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Early Detection of Major Depressive Disorder 2016, 39(5): 1268-1274.  Abstract ( )   PDF (316KB) ( )   The early detection of major depressive disorder (MDD) is critical for timely intervention and better outcomes of treatment. Extensive efforts have been made to evaluate methods of detecting MDD in its early stages of development. Methods that have been empirically shown promising can be roughly classified into three categories, focusing on the prodromal symptoms, the risk factors , and the biological endophenotype of MDD. The prodromal approach identifies individuals with early MDD through the screening prodromal symptoms, such as insomnia, fatigue, difficulty in concentrating, indecision, contemplation, lack of self-confidence, decreased efficiency, helplessness, reduced motivation, tension, irritability, physical discomfort, decreased energy, loss of appetite, gastrointestinal disorders, and so on. The estimated duration of the prodromal period varies across studies, spanning between 6 weeks to 23 months. In most studies, early depressive symptoms were identified by means of clinical interview or mental symptom rating. The second approach, which aims at determining individuals’ susceptibility to MDD, emphasizes the importance of examining the family history and personal risk factors of potential MDD patients. Family history is a major risk factor for MDD. If a first-degree relative has MDD, the chance of an individual developing this disorder is about 10-13%. As for personal risk factors, they could be either cognitive or emotional. Studies have shown that the first-degree relatives of MDD patients are more likely to have negative cognitive biases, and they show low level of positive emotions. A third and promising approach focuses on identifying potential biological markers of MDD. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that MDD patients have abnormalities in brain structure and function. The dorsal anterolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex of MDD patients are reduced in volume. In addition, MDD patients also have reduced activity in the ventral striatum, increased activity of the thalamus in the positive condition, increased activity in cortical midline structures, increased connectivity in the default mode network (DMN), decreased regional homogeneity (ReHo) in the left insula and left cerebellum, shortened latency and increased density of REM sleep. Furthermore, previous studies have found that MMD patients have increased activity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis, and lowered concentration level of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, catecholamines, tryptophan, and γ-aminobutyric acid, in some neural pathways and brain regions. These three approaches are all successful, to varied extend, in detecting early stage patients of MDD. However, one needs to be mindful of the disadvantages of these research approaches. The prodromal approach is phenomenological in nature, the prodromal symptoms usually lacks specificity and the methods used to identify them are too often subjective. Longitudinal studies that focus on individuals’ susceptibility to MDD is scarce in the literature; it remains unclear how various family and personal risk factors collaborate to deliver the end result of MDD. In clinical situations, it is not possible for a psychiatrist to make diagnoses based solely on these risk factors. As for the biological endophenotype approach, most previous studies have examined clinical stage patients rather than those in the early stages of developing MDD. Thus, it is difficult to determine which of the identified biomarkers are reliable warning signs of MDD. To identify reliable and objective precursors of MDD and to build an accurate risk prediction model, future studies should consider the use of high risk family designs to trace down the biological endophenotype of MDD. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Male Criminals' Personality on Personal Dangerousness: A Mediated Moderation Model 2016, 39(5): 1223-1228.  Abstract ( )   PDF (504KB) ( )   “Personal dangerousness” is a newly-developing concept with the rise of criminal positivism school. At present, there are two kinds of different definitions of the “personal dangerousness” in the field of criminal jurisprudence. In a narrow sense, it refers to the possibility that an offender commits a crime again(Qu Xinjiu, 2000). Broadly speaking, personal dangerousness is the combination of the possibility of the first offence and the possibility of the second offence (Chen Xingliang, 2004). As the researchers’ angles of view are different, the concept of personal dangerousness varies. In this research, the “personal dangerousness” is defined as the possibility that the criminals serving sentences seriously violate the prison regulations, commit crimes in jail and recommit crimes after release ( Huang Xingrui, 2004). Criminals with high personal dangerousness, not only have the possibility of committing a crime again, but also infect others as a source of crime (Zhao Linhu, 2010). Therefore, it is necessary to study the key factors and mechanism of the personal dangerousness. This study aims to explore the mediated moderation among personality, social support, mature coping style, and personal dangerousness after controlling several variables which conclude age, education, marital status, and crime times. 463 male criminals from four prisons in Zhejiang Province took part in the questionnaire survey. The self-report questionnaires included Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Social Support Rating Scale, Mature Coping Style Questionnaire and Criminal Personal dangerousness Checklist Scale. The data were analyzed by the Structural Equation Model using the AMOS 5.0 program. The results were that the mediated moderation model provided a good fit to the data, X2 = 93.75, df = 27, p < .001, NFI = .95, IFI = .96, CFI = .96, RMSEA = .073. Our findings are as follows: (1)Risk factors, which affect criminals’ personal dangerousness, are age, education level, marital status and crime frequency. In other words, the younger the male criminal, the higher his personal dangerousness; the more frequently the criminal commit crimes, the lower the possibility he regrets and accepts the education correction and the higher his personal dangerousness; the lower his education level, the more difficult for him to accept correction, and his personal dangerousness will be higher; the unmarried and divorced, because of lack of family limitation and low sense of social responsibility, have higher personal dangerousness. (2)Personality of male criminals affects personal dangerousness greatly as personality and personal dangerousness are significantly positively correlated. Male criminals, who are extroverted, tend to be more dangerous and have higher possibility to commit crimes again after rehabilitation. (3)social support moderates the effect of personality on personal dangerousness, so we should focus on improving the level of their social support, from which they may experience warmth and power of kinship, to strengthen the “reducer” effect of social support. (4)mature coping style mediates this moderation effect. Therefore, courses about the coping ability of male criminals can be set to cultivate their ability of thinking positively when faced with difficulty and stress. Psychological intervention schemes can also be developed to cultivate mature coping skills to lower the personal dangerousness of male criminals by intervening this mediating variable. In conclusion, the results of the above study stress the influence of male criminals’ social support and mature coping style on lowering personal dangerousness, which are meaningful for prison work. Related Articles | Metrics

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Constructive Deviance in Organizations: Conceptualization, Formation Mechanisms, and impact 2016, 39(5): 1242-1247.  Abstract ( )   PDF (576KB) ( )   With the increasing interest in positive organizational scholarship, interest in constructive deviance has grown. A growing literature explores the notion of constructive deviance conceptualized as behaviors that depart from the norms of the reference group such that they benefit the reference group and conform to hypernorms. Despite the role of constructive deviance in increasing innovation and fostering organizational change, there is a lack of empirical research in the area. Our review is organized around series of questions. We begin with “What is constructive deviance?” We discuss the origin and concept of constructive deviance, indicating that constructive deviance is a type of voluntary behavior that is characterized by prosocial intentions, departing from the norms of organization, conforming to hypernorms. We then turn our attention to the measurement of constructive deviance. Western scholars measure construction deviance mainly through the self-report scale. “What leads to constructive deviance and why?” Here, the results of theoretical and empirical research on the antecedents of constructive deviance are summarized, finding that personal characteristics and variables of perception and attitude, as well as organizational context characteristics all have significant effects on constructive deviance. The end result of this review is an integrative model of constructive deviance. Using the three common theories to organize our review (Self-determination theory, Social exchange theory, and economic rationality), we provide an emergent model that integrates extant theoretical and empirical work on the antecedents of constructive deviance. We then ask, “What is the effect of constructive deviance?” In this section, the double results of constructive deviance are explained. On the positive side, effective constructive deviance is beneficial not only to organizations because it increases innovation, enhances competitiveness and fosters organizational change; but also to employees who do constructive deviance because it brings the positive performance evaluation and the advantage to the occupation development. On the negative side, if the employees showed too much construction deviance, the stability and effective operation of the organization would be threatened. Even worse, too much constructive deviance causes confusion and disorderly situation. Finally, we propose the possible future research directions: (1) to explore the construct of constructive deviance. (2) to prepare predictor scale suitable for Chinese, to provide a reliable measurement instrument for advanced study. (3) to explore the multi-level dynamic formation mechanism of constructive deviance, probing into the mediating mechanisms in constructive deviance formation, as well as the interaction mechanisms of personal characteristics and situational factors to constructive deviance, such as the role of intrinsic motivation，responsibility and organizational justice in mediating the relationship between organizational context and constructive deviance of individuals - context interactions impacting on constructive deviance. (4) to explore the boundary condition of constructive deviance, because it’s a double-edged sword to the organization and its employees. Finally, we analyze the contextual characteristics in China which might affect constructive deviance, and propose to carry out the localized research on constructive deviance. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Literature Review and Development of Organizational Change Readiness Theories Xue-liang HAN 2016, 39(5): 1248-1255.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1093KB) ( )   Organizational change readiness is the antecedent for implementing change. The scholars holding psychological view argue that its main purpose is to sharp the stakeholders’ mindset. However, the scholars holding structural view argue that it reflects the capacity of the organization in implementing the change and its ability to obtain the related resources. This paper reviews both the two views, especially the studies under the psychological perspective. However, the purpose of this paper is not limited to the review of literatures. Based on the present achievements in organizational change readiness research, this paper aims to explore a new theoretical framework about organizational change readiness. The paper reviews the development and measurements of the organizational change readiness, and analyzes the research trends under the panoramic view. It shows that: there are many scholars focusing on the individual-level. In contrast, there are few studies on group-level and organizational-level change readiness. Studies on the individual-level have confirmed the following findings: firstly, the individual tendency, group norms and organizational culture can predict individuals’ readiness for change; secondly, the individual change-supportive behaviors, working attitude and employee’s organizational commitment are all consequences of the organizational change readiness. There are few studies which have analyzed the consequences of collective readiness. Present studies on the collective-level have concluded that the sustain momentum of workshop, team climate, affective tone and emotional aperture can affect the collective readiness for change. Studies from the organization-level can be divided into two streams. The scholars holding psychological view emphasize the strength of the organization culture in readiness for change. One of these studies has confirmed that both the group culture and adhocracy culture have positive effect on individual readiness for change, while the other two kinds of culture, i.e. the market culture and hierarchy culture, have negative effect on individual readiness for change. The scholars holding structural view emphasize the resources and abilities of the organization in readiness for change, such as financial readiness, technological readiness, staff readiness, process and practice readiness, business readiness, etc. Integrating the results of the present organizational change readiness research, this paper has built a new theoretical framework of organizational change readiness. The new theoretical framework has not only merged the psychological and structural views of readiness for change, but also divided the organizational change readiness into three stages: the antecedents of readiness for change, the concepts and measurements of readiness for change and the consequences of readiness for change. The new theoretical framework in this paper has bridged the gap in this field: both the consequences in collective-level and the measurements in the three levels (individual-, collective- and organizational-) of organizational change readiness, need more studies in the future. In addition, the conceptualization, multi–level study and cross–cultural comparison should get more attention in the future studies. This paper makes notable contributions to Chinese organizational change research and offers implications for the companies to adapt to the current economic transformation in China. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Cleansing Priming on Moral Judgment：Exploring the Influence Factors 2016, 39(5): 1236-1241.  Abstract ( )   PDF (317KB) ( )   The metaphor “cleanliness is next to godliness ” is widely accepted in real life. Recently, researchers have tried to use the methods applied in behavior and cognitive science to prove the mental reality of this metaphor. And many researchers pay a lot attention to the casual effect of physical to moral judgment. However, there have been heated debate on the direction to which physical cleansing will lead when making moral judgments, more severely or even more tolerably? Hence, it is important for us to understand how cleansing priming works for moral judgments, and what factors influence these two different directions. After referring to some related research, there are some factors people paid few attention to like the original mental states (mood) before cleansing priming, priming methods of physical cleanliness, the roles people play (actor or observer) in moral judgments, the type of moral behaviors, as well as some unknowable moderators and mediators, and all these factors could exert some distinct influences on our moral judgments. Based on these, researchers should further explore states like disgust, happiness or neutral before and after cleanliness priming. Moreover, different cleansing priming should be more precisely defined and the combination of cleansing priming with different subject roles may also make some difference. And the influence of moral scenarios together with some other mediators (such as moral self-image and political standpoint ) or moderators (like compulsive tendencies and perfect personality) on morality should also be paid close attention to, so as to reveal the mechanisms of cleansing priming in shaping moral behavior and moral cognition more correctly. What’s more, cleanliness priming in future research should be manipulated more standardly. And specific groups like criminals or judges should also be paid attention to, so as to explore the effects of cleanliness on moral judgment among these groups. Besides, owing to culture limitation of metaphor, future researches need to take culture factors into account when carrying out related researches. Given that dirtiness or cleanliness of physical environment plays such an important role in reality, future researchers should pay more attention to the role of situational factors of cleansing in morality; That is to say researchers need to attach great importance to the implication roles of cleansing clues, such as the locating place of the slogan, public service advertising or dustbin. Great importance should also be attached to the rebuilding of environment in prison, so as to make a better environment for prisoners which may help them reform better. Only in these ways, can Chinese people shape moral behaviors and cognition more correctly in this comfortable and clean environment. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Research on the Effects of Materialism on Dual Filial Piety: A Perspective of Intergenerational Transmission 2016, 39(5): 1216-1222.  Abstract ( )   PDF (913KB) ( )   Filial piety as one of the core values of Chinese traditional culture, which has become the dominant psychology, behavior and the strength of daily life. Therefore, filial piety is an important topic of indigenous psychology, the relevant empirical study is still rare, so the research of filial piety need to be further deepened and enhanced. Intergenerational transmission is a new perspective and hot topic of this field. A series of studies have been carried out abroad, but we just begin to introduce overseas relevant research dynamic, and the empirical research of intergenerational transmission of filial piety is lack both in domestic and abroad. Therefore, the study tried to explore the effects of materialism on intergenerational transmission of authoritarian filial piety and reciprocal filial piety. Data was drawn from a survey of 439 children and their father or mother by door-to-door investigation in a village in Hubei province. Parents completed the Dual Filial Piety Concept Scale and materialism Scale, and children completed the Dual Filial Piety Concept Scale and materialism Scale. This took about 15 to 30 minutes to complete the questionnaires. The descriptive statistics, and correlation and regression among factors were calculated with SPSS 18.0, and AMOS17.0 was applied to deal with all data. The results indicated that parents’ materialism had negatively predicted children’s authoritarian filial piety and reciprocal filial piety, and children’s materialism had negatively children’s authoritarian filial piety and reciprocal filial piety. Parents’ materialism had positively predicted children’s materialism, and children’s materialism played complete intermediary role between parents’ materialism and children’s authoritarian filial piety and reciprocal filial piety. The results also found that there were significant effect on the intergenerational transmission of authoritarian filial piety and reciprocal filial piety. But children’s materialism played a significant negative moderate effect between parents’ authoritarian filial piety and children’s authoritarian filial piety; and children’s materialism played a significant negative moderate effect between parents’ reciprocal filial piety and children’s reciprocal filial piety, but the moderating effect of parents’ materialism are not significant. In conclusion, this study examined about the effects of materialism on intergenerational transmission of authoritarian filial piety and reciprocal filial piety. Generally speaking, materialism had multiple negative impacted parents and children’s authoritarian filial piety and reciprocal filial piety. The findings and conclusion of this study has important significance for some social or family problems, and provides reference for education of filial piety in home and school. These results also provide some empirical evidences sinicization research and cross-cultural comparison. It contributes to our understanding of dual filial piety in Chinese society. Related Articles | Metrics

