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Interaction Effects of Ambient Illumination and Background Color Saturation on Visual Performance with LCD Screens 2017, 40(4): 801-807.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Abstract□□Ambient illumination and background color saturation are two major factors in visual performance, they have great influence on the speed of reading, the accuracy rate of cognition, even the individual’s emotion, and all of this may affect the visual performance. Thus, the interaction effect of ambient illumination conditions and background color saturation on visual performance with LCD screens is investigated in this study. The experiment evaluate three independent variables: illumination color, illumination intensity and background color saturation. Illumination color had three levels: 2700k, 4000k and 6500k, and illumination intensity had two levels: 250lux and 750lux. Five background color saturation were employed in the experiment. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to each of the six treatments of the between-subjects factor, with 10 participants for each treatment. Every subject completed the five levels of the within-subject factor. Two dependent measures: the percentage of correctly identified letters, and the speed of cognitive process. Subjects begin the test only after reading the experimental instructions. At the beginning of each trial subjects were asked to fixate on the center of the screen where symbol “+”. Three second later, a stimulus which consists of four capital letters was presented in the center area of the screen for 200ms. The subjects were required to write down as many letters as they can identify in the corresponding position. Results of the experiment indicate that the all the independent variables had significant effect on the speed, but only the illumination color had significant effect on the percentage of correctly identified letters. The illumination intensity × background color saturation interaction was significant on the speed, The interaction of all the three independent variables had significant effect on the percentage of correctly identified letters, but no significant effect on the speed。 In conclusion, the interaction effect of ambient illumination conditions and background color saturation has different influence on visual performance with LCD screens, and visual performance can be improved by adjusting the background color saturation under the different ambient illumination condition. With respect to 250lux, the value of the saturation should change in the range of 102 -153, and with respect to 750lux×2700k, in order to improve the percentage of correctly identified letters, the value of saturation should change in the range of 153 -204. Related Articles | Metrics

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The moderating effect and the mediating effect of career competencies in the Job Demands-Resources model Zhong-Lin WEN Yu-Shuai CHEN 2017, 40(4): 822-829.  Abstract ( )   PDF   This study mainly investigated the mediating effect and the moderating effect of career competencies in the Job Demands-Resources Model. Career competencies are a kind of knowledge accumulation, including knowing-why, knowing-how and knowing-whom, which could influence employees’ career. The basic assumption of the Job Demands-Resources Model is that every work environment is characterized by occupation-specific job resources and job demands, and it includes two processes for the development of burnout. First, long-term excessive job demands from which employees do not adequately recover may lead to sustained activation and overtaxing, eventually resulting in exhaustion; second, job resources lead to increased levels of motivation in the form of work engagement (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001). Previous studies has shown that personal resources may act as a mediator in motivational process, and can stimulate employees’ work engagements (Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2007), and may also act as a moderator in health impairment process, and can reduce burnout. Career competencies may be expected to act in a similar way as personal resources in stimulating employees work engagements and reducing emotional exhaustion in the Job Demands-Resources Model (Akkermans, Schaufeli, Brenninkmeijer, & Blonk, 2013). Based on the Job Demands-Resources Model and conservation of resources theory, our focus is to investigate the mediating effect and the moderating effect of career competencies in the Job Demands-Resources Model. 201 employed persons were measured with the professional competence measurement scale, the questionnaire of career development, the Job Content questionnaire, the Questionnaire on the experience and assessment of work, the MBI - GS Scale and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Mplus and SPSS were used to analyze the data. The results showed that: (1) Job demands statistically significantly affected emotional exhaustion(r=0.16, p<0.05); and career competencies acted a moderator on the relationship between job demands and emotional exhaustion(β=-0.49，p<0.01; △R2=0.03)，and the relationship between job demands and emotional exhaustion were weaker for employees in high career competencies condition than in low career competencies condition. We used the Johnson-Neyman’s method to test the simple slopes, the result showed that when the mean-centered moderator M (career competencies) in [-2.18, 0.45], simple slope a+cM=.65-.49M were significant.(2) career competencies significantly affected work engagement; (3) Career competencies acted a mediator on the relationship between job resources and work engagement(c=0.48, p<0.001; a=0.56, p<0.001; b=0.30, p<0.001; c’=0.31, p<0.001). In summary, Career competencies are shapeable abilities, and it is important and useful for employees to promote their work engagements, and then to achieve their career goals. Studies of Career competencies in the eastern culture are still in its infancy. With putting more attentions on career competencies, HR programs may benefit from this insight by simultaneously increasing job resources and career competencies to increase employee engagement and reduce their exhaustion. On the one hand, HR program should provide the sufficient job resources to employees, such as social support, opportunities of development and autonomy, and job demands should be controlled within a certain range to avoid exhaustion. On the other hand, HR program should use some relevant career management measures to strengthen employees’ career competencies, such as the career management skills training courses. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Time-course of attentional bias to threatened stimuli 2017, 40(4): 830-836.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Previous studies showed attentional bias contains the rapid orientation of attention, the avoidance of attention and the difficulty to disengage from threatened stimuli. However, the time course of these tree components is still unclear. The present study is trying to explore the time-course of the threat-related attentional biases. The threatened and neutral emotional pictures were used as the stimuli. Subjects were asked to identify whether two pictures belonged to the same category (neutral or threatened) or not, in which two pictures were presented on computer screen simultaneously. Subjects’ eye movements were recorded during their task. Twenty six undergraduates volunteered to participate in the experiment. All stimulus- pictures were selected from the International Affective Picture System. Four types of stimuli pairs (i.e. threatened vs. threatened, threatened vs. neutral, neutral vs. threatened and neutral vs. neutral) were constructed from 152 pictures (77 neutral pictures vs. 75 threatened pictures). Three neutral pictures of stimuli pictures were repeated to pair twice and five threatened pictures of them were repeated to pair twice. Each type of stimulus pairs included 20 picture-pairs. Totally, there were 80 picture-pairs in all conditions. They were randomized and segregated into 4 blocks. Subjects were positioned in chin and forehead rest and seated 70cm in front of a 17-inch screen on which theses stimulus-pairs were present. Eye movements were recorded by SMI eye-tracker (iView Hi-Speed) with a sampling rate of 350Hz. In each trial, a white “+”was presented for 1000ms. Then a picture-pair was presented until 1000ms after subjects responded with maximum duration of 8000ms. The inter-trial interval (ITI) is 2000ms. The results showed that: (1) Subjects were more likely [F(1,25)=21.867, p<0.01] and faster (shorter saccadic latency) [F(1,25)=16.507, p<0.01] to move their eyes toward left visual field than that toward right, indicating strong attentional bias toward left. (2) The latency of the first saccade toward right visual field under “neutral vs. neutral” picture pair was significantly longer than that of “threatened vs. neutral” pair [F(1,25)=13.970, p<0.01]. Although the latencies of the first saccade toward left were faster than that of toward right under “threatened vs. threatened” [F(1,25)=7.690, p<0.01], “neutral vs. threatened ” [F(1,25)=15.462, p<0.01] and “neutral vs. neutral” [F(1,25)=20.483, p<0.01] conditions, it wasn’t significantly under condition of “threatened vs. neutral”. These results showed that subjects were reluctant to move their eyes to the threatened picture, suggesting that the avoidance of attention occurred less than 250ms, because all the first saccade latencies were shorter than 250ms. (3) In left visual field, the gaze duration under “threatened vs. neutral” was significantly longer than under “neutral vs. threatened” [F(1,25)=11.315, p<0.01]. In the right field, they were opposite [F(1,25)=6.777, p<0.01]. That was, subjects gazed longer, it was about 400ms to 600ms, at the threatened picture no matter where it was, and they need at least 600ms to move their eyes away. These results suggested that the difficulty to disengage from threatened picture. (4) The reaction time under “threatened vs. neutral” was the longest (200ms longer than other conditions) and the error rate was also the highest (5% higher than other conditions). It showed that subjects allocated more attention to left side of visual field. However, putting together with the attention avoidance and difficulty to disengagement made attention allocation more complicated. During comparing the two pictures at left and right visual field, the switching frequency was the lowest under “threatened vs. neutral” pair. It might increase the error rate of judgment indication that attentional bias influenced other cognitive process. Our results suggested that the attention avoidance and bias to left-side interacted in early stage, and the attention avoidance (less than 250ms) occurred earlier than the disengagement difficulty of attention (400ms-600ms). Related Articles | Metrics

