to be more deliberate, less moral, and more worthy of punishment than equivalent transgressions in the past (we will label these temporal asymmetries in moral judgment). Because people’s emotional reactions tend to be more extreme for future events than for past events, such emotional reactions often guide moral intuitions, and judgments of moral behavior may be more extreme in prospect than in retrospect. Future research directions include (1) Temporal emotion asymmetry under different temporal orientations. Temporal orientation, also known as temporal focus, refers to the degree to which people pay attention to the past, present, and future, as well as the tendency to produce emotional and behavioral responses to these time zones; (2) Considering the temporal emotion asymmetry of depressed groups; (3) Exploring the differences in temporal emotion asymmetry from different perspectives.
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    A review of eye tracking studies on mind wandering
    Zhang Qin, Wang Ya
    2023, 46(3): 538-544. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (333KB) ( )  
    In daily life, people often mind wandering, which is also known as absent-mindedness. Mind wandering mainly refers to a state of consciousness in which an individual's attention shifts from the current task to internal information unrelated to the task, such as personal goals, fantasies or other ideas, and departs from the present moment. Mind wandering usually reduces task performance. In addition, mind wandering can also affect individual's mental health, especially when mind wandering focuses on the past, which is usually related to negative emotions. It is worth noting that mind wandering also has important adaptive functions, such as its association with planning and creative thinking. Self-report methods were often used to study mind wandering, however, it is subjective. Eye tracking technology is becoming widely used in mind wandering research because of its economic efficiency and applicability in different situations and populations. Eye tracking can help us to understand the relationship between brain and behavior. It is of great significance to explore the eye movement characteristics of mind wandering to get a better understanding of mind wandering and its underlying mechanisms. In recent years, eye tracking has been used in many studies on mind wandering, and important findings have been achieved. To provide an overview of eye tracking studies of mind wandering, and get a deeper understanding of mind wandering, we searched databases (including web of science , google scholar, Pubmed) with the keywords “mind wandering” and “eye tracking”, and reviewed relevant studies. We reviewed literature from the following aspects: First, the commonly used tasks to in mind wandering studies using eye tracking, including reading task, video-lecture task, sustained attention response task, N-BACK task, choice reaction time task, and breath counting task. Second, the commonly used eye movement indicators, including fixation duration, pupil diameter, blink rate, etc. Third, the characteristics of eye movement during mind wandering, and the studies suggested that eye movement indicators can be used as markers of mind wandering. Fourth, mind wandering was explained from the theoretical perspective of attention decoupling, that is, individuals in the state of attention decoupling were prone to mind wandering. Fifth, based on the findings and limitations of existing research, we suggest that future studies are needed in the following directions: (1) We need to compare whether different time windows would affect the research results; (2) To distinguish eye movement characteristics on different types of mind wandering, e.g., based on the content of mind wandering; (3) To explore individual differences of mind wandering by eye tracking, and to investigate whether the eye movement indicators of mind wandering could differentiate special populations, such as patients with mental illness; (4) To develop better algorithms to distinguish whether participants are focusing on task or mind wandering based on real time eye tracking data, this could get rid of the limitations of subjective reporting. These findings suggested that eye tracking represents a promising neurophysiological tool for understanding and assessing mind wandering.
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    Dynamic direct gaze captures more attention: an evidence from ssVEP
    2023, 46(3): 545-553. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1841KB) ( )  
    As a non-verbal cue, the gaze direction plays an important role in interpersonal communication. Previous studies found that the information obtained from the direct gaze are processed faster and more accurate than that of averted gaze, which is called the advantage of direct gaze. So far, the mechanism of this phenomenon is still under debating. A considerable number of behavioral studies have been conducted to discuss this issue. Some of them found that direct gaze attracts more attention, on the contrary, others reported that direct gaze induced a higher arousal level. In addition, and the results of EEG studies also provide evidence for this issue, supporting the view that direct gaze is more attractive than averted gaze. However, the interaction of the low-level feature and high-level social information affects the results. In conclusion, whether the direct gaze attracts more attention, and whether the advantage is resulted from more significant social information with the direct gaze, are still debating. It is possible that the use of static stimulus and visual search paradigm in previous studies caused the contrary results. Using EEG technology, the present study adopted fast periodic visual stimulation paradigm (FPVS) to achieve dynamic visualization of gaze direction, with the ssVEP as the indictor. We conducted 3 serial experiments to investigate whether dynamic direct gaze captures more attention, and what are the key factors of influence the direct gaze capturing attention, The results are showed as follows. In the experiment 1, the SNR of ssVEP for A-D was higher than that for D-A under the upright face condition, however, no significant difference under the inversed face condition. These results suggest that direct gaze attracts more attention than averted gaze, and the effect results from the high-level social information rather than the low-level feature information. In the experiment 2, no significant difference in amplitude and SNR of ssVEP between direct gaze and averted gaze was found when the static images were presented indicating that the dynamic change of gaze direction is the key factor for direct gaze capture attention. In the experiment 3, after the variation amplitude of the dynamic gaze direction is reduced, no significant difference in amplitude and SNR of ssVEP between direct gaze and averted gaze was found as well, indicating that the variation amplitude of gaze direction is the key factor for the direct gaze to capture attention. Only when the variation amplitude of gaze direction is large, the direct gaze is more attractive than averted gaze. The findings of this study reveal that dynamic direct gaze attracts more attention than averted gaze, and the advantage of direct gaze in capturing attention is due to its special social significance. Furthermore, the dynamic presentation of gaze direction and large amplitude of variation are the key factors for the advantage of direct gaze in capturing attention.
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    Self-structures: the views on the organization of positive and negative self-knowledge
    Bai Yun, Song Yongning
    2023, 46(3): 554-560. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (450KB) ( )  
    This article reviews research on the self-structure especially focusing on how positive and negative self-knowledge (elements) organize across multiple self-aspects. The view points of two related theories on this topic are fully reviewed and discussed: Compartmentalization of Self-Knowledge (Showers, 1992; Showers & Zeigler-Hill, 2012) and Intrinsic Dynamics of Self-Organization (Nowak, Vallacher, Tesser, & Borkowski, 2000). Both theories present similar views on how knowledge categories would emerge from the organization of positive and negative self-knowledge. However, due to the different research approaches, these two theories focus on the different aspects of this phenomenon. The theory of compartmentalization employs a card-sorting task, which contains forty adjective cards (20 positive and 20 negative). In this task, participants are asked to describe the different aspects of the self by sorting those cards into categories. The self-structure in this task is measured through the degree of compartmentalization. According to this theory, the self-structure can be largely classified as compartmentalized self-structure and integrative self-structure depending on its degree of compartmentalization. Compartmentalization of self-knowledge is regarded as relating to the stability of affective states, and can be seen as the strategies that people are used to cope with negative experiences. The theory of intrinsic dynamics of self-organization employs computer algorithm to simulate how positive and negative elements would interact with each other and eventually organize into different categories after several trials of interaction. Some elements are more influential than others, thereby categories are more likely to emerge according to the valence of elements with stronger influence. This theory also proposes that the press of integration is the underlying factor that drives the organization of positive and negative self-knowledge. In the end, this article briefly reviewed the research on the knowledge structure of others (e.g., close partners and parents). Although the theories regarding other-structures are largely consistent with the research on self-structures, some seemingly incompatible evidence also appeared. And this is exactly the direction that call for future research to clarify. Several questions related to this topic are discussed accordingly. (1) what is the mechanism that underlies the organization of positive and negative self-knowledge? The theory of compartmentalization demonstrated that the compartmentalized self-structure is highly related to emotional response categorization in which knowledge about the self is categorized based on their emotional responses (e.g., sad knowledge category, happy knowledge category), whereas the integrative self-structure is related to relatively unemotional semantic categorization in which knowledge is categorized based on their semantic meaning. However, there is evidence that can show emotional response categorization causes the compartmentalized self-structure, or vice versa. It is possible these two phenomena only occur concurrently. The theory of intrinsic dynamics proposes that it is the press for integration that drives the organization of positive and negative self-knowledge. However, this conclusion is reached through computer simulation, and the shortcoming is that it lacks supporting empirical evidence. (2) whether or not self-structures are the bases of affective disorders? Psychologists in clinical psychology often regard any mental structures as cognitive biases that underlie emotional disorders as depression and anxiety. However, psychologists in the personality and social psychology have demonstrated that self-structures are the strategies with which people are used to cope negative experiences. The present review takes the position of the latter and further proposes that self-structures and affective disorders are concurrently occurred phenomena. Therefore, the clinical research of affective disorders should not only consider environmental factors that cause or trigger the disorders, but also should try to counterbalance the degree of cognitive biases related to self-structures. In other words, both approaches may contribute to the alleviation or even cure of affective disorders.