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Empowering Leadership Behavior and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Role of Supervisor Identification and Psychological Ownership for Organization 2016, 39(5): 1229-1235.  Abstract ( )   PDF (754KB) ( )   Empowering leadership behavior, which includes delegating authority and encouraging participative decision making, is one of the most effective behaviors to lead to empowerment of employees, and receives widespread attentions. Beyond confirming the effect of empowering leadership behavior on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), research is relatively limited regarding the underlying mechanism and boundary condition. From the perspective of relational identification and sense of control, we developed a moderated mediation model to investigate the mediating role of subordinate’s supervisor identification and the moderating role of subordinate’s psychological ownership for organization. Data were collected from 162 supervisors and their 460 immediate subordinates. The survey was administered twice with a time lag of two weeks in order to alleviate problems of common source bias, and questionnaires were completed on-site with the help of human resource managers. Subordinates completed a survey evaluating supervisors’ empowering leadership at Wave 1, and another survey reporting their supervisor identification and psychological ownership for organization at Wave 2. Supervisors rated subordinates’ OCB at Wave 2. Multiple regressions and two different procedures recommended for testing moderated mediation were performed to test the hypotheses. The results supported our hypotheses. Evidence was found of a moderated mediation framework in which supervisor identification mediated the positive relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate’s OCB (indirect effect = .06, p < .05), and at the same time, subordinate’s psychological ownership for organization moderated the second stage of this mediation relationship. Specifically, the indirect effect of empowering leadership on OCB through supervisor identification was significant when psychological ownership for organization was medium and high (p < .01), and insignificant when psychological ownership for organization was low (p = .11). The present study enriched research about empowering leadership behavior, and highlighted the underlying mechanism and boundary condition of its effectiveness on subordinates’ OCB. Our research demonstrated that empowering leadership behavior satisfied subordinates’ need for enhancing self-esteem and obtaining psychological safety, evoked subordinate’s trust in supervisor, and thus enhanced subordinate’s supervisor identification. Empirical evidence of the importance of supervisor identification provided future research direction for relational identification. We also found that psychological ownership for organization moderated the relationship between supervisor identification and OCB, and subsequently the indirect relationship between empowering leadership behavior and OCB. For practical implications, supervisors should offer employees more autonomy and support, thus enhance their supervisor identification, and promote OCB. Also, as having subordinates who have the sense of owners of organizations enhances the effect of empowerment, it is necessary for organizations to cultivate employees’ perception of possession and relatedness with their organizations, i.e., psychological ownership for organization. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Different Gender Orientation of Names on Female Mate Preferences 2016, 39(5): 1190-1196.  Abstract ( )   PDF (805KB) ( )   Impressions of individuals often begin with a name. Introductions are made and perceptions formed about individual‘s behavior and potential for success and may even determine whether future interaction is desired . Some studies on recruitment behavior have found that the information of ethnicity and gender conveyed by name affected name owner’s interview opportunity. A study of online dating revealed that negatively named individuals were more neglected by other online-daters, as indicated by fewer first visits to their dating profiles. Previous researches on names were mostly focused on the names in western culture, in Chinese culture it's common that a male has a female-oriented name and vice versa. A research conducted by Chinese scholars examined the impact of first names on ratings of attractiveness by using pictures presented with male-oriented or female-oriented names , the stimulus figures whose gender orientation of name and gender identity of picture are consistent were considered more attractive. This paper explored the impact of different gender orientation of names on female mate preferences in the early stage of mate selection, when first reading the brief personal profiles of potential partners before meeting. In study1, the independent variable is the first name (male-oriented, female-oriented) of male candidates, and the dependent variable is mate selection. One tactic to disguise the hypothesis and increase the realism of the task was the use of a foil candidate in a set of three candidates. The foil candidate has a male-oriented name and was created to be weaker than the other two candidates (three variables are controlled: age, height, education level). Study2 added photographs to candidates’ profile on the basis of study1. In addition, participants rated candidates on scales adapted from the Partner Ideal Standards Scale (Fletcher et al., 1999), so as to explore the mechanism of name effect in mate selection. Each scale asked participants to indicate how accurately the item described the candidates from 1(very inaccurate) to 7 (very accurate). The ideal standard dimensions were (a) warmth/trustworthiness, (b) attractiveness/vitality, and (c) status/resources. The results of study1 and study2 showed that there were significant differences in the female participants’ selection of the three male candidates. The candidate with male-oriented name was selected more than the one with female-oriented name. The foil candidate was selected less than the one with male-oriented name, and was selected less than the one with female-oriented name.We built binary logistic regression models to predict the mate preferences from ratings of the Partner Ideal Standards Scale. The dependent variable is mate selection, of which the male-oriented name was coded “1”, and the female-oriented name was coded “0”. The independent variable is the ratings of the ideal standard dimensions. The results revealed that the perceptions of attractiveness/vitality was a significant positive predictor of mate preferences. Conclusion:(1) the gender orientation of names had an impact on mate preferences. For man, the female-oriented name got less opportunities in the early stage of mate selection. (2) The perceptions of attractiveness/vitality caused by name positively predicted mate preferences. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Power Level and Task Difficulty on Advice Taking 2016, 39(5): 1184-1189.  Abstract ( )   PDF (407KB) ( )   In the domain of advice taking, most researches focused on how others’ advice influences the judges’ decision and the extent to which the judges accept the advice. Advice taking is an interpersonal process in which the social status of adviser and judge play an important role. In such a setting, power may convey important information about the relationship of adviser and judge. So the perceived power of judge may affect the degree of advice taking. Because individuals who experience high level of power have more confidence, tend to keep distance from others according to the social distance theory of power, individual with high level of subjective sense of power tend to discount advice, which was stated by previous researches. But the legitimacy of power may decrease the confidence and reduce the social distance of judge. That is, the influence of power on behaviors will change if individuals think the power is illegitimate, so the effect of illegal power on advice taking would be reversed. What more, task difficulty may also moderate the effect of power on advice taking. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of different power and the task difficulty on advice taking. Two experiments were designed within the JAS paradigm. The decision task was estimating the number of coins in a glass. The legitimate power in experiment 1 and the illegitimate power in experiment 2 were primed using word search task. There were 122 college students took part in experiment 1 and 97 students took part in experiment 2. The dependent variable was the level of advice-taking which calculated by the formula of WOA (weight of advice). The independent variables were power level (high vs. low) and task difficulty (easy vs. difficult), dependent variable was extent of advice taking, and estimation task was used in both experiments. The results were as follow: (1) when judges thought their power were legitimate, their level of power significantly influenced the level of advice taking. Individuals experiencing high level of power were less receptive to advice than individuals experiencing low level of power. Task difficulty had significant effect on advice taking. People weighed advice significantly more when the task was difficult than when the task was easy. (2) When the judges thought their power was illegitimate, individuals experiencing high level of power weighted advice less than individuals experiencing low level of power when the task was easy, but there was no difference between them when the task was difficult. This research suggested that, the power status unconsciously lead to reject others’ advice, although everyone knew the principle listen to both sides and you will be enlightened. So we should remind ourselves constantly don’t treat others using condescending attitude. A modest attitude to others’ advice is necessary to rational decision making. Related Articles | Metrics