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Numerical Processing Task Affecting Numerical Magnitude Effects in Time Perception 2017, 40(4): 837-843.  Abstract ( )   PDF   A Theory of Magnitude (ATOM) proposes that time, quantity and space share an innate and common metric system. An increasing number of empirical works have demonstrated that our time perception is influenced by other concurrent magnitude attributes such as space, number, weight and luminance. However, it is still unknown that when and where the numerical magnitude effects in time perception occurs. Our research used duration reproduction task and numerical processing task synchronously to explore how numerical processing affects temporal reproduction. In temporal reproduction task, a dot, as standard stimulus, appeared on screen for one of the standard durations(300ms, 450ms, 600ms, 750ms). Participants then continuously pressed the space bar to reproduce the duration of the standard stimulus. While participants pressing the space bar, a digit(1, 2, 8, 9) as reproduction stimulus, was presented on screen . In Experiment 1, 25 participants were required to name the digit. In Experiment 2, 29 participants were required to determine the parity of the digit. In Experiment 3, 30 participants were required to determine whether the digit was smaller or larger than 5. We observed the numerical magnitude effects in Experiment 1 and Experiment 3, but not in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1 participants were required to name the digit. The effects of numerical magnitude were different on different duration reproductions. Reproduced durations were longer for big numbers and shorter for small numbers in the 300ms standard duration. However, the effects disappeared in the 450ms standard duration. In contrast, reproduced durations were shorter for big numbers in the 600ms standard duration. In the 750ms standard duration, the effects disappeared again. In Experiment 3 participants were required to determine whether the digit was smaller or larger than 5. Similar with the result in Experiment 1, Experiment 3 revealed that under different standard durations the effects of numerical magnitude on temporal reproduction were different. Participants’ reproduced durations in the 300ms standard duration were longer for big numbers and shorter for small numbers. The reproduced durations in the 450ms standard duration were shorter for big numbers. The effects disappeared in the reproductions of 600ms standard duration. The reproduced durations in the 750ms standard duration were longer again for big numbers. All in all, our results show that the temporal perception was influenced by numerical magnitude in both the numerical naming task and numerical judging task. Moreover, the effects of numerical magnitude might be different in different standard durations and numerical processing tasks. The findings suggest that the numerical magnitude effects in time perception change dynamically according to numerical processing conditions and the effects could occur at any stage of temporal cognitive processes. Related Articles | Metrics

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Advances of Co-Registration of Eye Movement and EEG in Psycholinguistic Studies Zhu-Yang LI 2017, 40(4): 850-855.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Brain-electric correlates of reading have traditionally been studied with word-by-word presentation, called serial visual presentation (SVP), a condition that eliminates important aspects of the normal reading process and precludes direct comparisons between neural activity and oculomotor behavior, so that the results obtained by this method had lower ecological validity, which was difficult to be popularized. And EM only describes a summation of all cognitive processing occurring during reading, which can not show the sequence of the cognitive processes. This paper presents a new methodology for studying psycholinguistic, which combines eye movements (EM) and electroencephalogram (EEG) to track the time course of cognitive processes. This technique has the advantage of coupling accurate time measures from Event-related potentials (ERPs) and the location of the eye on the stimulus, which can compensate for the lack of EM and ERPs, so it can be used to explore the time course of cognitive processes and its neural mechanism in the process of reading under the natural reading condition. The realization of this technique needed two computers, which were connected through parallel ports. The computer A was used for stimulus presentation and the eye-movement acquisition. And the computer B was used to collect the EEG signals by means of EEG amplifier. It should be noted that eye tracker and EEG amplifier must have the same sampling rate. The computer A would send a synchronization signal (TTL Pulse) to computer B as soon as the stimulus was presented on the screen. The synchronization signal could allow the EM and EEG signals to be recorded simultaneously, which could provide an accurate mark for the off-line analysis of EEG data. It should be pointed that saccde offset or the onset of the first fixation were treated as the reference mark of EEG segment obtained by co-registration of eye movement and EEG record, which was different from traditional ERP off-line analysis. Some studies have begun to make use of this technique to explore fundamental phenomena of psycholinguistic and the mechanism of prafoveal processing during reading, and made some valuable outcomes through this technique. For example, Dimigen, Kliegl & Sommer（2012）utilized co-registration of EM and EEG and combined the boundary paradigm to investigate the neural mechanism of parafoveal preview effect. The results demonstrated that a correct parafoveal preview during the previous fixation could lead to a modulation of fixation-related potentials (FRP) amplitude over occipitotemporal areas. This component could be located to extrastriate occipital or occipitotemporal cortex. At last, based on the problems existing in this technique and its application prospect, some advises have been put forward for the future: (1) A standardized procedure should be developed for the processing of data obtained by co-registration of EM and EEG. (2) More indexes should be selected in using the approach of co-registration of EM and EEG recording. This can achieve more valuable results. (3) Because of the uniqueness of Chinese characters, some studies have found that some effects are different from the alphabetic characters. Therefore, co-registration of EM and EEG recording should be widely used in Chinese reading. Related Articles | Metrics

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Multiple Mechanisms Underlying Collaborative Inhibition: The Evidences from Encoding Manipulations 2017, 40(4): 815-821.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Intuition suggests that “two heads together are better than two heads apart” when completing cognitive tasks, particularly problem solving. However, this does not appear to be the case for memory tasks. Researchers demonstrated that, during retrieval, individuals working together as a collaborative group performed much more poorly than did the same number of people recalling individually (nominal group). This phenomenon is called collaborative inhibition effect. There have been a number of studies on this topic since it was found two decades ago. Researchers have also given models to explain this effect. Psychologists suggested that collaborative inhibition might be due to the single theory such as retrieval inhibition mechanism, which suggests that when an individual engages in recall in a collaborative setting, relating the results of that recall to other group members might cause both the speaker and the listener to forget non-recalled materials, or retrieval disruption mechanism, which states that each individual’s idiosyncratic organization of overlapping information is disrupted during collaborative recall phases. However, there are growing evidences that it is inconsistent with the single theory account, suggesting that multiple mechanisms are needed to be explored underlying collaborative inhibition. To identify the contributions of retrieval inhibition and retrieval disruption underlying collaborative inhibition, the current study explored how the encoding mode and the encoding order consistency influence collaborative inhibition. Experiment 1 adopted a survival-processing paradigm to investigate whether retrieval inhibition plays a role in collaborative inhibition. In this experiment, 108 participants that compose 36 groups were randomly assigned to the survival-processing condition or non-survival-processing (control) condition. After the encoding phase, each group finished a group (collaborative or nominal) recall test. The results obtained here suggested that survival-processing condition and non-survival-processing condition both showed collaborative inhibition effect; but this deficit was attenuated in survival-processing condition, which means the encoding modes influenced the magnitude of collaborative inhibition, that indicated the retrieval inhibition mechanism plays a role in collaborative inhibition. Experiment 2 used associative memory training method to investigate whether retrieval disruption could influence collaborative inhibition. Another 120 participants were volunteered in this experiment. Half of the groups encoding items in the same order and the other half was not, both of whom were taught to encoding the materials with associative memory method in two weeks. The results of Experiment 2 showed that after the specific memory training, participants that learned items in the same order showed no collaborative inhibition, while participants that learned items in the different order showed classic collaborative inhibition. These results suggested that the encoding order consistency influence the magnitude of collaborative inhibition, which confirm the role of retrieval disruption mechanism underlying collaborative inhibition. Many results demonstrated that single theory (either retrieval inhibition or retrieval disruption mechanism) might be the mechanism of collaborative inhibition. However, the current results demonstrated that both retrieval inhibition and retrieval disruption mechanisms underlying collaborative inhibition. These results suggested that, compared to single theory, multiple mechanisms are more suitable to explain collaborative inhibition. Based on the above results, we discussed the mechanisms underlying collaborative inhibition. In addition, we give some important points to the future studies. Above all, collaborative inhibition may have multiple bases—in addition to retrieval inhibition, retrieval disruption also plays a role. Related Articles | Metrics

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Event-Based Prospective Memory and Cognitive Control 2017, 40(4): 856-862.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Prospective memory (PM) and cognitive control are core elements of human cognition. However, most existing theories and experimental studies of PM did not consider cognitive control when investigated the process underline PM. Bugg et al. (2013) integrated PM and cognitive control theories, firstly. They found that there were similarity between multiprocess framework (MPF) of PM and dual mechanisms of cognitive control (DMC). For instance these two theories both involved preparation and reflexive process during stimulus producing. More specifically, strategic monitoring in MPF was similar with proactive in DMC for goal-relevant and top-down influences on behavior. While spontaneous retrieval in MPF was similar with reactive in DMC for bottom-up stimulus orientation. Since Bugg et al. (2013), the number of researches focus on cognitive control during PM was accumulating. We firstly reviewed researches about the supportive role of cognitive control to PM. According to three unities of executive control (functional similarity with cognitive control), shifting, updating, and inhibition are involved in PM. Shifting in PM meant the task-switching feature of PM paradigm, switching between PM task and ongoing task, or special ongoing task containing switching. Task-switching increased resources consumption regardless in PM- or ongoing task, and would impair performance of PM task. Updating in PM meant interruptions during task performance, in which keeping previous task in mind with performing present task. It was harmful for PM implementation and may induce catastrophe under particular working condition. Inhibition in PM was required when intention has been finished, suspended or changed. Activation after its completion could be inhibited or not still in dispute now. Under some condition, finished cues would prolong RTs of same stimulus or cause false alarms (commission errors). However, under the other condition these effects would fade. Secondly, differences between PM and cognitive control were discussed, from methods and relevant brain regions. Differences in methods were stimulus with features of cognitive control paradigm and whether one kind of task could imply distinct processes. Cognitive control network comprising dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), dorsal parietal cortex (DPC), anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) (e.g. Breukelaar et al., 2016). While PM did not have a specific brain network for disputation about cost and different retrieval procedure of varying cues. Now anterior PFC, PC, ACC, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and insula are involved in PM (Cona et al., 2015). Although PFC, ACC and PC were active during PM and cognitive control, sub-regions and active degree were not the same. Distinct region was insula which was active in PM paradigms. There are still limitation in previous researches, which would give future work three implication: (1) Un-corresponding relationship between PM and cognitive control for more dependent role of PM. This means that future researches could reduce dependence of episodic memory by considering physiology basis during exploring PM’s through ERPs, fMRI and other neurocognitive technologies. (2) Lack of what effects of cognitive control unities and diversities on PM. This means that many kinds of tasks could be utilized in PM researches, to investigate which specific unity effect on PM and how to improve the unity to enhance PM or other relevant cognitive ability. (3) Confusion the differ role between PM and cognitive control in cognitive system. Specifically, PM is more comprehensive for requirement of perception, working memory and attention, while cognitive control is more basic for was required in numerous cognitive activities, for instance emotion. How to integration disputation of cognitive control theories for explaining and understanding PM process is a difficulty of future work. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Emotion on the Eye Movement of Image Scanning 2017, 40(4): 808-814.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Related Articles | Metrics