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    Explicating potential opportunity cost improves intertemporal decision-making in male heroin abstainers
    2023, 46(3): 561-569. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (720KB) ( )  
    Deficiency of intertemporal decision-making in substance addicts which was considered as the behavioral marker of this population has been confirmed by abundant of researches. Besides, more and more results from longitudinal studies indicated that deficiency of intertemporal decision-making in substance addicts may play a significant role both during the beginning, development, withdrawal and prognosis phases in addiction. It followed by a number of researches focused on how to improve the intertemporal decision-making in substance addicts. Among the traditional ways which aimed at this improving, only episodic future thinking (EFT) showed consistent results. However, EFT deeply depends on the active efforts from addicts to think of some cues about future. Because of this kind of demanding, the actual improving effects from EFT is limited for this population. Out of the area of studies in addiction, researchers have found that the intertemporal decision-making could be improved by only explicating the potential opportunity cost of both sooner but smaller (SS) reward option and larger but longer (LL) reward option, this phenomenon was called hidden-zero effect. In order to verify whether the deficiency of intertemporal decision-making in substance addicts could be improved by explicating the potential opportunity cost of both options in intertemporal decision-making, two experiments were designed. Experiment 1 employed the monetary intertemporal decision-making task, and 30 male heroin abstainers were recruited. The result showed that compared with the hidden-zero condition in which the opportunity cost of both options in intertemporal decision-making were not explicated, the number of SS chosen by these male heroin abstainers was significantly lower in explicit-zero condition in which the opportunity cost of both options in intertemporal decision-making were explicated. Experiment 2 employed the cross-commodity delay discounting task which use heroin as immediate reward option and money as delayed reward option, and 27 male heroin abstainers were recruited. The result showed that the delay discounting levels indicated by area under curve (AUC) of these male heroin abstainers were not significantly different between explicit-zero condition and hidden-zero condition. Explicating the potential opportunity cost of both options in intertemporal decision-making may extended the temporal horizon of heroin abstainers and augmented their far-sighted system of intertemporal decision-making, so they could pay more attention to the high reward value of LL which may be less noticed in hidden-zero condition. The relative subjective reward value of SS may decrease when the reward value of LL was more considered. Finally it led to the less number of SS chosen by these male heroin abstainers in Experiment 1. However, considering the relatively higher subjective reward value of heroin compared to money for these heroin abstainers, the relative subjective reward value of immediate heroin reward maybe less changed by explicating the potential opportunity cost of both options in intertemporal decision-making. Because of this, the delay discounting levels in explicit-zero condition and hidden-zero condition were not significantly different in Experiment 2. In conclusion, explicating the potential opportunity cost of both options in intertemporal decision-making can improve monetary intertemporal decision-making instead of cross-commodity intertemporal decision-making for male heroin abstainers.
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    The Influence of Road Situation and Driving Attitude on Driver's Lane-change Decision: An Eye-tracking Study
    Du Xinyu, Ma Jinfei, Liu Hui, Chang Ruosong
    2023, 46(3): 570-577. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1095KB) ( )  
    Does a fun-riding driving attitude—as a driving safety attitude that is closely related to risky driving—affect a driver's lane-changing decision, and if so, under what circumstances? This study aimed to examine the interactions between road situations, fun-riding driving attitude, areas of interest in lane-changing decisions, and the allocations of visual attention of drivers. Road situations, fun-riding driving attitude, and areas of interest were independent variables in this study. Road situations and areas of interest were the within-group variables. The tendency of fun-riding driving attitude was the between-groups variable. Reserved lane-changing time and total fixation durations on the areas of interest were dependent variables. Using the position of the lane-changing vehicle on the lane as the dividing standard, road situations in this study were classified into two types: one-sided and two-sided lane-change situations. In the one-sided lane-change situations, the experimental vehicles were driving on the inner or outer lane. Only one lane can be targeted for changing lanes. But in two-sided lane-change situations, the experimental vehicles were driving in the middle lane. Both the left and right lanes could be used as target lanes. The revised Chinese version of the Driving Safety Attitude Scale (DSAS-C) was used to divide participants into higher and lower fun-riding driving attitude tendency groups. Thirty-five drivers were recruited for experiments in Dalian, China. They ranged in age from 19 to 50 years old and the average age was 28 years old. Participants were shown videos taken from the driver's perspective through the computer and were asked to change lanes by clicking the left mouse button. We employed the Tobii eye tracker to collect the eye movement markers and reaction time of participants. The sampling rate of eye movement data was over 75% for each of them. The eye movement heatmap of drivers was used to classify the areas of interest in the front view and side mirrors. An analysis of variance showed that fun-riding driving attitude tendency was a predictor of the time reserved for lane-changing decisions in two-sided lane-change situations. Drivers with a higher tendency of fun-riding driving attitude reserved a shorter time for changing lanes in the situations. We also found that tendency of fun-riding driving attitude and areas of interest interacted with the total fixation durations of the drivers. Compared to the drivers with a lower tendency of fun-riding driving attitude, drivers with a higher tendency were more focused on the front view in two-sided lane-change situations. Moreover, they also paid more attention to the side mirrors in one-sided lane-change situations. A path analysis of the structural equation model showed that total fixation duration on the front view could be regarded as a mediator of the influence of fun-riding driving attitude tendency on reserved lane-changing time in two-sided lane-change situations. The results showed that the higher the driver's fun-riding driving attitude tendency was, the more he would focus on the front view and the more impulsive the lane-change decision would be in two-sided lane-change situations. The results support the application of the theory of planned behavior in the study of driving decision-making. They are believed to provide evidence for the effectiveness of eye movement measurement methods in measuring and predicting behavioral intentions.
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    The Relationship between?3~4-Year-Old Children’ s Temperament and Parenting Style: A Two Wave Longitudinal Study
    Liu Wen, Guo Xin, Zhang Jiaqi, Hu Wenwen
    2023, 46(3): 578-585. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1248KB) ( )  
    Temperament is a biology-based difference in individual reactivity and self-regulation, which is an important indicator of children's personality and social development. As children develop socialized, they can be modified by behavioral conditioning. Both family system theory and ecological systems theory emphasize that family is the main factor affecting children's development in individual development, especially in parenting. Parenting style refers to the attitude and behavioral tendency that parents show when educating and raising their children. The Transactional Model states that children and parents influence each other dynamically. In this process, the influence of children on parents is equally important as that of parents on children. The two-way relationship between children's temperament and parenting behavior may constitute an interactive and potential causal development path of children's adaptation in a wider developmental context. However, parenting does not happen in isolation, and child characteristics, such as temperament, might shape or evoke parenting behaviors. In turn, parenting behaviors might shape children's temperament, with this transaction between parenting and temperament contributing to children's adjustment. Examination of the relations between temperament and parenting can clarify their unique, additive, and bidirectional relations and elucidate developmental pathways to child adjustment. Throughout the previous studies, most of them examine the unilateral effect of children's temperament or parenting style, and most of them are reflected in the influence of parenting style on the socialization of children's temperament. There are relatively few longitudinal studies on the bidirectional relationship between children's temperament and parenting, and existing studies on the bidirectional relationship generally focus on specific parenting behaviors rather than on more generalized parenting style. Therefore, from the perspective of the developmental Transactional Model, this study will explore the bidirectional relationship between children's temperament and parenting style by using cross-lagged research method. In this study, a total of 293 3~4-year-old children were longitudinal?investigation by questionnaire for one year, two measurements were taken during the period. Children's Temperament Teacher Assessment Questionnaire and Parental Authority Questionnaire were distributed and filled in respectively to children's teachers and parents. All the measures were reliable and valid. SPSS 22.0 and Mplus 7.4 were used to analyze the data. A cross-lagged model was used to investigate the reciprocal relationship between children's temperament and parenting style. The results indicated as follows: there was a significant correlation between the dimensions of temperament and parenting style. Cross-lagged regression results indicated that Time 1 emotionality and concentration of children's temperament could significantly and negatively predict Time 2 mother's doting parenting style. Time 1 maternal doting parenting style negatively predicted the Time 2 activity of children's temperament; the activity of children's temperament and paternal authoritarian parenting style can predict each other, but the influence of paternal authoritarian parenting style on children's temperament activity is greater. Time 1 concentration of children's temperament negatively predicts Time 2 paternal authoritative parenting style, and Time 1 social inhibition negatively predicts Time 2 paternal doting parenting style. The research reveals that there is not only a significant correlation between children's temperament and parenting style at the same time but also a significant relationship with the development of time. This reminds us that children's temperament and parenting style is a dynamic interaction, which plays an important role in exploring the development trajectory of children.