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To Empower or Not to Empower Your Followers？An Implicit Followership Theory Perspective on Leader Empowerment Behavior Jian PENG KANG Yongjun Xue-liang HAN 2016, 39(5): 1197-1203.  Abstract ( )   PDF (649KB) ( )   As empowerment was found to enhance followers’ work motivation, and to allow them to be more adaptive to the rapid changing environment, the role of leadership in empowering followers has received increasing attentions in organizational research and practice. Leadership empowerment behavior refers to a set of actions in which a leader shares power to his or her followers through highlighting the meaningfulness of work, fostering participation in decision making, conveying confidence in high performance, and providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints. While previous research on this topic extols the positive effects resulting from leader empowerment behavior, it remains unclear what factor can predict the emergence of leader empowerment behavior. In recent years, the implicit followership theory, which comes from the combination of social cognitive theory and followership literature, draws a new perspective to investigate the antecedents of leadership empowerment behavior. According to the implicit followership theory, individuals generate personal assumptions about the traits that characterize followers. Integral elements of implicit followership theory are prototypes, which are abstract, composite mental representations for particular cognitive categories. Based on the valence of a prototype, followership prototypes are classified into two types: the positive followership prototype (PFP) and the negative followership prototype. PFP comprises the assumed traits characterizing good followers, such as industriousness, enthusiasm and good citizenship. To date, many scholars focused on leaders’ PFP and found that leaders’ PFP affected followers’ job attitude and performance through leader-member exchange. In compliance with the research approach for positive psychology, we also plan to concentrate on leaders’ PFP. In organizational settings, leaders' PFP may be activated unconsciously and compared with the followers' explicit/actual followership characteristics in the leader-follower interaction. Leaders act in accordance with the outcome of these comparisons. Drawing on such arguements, we aim to explore the effect of the congruence between leader’s PFP and follower’s positive followership trait (PFT) on leader empowerment behavior. Polynomial regression combined with the response surface methodology was used to test the hypotheses. Based on a sample of 226 leader-follower dyads from two companies in China, we showed that: (1) The more agreement (i.e., higher congruence) between a leader’s PFP and follower’s PFT, the higher the leader empowerment behavior; (2) In the cases of congruence, leadership empowerment behavior was higher when leader PFP and follower PFT were both high instead of being both low. There are still some shortcomings in this paper. First, the study probes only into the direct impact of followership prototype congruence on leadership empowerment behavior, whereas the underlying mechanism and its boundary conditions are not discussed. We suggest the mediating role of trust in followers and moderating role of leadership prototype agreement can be examined in future studies. In addition, we explain the relationship between the independent variable and dependent variable in detail, adopting the method of multi-source data to avoid common method variance, but the cross-sectional study design constrains our findings about causality. Thus, future research can take advantage of a longitudinal study design or experimental design to test the effect of implicit-explicit followership congruence on leader empowerment behavior. Related Articles | Metrics

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Person-Supervisor Fit and Employee Work Well-Being:The Role of Leader-member exchange and political Skill 2016, 39(5): 1204-1209.  Abstract ( )   PDF (530KB) ( )   Work well-being has attracted much attention with the rise of positive psychology, which focuses on positive attitude and affect at workplace, and plays a positive role for organization outcomes, such as organization performance, organization citizenship behavior and so on. Previous research suggests that various forms of person-environment fit are helpful to improve employees’ well-being, for example, person-organization fit and person-job fit can enhance employees’ work well-being. However, those studies mainly focus on other types of fit, without elaborating the basic process between person-supervisor fit and work well-being, in other words, some questions should be answered on this topic, first of which is through what internal mechanism person-supervisor fit operates on work well-being, and the second is what is the boundary condition of person-supervisor fit and work well-being. To answer the questions, we intend to explore how person-supervisor fit affects work well-being and when their relationship is changed. First, we reviewed the existing literatures about person-supervisor fit and work well-being. Second, based on the social exchange theory, we developed a model to examine the mediating role of leader-member exchange between person-supervisor fit and work well-being, and the moderating role of political skill between person-supervisor fit and leader-member exchange. In the end, we testified the hypotheses by empirical data. Data were collected among 209 employees in China through two wave surveys to reduce the common method bias. Person-supervisor fit , leader-member exchange and political skill were evaluated at the first time, and work well-being was evaluated one month after the first time. Confirmatory factor analysis results indicated that all variables have high reliability and validity, and four-factor model were better than other models. Hierarchical regression was used for data analyses. The results showed that person-supervisor fit was positively related to employee work well-being(β=0.165, P<0.01), leader-member exchange fully mediated the relationship between the person-supervisor fit and work well-being, and political skill played a negative moderating role between person-supervisor fit and leader-member exchange. In conclusion, this research examined the mediating role of leader-member exchange between person-supervisor fit and work well-being, which unveiled the underlying mechanism of person-supervisor fit and work well-being. Meanwhile, we also examined the moderating of political skill between person-supervisor fit and leader-member exchange, which revealed the boundary condition of person-supervisor fit and work well-being. This research not only answered the question of how and when person-supervisor fit affects employee well-being, but also examined the scientificalness of the social exchange theory. Thus, the research has a great significance to enrich the theoretical research of work well-being. The study has implicated that organizations could enhance the fit between employees and their supervisor by selection, training, and so on. What’s more, supervisor can develop and strengthen the special interests of supervisor and subordinate to affect the cognition of person-supervisor fit. Then, organization should pay much attention to the role of leader-member exchange. Finally, remind employee should use political skill reasonably. At the end of the article, we point out the limitations and future research directions. Data were collected among 209 employees in China through two wave surveys to reduce the common method bias. Person-supervisor fit , leader-member exchange and political skill were evaluated at the first time, and work well-being was evaluated one month after the first time. Confirmatory factor analysis results indicate that all variables have high reliability and validity, and four-factor model were better than other models. Hierarchical regression was used for data analyses. The results showed that person-supervisor fit was positively related to employee work well-being(?=0.165，P<0.01), leader-member exchange fully mediated the relationship between the person-supervisor fit and work well-being, and political skill played a negative moderating role between person-supervisor fit and leader-member exchange. In conclusion, this research examined the mediating role of leader-member exchange between person-supervisor fit and work well-being, which unveiled the underlying mechanism of person-supervisor fit and work well-being. Meanwhile, we also examined the moderating of political skill between person-supervisor fit and leader-member exchange, which revealed the boundary condition of person-supervisor fit and work well-being. This research not only answered the question how and when person-supervisor fit affects employee well-being, but also examined the scientificalness of the social exchange theory. Thus, the research has a great significance to enrich the theoretical research of work well-being. The study has implicated that organizations could enhance the fit between employees and their supervisor by recruit, train, and so on. What’s more, supervisor can develop and strengthen the special interesting of supervisor and subordinate to affect the cognition of person-supervisor fit. Then, organization should pay much attention to the role of leader-member exchange. Finally, remind employee should use political skill reasonably. At the end of the article, we point out the limitations and future research directions. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Social Exclusion on Ego Depletion: The Compensation Effect of Self-awareness 2016, 39(5): 1210-1215.  Abstract ( )   PDF (373KB) ( )   Social exclusion is generally defined as the need of people’s belongingness and social relationships, which is thwarted owing to being excluded by a group or other people. Relevant researches suggest that social exclusion may affect the cognition, emotion and behavior. The proposition of ego depletion is based on the strength model of self-control, it is the phenomenon when self-control failed, which people unwilling to control themselves. According to the self-control failure theory of the social exclusion and the strength model of self-control, social exclusion may affect the ego depletion. Ego depletion could cause aggressive behavior, bad emotion and so on. During recent years, researchers had found that there were several methods to compensate the influence of the ego depletion. Self-awareness refers to the inner subjective state of individual when he is aware of himself. Previous research has consistently demonstrated a unidirectional link between self-awareness and self-control, that self-awareness increases self-control performance. Based on these, we expect that self-awareness can compensate the influence of ego depletion, which also can compensate the ego depletion caused by social exclusion. With Chinese college students as participants, there are two experiments in this study. In Experiment 1, the aim was to explore the compensation of self-awareness on the ego depletion. This experiment used cross “e” paradigm to initiate ego depletion, and also use the word-search test to prime self-awareness, which was a common kind paradigm of self-awareness’s priming. The experiment also used the Stroop task as the method of the ego depletion measurement. 60 college students were randomly assigned to any one of the four experimental groups, there are 15 subjects in each group. It was a 2(ego depletion: initiate vs. non initiate) ×2(self-awareness: prime vs. non prime) between-group design. All the subjects would finish the ego depletion initiation task (cross ‘e’ task) first, then the subjects completed the Brief Mood Introspection Scale to test their mood state, and then they operated the test of self-awareness’s priming, at last, they completed the Stroop task. The results showed that, the main effect of ego depletion initiation and self-awareness was significant and the interaction of the ego depletion and self-awareness was also significant. Based on Experiment 1, Experiment 2 further explored the role of self-awareness in the relationship between social exclusion and ego depletion. This experiment used the recall writing paradigm and the real condition rejection method to initiate the social exclusion. It was a 2(exclusion situation: the recall vs. the real)×3(exclusion type: the rejected vs. the accepted vs. the controlled)×2(self-awareness: prime vs. non prime) between-group design, there are 180 college students in the experiment, they were randomly assigned to any one of the experimental groups. The number of the subjects was 15 in each group. In the recall condition, the subjects must write the experience of being excluded, or accepted, or the activity of yesterday. While in the real condition, the subjects were informed that they were joining in an activity to set up the real situation. After that, all the subjects evaluated the sense of exclusion by themselves, and then finished the BMIS. Then the subjects operated the task of self-awareness’s priming, at last, all the subjects finished the Stroop task. The results showed that, the main effect of social exclusion and self-awareness was significant, and the interaction of social and self-awareness was also significant, the results also showed that, the main effect of exclusion situation was significant. In this research, we conclude that self-awareness can compensate the effects of the ego depletion, which also can compensate the effects of the social exclusion on ego depletion. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Grandchild-caring on the intergenerational ambivalence in Rural China 2016, 39(5): 1137-1143.  Abstract ( )   PDF (890KB) ( )   Closeness and distance, intimacy and setting boundaries, harmony and conflict were inevitable in intimate social relations such as those in families. A considerable proportion of parents and adult children experience these mixed feelings. Researchers agreed that the feelings of ambivalence. However, the current knowledge about intergenerational ambivalence primarily came from the findings of Western studies, and there was lake of studies on whether the Western-derived concept of ambivalence could be applied to the traditional families like those in rural China. Furthermore, with profound social and economic transformations, China was facing to the urbanization and migration of population, resulting in the more and more dispersion of young grandchildren and older parent left behind in rural areas as a result of massive rural-urban migration. Grandparents became crucial caring resources in the rural families. This study investigated the effects of grandchild-caring provided by older parent on intergenerational ambivalence in rural China, where was a traditional society undergoing dramatic demographic, economic, and social changes. In former studies, many researchers had studied the effect of the grandchild-caring on the elders’ well-being, generally based on the role strain or role advantage. However, the conclusions still were confused. Different from the grandparenting in West, as a role of grandparenting, the grandparents were entitled to provide caring for their grandchildren, especially for the grandchildren of their sons. Although the grandparenting role might create a sense of fulfillment, as to the lack of other social resource, it was often long-term demanding, and may leave older parents with few options of exit, companying with a sense of ambivalence. Thus we employed the theory of role strain to explain the effects of grandchild-caring on intergenerational ambivalence of older parents in rural China. Using the data from the survey “Well-being of Elderly in Anhui Province, China” conducted in Chaohu area by the Institute for Population and Development Studies at XXX University, in conjunction with the University of Southern California and Syracuse University, we carried out the two-level Tobit models to examine the effects of grandchild-caring on ambivalent feelings reported by the older parents toward their adult children. We found that, because of less access to the formal social supports in rural China, grandchild-caring provided by older parents to their adult children was associated with higher levels of ambivalent feeling toward their adult children, which supported the theoretical explanation of the role strain theory for grandparenting. Due to the gender role and gender division of household work in Chines families, the grandchild-caring, especially the low intensity of caring, heightened the strains of the older fathers and thus worsen their ambivalent feeling, but not for the older mothers’. Furthermore, due to the strong son preference in rural China, the older parents reported greater ambivalence toward sons than toward daughters. Especially for the older parents providing the low intensity care for their adult daughters experienced the lower level of intergenerational ambivalence. These results suggested that the strong interdependence between older parents and their children, especially the preference for the sons, would create the greater feeling of ambivalence. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Relationship between Mother’s Emotion Regulation and Children's Emotion Understanding Competence: The Mediating Role of Maternal Reactions to Children’ Negative Emotions 2016, 39(5): 1130-1136.  Abstract ( )   PDF (616KB) ( )   Abstract Children's emotional understanding competence is an important component of their emotional socialization that is the foundation of emotional communication and social interaction. It is also a good indication of their social-emotional development and social adjustment. Children who have high emotional understanding competence are more likely to recognize others' emotions and predict others' behaviors, thus are more accepted by other children. Among the factors that influence children's emotional understanding competence, mothers' reactions to their children's negative emotions play an important role. Mothers accept and talk about children's negative emotions, which facilitates children' acceptance of negative emotions. Mothers' emotional regulation also influences their ways of coping with emotional events and their attitudes and reactions to children's negative emotions, which eventually affect children's emotional understanding competence. In the present study, we focused on the relationship among the mothers' emotional regulation mode, maternal reactions to children's negative emotions, and children's emotional understanding competence. The aims of the present study were (a) to examine whether mothers' emotion regulation mode significantly predicts children's emotion understanding competence and mothers' reactions to their children's negative emotions, and (b) to investigate the mediating role of maternal reactions to their children's negative emotions between mothers' emotional regulation mode and children's emotional understanding competence. The present study used emotional comprehension task to examine 258 children's (aged from 3-5 years old, mean age 54.92±9.73 months，49.4％boys) emotion understanding competence, their mothers completed emotional regulation questionnaire (ERQ) and coping with children's negative emotions (CCNES) questionnaire. The results indicated that the level of children's emotional understanding competence increased with age. The gender difference was significant, with girls performing better than boys in emotional comprehension task (p<.01). Mothers scored highest in the mode of emotion-focused and problem-focused, and scored lowest in punishment reaction (p<.01). Mothers used more supportive reactions than non-supportive reactions when coping with their children's negative emotions. Mothers displayed more punishment and non-supportive reactions to boys' negative emotions, but more emotion-focused and supportive reactions to girls’ negative emotions (p<.01). Mothers' emotion regulation mode (positive-rumination, positive-revealing and negative-reappraisal) significantly predicted children's emotional understanding competence, which remained significant after adding maternal supportive reactions (encouragement expression, emotion-focused and problem-focused). Maternal supportive reactions, especially the encouragement expression, to children's negative emotion played a mediating role between maternal emotional regulation mode and children's emotional understanding competence. In summary, mothers showed more emotion-focused, problem-focused reactions to their children's negative emotions. Mothers displayed more punishment and non-supportive reactions to their sons' negative emotions, but more emotion-focused and supportive reactions to their daughters' negative emotions, which may lead to girls performing better than boys in emotional comprehension task. Maternal supportive reactions, especially the encouragement expression reactions, to children's negative emotions had a mediating role between maternal emotion regulation mode and children's emotional understanding competence, which suggests that, mothers' supportive reactions especially encouraging their children to express their bad feeling may benefit their children's emotion understanding competence when children experience negative emotions. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Adolescents’ Peer Attachment on Depression: The Mediating Role of Friends Social Support and Self-Esteem 2016, 39(5): 1116-1122.  Abstract ( )   PDF (733KB) ( )   Adolescence was an important period during which adolescents developed lots of psychical and psychological characteristic so as to be prepared for being adults. However, faced with great psychical changes, mental changes as well as developmental crises, adolescents were especially likely to be depressive. According to researches in both China and abroad, the prevalence of depression among adolescents was very high. It ranged from 20% to 44% and grew fast with each passing day at the same time. Therefore, many researchers has done lots of work to find out factors that had significant effects on adolescents’ depression. In the past few years, researchers have shown increasing interest in adolescents’ peer attachment, because it has been demonstrated that peer attachment was an important protective factor for adolescents’ social development and mental health. However, there were few researches focused on the protective effect of peer attachment on adolescents' depression. Moreover, developmental psychologists pointed out that adolescents were increasingly rebellious toward parents with the development of self-awareness and their peer intercommunication would increase gradually. These made peer attachment became an important source of social support, needs of security and belonging, which were all important protective factors for adolescents to avoid from being depressive. In addition, previous researches showed that social support and self-esteem had important effects on depression and both social support and self-esteem were negatively correlated with depression. In order to explore the relationship among peer attachment, social support, self-esteem and depression as well as mechanism of peer attachment on adolescents’ depression, this study focused on the mediating role of social support and self-esteem between peer attachment and adolescents' depression and its’ learning stage difference. A survey research method was adopted in which Inventory of Peer Attachment, Perceived Social Support Scale, Self-Esteem Scale as well as Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale were administered to 668 middle and high school students. Data were collected and analyzed with SPSS 17.0，and the bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap method was used to analyze the serial mediating roles of social support and self-esteem between peer attachment and adolescents' depression. The results indicated: (1) the relationships between each pair of peer attachment, social support and self-esteem were significantly positive, while the three were negatively correlated with depression. Peer attachment not only had direct negative effect on depression, but also could significantly predict social support and self-esteem; social support could significantly predict self-esteem; both social support and self-esteem could significantly negative predict depression. (2) For all the participants, peer attachment not only had direct negative effect on depression, but also could affect adolescents’ depression through the mediating role of self-esteem. There are learning stage difference on the mediating role of social support and the serial mediating role of both social support and self-esteem. These findings highlighted the acting mechanism of peer attachment on adolescents’ depression through the serial mediating role of social support and self-esteem. Peer attachment influenced adolescents' depression through social support and self-esteem as well as their combined effect. Adolescents with positive peer attachment, such as peer trust, would get more social support and have higher self-esteem, and finally have lower level of depression. Related Articles | Metrics