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A Study on False memory and true memory in blind students 2017, 40(4): 844-849.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Most prior studies of false memory focused on sighted rather than blind population. Using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (DRM), the current study compared false and true memory among blind students in reference to sighted students. Specifically, two experiments examined recognition of word lists via either Braille reading or auditory learning. The results of both experiments demonstrated false memory among blind students which did not significantly differ from that of sighted students. While sighted students did not show different performance under the conditions of screen reading and auditory learning, blind students performed better when engaging in Braille reading, manifested as better correct rejection on unrelated words. Blind students produced better performance on discrimination of learned words and unrelated words under stricter judgement criteria. Related Articles | Metrics

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Changes in Learning Styles: Facilitating Learning through Retrieval Practice 2017, 40(4): 913-919.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Retrieval practice effect, also termed as testing effect, refers to that retrieval practice facilitate long-term retention after initial study, compared to repeated studying costing an equal time, even when tests are given without feedback. Despite the wealth of empirical research illustrated that retrieval practice is one of the most potent strategies for enhancing learning, students and educators may only considered it as an assessment tool to measure what a student knows, consequently cannot change or facilitate learning behavior. Accordingly, a high-level goal of this paper is to advocate for increased use of practice testing as a means for improving student learning in authentic educational contexts, and to offer a reference for teachers and students to apply this strategy correctly and efficiently. The current paper firstly provide an overview of theoretical approaches that have been directed or indirected toward explaining the retrieval practice effect, such as elaborative retrieval hypothesis and episodic context account .Then review some fMRI studies,which provide insight by showing that several enhanced brain regions associated with retrieval practice but not with restudy. As a result, retrieval practice not only makes full use of the cognitive and affective, cortical and subcortical functions, but also plays the advantages of semantic and episodic memory to facilitate learning and memory. Secondly, we illustrate the specific characters of retrieval practice in education context. As we show, across a wide variety of materials and students throughout their lifespan, the testing effect remains a robust phenomenon; significant testing effects emerged at all retention intervals; prior knowledge or ability level has no influence on the effectiveness of retrieval practice; covert retrieval provides as much benefit to later retention as does overt retrieval and that both can be effective study strategies. Thirdly, research indicates that some factors have an important influence on retrieval practice effect size. On the basis of these influencing factors,we offer some basic prescriptive conclusions for students and educators as well as recommendations for enhancing learning and memory in education settings. For instance, multiple practice tests distributed across time, provide correct and delay feedback, enhance retention through reconsolidation and apply challenging retrieval forms to make the effect maximization. Finally, we consider some possible negative consequences (retrieval practice induces forgetting and negative emotion) of testing that may occur in certain circumstances, though these negative effects are often small and do not cancel out the large positive effects of testing. Frequent testing in the classroom may boost educational achievement at all levels of education by formative assessment and low-or no-stakes quizzes. In fact, frequent quizzing seems to alleviate test anxiety. Related Articles | Metrics

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How does mobile social media use affect the friendship quality of adolescents: The mediating role of online social support and online self-disclosure 2017, 40(4): 870-877.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Social media has deeply changed the interpersonal communication. With the popularity of mobile Internet, appearance of mobile social media, the communication between people is becoming more different. More and more young people started to use mobile social media to communicate with their classmates and friends. But few studies have focused on the adolescents’ behaviors on using mobile social media activities and whether the use of mobile social media will affect the quality of their friendship, and how it will be affected. Studies have found that there is a close connection between the use of social media and adolescents’ friendship quality. In addition to all the features of traditional social media, mobile social medial also has its own unique characteristics. It is convenient and can be used anytime and anywhere. How will the use of mobile social media affect adolescent’s friendship quality, and what is the relationship between mobile social media and adolescent’s friendship quality? Further analysis and verification are still needed. Mobile social media refers to the traditional social media were used on mobile devices(e.g., smartphones, pad.), and the software that had social features specifically developed for mobile devices, such as SMS, social networking sites, micro-blog, mobile QQ, and wechat. The current study examined the effect of mobile social media on friendship quality of Chinese adolescents, and how such an effect might be mediated by online self-disclosure and online social support. The participants were recruited from four middle schools in Shanxi province and Anhui province. All participants were tested in groups in classroom settings. We recruited 600 students with average age of 14.42. They were asked to complete Adolescents’ Mobile Social Media Usage Scale, Online Self-disclosure Scale, Online Social Support Scale and the Scale of Friendship Quality. There are 560 students completed the survey (i.e., response rate was 93.3%), 473 students using mobile social media contacted with their classmates or friends, and 87 students never used mobile social media. Thus the data analysis does not include this part of samples that never used mobile social media. Results provide strong support for the hypothesis that Mobile social media was positively correlated with adolescents’ friendship quality, online self-disclosure, and online social support (p<0.01). Structural equation modeling showed that there are two ways that mobile social media use predicted the adolescents’ friendship quality: The first is that mobile social media use can affect adolescents’ online social support, and then affect the friendship quality via online social support. And the second is that mobile social media use can affect the adolescents’ online self-disclosure, and then online self-disclosure will affect the friendship quality via online social support. Online self-disclosure and online social support play a serial mediation role between the mobile social media use and friendship quality. The present study examined how the social media use on the mobile devices affect the friendship quality of adolescents in China, it answered the question that how the mobile social media use affect the adolescents’ interpersonal relationships. The present study resolve the core questions of how mobile technology use affect physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and moral development of children and adolescents in the world. Related Articles | Metrics