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    Parental Responses to Negative Emotions and the Potential Risk of Personality Disorder in Adolescence
    Wenjuan Zhang
    2023, 46(3): 586-593. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (868KB) ( )  
    For a long time, clinicians and researchers have opposed giving children and adolescents a personality disorder diagnosis. However, a burgeoning number of empirical evidence made it clear that personality disorders occurred in childhood and adolescence. There are a large body of research supporting the important role of family influences on the development of particular type of personality disorder, especially the relationships between family emotional environment and borderline personality disorders. But it is inappropriate to evaluate adolescents’ personality from the perspective of categorical model of personality disorders, which may increase the stigmatization and impede the development of personality. Dimensional perspective of personality disorders in DSM-5 Section III (Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition, and Psychoticism) is considered a better approach to define personality disorders in childhood and adolescence. Because it helps us understand adolescents’ maladaptive personality traits from a developmental psychopathology perspective and connects personality development during childhood and adolescence with adult personality disorders, other than labeling them personality disorder categories. Thus, the present study seeks to evaluate adolescents’ pathological personality traits from the perspective of dimensional model of personality disorders. We aimed to explore the profiles of adolescents’ pathological personality traits and its associations with parents' responses to negative emotions. First, we identified maladaptive personality profiles of adolescents based on 25 pathological personality traits in the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5). Then we further tested the group differences of parental responses to negative emotions on adolescents’ maladaptive personality profiles. Last, we examined the interactions between parental non-supportive and supportive reactions to negative emotions on the development of adolescents’ pathological personality traits. The study was conducted in six middle schools in mainland China. Seven hundred and one adolescents were recruited in this sample. Due to a large number of missing data (> 10%) or suspected random responding, 59 participants were excluded from analyses. The final sample (642 adolescents) comprised the following distribution: 53.6% male, 46.4% female; grade 7 (41%), grade 8 (46%), and grade 10 (13%). The school principals and head teachers coordinated the assessment procedure. All the participants were informed that participation in this study was voluntary and their answers were confidential. Researchers went to each classroom to make the instructions consistent and clear. The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 and Parental Responses to Adolescents’ Negative Emotions Scale were conducted by paper and pencil during regular daily classes in each classroom with 40-60 students. It took about 35-50 minutes to finish the whole questionnaires. We provided free lectures about personality development in adolescence as a reward. The results demonstrated that: (1) three profiles of adolescents’ pathological personality traits were identified: low-risk (25%; low scores across the 25 low-order pathological traits), median-risk (49.1%; median scores across the 23 low-order pathological traits, with the exception of Impulsivity and Rigid Perfectionism), and high-risk (24.9%; high scores across the 25 low-order pathological traits). (2) Adolescents in the three personality disorder risk profiles demonstrated significantly different on all the parental reactions to negative emotions. Specifically, parental warmth/responsiveness and punishment to negative emotions showed significantly different across the three profiles. However, parental expressive encouragement showed non-significant between low-risk and median-risk profiles, whereas parental minimization showed non-significant between median-risk and high-risk profiles. (3) The moderating effect of parental supportive reactions on the relationship between parental non-supportive reactions and adolescents’ pathological personality traits was significant. When parents' supportive response modes were relatively high, the negative path effects were weakened.
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    Warmth or Competence? Preference for Warmth and Competence in Cooperation
    Yan Yiren, Liu Ning
    2023, 46(3): 594-602. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (530KB) ( )  
    Warmth (including friendliness, trustworthiness, well-being, and morality) and competence (related to goal attainment, including competence, ambition, intelligence, efficiency) are the two fundamental dimensions (i.e. Big Two) in social cognition. Previous research explored the relationship between warmth and competence and found that warmth judgments were primary. However, there are certain boundary conditions for the primacy of warmth. Previous research indicated that interdependence might have moderate effect on the primacy of warmth, but the conditions under which interdependence leads to a reversal of the primacy of warmth to the primacy of competence have not been clearly answered. The current study proposes the “interest-interdependence hypothesis”, which states that in an interest interdependent relationship, the primacy of warmth is reversed to the primacy of competence. This study intends to compare preferences for warmth and competence in short-term cooperation with strangers and test the “interest-interdependence hypothesis” by comparing cooperation and neutral scenarios. Study 1a explored preferences for warmth and competence in cooperation from the perspective of others and tested the “interest-interdependence hypothesis”. Fifty university students were assigned to 2 (scenario: cooperation scenario vs. neutral scenario) × 2 (dimension: warmth vs. competence) mixed design. Half of the participants in the cooperation group read the cooperation scenario materials and others in the neutral group read the neutral scenario material. Then all the participants received a list of 16 traits (8 on warmth dimension, 8 on competence dimension) and were asked to choose 8 of them. The results of Study 1a showed that more warmth trait words (as compared to words on the competence dimension) were chosen in neutral group and more competence words (as compared to words on the warmth dimension) were chosen in cooperation group. Study 1b used the warmth and competence trait importance rating task to replicate preferences for warmth and competence in cooperation when perceiving others. Seventy participants were recruited and assigned to mixed design (same as study 1a). Participants in both groups read the corresponding scenario material separately (as in study 1a), and then they were asked to rate the importance of 30 traits (15 on warmth dimension, 15 on competence dimension) in evaluating others in the scenarios they just read. The results showed that, participants in neutral group scored significantly higher on warmth than competence. In contrast, participants in the cooperation group scored significantly higher on competence than warmth. Taken together, findings from these two studies provided evidence to support our “interest-interdependence hypothesis” from the perspective of others. Study 2 explored preferences for warmth and competence in cooperation from the perspective of self. Seventy-six university students were randomly assigned to cooperation group and neutral group, and then read the corresponding scenario material separately (same as in study 1a and 1b). Then they were asked to rate the importance of 30 traits (same as study 1b) in evaluating themselves. The results showed that competence traits were rated as more important than warmth traits in both groups, but the primacy of competence was more pronounced in the cooperation group. The present study not only answers, for the first time, the question of which is more important in cooperation, warmth or competence, but also clarifies the the conditions for the reversal of the primacy of warmth to the primacy of competence in the interdependence and provides initial evidence for the “interest-interdependence hypothesis”.
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    Capital Letter = Power? The Influence of Letter Case in Brand Logo
    Xie Zhipeng, Qin Huanyu, Zhao Jing, Wang Jingyuan
    2023, 46(3): 603-610. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (625KB) ( )  
    A brand logo is the visual representation of a brand. It plays a massive part in determining customers’ attitudes. In both the Chinese and overseas markets, letter cases in brand logos have puzzled scholars and managers alike. Yet to this day, few researchers have studied the influence of letter cases on brand logo design and its moderators. Based on Symbolic Association Theory, the current research uses 2 experiments to test the correlation between letter cases; customer perceived brand power and attitude. Among existing theories, researchers have focused on the impact of brand logos' color, shape size, clarity, border, orthographic slant and other overall elements on consumer perceptions, but few studies have focused on the impact of letter case type in text brand identity on consumer perceptions and attitudes. Existing theory suffers from 3 deficiencies: first, existing studies focusing on the effect of letter cases attribute the impact mechanism to reading fluency, arguing that the use of capital letters in sentences reduces reading efficiency and thus affects reader behavior and that this effect becomes less significant with shorter sentences and words, while brand logos are usually shorter in length; there are also studies It has also been found that uppercase symbols are more recognizable and memorable than lowercase logos. This shows that the existing theoretical mechanisms are contradictory and not applicable to brand identity. Second, previous studies can only explain consumers' preference for lowercase letters but cannot explain why consumers sometimes prefer uppercase logos. Third, due to the lack of relevant studies, the boundaries of consumer regulation of letter-case brand preferences are still unclear. To fill these 3 gaps, we focus on answering 3 questions in this study. First, how the case of letters in brand logos affects consumers' attitudes. Second, what are the psychological mechanisms involved? Third, what types of brands do upper/lower case logos apply to, respectively? A total of 3 hypotheses are proposed in this paper to address these questions. And this study uses three separate sets of experiments to test the proposed hypotheses. Experiment 1 examines the main effect of case identification on consumer attitudes and the mediating impact of perceived power tendencies, and Experiment 2 examines the moderating effect of perceived luxury. This study confirms through 2 sets of experiments that letter case in brand identity further influences consumers' attitudes toward brands by affecting their propensity to perceive brand power, which is moderated by the brand's perceived level of luxury. Expressly, this study confirms that uppercase letters enhance consumers' perceived propensity to display brand power, while a high propensity to show power is beneficial only for brands with more elevated perceived luxury; for brands with lower perceived luxury, lowercase letters with a weaker tendency to display power are more appropriate. The results show that capital letters are more suitable for brands of a high level of luxury, while for brands of a lower level of luxury, the less persuasive lowercase letters are more appropriate. This research not only expands and enriches the scope of SAT (Symbolic Association Theory) but also provides managers and designers with constructive guidelines for logo design.