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How disgust affects moral judgment across age groups Ming Peng 2016, 39(5): 1110-1115.  Abstract ( )   PDF (489KB) ( )   Disgust emotion has been evolved to avoid disease infection. When the risk of disease is high, people will be more likely to comply with the commonly accepted social rules and practices to reduce the chance of infection. It has been demonstrated that, when primed with disgust emotion, compared with the neutral emotion, people rated moral transgressions and violations more harshly. However, disgusting emotion was not bring inborn. The disgust emotion responds to parasite pressure not only over evolutionary time, but also over lifetimes. Rozin et al. (2000) proposed a developmental model of disgust describing the particular categories of disgust elicitor appear in a certain sequence and Stevenson’s study (2010) demonstrated this model, that is core disgust developed first, while sociomoral disgust was the last. Therefore, the relationship between disgust and sociomoral judgment was developed with growth. However, there have not been studies to examine the development of the disease avoidance function of disgust emotion. In this study, we employed grade 1 (about 7 years old) and grade 4 (about 10 years old) primary school students and adults (about 21 years old) to investigate the influence of disgust on moral judgment across age. Half of the participants first rated a set of disgusting stimuli pictures of feces, dead insects, and rotten foods and then completed the moral judgment, whereas the other half of participants first completed the moral judgment and then rated the disgusting stimuli. Moral judgment behaviors included some moral violation behaviors (e.g., tearing a friend’s favorite book apart, giving a piece of moldy bread to a homeless person, cutting up the neighbor’s dog that died in an accident and eating it for dinner). Participants rated the disgusting stimuli on a 5-point scale, with the following anchors: really dislike, dislike a bit, unsure, like a bit, and really like. On a 3-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 3 (very much), participants rated the extent to which each of the three types of behavior was wrong, the extent to which it deserved punishment, and the extent to which they wanted to make a friend (for primary school student participants) or to be a roommate (for adult participants) with the person committing the moral transgression. The results showed that both adults and grade 4 students under the disgust condition rated the conduct related moral violations behaviors more harshly than the control group under the control condition. Grade 4 students under the disgusting condition avoided the person committing the moral violation more than participants under the control condition. However, the same results were not found in primary school students of lower grade. The correlation between the disgust ratings and the critical judgment of moral transgression was statistically significant in the primary school student participants. It is concluded that that the influence of disgust emotion on moral judgment appears after 7 years of age and develops with growth, then stays at a constant level in adulthood. Related Articles | Metrics