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Different Performance of Word Learning Capability Between Children and Adults in Natural Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements 2017, 40(4): 863-869.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Vocabulary is the cornerstone of listening, speaking, reading, writing, translation and other language skills. According to statistics available, children learn about 3000 vocabularies per year during the primary school period, and about 30% of the vocabularies are acquired from the natural reading. That is, with the increasing exposures of the novel words to different sentential contexts, readers have gradually formed the novel lexical representation in their mental lexicon. Previous study has shown that adults could form the more consolidated lexical representation than children during the initial four encounters with different contexts based on their eye movement behaviors. In the present study, we endeavor to explore how reader’s eye movement behavior change during the initial several encounters when learning the novel words in the natural reading. Specifically, we focus on the issue of whether the change of reader’s eye movements show the developmental trends with the increasing number of encounters with different contexts. We adopted a group of high-frequency characters to construct 30 two-character pseudowords as novel words. Every target word was embedded into five sentence frames, each of which provided a context describing a plausible meaning of the pseudoword it contained. Each pseudoword was assigned to one of ten real-world semantic categories. In order to test whether or not readers had learned the semantic category of each pseudoword after reading it within five sentential contexts, a multiple choice semantic category question (presenting ten categories, of which five were used in the experiment and five were distractors) was presented to the participants. The eye movements of two groups of participants (including adults and 9-year olds) were recorded when they read the sentences. The first aspect of results showed that, children and adults undergo the same pattern of change on first fixation duration with the increasing reading of novel words through sentential contexts. That was, the duration of the first fixation located on the novel words sharply decreased when they met it for the second time, and it retained the same level during the next three encounters. It suggests that there is no developmental trend between children and adults in the very early stage of lexical processing when learning the novel words through context. Another aspect of results showed that, adults and children undergo different patterns of changes with the increasing reading of novel words through sentential contexts. For adult, gaze duration, refixation probability, and total reading time on the novel words sharply decreased when they read it in the second time; by contrast, children saved some gaze duration and refixations probability on the novel words in the fourth time of reading novel words within contexts, but it did not occur during the first three times of reading. These results indicates that adults showed better performance than children on the relative later stage of lexical processing when learning novel words through contexts. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Relationship between High School Students’ Gratitude and Psychological Well-being: a Chain Mediating Effect of Perceived Social Support and Basic Psychological Needs Xue-Feng LUO Shoukuan Mu 2017, 40(4): 878-884.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The period of middle and high school is the key period of moral education, and gratitude is the key positive characters that moral education should focus on. Previous studies reveals that a high gratitude person are more positive emotions, mindfulness and high life satisfaction, et cetera. Numerous studies explored the mechanism of how gratitude influences subject well-being. In contrast, the studies of gratitude and psychological well-being are relatively less. Psychological well-being, which is different from subject well-being, developed from eudaimonism and focuses on self-fulfillment. Wood, Joseph and Maltby’s work(2009) indicated that psychological well-being is uniquely predicted by gratitude. However, how does gratitude affect psychological well-being? What mediators are there between them? The existing literature shows that social support and basic psychological needs are mediators between gratitude and subject well-being. Besides basic psychological needs plays an role of mediator between social support and psychological well-being. Thus, we presumed that social support and basic psychological needs might be the mediators between gratitude and psychological well-being. The purpose of this study was to test our hypothesis that social support and basic psychological needs mediated from gratitude to psychological well-being and further develop the mechanism of gratitude to well-being. 610 questionnaires were distributed and recruited, 583 of them were valid. In the valid questionnaires, the participants were 16.33(SD = .89) on average; 40.3% are male, 55.1% are female, and 4.6% did not report their gender; 37.0% were freshmen, 58.8% were sophomore, and the rest did not report it. They completed gratitude questionnaire GQ-6, perceived social support scale, basic psychological needs scale and psychological well-being scale. All these scales’ Cronbach α were acceptable: GQ-6 was .81, perceived social support scale was .86, basic psychological needs scale was .83, scale of psychological well-being was .94. Structural equation modeling with item-parceling was applied to analyze the data. The items of GQ-6 were parceled into 3 new indicators; the items of perceived social support scale and basic psychological needs scale were parceled into 3 new indicators respectively by using internal-consistency approach; the items of Ryff’s psychological well-being scale were parceled into 14 new indicators by using domain-representative approach. The results showed that: (1) The structural equation modeling revealed that the model fitted the data well (RMSEA=.071，CFI=.916，TLI=.905，SRMR=.055). Perceived social support and basic psychological needs mediated the effect of gratitude on psychological well-being. (2) In the chain-mediated model, the coefficient of the path from perceived social support to psychological well-being is non-significant. The chain mediating effect is about 33%. The direct effect from gratitude to psychological well-being is significant. It means there are some unrevealed mediators exist which we should further explore. Besides, the 6-dimension construct of Ryff’s psychological well-being scale is not supported by this study. The results of previous studies, especially the Chinese ones, about this scale’s construct validity are inconsistent. Therefore, we suggested researchers to revisit Ryff’s psychological well-being scale before they use it. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Juvenile Preference for Online Social Interaction on Internet Addiction: The Moderating Effect of the family social economic statue 2017, 40(4): 885-891.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Previous studies have demonstrated that the preference for online social interaction (POSI) is one of the most important influence factors affecting problematic Internet use (PIU). Online communication promotes intimate relationships, alleviates social anxiety, and strengthens interpersonal skills. However, some other researches also show that a portion of youth are dependent on the Internet and are even addicted to the Internet, specifically because of the safety and continued interpersonal relationships that online communication provides. According to the assumptions of the Self-Worth Orientation Theory, the human is a reasonable and social (socialized) animal, and reasonable thinking of human beings pursues things’ reason. People need to construct and explain the system of the inside and outside world, which includes oneself and others, and find the self and the meaning of life; self-worth is the ultimate reason system of self-behavior. The inner and outside psychological resources could promote self-worth. And the family social economic statue (SES) is one supporting resource of self-worth system. Thus, based on the theory of Self-Worth Orientation, we hypothesized that, if a youth lives in a high SES family, his or her self-worth may be high, which may weaken the dependence of the acceptance and support from online, in turn, the effect of POSI on PIU may fade down; on the contrary, if one lives in a low family SES, his or her self-worth may be low, the acceptance and support from online interaction would be integral to make up for the lack of self-worth, thus, the effect of POSI on PIU may enhance. In sum, the family SES may moderate the effect of POSI on PIU. To explore this hypothesis, we adopted Young’s Internet addiction diagnostic questionnaire, preference online social interaction scale, and self-made family SES scale to measured 1219 adolescents and their parent. For youths, 447 were elementary school students (Mage = 10.72, SD = 1.39), 418 were middle school students (Mage = 13.04, SD = 1.23), 351 were middle school students (Mage = 16.03, SD = 0.88). For parents, 429 respondents were fathers, 729 respondents were mothers, 38 were non-parent, and 24 did not response. The date of non-parent and no response were not included in the analysis. A hierarchical regression model was used to investigate the effect of control variables (gender and youth’s age), the independent variable (POSI), the moderator variable (family SES), and interaction between POSI and family SES. The results showed that the effect of POSI on PIU was significant, and the effect was moderated by parent’s SES. Further analysis revealed that, living in high family SES, the effect of POSI on PIU was not significant (B = 0.008 SE = 0.007, t(843) = 1.24, p = .22, ?2 = .002); however, living in low family SES, teenagers’ POSI predicted PIU significantly ( B = 0.030, SE = 0.007, t(843) = 4.20, p < .001, ?2 = .020). These results support the hypothesis of Self-worth Orient Theory. This study, not only in theory level, affords a new perspective to explain the mechanism of PIU, also, it provides some new inspiration for prevention and treatment of PIU---giving more attention and offer more supports of self-worth to the adolescents who live in low family SES. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Cultural Intelligence on Minority Preparatory Undergraduates’ Subjective Well-being: The Chain Mediating Effect of Bicultural Identity Integration and Acculturative Stress Xiao-Ming FANG 2017, 40(4): 892-897.  Abstract ( )   PDF   In recent years, the number of minority preparatory undergraduates has gradually increased. Minority preparatory undergraduates living in the dual culture have more difficulties of cultural adaptation and mental health problems(Li, 2014; Li, Feng, et al., 2014; Li, Wang, et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2015). The minority preparatory undergraduates who have cultural adaptation difficulties is easily to experience more alienation, anxiety, tension and so on. Subjective well-being has been an important area of research in positive psychology, which reflects individuals’ affective and cognitive evaluations of their lives. Subjective well-being is an important indicator of mental health, which is closely related to the life, learning and cultural adaptation of minority preparatory undergraduates. Cultural intelligence is one of the important influence factors to minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being(Ang et al., 2007; Ayoob et al., 2015). Few studies have examined the mediating processes between cultural intelligence and minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being. Mediational analyses attempt to identify the intermediary process that leads from the independent variable (e.g., cultural intelligence) to a dependent variable (e.g., minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being) . Therefore, more attention should be paid to minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being. It is very necessary to study the potential mechanisms of minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being so as to design improvement programs. The present study aimed to explore the chain mediation mechanism among cultural intelligence, bicultural identity integration, acculturative stress and subjective well-being. Specifically, the present study examined whether cultural intelligence would be indirectly related to minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being through bicultural identity integration and acculturative stress. The results could help effectively enhance subjective well-being of minority preparatory undergraduates. 799 minority preparatory undergraduates (338 boys and 461 girls, Mage=19.12±1.51) were recruited in the study to complete self-report questionnaires. Cultural intelligence was measured with the cultural intelligence questionnaire which consists of 20 items. The respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with each statement on a 7-point Likert scale. Bicultural identity integration was assessed with the bicultural identity integration questionnaire which consists of 8 items. The respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with each statement on a 5-point Likert scale. Acculturative stress was measured with the acculturative stress questionnaire which consists of 15 items. The respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with each statement on a 5-point Likert scale. Subjective well-being was evaluated with the subjective well-being questionnaire which consists of 9 items. The respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with each statement on a 7-point Likert scale. The results indicated that: (1) Bicultural identity integration mediated the effect of cultural intelligence on minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being. Cultural intelligence not only directly influence well-being minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being, but also through influence Bicultural identity integration, ultimately influence minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being; (2) Acculturative stress mediated the effect of bicultural identity integration on minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being. Cultural intelligence could directly influence minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being, as well as through influenced bicultural identity integration and acculturative stress, ultimately influenced minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being. Therefore, bicultural identity integration and acculturative stress played a chain mediating effect between cultural intelligence and minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being. The chain mediating model significantly revealed the effect mechanism of cultural intelligence on minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being. These findings supported our model that the link between cultural intelligence and minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective was complex and dependent on other factors. The conclusion of the study had important reference value for improving minority preparatory undergraduates’ subjective well-being. Related Articles | Metrics

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Emotion Regulation Flexibility: An Integrative Review 2017, 40(4): 905-912.  Abstract ( )   PDF   It has long been appreciated that emotion regulation (ER) is essential for individuals to adapt to their environment. According to the dominant process model proposed by Gross in 1988, the defining feature of ER was that individuals adopt a certain strategy to achieve their primary goal in a particular context, and its effect depended on the combination of strategy and context. Although the Gross’ model has consistently emphasized the role of context, in practice subsequent studies have focused primarily on the utilization of specific ER strategy in a fixed situation, specifically focusing on the primacy of putatively adaptive or maladaptive strategies. Until recently, several empirical studies discovered that the context moderated the outcome of the implementation of specific strategy, thus switching to scrutinize the flexible implementation of different strategies in multiply varying situations instead of single constant situation, which highlighted the role of ER flexibility. In order to examine the current status and future prospects of ER flexibility, this review was arranged as follows: In the first section, we distinguished three fundamental elements (changes in the strategy, changes in the environment, synchronous changes between strategy and environment) through analyzing conceptualizations of ER flexibility constructed in prior studies. Therefore, we defined ER flexibility as the variability of synchronous changes between strategy and environment (including internal and/or external situations). In the second section, we overviewed two models of ER flexibility. Firstly, considering the three different time scales (micro scale, meso scale, and macro scale) involved in ER flexibility, Hollenstein, Lichtwarck-Aschoff and Potworowski classified three types of ER flexibility (dynamic flexibility, reactive flexibility, and trait/developmental flexibility). Secondly, allowing for the three sequential components (context sensitivity, repertoire, and feedback) of ER flexibility, Bonanno and Burton assumed three essential abilities of ER flexibility (evaluate demands and opportunities, select regulatory strategy, monitor and modify as needed) correspondingly. In the third section, based on the above mentioned three key elements of ER flexibility, we differentiated six sub-types of ER flexibility: (1) Objective changes in the environment; (2) Subjective changes in the environment; (3) Autonomous changes in the strategy; (4) Controlled changes in the strategy; (5) Absolute synchronous changes between strategy and environment; (6) Relative synchronous changes between strategy and environment. Subsequently, we elaborated experimental diagrams under these conditions respectively. In the fourth section, with regard to neurobiological underpinnings implicated in ER flexibility, few preliminary studies to date showed that ER flexibility related to not only dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), thalamus, caudate, and precuneus, but also the inverse medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) - amygdala functional connectivity. In the fifth section, we discussed about whether the ER flexibility is inherently adaptive. While the minority of researchers assumed that ER flexibility is inherently adaptive, the majority of researchers believed that its adaptiveness should be validated by follow-up empirical studies rather than presumed by pre-existing theoretical assertions. In the final section, we discussed several limitations of previous studies and pointed out some promising directions for future research accordingly. Related Articles | Metrics