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    The Influence of Perceived Social Support on Post-Traumatic Growth among Wenchuan Earthquake Young Survivors: The Mediation Role of Gratitude and Self-efficacy
    Xu Wenjian, Liu Leyi, Tang Wanjie
    2023, 46(3): 611-618. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (698KB) ( )  
    Post-traumatic growth (PTG) refers to the positive psychological changes experienced by individuals after struggling with major life crises or extremely challenging traumatic events, which exists widely in people exposed to natural disasters. The development of PTG is affected by many personal and social factors, particularly social support. Studies showed that social support can help individuals reduce their negative assessment of negative events and establish positive cognitive schemata. For individuals, perceiving more social support was conductive to the formation of PTG. However, the mechanisms in the relationship between perceived social support and PTG was not clear and needed more research. According to relevant theories, gratitude and self-efficacy play an important role. First, gratitude is a positive psychological quality related to individual cognition and emotion, which contains the meaning of grace and pleasure. According to the theory of gratitude expansion construction, gratitude can broaden the individual’s cognitive level and scope of thinking and action, help the individual build persistent resources such as body, intelligence, psychology and society, and effectively alleviate the individual’s adverse physiological reactions caused by negative cognitive emotions, so as to promote self-development. Second, self-efficacy refers to the individual’s speculation, judgment, and belief on whether he can complete a certain task. Self-regulation shift theory suggests that if post-traumatic individuals can get good social support, they will feel the improvement of self decision-making belief, improve their perception and evaluation ability, and promote positive psychological adaptation and growth. Therefore, this study incorporates gratitude and self-efficacy into the exploration of the relationships between social support and PTG, examining the internal mechanism under which perceived social support may affect PTG. This study used the Perceived Social Support Scale, the Gratitude Scale, the Self-Efficacy Scale and the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory to investigate 476 youth participants who survived 12 years after the Wenchuan earthquake, 55.46% males and 44.54% females (M age = 24.69 years, SD = 4.25). The structural equation model was performed for analysis. The results showed that: (1) In the long period after the Wenchuan earthquake, the PTG of young survivors still existed, and in the relatively upper-middle level (M = 89.51, SD = 23.00); (2) Perceived social support significantly and positively predicted PTG (β = 0.43, p < 0.001); (3) Gratitude (95% CI [0.00, 0.08]) and self-efficacy (95% CI [0.04, 0.15]) played a partially mediating role between perceived social support and PTG, respectively. The current study further explored the mechanism between perceived social support and PTG, and revealed the important role of gratitude and self-efficacy in the relationship between them. In term of applications, this study found that social support is not only very important for promoting PTG in a short period after the earthquake, but also very important for the long-term development of PTG, which provides an important empirical basis for long-term post disaster psychological reconstruction and psychological intervention. Moreover, this study also provides practical enlightenment for the path of post disaster psychological intervention, that is, the psychological social intervention technology of providing social support, cultivating gratitude and improving self-efficacy, which has strong practical significance for improving the psychosocial adaptability of people in post-earthquake disaster areas.
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    The Relationship between College Students’ Cultural Orientations and Self-objectification: The Mediating Role of Overt Narcissism
    Fan Linlin, Chen Hong, Liu Xinyuan
    2023, 46(3): 619-626. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (791KB) ( )  
    According to the objectification theory, frequent encounters with sexual objectification will coax people into internalizing a third-party self-perspective and observing themselves through a sexually objectifying lens, a process termed as self-objectification. Previous studies reported that a high level of self-objectification would be detrimental to individuals' physical and mental health, so it is important to explore what factors contribute to the development of self-objectification. At the individual level, cultural orientation is the way in which individuals view the relationship between themselves and the external world, and it includes four types: vertical individualism, vertical collectivism, horizontal individualism and horizontal collectivism. Up to now, little research has explored how cultural orientation at the individual level affects self-objectification, and the results of cross-cultural research on self-objectification are also controversial. Overt narcissism is a personality trait, and previous studies suggested that culture may play an important role in shaping overt narcissism. In addition, overt narcissism affects individuals' body awareness. Several studies showed that overt narcissists think their bodies are attractive and they often have a higher level of self-objectification. In conclusion, first of all, there are controversies in previous cross-cultural studies on the relationship between cultural orientation and self-objectification. Secondly, few researchers have explored the role of overt narcissism in the relationship between cultural orientation and self-objectification. In addition, most studies exploring the influence factors of self-objectification included only female participants, so the relationship between cultural orientation and self-objectification in male groups remains unclear. Herein, this study aims to investigate the relationship between cultural orientation and individual’s self-objectification among Chinese college students, and the mediating role of overt narcissism. In addition, this study further discussed whether the mediation model is consistent across genders. Participants included 1720 college students (556 males and 1164 females) from a certain university. Three questionnaires were used in this study: Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Individualism and Collectivism Scale, and Self-Objectification Questionnaire. These scales had good reliability and validity. All data was analyzed by the software of SPSS 21.0 and Amos 22.0. The results indicated that: (1) Vertical individualism was positively correlated with self-objectification, while vertical collectivism, horizontal individualism and horizontal collectivism were negatively correlated with self-objectification. (2) The mediating effect of overt narcissism was not significant in the relationship between horizontal cultural orientation and self-objectification, while horizontal individualism and collectivism only had a direct effect on self-objectification. Vertical individualism and collectivism can not only significantly predict self-objectification, but also affect self-objectification through the mediating role of overt narcissism. (3) There are significant gender differences in vertical dimension cultural orientation, overt narcissism and self-objectification: Male participants scored significantly higher than female participants on vertical individualism, vertical collectivism and overt narcissism, while female participants scored significantly higher than male participants on self-objectification. The mediating models between vertical cultural orientation and self-objectification have measurement equivalence between genders. These results suggest that self-objectification is affected not only by external social and cultural environments, but also by cultural orientation at the individual level and overt narcissism. This means that individual characteristics also play an important role in the formation and development of self-objectification. Concern for collective goals and interests and concern for building harmonious group relations are associated with lower self-objectification. Overemphasis on the uniqueness of the self and the maintenance of the unique self by means of competition and comparison with others are associated with higher self-objectification. Therefore, from the perspective of constructing the individual-collective relationship, researchers can reduce the level of self-objectification by encouraging individuals to devote themselves to the collective goal in future interventions.
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    Taking up the Cudgels or Turning a Blind Eye? The Influence of Peer Abusive Supervision on Bystander Behavior from the Viewpoint of Dual Path
    2023, 46(3): 627-634. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (745KB) ( )  
    Abusive supervision refers to subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact. This phenomenon is common in the workplace and exerts a negative impact on employees’ minds and behaviors. To date, most studies have examined the effects of abusive supervision from the perspective of the victim, but few have explored the consequences from the perspective of the bystander. In light of this, we investigated the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of peer abusive supervision affecting bystander behavior which was based on affective events theory. In order to test our hypotheses, three experiments (including one preliminary experiment and two formal experiments) were conducted. The pre-experiment was a 2 (abuse: yes vs. no) ×2 (relationship: strong vs. weak) between-subjects design to testify successful manipulation. In Experiment 1, the same design was used to explore the mediating effects of moral outrage and schadenfreude. The same experimental procedure was also used in Experiment 2 to verify the stability of the mediating mechanism, and to examine the boundary effects of peer abusive supervision on bystander behavior, as well as whether peer abusive supervision and peer relationships have an interaction effect on bystander behavior. All our hypotheses were supported. Our results indicated that: (1) Peer abusive supervision has indirect positive effects on defender behavior and negative effects on outsider behavior through the mediating effects of moral outrage; (2) Peer abusive supervision has indirect negative effects on defender behavior and positive effects on outsider behavior through the mediating effects of schadenfreude; (3) Peer relationships moderates the positive predictive effect of peer abusive supervision on moral outrage and the negative predictive effect on schadenfreude, i.e., the better the peer relationship is, the stronger the positive effect of peer abusive supervision on moral outrage and the weaker the positive effect on schadenfreude. (4) Peer relationship positively moderates the mediating effect of moral anger, i.e., the better the peer relationship is, the stronger the mediating effect of moral anger, while the peer relationship negatively moderates the mediating effect of schadenfreude, i.e., the better the peer relationship is, the weaker the mediating effect of schadenfreude. Our findings have several important theoretical and practical implications. In terms of theoretical implications, firstly, it introduces a new perspective, i.e., the bystander perspective to explore the mechanism of abusive supervision, which enriches the perspective of abusive supervision research. Secondly, two dimensions of bystander behavior, namely, defender behavior and outsider behavior, are taken as outcome variables of witnessing abusive supervision to expand the research scope of bystander behavior. Thirdly, it shows that organizational situational factors, such as peer relationships, have a certain influence on abusive supervision, revealing a relatively new boundary effect. There are also three main practical implications. Firstly, companies should provide managers with relevant training to reduce the occurrence of abusive supervision. Secondly, companies should establish an ethical workplace environment that motivates employees to take action to maintain justice in the face of abuse. Finally, companies should conduct regular group activities to create a friendly and cooperative organizational atmosphere.