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Orthographic Learning in Chinese Children: Effects of Character Type and Exposure 2016, 39(5): 1105-1109.  Abstract ( )   PDF (520KB) ( )   To date, no research that explores the orthographic learning of Chinese from the “self-teaching” view has been reported. Chinese researches suggest that both the character type and the component familiarity affect the orthographic learning of Chinese children. The present study is to test the “self-teaching hypothesis” (Share, 1995) on Chinese children and extend this hypothesis through taking character type and component familiarity into consideration. The current study adopts the classical "self-teaching" paradigm (Share, 1999). In the orthographic learning phase, 41 average Chinese second graders were asked to read aloud 12 self-compiled stories, which each contains 1 embedded pseudocharacter as target character. All of the characters and pseudocharacters in stories have Hanyu pinyin labeled as pronunciation clues to help children read the stories correctly. While reading the stories, children were not given any feedback as to their pronunciation of the target characters, nor were they provided with the pronunciation. Three factors are manipulated to investigate their effects on orthographic learning, including the character type, the exposure time and the posttest intervals. There are 12 pseudocharacters in total, which can be divided into 3 types: (a) 4 simple pseudocharacters, reformed from simple characters that selected from first grade Chinese language textbooks, and each of which is an integral whole that contains no component or subcomponent; (b) 4 familiar compound pseudocharacters, which each consists of 2 familiar components appearing in legitimate positions; (c) 4 semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters that each consists of 1 familiar component and 1 unfamiliar component, which both appear in legitimate positions. The familiar components were selected from textbooks of first and second grade, and the unfamiliar components were from textbooks of third to sixth grade. There are 2 exposure time condition, including 3 times and 6 times. Two simple pseudocharacters, 2 familiar compound pseudocharacters, and 2 semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters appear 3 times in the stories, while the rest of pseudocharacters appear 6 times. During the orthographic test phase, the orthographic choice task and the writing task are tested to measure children’s recognition and recall performance of the 12 pseudocharacters, respectively. These 2 tasks were both first administered immediately after the orthographic learning phase (Time 1) and again 3 days later (Time 2). All testing was conducted one on one in a quiet area of the children’s school over two sessions. Results reveal that Chinese children can also "self-teaching" during stories reading aloud when target characters exposure 3 times and maintain part of the learning effect for 3 days like Hebrew children (e.g., Share, 1999) and English (e.g., Nation et al., 2007) children. Compared with familiar compound pseudocharacters and semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters, simple pseudocharacters can be recognized most accurately at Time 1 and Time 2 (ps<.05), however, this result is not the case for writing task. The performance of familiar compound pseudocharacters is better than that of semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters on orthographic choice task (p<.001) and writing (p<.05) task at Time 1, nevertheless we find no significant difference between scores of familiar compound pseudocharacters and semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters at Time 2. The scores of semi-familiar compound pseudocharacters are the lowest across two posttest points. These results suggest that simple pseudocharacters have recognition advantage that can maintain for 3 days during the orthographic learning process. By contrast, familiar compound pseudocharacters have recall advantage only on the day that children read aloud the stories. Additionally, it is hard for children to learn compound pseudocharacters contain unfamiliar components through "self-teaching". This study confirm our hypothesis that Chinese children can have "self-teaching", and both the character type and the component familiarity play key role on this orthographic learning process, which has important enlightenment for further theoretical research and literacy teaching. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect Mechanism of Stress on College Adaptation among Minority College Students in Han District Colleges 2016, 39(5): 1157-1163.  Abstract ( )   PDF (646KB) ( )   The university stage is the important turning point of the psychological development of minority college students in Han district colleges. Therefore, the adaptation of minority college students in Han district colleges to this stage not only directly influence their current physical and mental development, but also influence their subsequent development (Glass, Gómez, & Urzua, 2014; Mattei, 2014; Perera & McIlveen, 2014; Torres & De la Cruzb, 2015). Previous researchers found that college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges was worse than college adaptation among common college students (Lu, 2007; Meng, 2014; Zhou, 2014). It is very necessary to study factors and the potential mechanisms that influence college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges in order to improve their college adaptation. The present study aimed to explore the moderated mediation among stress, coping style, cultural intelligence and college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges. A sample of 779 minority college students in Han district colleges of 8 college (416 boys and 363 girls, Mage=20.21±.88) was recruited in the study to complete self-report questionnaires. The self-report questionnaires used in this study included sense of stress scale, coping style scale, cultural intelligence questionnaire and college adaptation questionnaire． The results indicated that: (1) stress was a risk factor of college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges; (2) coping style mediated the effect of stress on college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges. Stress not only directly influence college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges, but also through influence positive coping style and negative coping style, ultimately influence college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges; (3) cultural intelligence moderated this mediation effect of coping style. Cultural intelligence not only moderated the relationship between stress and coping style, but also moderated the relationship between stress and college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges. For minority college students in Han district colleges with high levels of cultural intelligence, with the increase of stress, minority college students' negative coping style and college adaptation had no obviously ascending trend (β= –.03, t = –.65, p > .05; β= –.05, t = –.54, p > .05), and minority college students' positive coping style had descending trend (β= –.14, t = –3.07, p <.01)．For minority college students in Han district colleges with low levels of cultural intelligence, with the increase of stress, minority college students' positive coping style and college adaptation had obviously descending trend (β= –.30, t = –6.24, p < .001; β= –.53, t =–5.38, p < .001), and minority college students' negative coping style had ascending trend (β= .23, t = –4.71, p <.001). The effect of stress on college adaptation among minority college students in Han district colleges was moderating mediating effect. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Field dependence/independence on Hypermedia Learning: A Moderating Effect of Tolerance of Ambiguity Jing-Jun CHEN Chun-Mei ZHANG 2016, 39(5): 1164-1170.  Abstract ( )   PDF (539KB) ( )   As one of the core technologies of Internet, the hypermedia technology is playing a more and more important role in peoples’ daily lives, including their online learning. The cognitive style of field dependence/independence is an important variable which has a strong influence on hypermedia learning. However, According to the Kolb’s learning model, the person is required to employ each of the four key learning abilities: concrete experience, abstract conceptualization, reflective observation, and active experimentation. The difference in learners’ cognitive styles only related to their abilities what about “concrete experience” or “abstract conceptualization”. And the tolerance of ambiguity was proved to relate to learners’ abilities what about “reflective observation” or “active experimentation”. These four key learning abilities together have an impact on peoples’ learning. Thus, the tolerance of ambiguity may be another important variable has influence on hypermedia learning. In addition, it is likely to moderate the relationship between cognitive styles and hypermedia learning achievement. The present study aimed to examine the impacts of levels tolerance of ambiguity on hypermedia learning achievement and the moderating effect of tolerance of ambiguity between cognitive styles of field dependence/independence and hypermedia learning achievement. A total of 285 college students were asked to measure their tolerance of ambiguity with a Ambiguity Tolerance Scale, cognitive styles of field dependence/independence with a Cognitive Style Figure Test. Then they were asked to study through a hypermedia system about the human body blood circulation which we made it ourselves. Then, their hypermedia learning achievement was measured with a knowledge test. The multiple hierarchical regression analysis were employed to examine the moderating effect of tolerance of ambiguity. The results were as follows: (1) Cognitive styles of field dependence/independence related to learners’ tolerance of ambiguity when some variables were controlled. Field independence learners tend to have a lower tolerance of ambiguity. (2) Tolerance of ambiguity significant predicted learners’ hypermedia learning achievement while the impacts of cognitive styles were controlled. (3) Tolerance of ambiguity moderated the relationship between cognitive styles and hypermedia learning achievement. For low and medium tolerance of ambiguity learners, cognitive styles significant predicted their hypermedia learning achievement. While for high tolerance of ambiguity learners, cognitive styles can’t predict their hypermedia learning achievement. The present study extends our understanding of the hypermedia learning on individual differences and introduces the tolerance of ambiguity to the hypermedia learning filed, and upsets the status quo what the value of hypermedia learning was evaluated only according to learners’ cognitive styles of field dependence/independence. In conclusion, the study shows the moderating effect of tolerance of ambiguity between field dependence/independence and hypermedia learning achievement. These results highlight the important role that learners’ tolerance of ambiguity play in their hypermedia learning, and argue that the field dependence learners can also adapt hypermedia learning while have a high level of tolerance of ambiguity. Furthermore, the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and field dependence/independence is still controversial in previous studies. The present study discusses this problem from the view point of theory and practice. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Parental Involvement on Students’ Achievement Goals: The Moderating Role of Parenting Style 2016, 39(5): 1098-1104.  Abstract ( )   PDF (852KB) ( )   Achievement goals have important effects on various educational outcomes. Numerous studies have examined school factors as antecedents of achievement goals, while less attention has been paid to family factors. A small body of research linked parental involvement with student motivation, however, most studies examined parental involvement in a fragmented way. Moreover, few studies considered possible moderators in the relationship between parental involvement and achievement goals. Thus, the current study explored the effects of parental involvement on students’ achievement goals within an integrated framework (i.e. home-based involvement, school-based involvement, academic socialization), and whether the relationship would be moderated by perceived parenting style (i.e. parental autonomy support versus parental control). This study also explored age difference in the above relationship, in order to further reveal the effects of parental involvement among different age groups. Participants were 2038 students from 9 schools in Beijing, among which, 625 were elementary students, 637 were junior high school students, and 776 were senior high school students. Three questionnaires were administered during a 45-minute class period: Achievement Goals Questionnaire (mastery goal, performance-approach goal, and performance-avoidance goal), Parental Involvement Questionnaire (home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and academic socialization), and Parental Autonomy Support/ Control Scale. All data were analyzed using SPSS 20.0. A set of hierarchical regression analysis were conducted, with student gender and socio-economic status being controlled. Results showed that: (1) Different aspects of parental involvement had differential effects on achievement goals. Generally, academic socialization positively predicted all three achievement goals (β ranging from .10 to .27), home-based involvement positively predicted performance-avoidance goals (β ranging from .10 to .18), and school-based involvement positively predicted mastery goals (β ranging from .15 to .18). (2) There were age differences in the relationship between parental involvement and achievement goals. For junior and senior high school students, academic socialization positively predicted performance-avoidance goals (β = .14 and .11,ps< .01 ), and school-based involvement negatively predicted performance-avoidance goals (β = -.12 and -.11,ps< .05). However, these relationships were not significant for elementary students. Also, home-based involvement positively predicted elementary, but not middle school students’ performance-approach goals (β = .10, p < .05). (3) Parenting style moderated the relationship between parental involvement and achievement goals. Overall, autonomy supportive style strengthened the relationship between parental and mastery goals, while controlling style strengthened the relationship between parental involvement and performance goals. Specifically, under high parental control, academic socialization (β = .09, p < .05) and home-based involvement (β = -.13, p < .001) had greater positive effects on elementary students’ performance-approach goals. Also, academic socialization had greater positive effect on junior high students’ performance-avoidance goals (β = -.14, p < .01). When parental autonomy support was high, home-based involvement had greater positive effect on senior high students’ mastery goals (β = .15, p < .01). This study contributes to the literature by examining the effects of parental involvement on students’ achievements goals within an integrated framework, and by considering the moderating role of parenting style, as well as age differences. These results also have practical implications. Aside from emphasizing the importance of education to their children, parents should actively communicate with the school. At home, parents should provide an autonomy-supportive learning environment, and give children sufficient mental support, instead of focusing solely on academic achievements or social comparison. Related Articles | Metrics

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Development of children's social competence- from cultural environment and social change perspective 2016, 39(5): 1177-1183.  Abstract ( )   PDF (311KB) ( )   Social competence is a classic question in the field of psychology. Previous studies have explored the relationship between social competence and other factors, as well as the impact of social culture and environmental factors on children's social competence development. Over the past few decades, China's economy grew rapidly, society underwent great changes, and the resulting impact can’t be ignored. However, based?on the review of existing studies, we found few studies realizing the important role of the time factor (social changes) on children’s social competence development. From both static and dynamic perspective, the study discussed many factors that influence the development of social competence to explore its development process. First of all, the paper introduces two main conceptions of social competence used in previous studies. Then, latest research results on cultural environment and social change were reviewed, which bring us some useful inspiration. For example, we can reduce the adverse effects of poor economic condition by creating a better home environment and develop children’ social competence by creating a good class atmosphere and providing more emotional support from teachers. In addition, we should take full advantages of social change and economic development to provide children with rich social education resource and develop children’s autonomy, social initiative and other social competence. So that they can better adapt to the changing social environment. Finally, in order to deeply explore the developmental characteristics and impact mechanism of children’s social competence and promote its healthy development, this paper points out that the future research in this area should pay attention to following aspects. First, researchers need to emphasis on clarification conception of social competence. That means future research should be conducted in a unified theoretical framework to facilitate comparison and integration of results from different studies. Second, Interactions and dynamics of various factors should be valued. Social development is a dynamic process, in which social and cultural environment are evolved. Researchers need to treat the impact of social and cultural environment with an ongoing and varying perspective, simultaneously, consider the interaction of various factors on the different environmental aspects. At last, attentions need to be paid to the improvement of the research methods. Different measurement methods can be used in further research according to children’s age. Longitudinal study can be employed to explore the impact of various social and cultural environment factors on the initial levels and growth of social competence. Afterwards, we can develop a more accurate description of developmental trajectories of children's social competence. Our findings suggest that developmental trajectories of social competence are influenced by both social cultural environment and social changes. Future research needs to be conducted to value the role of time factor and explore the developmental model of children's social competence with an ongoing and varying perspective. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Head Teachers’ Emotional Intelligence on Students’ Emotional Intelligence: Direct Effect or Indirect Effect. 2016, 39(5): 1151-1156.  Abstract ( )   PDF (517KB) ( )   Most of previous studies have focused on the impact of teachers’ Emotional Intelligence (hereinafter referred to as EI) in learning climate, teaching behaviors and students’ academic performance. Besides, class emotional climate could affect students’ emotions and behaviors significantly. But some limitations still exist. As the direct manager of the class, head teachers’ EI should be more significantly related to creating class emotional climate and affecting the development of students’ emotions. But so far these kinds of studies are still really few. This research studies the relationship between head teachers’ EI and students’ EI, exploring the influencing mechanism of head teachers’ EI and class emotional climate to students’ EI. The students surveyed were chosen randomly from 10 middle schools in Guangzhou, and the total number of these students accounted for 1083. In addition, the head teachers of these students were the subjects of this study as well, whose total number accounted for 30. The junior high school students surveyed had completed EI Scale and Emotional Climate Scale, while their head teachers had completed EI Scale. Hierarchical linear model was used to analyze data with the HLM software. What students’ EI and class emotional climate describe are individual characteristics of student, which are the variables of student’s individual level. And for this reason, students’ EI and class emotional climate are the level-1 variables. Class emotional climate includes negative emotional climate and positive emotional climate. As for head teachers’ EI, it describes the characteristics of teachers, which is the variable of class level. So head teachers’ EI is the level-2 variable. Sex of student is a control variable of level one. Grade, seniority and teaching subject of head teacher are the control variables of level two. In order to exactly analyze the influencing mechanism of head teachers’ EI and class emotional climate to students’ EI, this study forwards two models. The first model is used to analyze the moderating effect of head teachers’ EI in class emotional climate’s effect on students’ EI. The second model is used to analyze the mediator effect of class emotional climate in the effect of head teachers’ EI on students’ EI. The results show that head teachers’ EI can positively predict students’ EI, which means the higher head teachers’ EI is, the higher students’ EI is. The moderating effect of head teachers’ EI is significant in class emotional climate’s effect on students’ EI. Specifically head teachers’ EI can enhance the positive effect of class emotional climate on students’ EI and blunts the negative effect of class emotional climate on students’ EI. At last, the mediator effect of positive emotional climate and negative emotional climate are significant partly in the effect of head teachers’ EI on students’ EI, and the mediator effect sizes are 31.48% and 6.98%. Finally on the one hand, head teachers’ EI can not only positively affect students’ EI directly, but also indirectly impacts students’ EI through influencing class emotional climate. On the other hand, head teachers’ EI can adjust the impact of class emotional climate on students’ EI. Related Articles | Metrics