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Social Dominance Orientation: Retrospect and Prospect 2017, 40(4): 992-996.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Social dominance theory (SDT) was developed to understand the formation and development of the social prejudice which is based on social hierarchy. Social dominance orientation (SDO) is the major part of SDT. SDO is the preference of group-based social hierarchy and the unfairness of society, which is the general tendency of human being. According to the studies in the field of SDO, researchers usually drew the conclusion that (1) higher social dominance oriented individuals hold the belief that people with high ability should have more social rights and resources than those whose ability are low, that is, our society is originally unequal; and (2) lower social dominance oriented individuals believe that everyone is equal, and there should be no hierarchy difference. According to social dominance theory, members of dominant arbitrary groups are expected to have higher levels of SDO than members of subordinate groups because they want to sustain the privileged access to social and economic resources which their dominant position affords. Social dominance orientation is one of the most powerful predictors of intergroup attitudes and behavior. Some researchers suggest SDO might consist of two complementary dimensions: SDO-Dominance (SDO-D), or the preference for some groups to dominate others, and SDO-Egalitarianism (SDO-E), which means a preference for no egalitarian intergroup relation. About the nature of SDO is uncertain. Despite of the dimension of SDO, there is still fierce discussion on the question whether SDO is a stable trait or not. The contextualize critique of SDO has centered around two related points. First, these authors argue that SDO behaves differently as a function of the social context in which it is measured. Second, SDO reflected a generalized, abstracted support for group-based hierarchy and it’s a reliable predictor of a wide range of intergroup attitudes across different contexts and domains, including racial and ethnic prejudice and sexism. SDO has been found to be related to a range of hierarchy enhancing ideologies and policies such as prejudice and justice. Research has shown that distinct ideological belief systems, such as political conservatism and racism, are correlated with one another due to a general desire for group-based dominance. Many social factors such as social hierarchy, prejudice, political attitude and fairness can be affected by SDO strongly. According to SDO, hierarchy enhancing (HE) power and hierarchy attenuation (HA) power affect the human social system together. HE aims at form and maintenance the unfairness of society while HA aims at making the society fair. Based on these two concepts, studies on these four topics which affect human social life greatly have been discussed and summarized in order to reveal the importance of SDO in deconstructing these important social issues. Based on the review of SDO’s social influence, we make some recommendations on future research direction. First, in consideration of the limitation of explicit test of SDO (e.g. social desirability), implicit test should be developed to avoid these disadvantages and further the understand of the nature of SDO. Second, social context and social behavior should be integrated into the study of SDO in order to solve the controversy of the question whether SDO is a stable trait. Third, SDO should be brought into the topic of social problem solving and further the study of social distance at the same time of narrowing the gap between social groups in China. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Unfairness based Rumor on Genetic Modified (GM) Risk Appraisal 2017, 40(4): 941-946.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Rumor is a widespread social phenomenon, while the psychological black box of rumor spreading still remains underexplored. The existing research largely examined the issue of rumor from the aspect of the phenomenon, but the in-depth exploration of individual’s psychological process and characteristics during rumor spreading is limited. This paper attempts to investigate the influence of unfairness appealing rumor on people’s cognitive appraisal and emotional response in a context of Genetic Modified (GM) food risk. Drawing on previous research, we hypothesize that the emotions could be classified as consequence-related vs. morality-related. Further, rumor which provokes a feeling of unfairness would result in more intense ethical emotions, while maybe not the case for consequentialist emotions and perceived risks. Furthermore, we infer that rumor refuting by negate the credibility of rumor would offset the influence of it on emotional responses. To verify these assumptions, an experiment was taken on 150 undergraduates, which were assigned into 3 groups randomly. The group X read the basic message of GM bean oil. For the group Y, we inserted a faked message into the basic message to provoke a feeling of unfairness, while a clarification of that rumor was added for the group Z. Manipulations tests show that rumor indeed provoke a feeling of unfairness, while the reported unfairness decreased after rumor refuting. We analyzed the structure of the emotion ratings by applying a principal component analysis with varimax rotation, which supported the distinction between morality-based and consequence-based emotions. The results indicted that the feeling of unfairness not only directly led to stronger ethical emotions (such as angry, indignant), but also increased the consequentialist emotions (such as fear and worry) as well as the perceived risks indirectly. We argue that the ethical emotions caused by unfairness in the context of GM risk produced a casual effect on risk perception, where the participants intend to overestimate the risks of GM foods to justify their increased ethical emotions. Many psychological experiments have confirmed the spillover effect of incidental emotions on judgment, e.g. angry people inclined to underestimate risks (see Lerner et al., 2015). However, the induced ethical emotions in our experiment were integral to the following judgments and it resulted in higher perceived risks. The contrary effects imply a difference between incidental emotion and integral emotions on judgment. What’s more, we found that negating the rumor immediately could control the influence of rumor on perceived risks and emotions to some extent. These findings suggest that rumors governance must pay special attention to the emotional response of the public. To verify these assumptions, an experiment was taken on 150 undergraduates, which were assigned into 3 groups randomly. The group X read the basic message of GM bean oil. For the group Y, we inserted a faked message into the basic message to provoke a feeling of unfairness, while a clarification of that rumor was added for the group Z. Manipulations tests show that rumor indeed provoke a feeling of unfairness, while the reported unfairness decreased after rumor refuting. The results indicted that the feeling of unfairness not only directly led to stronger ethical emotions (such as angry, indignant), but also increased the consequentialist emotions (such as fear and worry) as well as the perceived risks indirectly. We argue that the ethical emotions caused by unfairness in the context of GM risk produced a casual effect on risk perception, where the participants intend to overestimate the risks of GM foods to justify their increased ethical emotions. Many psychological experiments have confirmed the spillover effect of incidental emotions on judgment, e.g. angry people inclined to underestimate risks (see Lerner et al., 2015). However, the induced ethical emotions in our experiment were integral to the following judgments and it resulted in higher perceived risks. The contrary effects imply a difference between incidental emotion and integral emotions on judgment. What’s more, we found that negating the rumor immediately could control the influence of rumor on perceived risks and emotions to some extent. These findings suggest that rumors governance must pay special attention to the emotional response of the public. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Acute Stress on Working Memory Depends on Stress Mindset 2017, 40(4): 967-974.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Everyone is familiar with acute stress. We experience it in varying forms and degrees every day. Acute stress in humans triggers the release of glucocorticoids (GCs) and influences performance in working memory (WM) tasks. This memory system relies on the prefrontal cortex (PFC), where GC-binding receptors are present. It is well known that stressful experiences may affect WM, but the results concerning the influence of acute stress on WM are quite heterogeneous with no, impairing or enhancing effects being reported. One factor which might mediate the effects of acute stress on WM is stress mindset. The main purpose of this research was to test the effect of stress mindset on WM under acute stress within female participants. Previous studies revealed that stress mindset is associated with moderate cortisol under stress，so we predict that having a stress-is-enhancing mindset will contribute to better performance in working memory tasks under acute stress. In Study 1, we investigated the reliability of the Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Test(SECPT) to elicit stress responses in Chinese female sample and tested the relationship between general stress mindset and WM performance under acute stress. A total of 55 female university students were recruited and were randomly assigned to “stress” or “no stress” group. The participants completed several scale (SMM-G, PANAS and Stress VAS) , then performed the standardized SECPT protocol or just put hand into lukewarm water respectively, during which several subjective measures (PANAS and Stress VAS) and objective measures (heart rate and skin conductance) were assessed. Then, participants performed n-back task to measure WM performance after completing SECPT. Results showed that female participants exhibited a significant increase in heart rate and skin conductance, and reported more negative emotion and stress following the SECPT. And general stress mindset was not significantly related to WM performance in reaction time and accuracy rate in both 1-back task and 3-back task. In study 2, we viewed mindset as a contextual factor, tested the effect of stress mindset in the specific context on WM performance under acute stress. A total of 58 female university students were recruited and were randomly assigned to “stress-is-debilitating mindset” or “stress-is-debilitating mindset” group. Firstly, the participants reported their stress level，then they watched two different video clips respectively to induce different mindsets. And then they performed the standardized SECPT protocol, marked the Stress VAS, finished the SMM-S to measure their mindsets and finished n-back task including 2-back and 3-back task. Results showed that (1) the SMM was higher for those in the enhancing condition than those in the debilitating condition, t（56）=7.736，p<0.001，d=2.07. (2) After SECPT ，participants reported higher stress level both in the enhancing condition and debilitating condition (F(1,56)=6.441，p<0.05, ηp2=0.103) . (3)There was no significant difference in stress level between the enhancing condition and debilitating condition after SECPT(F(1,56)=1.089，p>0.05). (4) Participants in the enhancing condition showed better WM performance under acute stress. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that SECPT is a protocol with good applicability in Chinese adult participants. Stress mindset indeed has effect on WM performance under acute stress within female participants. This study provides support for the idea that the mindset may also matter in the domain of stress. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Relation of Gratitude and Life Satisfaction: an Exploration of Multiple Mediation 2017, 40(4): 954-960.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Abstract Heretofore a substantial amount of researches involve gratitude and life satisfaction. It has been demonstrated that gratitude is a unique predictor of life satisfaction, and the relation between them may be causal. The mediators which may impact on this causality were also well-studied separately, while few researchers were concerned with the possible correlation between them. Moreover, in view of the personality which is correlated with these variables, it is necessary to filtrate feasible mediators and to seek out the special mechanism of gratitude to the life satisfaction, via controlling the influence of the personality. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore which of the selected 4 mediators- affect, self-esteem, self-efficacy and coping style- bring definitely significant effect on the predictive role of gratitude, even the causal relationship. The current study hypothesized that: (1) the effect of affect, self-esteem, self-efficacy and coping style on life satisfaction may be influenced by personality; (2) one of the 4 mediators may be the major explanatory variable of gratitude’s unique predictive status. 338 college students were recruited and investigated through seven related questionnaires in this survey: the Gratitude Questionnaire Six(Revised), the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Positive and Negative Schedule(PANAS), the Self-esteem Scale, the General Self-efficacy scale, the Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Five-Factor Inventory(NEO-FFI-R) and the Simplified coping style questionnaire(SCSQ) were respectively used to assess gratitude, life satisfaction, positive & negative affect, self-esteem, general self-efficacy, personality and the coping style. Except the independent variable, the dependent variable and the personality variable, the rest were the feasible mediators. A couple of software, SPSS and Process, were applied in the research. All the variables were calculated into the total score. The Pearson correlation was used to analysis the collected data; hierarchical regression was used to exclude the overlapped effect of the mediators under the control of personality, and to reject the influence of personality among the left mediators; Process programmed by Hayes were adopted to test the mediating effect of self-esteem and positive affect between gratitude and life satisfaction, after controlling the influence of personality and gender. The main results revealed that: (1) gratitude significantly correlated with life satisfaction and the mediators, and the chosen mediators were associated with each other, which can be seen clearly in Table 1; (2) the main effect of gratitude was significant after controlling the impact of gender and personality; (3) the general self-efficacy、coping style and negative affect was excluded because of the insignificant coefficient of regression to the life satisfaction, which can be seen in Table 3; (4) of all the mediators, only the mediating effect of self-esteem was significant via controlling personality and gender. The process was showed in Table 4. Accordingly, we conclude that in the four selected mediators it is the self-esteem that partially mediates the causality of gratitude and life satisfaction. Meanwhile, the relation between self-esteem and life satisfaction may be causal for the controlling of the possible variables. That is to say, self-esteem may be the antecedent of life satisfaction. Moreover, when personality is controlled, the coping style, negative emotion and general efficacy bring insignificant effects on life satisfaction, showing the co-variation with personality on the effect of life satisfaction. Self-esteem, positive emotion still works after controlling personality and gender, and there may be some complicated mediating relations, which may conduce to complete the path in “gratitude - life satisfaction” model, deserving further exploration. The present study clarifies possible mediators in the research of gratitude and life satisfaction, averting pointless exercises in further investigation. Meanwhile, further research is necessary to explore the relationship between self-esteem and life satisfaction. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Experience of Social Support among Bereaved Chinese Individuals: A Qualitative Study 2017, 40(4): 961-966.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Bereavement is a painful and stressful experience. Given the beneficial effect of social support on stressful events or adversities, it is naturally to expect that social support will facilitate one's grief adaptation. However, there are mix findings about this issue in the literature. One of the reasons might be the lack of deep understanding on bereaved person's experience of social support, before we asserting its usefulness of help. People may have special needs in bereavement, and social support can only play a positive role when it fit's the person's needs. Even though a theoretical model on social support in bereavement has been proposed recently, there is lack of substantial data about the actual experience of bereaved persons to enrich our understanding on this topic. Moreover, social support is the most common source for a Chinese bereaved person to seek help on the grief. Therefore, it is very important to build more knowledge on this topic, and to hear the insider's voice on their own experience. For such purpose, the present study adopted qualitative method to understand the experience of social support among bereaved Chinese adults. A purposeful sampling method was adopted in this study to include participants. Their age, gender, types of loss, and reasons of the death were all taken into consideration in the process of recruiting to maximize characteristic variation. Finally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 bereaved adults. Some of them joined the one to one in-depth interview, and the rest joined focused groups. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was adopted to analyze the data. The interviews reveal three main themes. The first is about the content of social support. It includes support regarding the after death issues (such as arranging the funeral), emotional support (including both help the person to process or distract from the grief), life recovery (adjusting to a new world without the deceased), and material support (such as helping with economic difficulties). Second is the main source of social support, which includes family members, friends, colleagues and other bereaved persons with similar loss experience. Government institutions also provide some form of support to the person. Finally is the influence of social support. We found that it facilitates the person's recovery through cognitive and emotional changes in the adjustment process. Social support helps the bereaved to release negative emotions, increase positive emotions, bring positive believes, and accept the reality of death. These findings provide vivid material to the understanding of social support for bereaved Chinese people. It is compatible to the latest model of Social Support in bereavement(SSB)(Li et al., 2013), as it demonstrates that the content of the support contains both loss-oriented and restoration oriented domains. Meanwhile, some types of support is consistent with the theoretical model, such as emotional support and instrumental support in both domains. However, it deserves to be noticed there are delicate discrepancies. For example, the informational support proposed in the original theoretical model did not come out as an prominent and independent type of support from the present data. The results shed light on the influence of social support in bereavement adjustment. Firstly, social support offers an accepting environment for listening to the bereaved, and talking about the bereaved. This is beneficial for renewing mental representations of the deceased person. Secondly, social support facilitates the acceptance of the loss, thus smoothes the progress of continuing the on-going life without the deceased. Third, social support offers a chance for the person to take a break from the grief, stop ruminating the loss or immerse in the negative mood. Finally, it helps the bereaved to solve practical problems in life, thus reduce the secondary stressors accompanied with the loss. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Social Networking Sites Usage on Body Image Satisfaction: the Mediating Role of Body Image Comparison and the Moderating Role of Gender 2017, 40(4): 920-926.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Along with the development of science and technology and the popularization of network, social networking sites (SNSs) have become an important platform for interpersonal interactions, and the impact of SNSs use has also become a focus of relevant research scholars. Teenagers are the most active users in SNSs, so it’s important to find out the impact of SNSs use on teenagers’ physical and mental health. Plenty of researches have investigated the relationships between SNSs use and teenagers’ psychosocial functioning. On the other hand, a great deal of researches interested in body image satisfaction. The past researches confirmed that media use impacts body image satisfaction from many perspectives. The current research focuses on the impact of SNSs use on teenagers’ body image satisfaction. The purposes of this research are to investigate the mechanism of SNSs use affecting body image satisfaction. A survey was conducted to evaluate relationships among SNSs use, body image comparison, body image satisfaction, and self-objectification of middle and high school students. Participants of the research were 1469 middle and high school students, including 733 girls and 736 boys. The experiments conducted questionnaires to the selected classes by convenient sampling. Four questionnaires were used in this study. the Scale for Social Networking Sites Use Intensity includes 8 items in which the first two measure Length of time on SNSs per day and online friends numbers and the other six using a 5-point Likert scoring. The SNS Appearance Comparison Scale includes 3 items using a 5-point Likert scoring and the Body Image States Scale includes 6 items using a 9-point Likert scoring. The Self-objectification Scale includes 10 items needed to be ranked in influential order. The results indicated that: (1) the SNSs use intensity of teenagers positively correlates with body image comparison on SNSs, and negatively correlate with body image satisfaction; and girls’ (not boys’) body image comparison negatively correlate with body image satisfaction. (2) For female teenagers, SNSs use not only directly predicts body image satisfaction, but also indirectly predicts body image satisfaction through the mediating role of body image comparison; and higher self-objectification predicts more body image comparison and less body image satisfaction. Those findings supported conclusion from earlier studies, that is, body image comparison is the reason for SNSs use predicting body image satisfaction. In addition to this, the research proved that self-objectification is the moderating role. Substantial research confirmed that body image affects multiple aspects of psychosocial functioning. It is why the research about teenagers’ body image is necessary. The findings of this research point to some practical implications. Firstly, teenagers (especially girls) should be guided to use social networking sites properly. Further education of media use such as media literacy involved in social networking sites might prove more effective. Then it is important to cultivate girls’ positive body image and reduce mass media objectification of female image. Social culture should encourage girls to enhance competence rather than pay attention to appearance. The negative effects of body image comparison could be reduced if girls don’t drive for and internalize the media ideal image. Related Articles | Metrics