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    Is Marriage the Tomb of Happiness? ——Evidence from CFPS Tracking Data Based on a PSM-DID Approach
    Deng Xiaohui, Xiang Yanhui
    2023, 46(3): 635-643. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1364KB) ( )  
    The relationship between marriage and happiness has always been concerned by the public as well as researchers. Some studies found that marriage could decrease individual happiness, the others revealed that marriage could increase individual happiness. So no clear conclusion has been reached at present. Previous studies mostly used cross-section data, so this study aimed at using the tracking data of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to explore the influence of individual marital status change on happiness. To control the influence of other confounding factors, the methods of Differences-in-Differences (DID) and Propensity Score Matchings (PSM) were adopted in this study. In real life, whether an individual marries or not is not at random, because it may be affected by other covariable factors, such as income, education level, and region. The idea of PSM matching is to convert multiple covariables that need to be matched into an index—propensity score, namely the probability that an individual becomes an experimental group, which in this study is the probability that the marital status changes from unmarried to married. Then, the control group and the experimental group were matched according to different matching methods (such as one-to-one matching, nearest-neighbor matching, K-nearest neighbor matching, kernel-matching, radius matching, etc.). After that, the difference in happiness between the experimental group and the control group was compared by the method of DID, and the pure effect of the experimental treatment (from unmarried to married) was obtained, to reach a conclusion. This study adopted PSM-DID, which not only avoided self-selection bias by means of PSM, but also solved the problems of missing variables and time effect using DID. Besides, it could also answer more scientifically and reasonably whether marriage may lead to the improvement of happiness. The result showed that: (1) the marital status transition (from unmarried to married) could improve individual happiness significantly, which is moderated by gender. To be more specific, happiness increased more in men than women if changing from unmarried to married, of which the explanation mechanism may be related to the health and economic problems brought by marriage. Besides, intimate relationshihp could make people feel more supportive and help improve the physical and mental health, thus affecting individual happiness, which may be moderated by the quality of marriage. What’s more, marriage may also bring more economic benefits for married men than for unmarried men, such as higher wages, and this economic well-being may also contribute to higher happiness to some extent; (2) Increased happiness of men is significantly higher than that of women, the reason may be related to the traditional marriage culture of China and the division of labor between men and women in family structure, which may be the important reasons why change of happiness in marriage is significantly higher in men than in women. According to the traditional view of marriage, men are symbol of power and dominate the family, which could make them be more satisfied about present life after marriage. Therefore, based on the tracking samples in big data for the first time, this study answered the influence of marriage in enhancing happiness, as well as the moderating effect of gender in the relationship between marriage and happiness.
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    Avoiding or accepting? The positive effect activating by the imitation of dissociative reference groups
    Yang Defeng, Lei Xi, Lei Shuyu
    2023, 46(3): 644-651. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (734KB) ( )  
    Consumers are often imitated by others, particularly the dissociative reference groups. Previous study has proposed that the mimicry noticed by imitated consumers would threat their need of distinctiveness, then increasing the intension to disposal or re-customize product they had chosen. Besides, prior researches have mainly focused on the negative effects of dissociative reference groups on consumers. For example, consumers are less likely to choose the products or brands related to their dissociative reference groups, aiming to keep their positive social identity. According to these findings, when consumers are aware that their possessions have been imitated by dissociative reference groups, this mimicry would evoke negative responses such as lower brand attitude. But is this inference always correct? We propose that the impact of imitation from dissociative reference groups depends on the product features, more specifically, the environmental significance. In other words, this study explored the interaction effect of imitation from dissociative reference groups and environmental significance of product on possession disposal intention. Via two experiments, we provide evidence for the proposed main effects and underlying mechanism. Study1 was a 2 (imitation from dissociative reference groups: imitation vs. non-imitation) × 2 (environmental significance of product: green product vs. non-green product) between-subjects design, examining the interaction effect of imitation and environmental significance on possession disposal intention, as well as the mediating effect of meaningful existence. Study 2 was a 2 (manipulation of meaningful existence: manipulation vs. control) ×2 (imitation from dissociative reference groups: imitation vs. non-imitation) × 2 (environmental significance of product: green product vs. non-green product) between-subjects design. In study 2, we further examined the mediating effect of meaningful existence adopting a process-by-moderation approach. The results show that the consumers who are imitated by dissociative reference groups will be more likely to dispose their possessions when using a non-green product. However, consumers report lower disposition intention when the imitated possession is a green product. Besides, this research has identified consumers' meaningful existence as a mechanism explaining the interaction effect above. Meaningful existence mediated the interaction effect of imitation and environmental significance of product. This research has provided several theoretical contributions to the relevant research fields. Firstly, our research extends the literatures about imitation by exploring the boundary condition of noticed imitation. The imitation about green product can lead to positive effect even this mimicry is aware by the mimicked consumers. Secondly, our research extends the understandings about reference group by exploring the positive effect of dissociative group. Thirdly, few studies investigated the effect of green consumption. We explore the positive effect of green consumption in the context of imitation. Finally, we enrich the context of meaningful existence by exploring its’ effect on consumption attitude as well as the influence of imitation on it. From a managerial point of view, our research suggests that companies can cover a story related to the imitation of dissociative reference groups to promote the consumption of green product. Besides, companies can emphasize the environmental significance of product or brand to alleviate the brand crisis triggering by the threat of dissociative reference groups to core consumers. In addition, companies can also help consumers to maintenance or improve their meaning of existence using product or brand, increasing consumers’ attitude towards the brand.
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    The Change of Depressive Symptoms after Career Transitions among Employees at High Risk for Depressive Symptoms
    Yan-Yu Yang cirong LI Chun-Xuan LI
    2023, 46(3): 652-659. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1224KB) ( )  
    The older, female, unmarried and rural individuals often are viewed as populations at high risk for depressive symptoms because of age stereotype, gender stereotype, physiological factors and the lack of resource. Most scholars in depressive symptoms agree that there was higher proportion and level of depressive symptoms in these special populations. In order to add further understanding about these populations, this study tends to examine the depressive symptoms of employees at career transitions. Career transitions as a stressor often induces higher stress that may trigger higher level depressive symptoms for everyone. In other words, due to the stress experience, the older, female, unmarried and rural individuals may be more able to adapt the transition in career and have lower depressive symptoms than other people. We therefore aim to explore whether the older, female, unmarried and rural populations permanently have severe depressive symptoms after career transitions by change score modeling. The present study investigated the effect of career transitions, including self-employed event and off-duty event, on the change of depressive symptoms, and the moderating effect of age, gender, marital experience and urban-rural. Using the longitudinal data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS; 2010, 2012 and 2014), we tracked participants before and after their career transitions and record changes in their depressive symptoms scores by Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (KPDS) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). A total of 19,696 participants finished three-wave depressive symptoms questionnaires (47.63% males and 52.37% female; 8.11% unmarried and 91.89% had married; 44.29% living in urban and 55.71% living in rural; aged from 16 to 91 years, average age 46.22 ± 14.61). There were 745 participants who had a transition from work to the self-employed and 524 participants who departed from work between 2010 and 2012 among these participants. In addition, the effect of career transitions and demographic variables was tested for Mplus 8.3 and the results were showed by path coefficient. The results showed that high level of depressive symptoms brought out an intra-individual decline in subsequent depressive symptoms and the career transitions played an important role in the intra-individual changes in depressive symptoms. Specially, the self-employed event predicted the intra-individual declines in depressive symptoms and the off-duty was opponent. What’s more, the demographic variables had direct effect and moderating effect on the intra-individual changes in depressive symptoms. The findings of direct effect showed the positive association between age and the intra-individual changes in depressive symptoms, and the negative association between gender, marital experience, urban-rural and the intra-individual changes in depressive symptoms. The moderating effect revealed that when becoming the self-employed the older and rural individuals had intra-individual declines in depressive symptoms; whereas, the older and male employees as experiencing off-duty event had intra-individual increases in depressive symptoms. Findings show the older, female and rural individuals as special populations at a high risk for depressive symptoms have intra-individual decreases in depressive symptoms after career transitions. These results give support to our viewpoints that some special populations are not always in high depressive symptoms. Future research could find other risk factors of depressive symptoms to add further understanding of the depressive symptoms of older, female and rural employees. And the findings have broadened implications for theoretical perspectives on psychological health of employees.