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Study on Personality Development of Children Aged 6~12 Years Old with Cohort-Sequential Longitudinal Design 2016, 39(5): 1123-1129.  Abstract ( )   PDF (773KB) ( )   Over the past few decades, personality researchers have suggested that personality during childhood is significantly more changeable, but much less is known about how do children’ personality traits typically develop. Additionally, as development may be faster paced in children, shorter time-intervals may be necessary to capture changes. Moreover, it is important to take into account the possibility of gender differences and age differences in Personality development during childhood. The present study investigated personality development in Chinese children from 6 to 12 years old，including the development characteristics of different ages and genders. The study adopted a longitudinal study with a cohort-sequential design to examine personality development in nine cohorts of children who were, respectively, 6 - 6.5, 6.5 - 7, 7 - 7.5, 7.5 - 8, 8 - 8.5, 8 - 8.5, 8.5 - 9, 9 - 9.5, 9.5 - 10 and 10 - 10.5 years of age at the first measurement. The study was designed 4 waves in total, which measurement was taken every six months. There were 1318 Chinese primary school students (667 boys, 651 girls) participated in this research .Teachers reported on the children’s personality dimensions by filling out the Teacher-Reported Personality Inventory for Children. The questionnaire is derived from the lexical tradition, based on an extensive analysis of free teacher-descriptions of their students. This instrument includes 62 items, assessing 15 facets that are hierarchically structured under five higher order domains. The higher order domains are labeled as follows: (1) Extraversion (11 items), (2) Prosociality (13 items), (3) Conscientiousness (16 items), (4) Emotional Stability (8 items) and (5) Intelligent (14 items). Items were rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The questionnaire is reliable(Cronbach's Alpha=0.97, spilit half reliability=0.91, retest reliability=0.73, rater consistence reliability by teachers=0.82) and valid(χ2 / df=3.09，RMSEA=0.04，SRMR=0.05). In the study, the Latent Growth Curve Model (LGM) and Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) are used to deal with data. The multiple group analysis of the Latent Growth Curve Model was applied to decide whether the nine cohorts all had the same developmental trend. If the single coherent trajectory existed, we applied the Hierarchical Linear Model to deal with data to explore the age and gender characteristics of children’s personality development. The results showed that: (1) Throughout the primary school stage, Conscientiousness was a consistent linear increase in developmental trend. (2) The Intelligent, Extroversion, Prosociality and Emotional Stability exhibits a curvilinear pattern during childhood. Specifically, rapid development in 6-8 years, smooth development in 8-10 years and downward trend in 10-12 years. (3) Intelligent initial values were higher for girls than those of boys at age 6 and for the whole primary stage, the developmental rate of girls were faster than boys’. Finally, findings of this study provide a theoretical basis for personality education for children in elementary school. The school should develop adequate education programs to foster the development of positive personality traits, based on the developmental characteristics of children’s personality. Related Articles | Metrics

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Cognitive Development of the Vertical Spatial Metaphor for Children's Moral Concepts 2016, 39(5): 1171-1176.  Abstract ( )   PDF (467KB) ( )   With the rise of the "second generation cognitive sciences", the issue of metaphor has received the attention of psychology and linguistics. In terms of the research on the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts, most studies have explored the psychological reality and its influence on perception, not the development of the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts. In view of this, this study addressed the cognitive psychological processing of modern Chinese metaphors. From the perspective of development psychology, taking a group of children as participants. To investigate when in development the vertical spatial metaphor for moral concepts arises, whether children can through concrete vertical spatial dimension to understand the abstract moral concept, what features and regularities of development it has. It is very important for revealing the developmental laws of children's metaphorical thinking and exploring the development of children's moral cognition. Two experiments investigated the development of children's use of the vertical spatial metaphor for the representation of moral concepts: morality is spatially up and immorality is spatially down. In Experiment 1, a total of 93 preschool children within three age ranges took part in the study. A 3 (age group: 3.9, 4.9, 5.8)×2 (picture type: moral, immoral)×2 (spatial position: upper, lower) mixed experimental design was used. The participant were asked to place pictures of familiar cartoon figures that exhibited good or bad qualities ("moral" and "immoral" pictures) into boxes printed above or below a stick figure. The results showed that the frequency with which they placed moral pictures in the upper box and immoral pictures in the lower box increased with age. In Experiment 2, a total of 96 school-age children in three grades were asked to place words representing moral and immoral concepts into boxes printed above or below a stick figure. A 3 (grade: second, fourth, sixth)×2 (word type: moral, immoral)×2(spatial position: upper, lower) mixed experimental design was used. The dependent variable was the number of times that the participants placed the moral and immoral words up and down. Results showed that participants in all three grades tended to place moral words in the upper box and immoral ones into the lower box, and this tendency increased with age. The results indicated that: (1) the development of the vertical spatial metaphor appears to follow a pattern: 4-5 years is the initial formation stage, 7-9 years is the stage in which it strengthens, and 11-13 years is the period in which it develops almost to the adult level.(2) the metaphor that moral is up and immoral is down is embodied, meaning that it gradually forms through projection of the perceptual experience of up-down space. (3) the vertical spatial metaphor of children's moral concepts develops gradually as age increases, and both age and cognitive development play key roles in this development. All in all, metaphor is not only a kind of rhetorical device, but more importantly, a way of thinking and forming concepts. The present research explored the law of children's cognitive development by using conceptual metaphor. This work is still blank in the domestic and international research fields, and it is very meaningful to explore. The development of children’s vertical spatial metaphors of moral concepts is initially investigated in this study and the results are entirely new. Finally, this study discussed the mechanism by which the vertical spatial metaphor for moral concepts forms from the perspective of embodied cognition. The metaphor that moral is up and immoral is down gradually forms through projection of the perceptual experience of up-down space. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Processing of Isolated Negative Sentences With Uncertain Discrte Results：the Justification of Anchor-based Activation and Satisfaction Constrained Model 2016, 39(5): 1064-1070.  Abstract ( )   PDF (879KB) ( )   It is still unknown of how do people understand isolated negative sentences with uncertain discrete result, such as the Cartoon isn’t Mickey Mouse. Both schema-plus-tag model and two-step simulation hypothesis, being the most accepted hypothesis, cannot answer this problem. So anchor–based activation and satisfaction constrained model, ABASM, was proposed to solve this problem. According to ABASM, when processing isolated negative sentences with uncertain discrete result, participants would firstly represent the negated state of affairs, Mickey Mouse, and then search the final results. If there were alternatives of the affairs, participants would accept the alternatives as the final results of the affairs, else they would accept the representation of the negated state of affairs with negative marker (×+ N) and its alternatives as final representation. But ABASM did not explain how did the alternatives be searched and whether all of them would be accepted. Therefore, we would fill the void in the current research. In the three experiments, a sentence–verification paradigm was adopted to explore the processing mechanism of negated sentence with uncertain discrete results. In these experiments, participants were required to hear the sentences, such as the Cartoon is/isn’t Mickey Mouse. Then, 250,750 or 1500ms later after listening the sentences, pictures were presented instantly in the center of the screen. Participants were demanded to press the key to verify whether the objects in the pictures appeared in the former sentences. Three kinds of probing pictures were designed in these experiments. The first kind was anchor picture, short for A, which depicting the negated state of affairs of negated sentences, such as Mickey Mouse for the sentence the Cartoon isn’t Mickey Mouse; the second kind was high-related picture, short for HR, which depicting something with high relationship with anchor picture, such as Donald Duck; the last kind was LR, which depicting something with low relationship with anchor picture, such as Smurf. Results of Experiment 1 shown that both of the data pattern of the affirmative and negated sentences were “HR = LR, A < HR and A < LR”, which suggested that, in the early stage, participants simulate the actual state of affairs directly in affirmative sentences condition, and simulate the negated state of affairs in negated sentences condition. Results of Experiment 2 show that, the data pattern of the affirmative also was “HR = LR, A < HR and A < LR”, and that of negative sentence was “A=HR=LR”, which suggested that the searching stage have finished, furthermore, the search domain covered the LR. Results of Experiment 3 showed that the data pattern of the affirmative also was “HR = LR, A < HR and A < LR” and that of negated sentence was “HR < A, HR < LR and HR = LR”. This finding suggested that, in the 1500ms delay condition, participants only accept HR being the final results and stop the processing. The results of the three experiments indicated that, when processing the negative sentences with uncertain discrete results, participants would first simulate an anchor, then search all the alternates quickly. And if there were the alternates supplied, participants would accept the high-related alternatives being the final result. The results support anchor-based activation and satisfaction constrained model as well as All-search hypothesis and Limited-accept hypothesis. Related Articles | Metrics

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Face Expression Takes Precedence over the Gender Information Processing: Evidence from a Direct Comparison 2016, 39(5): 1045-1050.  Abstract ( )   PDF (667KB) ( )   Present study aimed to explore the priority issues between expression and gender information processing in face perception and further to reveal the laws of the human brain processing multidimensional stimuli. Three behavioral experiments were implemented. And each one included two types of task set (Facial Expression judgment task and Facial Gender judgment task) randomly assigned for the stimuli. The number of trials in different task was the same. The color (green or red) of image border gave the participants the clue to perform which task. Furthermore, there were four (in Experiment 1 and 3: 12ms, 50ms, 250ms and 500ms ) or five (in Experiment 2: 12ms, 50ms, 100ms, 150ms, 250ms) kinds of duration time for stimuli presentation in each task set. E-prime was adopted to compile the program and collect data. The stimuli presented on 17 inches of computer screen with 85 Hz refresh rate. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze the data of reaction time and accuracy with the kind of duration time (Duration Time ) and the type of task (Task) as within factor tasks. Experiment 1 shows that no significant results on reaction time. But there are two significant main effects (Duration Time and Task) on accuracy analysis. That indicates making judgment on expression is more accurate than on facial gender (t(29) = 4.742, p <. 001) in 12 ms conditions. And so does on the condition of 50 ms (t (29)= 2.256, p <. 05). But no similar findings are found in the other duration. Experiment 2 reveals that the reaction time is inverse proportion with the duration time of stimuli in the conditions of 50ms, 100ms and 250ms (p <. 05). Then the results of accuracy analysis show significant main effect of Duration Time and significant interaction between Duration Time and Task. Further analysis indicates that the accuracy of judging expression is significantly higher than that of facial gender (t(29) = 3.647, p <. 05) under the condition of 50 ms, however, the comparison for the other time windows do not reach significant difference. Experiment 3 shows that the main effect of Duration Time is significant on reaction time analysis. Analysis on accuracy finds out significant main effect of Duration Time, significant main effect of Task and significant interaction between these two factors. In summary: (1) the accuracy of the condition 12ms is the lowest among the four kinds of duration time; and the accuracy under the 50ms condition is lower than that of 200ms and 500ms conditions. (2) judging expression is more accurate than judging facial gender under the conditions of 12ms (t = 3.647, p <. 01) and 50ms (t = 2.103, p <. 05). In conclusion, the study revealed that the efficiency of expression recognition has advantage over that of facial gender judgment in early automatic processing stage. And in the automatic stage of facial information processing, the processing extent is proportional to the duration time of stimuli presentation. Related Articles | Metrics

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Seeing the Linda Problem Based on the Context Dependent Conceptual Structure LI Xiao-Ping 2016, 39(5): 1033-1039.  Abstract ( )   PDF (748KB) ( )   Abstract The context dependent conceptual structure based perspective of the Linda problem was proposed in this paper. The perspective argued that the conceptual structure seen by people between the T and the T in T&F, and the F and the F in T&F may be different. What more, when the conceptual structures of the T and F in the T & F are bigger than the T and F correspondingly, the judge about the T&F>T and the T&F>F may be reasonable. Not all the judges above are fallacies or illusions at least. Three studies were conducted and a total of 210 participants were recruited in this research. In study 1, in order to investigate whether subjects seeing the T and the T in T&F, and the F and the F in T&F differently or not, and whether the differences between them could affect the rate of the judges which can be seen as fallacy or not, the professionalism of the T and the T in T&F, and the F and the F in T&F perceived by the participants were investigated separately by rating after finishing the Linda problem. In study 2, in order to replicate the result in study 1 in the ranking scenario ,like the study 1, the comparative professionalism of the T and the T in T&F, and the F and the F in T&F perceived by the participants were investigated by ranking after finishing the Linda problem; In study 3, in order to investigate the level of the fallacy could be lower or not when the conceptual of the T and F are constrained more strictly, the original Linda problem and the modified problem which all the conjuncts were constrained by the words “professional” both were sent to participants. The results show that: (1)In study1, the T and the T in T&F, and the F and the F in T&F perceived by the participants are actually different between their professionalism; and the level of the fallacy is significant lower when the fallacy which can be described by the perspective in this paper excluded. (2) In study 2, the results replicated the results in study 1 though the method of the investigation was changed from rating to ranking. (3) The level of the fallacy in the modified Linda problem is actually lower than the original one. All the results support that the context dependent conceptual structure is one of the reasons that the “fallacy” exits .And the level of the fallacy is not so high when the reason of the context dependent conceptual structure are excluded. Related Articles | Metrics