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Uncertainty As the Mediator Between Others’ Procedural Justice and Self-directed Cooperation 2017, 40(4): 947-953.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Procedural justice is the key antecedent of employee’s cooperation (Cornelis, Van Hiel, & De Cremer, 2011; De Cremer & Tyler, 2007; Tyler & Blader, 2003). However, researchers primarily take a first-person perspective on the study of this effect (Colquitt et al., 2013), few studies take an observer perspective on organizational justice. In organizations, others’ procedural justice can significantly influence how individuals evaluate their organizations and the organizational authorities who enact justice. These evaluations, in turn, shape their engagement with those entities, such as cooperation, identification, commitment, and other attitudes and behaviors. This perspective is particularly important because members of organization witness many more justice events than they experience personally (Blader, Wiesenfeld, Fortin, & Wheeler-Smith, 2013; Lotz, Okimoto, Schl?sser, & Fetchenhauer, 2011). Existing studies have found that others’ procedural justice can predict self-directed cooperation (Mitchell, Vogel, & Folger, 2015; Wubben, De Cremer, & Van Dijk, 2011), and the mediating role of non-instrumental factors (Tyler & Blader, 2003; Blader & Tyler, 2009), but few studies examine which instrumental factor can mediate this effect. According to fairness heuristic theory (Lind, 2001) and uncertainty management theory (Van den Bos & Lind, 2002), the present study will explore whether this effect is mediated through instrumental factors (e.g., uncertainty). Two experiments were conducted. In experiment 1 (situation paradigm), participants consisted of 168 college students, and others’ procedural justice was manipulated by directing participates to imagine one piece of story associated with procedural justice that we prepared before. Specifically, the situation story talked about the procedure of a sum of reward allocation within a college students’ research team (justice vs. injustice). Independent-samples T test was used to test the validity of the manipulations, and it showed that the manipulations were successful. In addition, the influence of others’ procedural justice on self-directed cooperation was investigated. Using hierarchical regression analysis (Baron & Kenny, 1986), this experiment investigated the causal relationship between others’ procedural justice and self-directed cooperation, and the mediating effects of uncertainty between others’ procedural justice and self-directed cooperation were explored. In order to enhance the validity of the findings in experiment 1, experiment 2 was conducted in laboratory to explore the more realistic response towards others’ procedural justice. Participants consisted of 72 college students, and others’ procedural justice was manipulated by presenting information about how a previous ostensible participant was treated by the lab assistant. Specifically, the information conveyed that how the lab assistant allocate the payoff to the previous ostensible participant (justice vs. injustice). The method of manipulation check and data analysis is equal to experiment 1. The results were also similar to the results of experiment 1. The results showed that: (1) Others’ procedural justice had significant predictive effects on uncertainty and self-directed cooperation. That is to say, in the situation of others’ procedural justice, individuals’ intentions to cooperate with group were most intensive, which was proved in our study; (2) The effect of others’ procedural justice on self-directed cooperation was mediated by uncertainty. That is to say, uncertainty links others’ procedural justice to drive self-directed cooperation. The theoretical implications of the findings were discussed. Given that others’ procedural justice is an important event, managers should adhere to procedural justice rules to all employees to foster their cooperation. This study can also provide implication for further researches to explore the interventions addressing injustice. Related Articles | Metrics