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    Implicit/explicit self-confidence discrepancies and advice taking: The moderating role of task complexity
    Wang Bo, Liu Xiangmeng, Bi Chongzeng
    2023, 46(3): 660-667. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (603KB) ( )  
    People frequently encounter advice when making decisions in daily life. Advice is critical to improving decision quality. However, decision-makers are not such receptive to take in advice due to various situational and dispositional factors. Cognitive confidence has been confirmed as one of the most important factors that hinder advice taking, as confident decision-makers are more likely to place more weight on their own initial judgment and disregard others’. Yet, little is known about the impact of dispositional confidence, namely self-confidence on advice taking. Self-confidence, which comprises both explicit and implicit components resting with the degree of consciousness, is defined as one’s beliefs in his/her ability to handle over something (e.g., task at hand). Thus, from the self-concept maintaining perspective, decision-makers with a high level of self-confidence would be less likely to take advice for maintaining a competent self-view. Following the same logic, task complexity is supposed to be a situational factor that affects how receptive decision-makers are to advices. Specifically, effects of self-concept maintaining motivation would be enhanced as task complexity increases as the achievement of a complex task is a more credible competence certificate. On the other hand, explicit and implicit self-confidence discrepancies are supposed to impair self-concept maintaining motivation for implicit self-doubt resulted from discrepancies. In this vein, self-concept maintaining motivation would be further weakened in complex task settings and decision-makers would be more likely to share the extra responsibilities and risks with advisors by taking advice. In the current study, we therefore aim to investigate the joint effect of explicit and implicit self-confidence on advice taking, and the moderating role of task complexity. Two experiments were conducted to testify the foregoing hypotheses. Explicit and implicit self-confidence were measured by a self-report questionnaire and the Single Category Implicit Association Test respectively. Participants completed the coin quantity estimation task, while the task complexity of study 2 was increased by introducing an incentive system. Participants engaged in a repeated estimation task after the initial estimation but at the second time they received advice from a fictitious advisor. Compared with the free advice in study 1, advice in study 2 must be paid before accessing. We measured the extent to which participants relied upon advice using the weight of advice (WOA) index. In study 1, one hundred and twenty-three (under)graduate students were recruited. The results showed that explicit self-confidence was negatively related to advice taking, implicit self-confidence, self-confidence discrepancies, and direction of discrepancies had no impact on advice taking in simple task settings. One hundred and ten (under)graduate students participated in study 2. The results showed that explicit self-confidence was negatively and self-confidence discrepancies were positively related to advice taking, implicit self-confidence and direction of discrepancies had no impact on advice taking in complex task settings. Results based on multilevel analysis confirmed that task complexity amplified the effects of self-confidence discrepancies on advice taking (regression coefficient changing from 0.08 to 0.33). Implications, limitations and future directions are discussed.
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    From “Belief-Consistency” to “Information-Selection”: the moderation of Credibility and the Mediation of Positive Emotion
    Bing-Bing Li li guangzheng
    2023, 46(3): 668-676. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (754KB) ( )  
    In the information age, people's stand tends to be extreme rather than moderate, one of the main reasons is selective exposure. Selective exposure means that individuals choose to be exposed to the information environment with belief-consistency, which is manifested in the fact that individuals are more willing to choose information with belief-consistency for reading, rather than information that challenges the original beliefs. In the Internet era, people choose information more freely and conveniently, which enlarges the harm of selective exposure. Therefore, the theoretical explanation of selective exposure has become the focus of attention of researchers. On this topic, there still is a theoretical dispute between the theory of evaluation bias and the theory of cognitive dissonance. In order to explore the relationship between evaluation bias and selective exposure, and to verify the possible regulatory effect of emotion on both, this study took "mobile phone radiation and health" as the theme, compiled eight related web page links and presented them in the form of real search context. First of all, 147 college students' belief-consistency was measured. After reading the web links, the subjects were asked to evaluate their credibility, positive and negative emotions, and further information selection. Through the moderated mediating effect, the data were statistically analyzed in order to obtain the overall model among belief consistency, credibility evaluation, emotion and information selection. Data analysis showed that the belief-consistency of college students indirectly affected information selection through the complete mediating effect of credibility, while positive emotion plays a moderating role in the influence path of credibility information selection, forming a moderated mediated model. The results showed that there was a completion mediation effect between belief-consistency, credibility and information selection, that is to say, evaluation bias is the direct cause of selective exposure. Individuals do not blindly choose information, and credibility evaluation of information is the premise of information selection. Therefore, evaluation bias theory rather than cognitive dissonance theory is a more direct theoretical explanation of selective exposure. Meanwhile, positive emotion moderates the relationship between credibility and information selection. Under the condition of high positive emotion intervention, individuals may still choose the information even if their evaluation of the reliability of the current web link is not strong. With the help of cognitive dual processing model, it can be explained that high positive emotion plays a more significant role in heuristic processing. In future research, it is feasible to explore the causes of evaluation bias and distinguish different mechanisms of cognitive emotion and thematic emotion.
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    Crafting Your Career: How Occupational Future Time Perspective Relate to Career Success via Job Crafting
    Wang Yiguang, Wang Zhongjun, Lu Jiayu, Huang Mi
    2023, 46(3): 677-684. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (831KB) ( )  
    While pursuing career success, employees can not only satisfy their own pursuits, but also bring benefits to the organization. With the advent of an aging society, it has also led to the phenomenon of aging in the workplace. The age composition of the workplace has become diversified. How to enable employees of different age levels in the workplace to experience workplace success has become an urgent problem to be solved. However, the relationship between age and career success has not been sufficiently studied. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, this study was based on socioemotional selectivity theory, exploring the relationship between occupational future time perspective and career success and its associated mechanism. Specifically, this article explored the research tested the mediating role of promotion-focused job crafting between open future time perspective and career success, the mediating role of prevention-focused job crafting between the limited future time perspective and career success.
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    The priming advantage of circular transitive structure and ERP evidence
    Zhao Guangping, Wu Yanan, Shi Lei, Chen Shunsen
    2023, 46(3): 685-692. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1036KB) ( )  
    Three-word pairs were used to construct two structures of social situations: circular transitive structure and linear transitive structure, and the processing mechanism of social structure was investigated by the Plausible Scenario Judgment Task and ERP technology. The results show that compared with the linear structure, the circular structure induces a significant priming effect, induces a smaller P200, a larger N400, and a smaller P600. This indicates that the subjects have the cognitive characteristics of circular structural balance. Possible exclamation points to the circular transitive structure schema preference of Chinese culture and supports the cultural constructivist view of social structure cognition.
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    How does unfairness perception influence generalized trust?
    Yuan Bo , Chen Siyu, Dong Yue, Li Weiqiang
    2023, 46(3): 693-703. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (444KB) ( )  
    As one of the most important social norms of the human society, fairness is essential for individual subsistence and social stability. Previous studies have shown that unfairness perception decreased specific trust toward the unfair partners. However, it is still unclear whether this effect could extend to unrelated strangers. Two studies were conducted to explore whether and how unfairness perception impacts on generalized trust to unrelated strangers. The results showed that (1) participants who were unfairly treated in the previous Ultimatum Game, invested less money to strangers in the following Trust Game (Study 1). (2) participants who observed unfair behavior in the previous Dictator Game as a beholder, also invested less money to strangers in the following Trust Game (Study 2). The results indicate that unfairness perception formed from previous interaction could temporarily decrease generalized trust to unrelated others in subsequent situation. The current study reveals that maintaining social norms has a dramatic influence on generalized trust and provide scientific reference for trust building and maintenance.