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Brain mechanism of obesity in the perspective of Neuroimaging 2016, 39(5): 1086-1092.  Abstract ( )   PDF (678KB) ( )   As a kind of global epidemic, obesity is closely related to many Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, type 2 diabetes and even many specific types of cancer. In addition, obesity is also associated with poor cognitive function and neuro-degenerative disorders, such as dementia. The proportion of adults who were overweight or obese worldwide have increased dramatically over the past decennia. Compared with countries such as the UK and USA, China had a lower rate of obesity in adults, but the absolute number of obese people in China is exceeded only by that in the USA. Neuroimaging of neural responses in those with obesity or who are overweight has largely been conducted using food images as opposed to actual food ingestion, and a meta-analysis of these studies would provide a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying the development of obesity. Therefore, the present study systemic reviewed existing literature on functional and structural imaging researches of obesity. Evidences from the functional imaging researches, which showed that the existence of neural differences in response to food cue processing between healthy weight and obese subjects. Differences were identified in two brain circuits: (1) limbic and paralimbic areas associated with salience and reward processes, such as amygdala, insula, orbitofrontal cortex and parahippocampal gyrus; (2) prefrontal areas supporting cognitive control processes, such as lateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex. The hyper-responsivity of reward-related areas, the hypo-responsivity of cognitive control-related areas, together constitute the susceptible factors of obesity. There is also evidence that obesity is related to structural brain differences. Evidences from the structural imaging researches, which showed that obesity is associated with brain atrophy. For example, higher BMI are linked with low global grey matter volume as well as with regional grey matter (GM), include left orbitofrontal, right inferior frontal, parahippocampal, fusiform, lingual gyri, right cerebellar regions and right precentral gyri. In addition, increasing BMI was independently associated with lower fractional anisotropy (FA) in the genu, splenium, and fornix. All this evidence provided anatomical evidences from different perspectives of obesity. Finally, we suggest that the following aspects might shed light on future research: (1) more long-term longitudinal studies, only in this way can we confirm whether the neural differences in response to food and structural brain differences predicts obesity in the future, particularly after controlling for covariates such as socioeconomic status, age, sex, inflammation, nutritional habits, among others; (2) the expansion of the intervention strategy, for example, cognitive remediation therapy, designed to improve neurocognitive abilities such as attention, memory and executive function, which has been shown to be useful to treat cognitive deficits in anorexia nervosa. Hence, by increasing the levels of cognitive function this may aid in helping individuals make suitable lifestyle decisions, stop the vicious cycle and maintain it long term; (3) integration of multi-modal brain imaging data, such as, diet and lifestyle are the most readily identifiable causes of obesity, yet it is highly heritable, so it is necessary to determine if the neuroanatomical pathways compromised by this obesity-risk gene themselves indicate a mechanistic pathway for obesity. Related Articles | Metrics

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Doctor-Patient Interpersonal Trust: Concept, Positive Evolutionary Process, and Influential Factors Xiao-Kang Lu 2016, 39(5): 1093-1097.  Abstract ( )   PDF (423KB) ( )   Doctor-patient interpersonal trust refers to the expectant judgment and psychological state held by the physicians’ party and patients’ party, who both believe that one will not make unfavorable or harmful behaviors to the other. Although doctor-patient trust involves three levels including interpersonal trust, inter-group trust and institutional trust, the purpose of this article is to analyze the concept, the positive evolutionary process, and the antecedents of doctor-patient trust for the interpersonal trust level. Idealized evolution of doctor-patient interpersonal trust undertakes a gradually deepening process, from calculus-based trust to knowledge-based trust and then to identification-based trust. Characteristics of each evolutionary stage are as follows: In the early development stage of doctor-patient trust, the main psychological mechanism lies in the process of calculating benefit perception and risk perception. Trough the calculating process, patients decide whether to adhere to the medical advices or not, and doctors decide whether to take appropriate or defensive medical treatment measures. However, some doctor-patient relationships may just stop at the calculus-based trust stage. In the middle development stage, doctor-patient trust exhibits the characteristics of knowledge-based trust. Due to better understandings of each other, doctors reinforce their behaviors of taking appropriate medical treatment measures, while patients strengthen their behaviors of adhering to the medical advices. In the mature development stage, doctor-patient trust displays the characteristics of identification-based trust. The emotional status of individual satisfaction is formed through the process of comparing perception with expectation, and physicians’ satisfaction and patients’ satisfaction contribute to the maintenance of doctor-patient trust together. To be specific, patients compare the clinical efficacy perception with the clinical efficacy expectation to form the emotional status of patients’ satisfaction, while doctors compare the psychological contract with the performance perception of the psychological contract to form the emotional status of physicians’ satisfaction. However, only a few doctor-patient relationships can be enhanced from knowledge-based trust to identification-based trust. Only based on mutual understanding, one party develops identification with another party, especially when there exist strong emotions between the two parties, can this transformation take place. Although the identification-based trust is the most sable trust form of doctor-patient relationships, because doctor-patient interpersonal relationships are usually temporary, the identification-based trust which is built on emotion and identification is hard to form. This article summarizes the antecedents of doctor-patient trust, including social environment and values, treatment situations and individual characteristics. Doctor-patient trust crisis makes the asymmetry principle of trust more prominent in the doctor-patient relationships. The relationship-oriented values contribute to the relational trust orientation of the doctor-patient relationships in China. Levels of doctor-patient trust are significantly different between urban and rural medical institutions, different levels of hospitals and even hospital departments. Trust-oriented individual characteristics of patients mainly include social status, risk perceptions and emotions, while trust-oriented individual characteristics of doctors include competence and professional ethics. Based on the assumption of the positive evolutionary process of doctor-patient trust, further studies should collect longitudinal data to reveal the influencing mechanisms and developmental characteristics of doctor-patient trust, explore the dimensions of physicians’ trust and patients’ trust, and verify the specific mechanisms of doctor-patient trust on the two parties’ attitudes and behaviors. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Global and Local Effects in Lexical Decision: Evidence from Reaction Time and Eye-movement Measurements 2016, 39(5): 1040-1044.  Abstract ( )   PDF (541KB) ( )   In Chinese character recognition, the relationship between global effect and local effect is a hotly debated issue for researchers. However, there has been inconsistent hypotheses and results among previous studies. The current study is designed to investigate the priority of global effect and local effect in the lexical decision task by using both reaction time and fixation time as indicators. This study used a 4 (orthography: correct, false radical-location, false radical-component, and scramble-stroke) × 2 (font size: 1.8°, 18°) repeated-measure design. We selected 128 Chinese target characters (half left-right structure and half upper-lower structure) to create the experimental stimuli. The false radical-location stimuli were made by reversing the two components of the correct characters; The false radical-component stimuli were made by adding or reducing a stroke to a specific radical in the correct characters; The scramble-stroke stimuli were made by a random rearrangement of the 3x3 matrix division for the correct characters. Each stimulus had a large size condition and a small size condition. The experimental conditions were counterbalance across participants. We also added correct characters as fillers in order to balance the number of right and wrong items. As a result, each participant was presented 128 conditional characters and 64 fillers. An EyeLink ELCL desktop system was used to monitor participants’ eye movements. When a trial started, a central fixation point was presented in the central of screen for 500 ms. Then a stimulus was presented in the center of the screen. The participant was required to press a button on a joystick to signal whether the stimulus was a real and correct character or not. The left and right buttons were assigned as yes- and no-response respectively in half participants, and vise visa in the other half participants. The presentation of stimuli would be stopped immediately by button pressing within the 2000 ms timeout. The results show that the false radical-location condition was significantly shorter than the false radical-component condition in reaction time, regardless of font size (ps < .001). In first-fixation duration, there was no significant difference between the false radical-location and the false radical-component conditions for small font size (p = .183), and the false radical-component condition produced longer fixation duration than the false radical-location condition for large font size (p = .036). In the total time, the false radical-component condition produced shorter fixation duration than the false radical-location condition for both font sizes (ps < .001). We conclude that while the result of reaction time supports the dominance of global effect in lexical decision, the result of fixation duration indicates that there is a time course of global effect and local effects in lexical decision. The eye movement technique may be a useful way to investigate the Chinese character processing in future research. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Self-face on the Inhibition of Return: Insights from Response Time Ex-Gaussian Distribution 2016, 39(5): 1051-1057.  Abstract ( )   PDF (536KB) ( )   Inhibition of return (IOR) forbids people’s attention to already attended objects, and promotes their detection to the new information in the scene during visual search. Previous studies showed that the magnitude of IOR decreaced when the face with some personal important social information appeared in the cueing location. An abundance of studies supported self-face was important to individuals and enjoyed the ability to withhold attention. However, whether self-face affects IOR was unknown.To meet the end, the impact of self-face on the IOR was tested. In addtion, there are several ways by which self-face could adjust the magnitude of IOR.The ex-Gaussian distribution analysis was also applied because it produced more directed and useful index to reveal how self-face affects IOR in detail. In the present study，the classic exogenous cue-target paradigm was applied to investigate the impact of different face types (self vs unfamiliar) on the effect of IOR as the SOA changes (350ms, 550ms, 750ms, 950ms, 1150ms ). A trail started with a drift-check, followed by the presentation of a white fixation with two position holders. Then, a cue face appeared on either the right or left position holder with equal probability for 250 ms, which was followed by the central cue. At last, the target was showed equally probably on the valid position (the same side of the cue present) or invalid position (the opposite side of the cue present) .The onset asynchrony of the cue and the target altered as the SOA was manipulated. In the study, the targets consisted of a line and a circle. Participants only responded to the line by pressing “Space” key while inhibiting themselves from making a response to the circle. They were instructed to respond to the target as accurately and quickly as possible. When no response was detected, the target would disappear in 1000ms. The ex-Gaussian distribution analysis was employed in the study to reveal how face influenced IOR in detail . 18 college right-handed students participated. Only reaction time of correct responses was calculated. Results showed that the reaction time to target in valid-cued locations was significantly longer than that in invalid-cued locations, indicating an IOR effect. Compared with the condition where other-face worked as a cue, self-face cue caused significantly less magnitude of IOR, showing that self-face mitigated the effect of IOR. However, no main effect of SOA or interaction of SOA with cue type was found on the magnitude of IOR. It suggested self face had no influence on the time course of IOR. In addition, the results of ex-Gaussian distribution analysis showed that the differences of response time between valid and invalid cued location were only reflected in the Gaussian component μ which is highly related to perception. By contrast, the decreased magnitude of IOR was caused by two self-face was reflected in the exponential component σ, which is related attentional decision. Our study showed self-face modulated the magnitude of IOR but not influenced its time course. And the result from ex-Gaussian distribution analysis provided much clearer evidence that the IOR may occur automatically and the influence of the self-face on the IOR was mainly due to that self-face faciliates particpants to make responses to the targets which appeared in cued place. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Psychological Reality of Spatial Metaphors for Time— Evidence form Gesture and Sign Language 2016, 39(5): 1080-1085.  Abstract ( )   PDF (305KB) ( )   Spatial representation of time can be found in most languages and cultures in the world. According to conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), metaphor offers a way to understand an abstract domain (e.g. time) by utilizing corresponding knowledge from a better-understood, more concrete experience (e.g. space). Yet, the criticisms from scholars both within and outside cognitive linguistics have never stopped since the birth of CMT, especially for its psychological reality. In other words, the linguistic data (oral speech and written language) is always used as both the predictor of the conceptual mappings and the predicted result. In order to respond to the criticisms of CMT, an emerging synthesis of gesture and signed language has been proposed to address this issue. Human’s communication can be performed verbally and/or nonverbally. For a long time, gestures have been only considered to be meaningless hand waving, or to bear fixed form and formulaic meanings in the culture from a semiotic perspective. In recent years, gestures and speech are considered to be parts of a single psychological structure and share the same computational and psychological origin. When people talk about time, there are some accompanied hand movements, which are often called temporal gestures. A number of recent studies have focused on temporal gestures in different cultural contexts, showing that temporal gestures are strongly shaped by cultural practices and artifacts. For instance, Floyd(2008) noted that there is a celestial gesture system used by speakers of Nheenghatú, an indigenous language of the Brazilian Amazon, in which speakers can point or sweep to refer to punctate times of the day. For humans, the ability to communicate and use language is instantiated not only in the vocal modality but also in the visual modality. Sign languages are articulated in the three-dimensional space by deaf people. In the case of sign languages, different devices (e.g. lexical expressions, grammatical means and non-manual features) can be used in the expressions of temporal notions. Many studies in sign languages have lent support to the existence of time line and its important role in the creation of temporal expressions. It means that signers may automatically activate the mental timeline when processing temporal linguistic information. On the one hand, signers can use real space to create temporal references, in which the metaphorical association of locations in space represents different points of time. On the other hand, he or she can also directly use a lexical unit to refer to that temporal dimension without turning to deixis. Compelling evidence has shown that our concept of time is organized metaphorically in terms of space. Recent development brings a welcome widening of the perspective of time metaphor research and starts to reap the benefits of the broad range of methods available in cognitive science. If one wants to prove that conceptual metaphors are conceptual thinking rather than only linguistic decoration, alternative evidence beyond linguistic data for their psychological reality is required. Since both of sign and co-speech gesture exploit richness of the manual-visual modality to spatialize temporal concepts. The study of more signed languages, in relation to the co-speech temporal gestures, can provide rich psychological evidence to clarify the origins and transmission of spatial representations of time. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of the Motivational Dimension of Affect on approach-avoidance behaviors 2016, 39(5): 1026-1032.  Abstract ( )   PDF (779KB) ( )   Abstract Under the circumstance when individuals consciously process the Stimulate emotional valence, the＂Affective Simon effect＂ appears.( ＂Affective Simon effect＂means that positive emotions of individuals facilitate approach behaviors, and negative emotions facilitate avoidance behaviors). Whereas individuals unconsciously process it, the effect does not appears (Roelofs et al,2009;Rotteveel et al,2004；). Two theories explain the phenomenon above which are the Motivational Orientation Theory and the Theory of Event Coding(TEC). The differences of these two theories are their empirical research paradigm and whether they are processed consciously or not. Also, the empirical researches on the Approach-avoidance behaviors are rare. In this study, we designed 2 experiments based on Gable and Harmon-Jones’ Motivational Dimension Model. By improving the “manikin task” paradigm and use it after the improvement, the effect of different emotional valence on the approach-avoidance behaviors could be observed. Experiment 1 is divided into 2 steps. There are 36 college students, including 15 males and 21 females, participated into step 1. These students are treated with the conscious process, which is the approach-avoidance react to emotional valence, so that we could observe whether there is the compatibility effect of approach-avoidance(＂Affective Simon effect＂). There are 40 college students, including 19 males and 21 females, participated into step 2. These students are treated with the unconscious process, which is the approach-avoidance react to pictures of emotion with people in it or not, so that we could observe whether there is the compatibility effect of approach-avoidance(＂Affective Simon effect＂). In Experiment 2, there are 31 participants, including 13 male and 18 female college students. The purpose of Experiment 2 is to observe the effect of different motivation intensity of emotion on the approach-avoidance behaviors. It demonstrated that,in the "manikin task"paradigm, under the circumstance when individuals unconsciously process it, by changing the manikin into photos of the participants, they take approach behaviors more rapidly than avoidance behaviors when looking at positive pictures of emotions, whereas they take avoidance behaviors more rapidly than approach behaviors when looking at negative ones. On the other hand, under the circumstance when individuals consciously process it, they take approach behaviors more rapidly than avoidance behaviors when looking at positive pictures of emotions, whereas they take avoidance behaviors more rapidly than approach behaviors when looking at negative ones (the shorter reaction time). Moreover, they take approach behaviors more rapidly under the condition that the positive pictures of emotions are of higher motivational intensities than they do under the condition that those are of lower motivational intensities, whereas they take avoidance behaviors more rapidly under the condition that the negative pictures of emotions are of higher motivational intensities than they do under the condition that those are of lower motivational intensities (the shorter reaction time). The results of the experiments indicate that: (1)The improved “manikin task” paradigm observes the effect of emotions on the approach-avoidance behaviors on a better way. (2) In either way, the conscious and unconscious process to pictures of emotion both result in the compatibility effect of approach-avoidance(＂Affective Simon effect＂), which preferably solved the dispute between the theory of Motivational Orientation and the Theory of Event Coding. (3) Compared with the positive emotions with lower motivational intensity, the one with higher motivational intensity has higher facilitation to approach behaviors. Compared with the negative emotions with lower motivational intensity, the one with higher motivational intensity has higher facilitation to avoidance behaviors. Related Articles | Metrics