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An Application of the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model: How Sacrifice Motivations Influence Romantic Relationship Satisfaction? Qing-Qing FENG Hui ZHOU Jun-Hao PAN 2017, 40(4): 975-982.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Purpose: Maintaining a long-term romantic relationship can improve happiness and life satisfaction. But the stability of an ongoing relationship may sometimes be challenged by conflict. According to interdependence theory, the shift from self-interested impulse and focus on the long-term maintenance of the relationship have been called transformation of motivation. Sacrifice requires transformation of motivation and can protect relationships. In romantic relationships, sacrifice means that individuals give up their immediate self-interests for the sake of their partner’s well-being and relationship satisfaction. But many studies had revealed that sacrifice itself did not help improve intimate relationship satisfaction, and what shaped the quality of intimate relationship is the motivations underlying people’s sacrifice behaviors. There are two kinds of sacrifice motivation: sacrifice approach motivation and sacrifice avoidance motivation. Sacrifice approach motivation is positively correlated with relationship, while sacrifice avoidance motivation is negatively correlated with relationship. This study proposed that the effect of sacrifice motivation on relationship was mediated by perceived partner’s sacrifice motivation. According to the interdependence perspective, interpersonal perceptions are subject to reciprocal influences in a dyadic relationship. Romantic relationship may be better understood by treating couple dyads as the unit of analysis. However, there is limited research that teats couples involved in romantic relationship as an integral unit in data analysis and investigates the question about how their sacrifice motivations improve their own relationship satisfaction and their partner’s relationship satisfaction. The current study aimed to examined the effect of sacrifice motivation on intimate relationship satisfaction and how such effect might be mediated by perceived partner’s sacrifice motivation, based on the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM). Methods: There were 168 participants and their romantic partner took part in our study. They all completed the whole self-report measurement of sacrifice motivation, perceived partner’s sacrifice motivation and romantic relationship satisfaction. The APIM was used to examine the hypotheses, and two types of mediation effects including mediated actor effects and mediated partner effects. Results: Both sacrificing for approach motivations and perceived partner’s sacrifice approach motivations positively predicted their own relationship satisfaction. Meditated actor effects showed that both male and female who report higher sacrifice approach motivations owned higher relationship satisfaction, and such association was mediated by their own perceived partner’s sacrifice motivations. Mediated partner effects showed that female who reported higher sacrifice approach motivations, their partner (the male) also reported higher relationship satisfaction, and this association was mediated by male perceived female’s sacrifice approach motivations. While male reported sacrifice approach motivation could not predict their partner’s (the female) perceive sacrifice approach motivation. Statistical tests indicated that there were no gender differences in mediated actor effects and mediated partner effects. This study found that neither partner’s own sacrifice avoidance nor their perceived of partner’s avoidance motivations was associated with their or their partner’s reported relationship satisfaction. The mediation effects found in approach motivation model was not repeated in avoidance motivation model. This result is consistent with the previous study in China. Conclusions: This study provides evidence to support the broader interpersonal framework for understanding sacrifice motivation and romantic relationship satisfaction. The current findings suggest that our own sacrifice approach motivations not only influence our own romantic relationship satisfaction but also affect our partner’s perceive of our sacrifice motivations and their relationship satisfaction. So when we encounter the conflicts of interest, and then decide to make a sacrifice, it’s better for us to sacrifice for approach goals. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Employee’s Social Identity Differences on Workplace Bullying: The Mediating Role of Team Identity 2017, 40(4): 927-933.  Abstract ( )   PDF   TWith the application of the work team, workplace bullying in team situations become the focus of researchers and managers. Team members are different in gender and region. Power imbalance caused by these social identity differences between employees in teamwork will lead to further escalation of interpersonal conflict into workplace bullying. The existing theoretical models for explaining the cause of workplace bullying mostly emphasis factors related to the organizational characteristics and job characteristics, ignoring the effects of group interpersonal interaction. Based on social identification theory and self-categorization theory, the social identity differences in gender and region force the individual into a stressful situation. If the individual's assessment of identity differences is stressful enough, and cannot adjust himself or herself to adapt to the new environment, he or she is more likely to be bullied. So we hypothesize that the bigger the difference from the other members of the team in gender or region, the individual is more likely to be bullied. Meanwhile, team identity can trigger employees to seek social support within the organization, thereby reducing the negative assessment of workplace bullying. So we also hypothesize that team identification plays a mediating role between social identity differences and workplace bullying. The present study examined the frontline staffs’ social identity differences influence on their perceptions of workplace bullying and the mediating role of team identification, using a sample of 331 frontline staffs from 22 production teams in four manufacturing enterprises in China. A structured questionnaire was employed as the research instrument for this study. It consisted of five scales designed to measure the variables of workplace bullying and team identification. All scales were well-established in the literature. The social identity differences are calculated by Euclidean distance. SPSS 21.0 were adopted to perform a series of statistical analyses. Hierarchical regression mode was used to test the hypotheses. The results of this study show that gender differences and geographical differences have significant influence on the five dimensions of workplace bullying. The mediating role of team identity in the relationship between social identity differences and the five dimensions of workplace bullying are different: On the dimension of deprivation of rights, it does not have intermediary effect, but it plays a complete mediating role in the relationship between gender differences and social exclusion. According to the research conclusions, this study puts forward some suggestions and implications for future research: In order to reduce the incidence of workplace bullying, managers should pay more attention to the majority of the team's influence on the minority and the threshold ratio of minority groups. For the employees' mental health management, managers need to pay attention to the basic unit of the "team", form team identity through effective new employee socialization strategy and transformational leadership and reduce the incidence of workplace bullying events. In view of the deprivation of rights cannot be changed by team identity, the establishment of employee participation in the management system and the upward feedback communication channels, may be an important way to improve workplace bullying situation. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Submarine Environment on Crews’ Cognitive Function and Performance Ability 2017, 40(4): 934-940.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Cognitive Function was a hot topic among the fields of brain sciences and psychological sciences. It was found that submarine environment was highly correlated with crews’ cognitive function. And performance ability was found to affected significantly. Work environments have important influence on the crews’ psychological health，the crews work environment should be improved so as to enhance their psychological health and ensure crews navigation safety．The purposes of this study were：(1) To compare the basic cognitive function, attention, understanding, memory between the crew and the shore diligent staff in submariner, and (2) To explore the effect of submarine environment on crews ’cognitive function and performance ability. This paper makes an analysis of the effect of the submarine environment on the crews’ cognition in the two type of submariners according to the related literatures. In this study,305subjects (divide into the crew and shore diligent staff) were investigated to measurement the reaction time, attention, understanding, memory and performance ability for submariners. The times of correct response of the crew at different posts to simultaneous sound-light reaction，progress in the sound-light reaction time，the time on targets and the time out of track of targets were detected by using attention distribution measuring instrument (EP701C) and attention focus measuring instrument(EP708A).The performance ability was detected by using hands coordination tester(EP711) and finger flexibility tester(EP109) respectively. Using Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale(WAIS、Chinese Version )insight test of the subscales and memory scale revised images from memory test respectively for submariners individually measured. The results indicated that：(1) The two groups in the choice reaction time were significant difference, the submariner had more error in three voice response, especially bass sound, more than 5 years of multiphase sergeants were effect remarkable. And it indicated the submarines’ judgment also affected. (2) In the attention focus ability test, miss more, and less than 2 years of soldiers’ performance significantly, in the distribution of attention test, the submariner had more error in light, but with the increase of service time is not obvious influence. (3) The submariner comprehension understanding ability is poor, the boat on 5 years started damaged crew rather important period. (4) The submarines ’operating time of hands coordination and flexible fingers were shorter than diligent staff, but miss and drop more, so, submariner’s hands operation speed had been enhanced in the submarine post training, but because of the negative impact of the submarine environment needs to improve its accuracy. It was concluded that the submarine environment had directly influence on crews’ cognitive function and performance ability. It took an important role of on the improvement of crews’ attention、understanding and working accuracy. And on the submarine more than 5 years was an important episode，when understanding was affected or most likely to be affected. Considering the various negative psychological effects brought about by physical and social conditions in submarines，For the specificity and importance of the submarine environment, we must create a healthy and comfortable submarine environment for them, and cultivate to improve the submariners cognitive function and performance ability. Related Articles | Metrics