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    Leader taking charge and team performance: The effects of team taking charge and environmental uncertainty
    Yun DAI
    2023, 46(3): 704-711. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1031KB) ( )  
    Reform and innovation are crucial for organizations to survive and develop in VUCA era. However, it is far from enough to rely on formal and limited change initiatives at the organizational level. The discovery of change opportunities and the implementation of change initiatives require the efforts of every member of the organization. As a change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior, taking charge has received a great deal of attention from scholars and practitioners. Taking charge entails voluntary and constructive efforts, to effect organizationally functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs, work units, or organizations. Characterized by challenging the status quo rather than maintaining it, taking charge is regarded as an important guarantee for the survival and success of the organization. As a behavior to improve work effectiveness, taking charge has been proven to enhance job performance in previous studies. However, most studies have limited the actors of taking charge behavior to employees or subordinates in the leader-subordinate dyads, and pay less attention to the leader’s taking charge behavior. Besides that, studies on taking charge are mostly focused on the impact of taking charge on individual-level performance, rather than team-level. Therefore, based on the team level, this paper focuses directly on leader's taking charge behavior, to explore the mechanism and boundary conditions of leader taking charge on team performance. Based on the two-wave data from 380 team members and 110 team leaders, we tested the hypotheses using Mplus 7.4. The results showed that leader taking charge increased team performance via the continuous mediating role of team belief and team taking charge. Environmental uncertainty positively moderated the relationship between leader taking charge and team belief, and the indirect relationship between leader taking charge and team performance via team belief and team taking charge. The positive effect of leader taking charge on team belief is stronger and more conducive to motivating team taking charge and improving team performance under high environmental uncertainty. Possible contributions of this study are as follows: firstly, it has enriched the study of taking charge behavior at the team level. By examining the mechanism that promotes team taking charge and team performance, the study promotes the further expansion of taking charge theory. Secondly, it has broadened the research perspective of taking charge. The study directly focuses on the leader taking charge behavior instead of employees or subordinates, providing valuable insights into the role modeling of leader taking charge to team. Finally, it has verified the effect of environmental uncertainty, indicating a boundary condition to show when leader taking charge is more important to sustain team taking charge and performance. The findings of the study provide some reference for the management practice of organizational change and innovation. Leaders should be fully aware that high environmental uncertainty is a good opportunity for change, and that leaders need to take on the responsibility to enhance employees' initiative and creativity by shaping and strengthening their common beliefs about taking charge, so that they can better cope with future risks and challenges.
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    Females' Preference and Self-Distancing for High Calorie Food after Ego Depletion
    Wang Caiyu, Yu Qiuting
    2023, 46(3): 712-718. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (961KB) ( )  
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    The impact of impression on advisor and motivation-based individual differences on advice taking
    Du Xiufang, Yuan Xiaoqian, Xu Zheng
    2023, 46(3): 719-725. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (566KB) ( )  
    In the process of advice taking, a process of interpersonal interaction, impressions on the advisors formed by decision makers during the interaction with them may affect decision makers’ evaluation of the advisors and then affect decision makers’ adoption of their advice. In the field of social cognition, the impression on a person is usually divided into two dimensions: warmth and competence. For advisors with competence, decision makers will give more consideration to their advice, because they may give the decision makers such impression as knowledgeable, experienced, etc. For advisors with warm characteristics, the warmth dimension may convey a kind of affinity to decision makers. How do people take advice in daily life? Are they more willing to take the advice from warm advisors, or inclined to adopt the advice from competent advisors? This may depend on the characteristics of individual differences of decision makers. The present research considers two individual difference variables that may be relevant to the warmth and competence dimensions: Need for cognition (NFC) and Need for affect (NFA). NFC has been defined as people’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activity; while NFA as people’s general motivation to approach or avoid situations and activities that are emotion inducing for themselves and others. Previous research found that NFC predicts liking of cognitively challenging situations and events, individuals with higher NFC may favor those higher in competence, because they can provide them more cognitive challenges. Similarly, NFA predicts liking of affective and emotionally stimulating situations and events, individuals with higher NFA may favor those higher in warmth, because they can provide them more emotional stimulation. We speculate that individuals with high NFA will adopt more advice from warm advisors, and individual with high NFC will adopt more advice from competent advisors. Two experiments were designed to explore the influence of motivation-based differences in individual characteristics and the impression on advisors on the adoption of advice. There are two types of motivations in individual differences: need for affect and need for cognitive, so Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 respectively explore impressions on the advisors, warm or competent, and the decision makers’ cognitive and affective needs affect their adoption of advice. The results showed that: (1) Individuals with high cognitive needs are more likely to take advice from advisors with competent impression than those with warm impressions. However, individuals with low cognitive needs have no significant differences in the acceptance from the advisors with competent or warm impressions. (2) Individuals with high affective needs take more advice than individuals with low affective needs, whether from advisors with warm impression or from advisors with competent impression, while those with low affective needs are more likely to take advice from competent advisors than warm advisors. (3) In general, decision makers take more advice from advisors with competent impression than from those with warm impression.
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    The Relationship between Marriage and Self-esteem: Insights from the Person-centered Approach
    2023, 46(3): 726-733. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (884KB) ( )  
    Accumulating evidences have found the association between intimate relationship and self-esteem during early in adulthood. According to Social Investment Theory, entering and maintaining a marital relationship could boost self-esteem. This is because marriage as a safe haven could satisfy individuals’ needs for belonging and increase their relational values. However, previous research on the relationship between marriage and self-esteem ignores the multidimensional nature of marriage and individual difference in marriage. Therefore, employing longitudinal person-centered approaches and treating the marital dyad as the unit of analysis, the current study (a) identified the profiles of marriage based on marital satisfaction, intimacy, commitment and marital instability, and (b) examined the differences among those marriage profiles on couples’ self-esteem. Couples (a) who had been married less than 3 years, (b) were in their first marriage, (c) without children, and (d) living together in Beijing, China were recruited. Finally, 268 eligible couples agreed to participate in the investigation at Time 1. Husbands averaged 29.59 (SD = 3.25) years of age and wives averaged 28.08 (SD = 2.51) years of age. Two years later, 203 of the 268 couples remained in the study (retention rate = 75.37%). All couples were invited to the laboratory to complete questionnaires regarding demographics, marital satisfaction, intimacy, commitment, marital instability, and self-esteem. Latent profile analysis was conducted to identify the best number of the potential marriage profiles. Then the BolckCroon-Hagenaars (BCH) method was further used to estimate group differences in couples’ self-esteem. The covariates (i.e., marital duration, self-esteem at baseline) were treated as control variables. Latent profile analysis revealed 3 profiles of marriage: (a) happy marriage (78.6%), (b) tasteless marriage (16.6%), and (c) distress marriage (4.9%). Spouses in distress marriage had relatively higher level of self-esteem than those in happy and tasteless marriage. Moreover, wives in tasteless marriage reported also higher level of self-esteem than those in distress marriage, but these effects were not observed for husbands. These findings suggested that heterogeneity exists in marriage of Chinese newlyweds. The majority of newlywed couples reported a stable and happy marriage. Only 4.9% of couples experienced distress marriage. Notably, happy marriage is more prevalent among Chinese newlyweds. In addition, the distinct marriage profiles are differentially associated with self-esteem. A happy marriage is related to high level of both husbands’ and wives’ self-esteem, indicating the positive effects of good marriage on the feeling of self-worth. However, tasteless marriage is also benefit to wives’ self-esteem indicating that there may exist gender difference in effect of marriage on self-esteem. These findings offer a more nuanced understanding of the association between marital relationship and self-esteem.
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    Explore the longitudinal relation:Longitudinal models based on the cross-lagged structure
    Fang Junyan , Wen Zhonglin , Huang Guomin
    2023, 46(3): 734-741. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1226KB) ( )  
    A cross-lagged structure usually consists of two kinds of effects, autoregressive effects of the prior level of a variable on the current level of itself and cross-lagged effects of the prior level of one variable on the current level of another variable. Longitudinal models with the cross-lagged structure are well recognized as powerful techniques for revealing longitudinal relations between two variables and laying the foundation of diachronic causation. There exist several cross-lagged longitudinal models, while practitioners know little about the association and difference among them, which makes it difficult to choose the most proper one. Although these models are similar in structure, they may differ in the results of estimation. Thus, it is necessary to get a whole picture of these longitudinal models and learn how to compare and choose among them. The present study aims to analyze different cross-lagged longitudinal models and compare them, so as to reveal the importance of model comparison and model selection and provide strategies to select among models. First, we introduce four popular longitudinal models with cross-lagged structure: Cross-Lagged Panel Model (CLPM), Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM), Latent Curve Model with Structured Residuals (LCM-SR), and Latent Change Score Model (LCS). Then, we clarify the similarities and associations among them. Next, we discuss their differences in various aspects. Finally, we conduct an empirical study to illustrate the procedure of model selection. Results show that: (1) these models are very similar in the model configuration because they all analyze diachronic relations by the cross-lagged structure; (2) CLPM can transform into RI-CLPM, LCM-SR and LCS under certain conditions; (3) different models focus on different developmental characteristics and each of them can provide valuable information on the change process; (4) these models could give different estimation results when applied to the same data set, which may induce different conclusions. We summarize several reference points for selecting a proper longitudinal model in practice: (1) research purpose. If researchers are interested in characterizing the development trajectories, then LCM or LCM-SR is preferred; (2) theoretical knowledge and empirical experience. If there is sufficient evidence showing that the within-person process should be separated from between-person difference, then LCM-SR and RI-CLPM could be considered; (3) the model fitting. Several model fit indices can be used. In summary, longitudinal models with cross-lagged structure play an important role in revealing longitudinal relations between psychological constructs. These models are similar in configuration but vary in modeling basis, premises and data requirements, which may give rise to distinct estimation results and conclusions. Researchers should understand the association and differences among them with considerable insight into model comparison and model selection. It is advisable to try different reasonable models and choose the most proper one for the exploration of longitudinal relations.