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An ERP Study on the Cognitive Neural Mechanism of Scientific Language 2016, 39(5): 1071-1079.  Abstract ( )   PDF (852KB) ( )   With the rapid development of scientific technology, the study on the neural mechanisms of scientific metaphoric language is methodologically and epistemologically significant. However, as an important part of conceptual metaphors, scientific metaphors have been overlooked by the previous electrophysiological studies of metaphors. This study is the first to use ERP to compare the cognitive neural mechanisms of literal and metaphoric expressions from scientific and daily contexts. The aim of the present study is to investigate the neural mechanism of scientific language by observing the differences between scientific language (metaphoric and literal) and daily expressions as well as between scientific metaphors and literal expressions (scientific and daily). A list of 120 Chinese sentences was formed consisting of three categories: scientific metaphoric scientific literal, and, daily literal with 40 sentences in each sentence type. The scientific sentences were created based on the basic scientific terms and concepts at the level of middle school covering mathematics, physics and chemistry. All the 17 participants were from the natural scientific majors in order to avoid the possible difficulties in understanding those scientific sentences during the experiment. In the experiment, ERPs were time-locked to the onset of the last word of the sentence and were obtained by stimulus-locked averaging of the EEG recorded in each condition. The resulting amplitudes of N400 or LPC were entered into 3 condition × 3 region (frontal F3, Fz, F4, central C3, Cz, C4, parietal P3, Pz, P4) × 3 hemisphere (left F3, C3, P3, midline Fz, Cz, Pz, right F4, C4, P4) ANOVAs for repeated measures. In the time window of N400 (300-500ms), there were significant main effects of condition F(2, 32) = 9.90, p < 0.001，ηp2 = 0.38. Scientific metaphors elicited the most negative N400. Significant condition × region interactions were found, F(4, 64) = 3.84，p = 0.057，ηp2 = 0.19. Post-hoc tests showed that scientific language (metaphoric and literal) elicited more negative N400 than daily literal sentences in the parietal regions (ps < 0.05). Scientific metaphors elicited more negative N400 than literal expressions (scientific and daily) in the central and parietal regions (ps < 0.05). In the time window of LPC (600-900ms), there were significant main effects of condition F(2, 32) = 3.10，p = 0.065，ηp2 = 0.16. Scientific metaphors elicited the least positive LPC. Significant condition × region interactions were found, F(4, 64) = 4.93，p = 0.01，ηp2 = 0.24. Post-hoc tests showed that in the parietal region relative to daily literals, scientific metaphors elicited less positive LPC (p = 0.012) and scientific literals elicited marginally less positive LPC (p = 0.077). Besides, the subtraction waveforms were obtained by subtracting the amplitude of daily literals from that of scientific metaphors and scientific literals respectively. The subtraction waveforms clearly show that scientific metaphors elicited another late negativity peaking around 800ms following the N400. ANOVAs for repeated measures produced significant main effect of condition, F(1, 16) = 5.74，p = 0.029，ηp2 = 0.26. Scientific metaphors elicited more negative late negativity than scientific literals. There are two main findings in the present study. Firstly from the perspective of scientific language, the distance between the two semantic domains of scientific language is larger than that of daily language, thus requiring more cognitive resources to process the meaning. Both the right and left hemispheres are important in processing scientific language, but the parietal region, especially the right part, is vital. Secondly, from the perspective of scientific metaphors, our findings replicate previous studies, namely, the increased N400 amplitude to scientific metaphors could be reflecting the initial anomaly in literal meaning, while the late negativity could be the manifestation of a further attempt to gain meaning, this time using a non-literal route as predicted by the sequential view. Both the right and left hemispheres show their involvement in understanding metaphors. Besides, our findings support the graded salience hypothesis. The complexity and abstractness of scientific expressions reduced dramatically their familiarity compared to literal expressions. So, the meaning of a scientific expression is inferred by contextual mechanisms after the more salient daily meaning is processed. Related Articles | Metrics

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Form, Feature and Evaluation of Explanation Psychology 2016, 39(5): 1275-1279.  Abstract ( )   PDF (286KB) ( )   The debate between explanation and understanding originated from the debate between Dilthey and Ebbinghaus, and run though the development of psychology. It seems that this is a debate about the purpose and task of psychology. In fact, it is a debate between two kinds of psychology with different forms and routes. The task of explanation psychology is to explain the nature, the rule and the mechanism of the mental and behavior. There are four forms of explanation psychology, such as mental-mental and mental-object relation explanation, stimulate-reaction explanation, cognitive mental-neural mechanisms explanation, evolved psychological mechanism explanation. The methodology of explanation psychology has the distinctive feature of scientism, which emphasizes physicalism, mechanism, biologism worldview, correspondence theory of epistemology, and reductionism, objectivism, logicism methodology. There are different research topics during every period of the development of explanation psychology. Therefore, it focuses on different key points. Every period of the development of explanation psychology has different features of scientism. The methodology of the creation period of explanation psychology can be called psychologism paradigm. The methodology of behavioral explanation psychology can be called behaviorism paradigm. The methodology of modern cognitive psychology can be called information processing paradigm. Both cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology expanded the scientism ideological line of psychology. During the process of the application of the theory and method of natural science, it contributed to forming a more solid foundation of natural science for the scientism. During the history of the psychology development, the explanation psychology and the understanding psychology hold opposite ideas and strongly disagree with each other. But it is clear that the explanation psychology has always led the mainstream of psychology. On one side, the explanation psychology has been devoted to the study of human nature, highlighted the scientism pursuit of psychology, built the natural image of human. Therefore it has expended the connotation of psychology as a natural science. While the understanding psychology is in a non mainstream position. On the other side, it raised the social and cultural nature of human, showed the humanistic care of psychology, built the image of human which is different from object, and drew the profile of psychology as a humanistic science. Both the explanation psychology and the understanding psychology has promoted the independence and maturity of psychology, and both of them contribute to the reality of today's psychology. In the future, in order to build a complete and clear image of human, in order to show the overall nature of human as the ideal, we could predict that the healthy development of psychology needs to abandon the either-this-or-that way of thinking that embedded in both explanation psychology and understanding psychology. Therefore the establishment of an integrated view of psychology is badly needed. Only in this way, many opposite poles in both explanation psychology and understanding psychology, such as explanation and understanding, reductionism and holism, objectivism and subjectivism, logicism and intuitionism, etc, can find their proper space, psychology will achieve a complete unity of thorough scientism and humanism, and only in this way psychology in the future will be able to burden the responsibility to build the complete image and show the full nature of human. Related Articles | Metrics