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Comparison between Item Selections in Multidimensional CAT 2017, 40(4): 997-1004.  Abstract ( )   PDF   Related Articles | Metrics

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The Loss of Natural Self-Evidence ——On the Blankenburg’s Schizophrenia Theory Xian-Jun Xu CHEN Wei 2017, 40(4): 1011-1016.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The field of schizophrenia research is dominated by the theory which focuses on the delusion. This theory advocates that relative special symptoms of schizophrenia can be observed most easily in the delusion perception. Then nondelusional schizophrenia which doesn’t have obvious symptoms is neglected. In Blankenburg’s view, though schizophrenic patients exhibit their world in the delusion more clearly and intuitively than in other psychopathological appearance, but it doesn’t mean that schizophrenia only manifests itself in the delusion. He tried to search the essence of schizophrenia in the nondelusional and symptom-poor forms, especially hebephrenic and simple type. He belongs to the tradition of phenomenological psychopathology founded by Karl Jaspers, so his methodology is phenomenological. In 1912, Jaspers proposed that phenomenology should be the preparative discipline of psychopathology because it could help psychiatrists understand what the patients really experienced. The phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the study of subjective experiences and gives high value to the self-descriptions of patients. So it differentiates greatly from the biological psychopathology which focuses on the study of neurological mechanisms. In the last decade, phenomenological psychiatry has underwent a rather prominent recovery because much theoretical and empirical work becomes to be interested in the systematic study of subjective experience of mental disorder. Despite progress in identifying the neural substrates of schizophrenia, phenomenology deserves to be at the center of any effort to investigate schizophrenia, because it makes accessible the symptoms reported by the patient and it can help researchers find out etiology of schizophrenia. Based on the phenomenological analysis of his patients’ self-descriptions, Blankenburg put forward that the loss of natural self-evidence is the core of schizophrenic change. According to the Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, the loss of natural self-evidence can be traced back to the four changes: (1) the change of the relation to the world; (2) the change of temporal construction; (3) the change of self-construction; (4) the change of the relation to others. First, schizophrenic patients can’t deal with their world like the healthy because they have lost the transcendental planning or passive genesis and they have to be charged with the work which should have been done in the unconsciousness or automatically. So they exhaust their strength shortly and express the schizophrenic asthenia. Second, schizophrenic patients’ time construction happens to be spilt and the integrity of their past, now and future has collapsed. They can’t utilize their past, so they can’t enter their future. Third, schizophrenic patients are short of self-supporting and can’t accomplish self-construction. More specifically, their self-weakness occurs on the low-level of self, i.e. the level of transcendental performance. In other words, the defected is their transcendental self that is the original and primary one. Four, schizophrenic patients’ relation to others or their intersubjective construction has changed greatly and it is the source of the loss of natural self-evidence. DSM-5 calls it asociality. Patients can’t shift themselves into others’ place automatically due to the loss of common sense, so they have to do it consciously and hardly. The psychiatrists in the English countries mainly used to rely on the positive symptoms in the diagnose of schizophrenia, but in the recent decades they become to pay more attention to the negative symptoms. And DSM-5 has ranked the negative symptoms as one of the core characters of schizophrenia. In this case Blankenburg’s work has special importance for the study of schizophrenia because it provides the best explanation of the subject dimension of the negative symptoms. The researchers who want to understand the negative symptoms, mustn’t ignore his work. As one of the greatest representative of the phenomenological psychopathology, he has influenced on the temporary study of schizophrenia and cognitive sciences deeply. Recently, Leonhard Schilbach and others have suggested that the “mirror neuron system” (MNS) and the “mentalizing network” (MENT) are key substrates of the loss of natural self-evidence. Related Articles | Metrics

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Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy Studies on Social Deficits in Children with Autism 2017, 40(4): 1005-1010.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The ability to flexibly modulate our behaviors in social contexts and to successfully interact with other persons is a fundamental, but pivotal, requirement for human survival. Deficit in this ability is naturally associated with socially isolating mental diseases, e.g., autism. Although ample studies have examined different aspects of autism, the diagnosis and treatment of individuals with ASD are still mainly based on behavioral observations and assessments. To investigate the neural bases of autism and to find the biomarkers for diagnosis/treatment, various neuroimaging techniques have been used in the fields of autism research. However, due to the technical limitations of brain-imaging techniques, which are not appropriate to measure brain activations in children with ASD in realistic social contexts. Most of studies have focused on high-functioning children with ASD over 3 years old in the resting state or in the simple tasks, involving only the passive observation of emotion or social relevant pictures or video clips. That is, the neuroimaging research on autism, a social deficits disorder, in non-social contexts. To fully understand the neural substrates underlying social deficits in individuals with ASD, it is necessary to examine their brain activations in natural social communications or interactions, and focus not only on intra-brain activation or connectivity but also on inter-brain connectivity considering the interacting members as a coupled unit. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a relatively new, noninvasive brain-imaging technique for studying functional activation by measuring changes in the hemodynamic properties of the brain. The fNIRS has few physical constraints and is more tolerant to motion artifacts and electromagnetic noise, permitting simultaneous measurements of two or more persons’ brains in relatively natural social contexts. Thus, fNIRS is suitable for neuroimaging research on children, even on infant within the first year, which will contribute greatly for understanding of autism since its symptoms normally occur before 18 months. Especially, a recent new technique of hyperscanning allows simultaneously measurement of two or more individuals in real social interactions, providing an opportunity to explore the neural mechanisms of social deficits in children with ASD during interactive activities. In this paper, thus, we review studies using fNIRS on children with ASD and social interactions to show the potential importance of fNIRS to help to solve the puzzle of autism. Specifically, previous fNIRS studies on autism and interpersonal interactions suggest that the atypical intra-brain activation and connectivity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the mirror neuron system (MNS) may play important roles in social deficits of the individuals with ASD. But it needs careful investigation on issue of the causal relationships between the roles of behavioral deficits in children with ASD and the atypical functional activation and connectivity in the PFC and the MNS. This could be addressed by studying the children with ASD at different ages from the first year of their life using both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Furthermore, it will be necessary to examine inter-brain connectivity across individuals with ASD and others in real social interactions. In this case, using fNIRS and hyperscanning techniques, we could firstly "look at" autistic children's brains when they are engaging in social activities with their parents, friends or teachers, which in turn allows understanding of their brains from new perspectives. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Inner Father: Theory and Significance 2017, 40(4): 1017-1022.  Abstract ( )   PDF   The inner father is the inner subjective experience of children to the father. It is composed of the symbolic father, introjected elements of the personal father, and the father image. The concept of the inner father is presented by Krampe in 2003. The symbolic father is the paternal dimension of the symbolic family. The introjected personal father develops from experiences with the first father in the child's life and from messages from others, particularly the mother, about the father. Both of these contribute to the father image, a more complex composite derived from the symbolic father, the personal father, and the introjected father. The father image may also contain and reflect cultural attitudes and expectations about the father (Fairweather, 1981; Samuels, 1985). Krampe and Fairweather (1993) refer to the symbolic father as the sense of father; it is also called father consciousness. Because the sense of father or father consciousness is part of the human genetic endowment, it is present in the self from conception. The sense of father is an innate energy that inheres in the deepest symbolic structures of the self. A second dimension of the inner father results from the child's experience with his/her actual or personal father. It is the person of the father himself that is the critical element in the child's paternal experience. The father's qualities continue to play a central role in the child's bond with him and his/her identification with him. Paternal warmth, understanding, and accessibility appear to be key components that promote a positive relationship between father and child. The third dimension of the inner father is the father image. In Jungian tradition, the father image results from the father archetype, and from cultural expectations and personal experience with a particular father (Samuels, 1985). In Fairweather's (1981) model, the father image derives from the symbolic father (i.e., the innate sense of father), the introjected personal father, and messages from others, particularly the mother, about the personal father. The concept of the inner father offers a new paradigm for understanding the meaning of the father to the self. This theory has important implications for the clinician, family and society. Awareness of the inner father will sensitize the therapist to listen for the client's need for and grief over the lost father, which may be obscured by hurt feelings or anger, or a belief system that supports the notion of the father's irrelevance to one's life. At the interpersonal level, the inner father activates the need to belong in a drive for empathic relatedness with others that is intimate, inclusive, and directs the individual toward meaningful involvement with others, beginning in the family. The societal level of the inner father principle promotes both intrapersonal and interpersonal recognition of the importance of father for the well-being of the offspring. Awareness of the reality of the inner father and the importance of father meaning may lead to the well-being of the larger commonwealth as well as for the individual. Based on the concept of the inner father, scholars have done some empirical research in related fields. In the future, more theoretical, empirical, experimental, cross-cultural, and clinical research will need to be carried out in the field of inner father. Related Articles | Metrics