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    Longitudinal Hamming Distance Discrimination: Developmental Tracking of Latent Attributes
    Liu Yaohui, Chen Qipeng, Xu Huiying, Zhan Peida,
    2023, 46(3): 742-751. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1507KB) ( )  
    Longitudinal cognitive diagnostics can assess students’ strengths and weaknesses over time, profile students’ developmental trajectories, and can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching methods and optimize the teaching process. Researchers have proposed different longitudinal diagnostic classification models, which provide methodological support for the analysis of longitudinal cognitive diagnostic data. Although these parametric longitudinal cognitive diagnostic models can effectively assess students’ growth trajectories, their requirements for coding ability and sample size hinder their application among frontline educators, and they are time-consuming and not conducive to providing timely feedback. On the one hand, the nonparametric approach is easy to calculate, efficient to apply, and provides timely feedback; on the other hand, it is free from the dependence on sample size and is particularly suitable for analyzing assessment data at the classroom or school level. Therefore, this study attempts to apply nonparametric method to longitudinal cognitive diagnostic assessments for tracking student’s learning trajectories. This study extended the longitudinal Hamming distance discriminant (Long-HDD) based on the Hamming distance discriminant (HDD), which uses the Hamming distance to represent the dependence between attribute mastery patterns of the same student at adjacent time points. To explore the performance of Long-HDD in longitudinal cognitive diagnostic data, we conducted three simulation studies and an empirical study and compared the classification accuracy of the HDD, Long-HDD, and Long-DINA models. The purpose of simulation study 1 was to compare the performance of performance of three methods under different simulation conditions. Simulation study 2 focused on the classification accuracy of the three methods at moderate attributes transfer probability level (p(0→1)=0.5, p(1→0)=0.05) and high attributes transfer probability level (p(0→1)=0.8, p(1→0)=0.05). To further highlight the advantages of the Long-HDD in small-scale assessments, the Long-DINA model was used as the data generation model in Study 3. At this point, if Long-HDD still outperforms or does not lose out to Long-DINA model's, the relative advantage of using Long-HDD in a small-scale assessments can be further highlighted. Furthermore, an empirical study was conducted to illustrate the application of the Long-HDD. Under the comparison of the three methods, the results of the simulation studies showed that (1) Long-HDD had higher classification accuracy in longitudinal diagnostic data analysis; (2) Long-HDD performed almost independently of sample size and performed better with a smaller sample size compared to Long-DINA; and (3) Long-HDD consumed much less computational time than Long-DINA. In addition, the results of the empirical study showed that there was good consistency between the results of the Long-HDD and the Long-DINA model?in tracking changes in attribute development. The percentage of mastery of each attribute increased with the increase of time points. In summary, the long-HDD proposed in this study extends the application of nonparametric methods to longitudinal cognitive diagnostic data and can provide high classification accuracy. Compared with parameterized longitudinal DCM, it can provide timely diagnostic feedback due to the fact that it is not affected by sample size, simple calculation, and less time-consuming. It is more suitable for small-scale longitudinal assessments such as class and school level.
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    The pure presence of others enhanced fear generalization
    Dai Yuqian, Dou Haoran, Lei Yi
    2023, 46(3): 752-759. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (663KB) ( )  
    The pure presence of others describes an experimental manipulation variable that someone sit behind another one seeing without doing anything. Clinically, social anxiety disorder (SAD) patients are sensitive to the presence of others. In this study, we examined whether the presence of others show maladaptive fear learning and stronger fear generalization than alone. The answers to such questions could provide a new perspective on the pathogenesis of social anxiety disorder patients. Eighty-four college students participated in this study. Three participants were excluded form analysis due to unsuccessful physiological recording. Eight other participants who could not learn the rules of shock and thus were also excluded. We also excluded eight participants for their preference degree of familiar others reach below 2 points, and six participants for their preference degree of strange others reach over 0 point. Finally, we analyzed 72 participants’ (Female:47, Male: 25) behavioral and physiological data. The experiment has been conducted in two stages: acquisition and generalization. Ten growing rings served as conditioned stimuli (CS) and generalized stimuli (GS). The smallest and the largest rings were set as the conditioned threat stimuli (CS+) and conditioned safety stimuli (CS-), separately. The eight midsized rings were used as for classes of generalization stimuli (i.e., Class1, Class2, Class3, Class4), with Class1 being the most similar to CS+ in perception. The unconditioned stimulus (US) was a 500ms electric shock, which was set at a level that was “uncomfortable yet not painful”. CS+ was probably paired with the US (reinforcement rate: 66.67%), whereas CS- was never paired with US. During the experiment, the online shock expectancy ratings of US and skin conductance responses were recorded. The results showed that there is no difference between the groups in the fear acquisition phase. CS+ has always resulted in higher shock expectancy and SCR than CS-. However, in the generalization test, there was a tendency in the presence of others group with higher shock expectancy, but it is insignificant. In the index of SCR, the main effect of stimulus type depicted a downward gradient. The configuration of these downward gradients differed across groups, as evidenced by a significant stimulus type-by-group interaction. With respect to Class1, the presence of others group displayed a greater SCR than group alone. In the group alone, Class1 induced a greater SCR than Class3 and Class 4, and Class 2 induced greater SCR than Class4, indexed by a steeper gradient than the presence of others group. These results indicated that the presence of others group had a broader generalization than the group alone. According to the theory of negativity bias, threat stimuli would attract more attention resource, leading to a steady attentional bias. During the fear acquisition phase, participants’ attention resources were more easily captured by novel fear stimuli and thus ignored the existence of others present. While in the subsequent generalization test, subjects have learned the rules of CS-US contingencies and therefor the variable of presence of others distracted the subjects’ attention in turn. This is consistent with previous research that individuals tend to allocate resources to the stimulus with higher threat value and inhibit the processing of other elements to better focus on the current target. Our results suggest that the presence of other enhanced fear generalization at the physiological level, rather than at the subjective level. Our findings may have potential value for etiology and treatment of social anxiety disorders in clinical.
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    The inter-coder consistency in qualitative research
    Qi Lidong, Yang Liping, Chen Jiamin, Zhang Dengpan, Shu Mei, Li Xihe
    2023, 46(3): 760-767. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (382KB) ( )  
    Abstract In recent years, there has been a consistent rise in the number of domains that make use of qualitative research methods. More and more psychologists are resorting to qualitative research to get further into their specialized fields of study. They assert that qualitative research is not only more flexible and adaptive but also offers benefits that quantitative research does not. As the number of qualitative studies conducted in psychology continues to skyrocket, researchers have begun paying increased attention to the methods that may be used to evaluate the quality of a study. This pertains to how researchers demonstrate the rigor of their studies. Coding consistency is considered by some to be an important criterion for evaluating the quality of qualitative research. However, there is considerable debate among researchers about whether coding consistency can be used to demonstrate study quality. Therefore, this study synthesizes and discusses the pertinent ideas raised in previous research. Researchers have proposed the concept of "coding consistency" as a reliability factor for coding in qualitative research. There are two forms of coding consistency: intra-coder consistency and inter-coder consistency. The latter type, inter-coder consistency, is a measurement of reliability that is frequently employed by qualitative researchers. The researchers concluded that a higher level of inter-coder consistency suggested a higher level of repeatability in the coding findings as well as a more objective discovery of reality. Nevertheless, this view is questioned by many scholars. They argue that establishing the reproducibility and objectivity of coding should not be the purpose of assessing inter-coder consistency; rather, the goal should be to encourage coders to engage in a negotiated discourse that helps researchers appreciate the study concerns on numerous levels. This topic has been discussed for a considerable amount of time, but no plausible answer has ever been offered. The results showed that many researchers discussed the topics solely from their point of view and did not consider the many distinct components of qualitative research. Inter-coder consistency may be used as a reliability indicator for qualitative research by researchers who pursue reproducibility and objectivity of research results; however, researchers who identify with constructionism suggest employing negotiated coding/critical friends to find many facets of the study issue. In addition, the research summarized many methods for assessing inter-coder consistency, such as percent agreement, category agreement, Cohen's kappa, and other similar techniques. According to the findings of this research, the approach to inquiry is what governs each stage of the qualitative research process. Qualitative researchers must give some thought to the connection that exists between the research approaches that were used and the approach to inquiry. In addition, researchers want to take into consideration the impact that the personal identity aspects of coders have on collaboration. In the not-too-distant future, academics will be tasked with developing procedures for the comprehensive evaluation of qualitative research.
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