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    20 November 2018, Volume 41 Issue 6 Previous Issue    Next Issue

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    The Influence of Reference Choice on Event-related Potentials Elicited by Emotional Pictures
    2018, 41(6): 1310-1317. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (5131KB) ( )  
    Reference plays an important role in analyzing event-related potentials (ERP), because it can change ERP experiment results. Previous work concerning reference, however, has focused on the cognition area, but little is known about emotion area. To test the influence of reference choice on emotional processing, 24 participants performed a passive picture-viewing task involving positive, neutral, and negative pictures while EEG was recorded. Analyses mainly focused on P2 (160 to 230 ms), early posterior negativity (EPN, 220 to 300 ms), and late positive potential (LPP, 400 to 3000 ms) components. We compared three references (average reference; mean mastoids reference; reference electrode standardization technique, REST) on three aspects of these components. e.g., amplitudes, statistic power, and internal consistency. Furthermore, we tested the influence of reference choice on artifact rejection rates of ERP. Self-report behavioral results indicated the emotional pictures differed significantly in valence (ps < .01), and the arousal of emotional pictures were higher than neutral pictures (ps < .01). The ERP results showed that references have distinct influences on amplitudes and statistic power of ERP components as well as artifact rejection rates of ERP. Firstly, the temporal EPN amplitudes were higher under both REST and average reference than those under mean mastoids reference (ps < .05); however, there were quite opposite results for parietal LPP amplitudes (ps < .01). Secondly, the results of Monte Carlo simulations showed that the statistic power of the P2 amplitude difference between negative and neutral conditions increased under mean mastoids reference than those under both REST and average reference. However, the statistic power of EPN’s “positive bias” increased under REST and average reference than those under mean mastoids reference. Thirdly, the artifact rejection rates under mean mastoids reference were significantly higher than those under both average reference and REST (ps < .01). Lastly, the internal consistency of ERPs under three references were relatively good [P2 ( .76 - .87),EPN ( .87 - .96), and LPP ( .69 - .91)]. In summary, the influence of reference choice on amplitudes was moderated by the biggest active region of specific ERP components. Importantly, high likelihood of the P2 difference between negative and neutral conditions was detected under mean mastoids and average reference, while high likelihood of the EPN’s “positive bias” was detected under both REST and average reference. Additionally, a wider range of threshold to reject the artifact should be used under mean mastoids reference. Reference choice, however, has no effect on the reliability of P2, EPN, and LPP. In summary, in order to avoid distorting results and inappropriate conclusions, future ERP studies are supposed to select reference with caution according to specific components and related work.
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    Prior knowledge and insight problem solving: a comment from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.
    2018, 41(6): 1339-1344. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (320KB) ( )  
    Knowledge and experience is both the basis and the resistance of insight problem solving behaviors. Advantaged knowledge hinders insight problem solving, whereas disadvantaged knowledge is the key to solve insight problems. Particularly, advantaged knowledge "help" problem solvers understand, think and solve problems with familiar path, which may let problem solvers get into the impasses, such as chunking effects that prevent the construction of initial state of problem space; constraint effects prevent the establishment of target state of problem space; functional fixed effects prevent correct operator identification. All of these three effects belong to the generally mental set, it may occur possibly because there might be a hierarchical processing model in the brain, which give higher priority to the familiar path of percept, deliberate and solve problem than novel information processing. The familiar solution path that with higher priority will comes to mind first and biased the attention, which not only reduce the exploration tendency of alternative solutions and also increase the difficulty of operate alternatives. Problem solvers must make a greater effect to win the unbalanced attentional competition between the disabled familiar solution paths and alternatives. Or else, the mechanization of familiar solution may let the brain loss attention flexibility, which in turn decrease the possibility to divert attention from familiar solution to explore and operate alternative solutions quickly and fluently. In order to break impasses and get insights, problem solver have to inhibited advantaged knowledge related familiar but disabled solution path, reactivated disadvantaged knowledge related novel solution. It violates the cognitive processing tendency of the brain, which is very difficult to spontaneously occur. However, it was possible to directly activate disadvantaged knowledge by means of spreading activation or increase the likely of activate disadvantaged knowledge by means of attention regulation, and then facilitated insight problem solving.
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    The effect of indoor illuminance on visuospatial performance during daytime
    2018, 41(6): 1325-1332. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (918KB) ( )  
    Research has shown that ambient lighting has a great impact on hunan non-visual effects, such as hormone secretion, physiological status and cognitive performance. Many studies found that high illuminance could enhance task performance, subjective alertness and mood. As regards the cognitive performance, however, most previous studies focused primarily on the influence of indoor lighting on simple vigilance tasks and working memory task, especislly the verbal working memory. Little is known about the impact of indoor lighting on the visuospatial working memory(VWM) though it plays a crucial role in storaging and processing spatial informance in our daily life. Further, spatial ability as another important ability in processing spatial information, mainly refers to the skill in representing, transforming, generating, and recalling nonlinguistic information, including spatial perception, mental rotation and spatial visualization. Though several studies have explored the effect of correlated color temperature on spatial ability, few has examined the effect of indoor illuminance on individual’s spatial ability during the daytime. Moreover, some studies also found that time of day may as a moderator in the lighting effects. Thus, the present study explored the impact of illuminance on visuospatial performance using VWM and spatial ability tasks and whether these lighting effects were moderated by time of day. A 2(Illuminance: 200 lx vs 1000 lx)×2(Time of day: Morning vs Afternoon) mixed group design was employed in the current study to investigate the effect of illuminance and time of day on healthy adults’ visuospatial performance, mood and alertness. Illuminance was the within-subject factor. A total of 34 subjects participated in the experiment according to the selection criterion. All participants should complete two light sesssions on separate days during the same timeslot in the morning or in the afternoon. VWM tasks consisted of the Coris block task and the dot memory task. Spatial ability test battery included the Hidden Pattern test, Card Rotation test and Embedded Figure test. Several scales like PANAS and KSS as well as the PVT and CFF were accessed participants’mood, alertness and visual fatigue respectively. Results revealed that the interaction between illuminance and time of day on objective alertness was significant, indicating that the reaction time of PVT was shorter under the bright lighting condition in the afternoon. However, no significant effect of illuminance and time of day on subjective alertness was observed. The main effect of illuminance on CFF value was significant that bright light exposure induced less visual fatigue compared to the dim light. Concerning visuospatial performance, the main effect of illuminance on Coris block task showed that the number of correct recalled position was significantly larger under bright light than under dim light condition, while no significant effect on other visuospatial tasks were observed. In summary, the results revealed that daytime bright light could improve participants’ alertness only in the afernoon. The beneficial effect of bright light on visuospatial performanc was only observed on the VWM, but not on the spatial ability. These results suggest that effects of indoor illuminance on cognitive performance may dependent on type of task.
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    The Competition between Inhibition of Return and Emotional Attention Bias: Evidence from Eye Movements
    Jian GUAN Wen-Rui Li
    2018, 41(6): 1353-1358. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (744KB) ( )  
    Emotional stimuli usually gain attention bias. Inhibition of Return (IOR) forbids people’s attention to already-attended objects, and promotes their detection to the new information in the scene during visual search. They are two adaptive and evolved mechanisms, but priority for the two is unknow. In the current study, we recorded participants’ eye movements using an ASL-H6 eye tracker to explore how these two mechanisms interplay during cognitive processing. Experiment used the classic exogenous cue-target paradigm, to investigated how these two competitive attention resources when different emotional pictures are presented at target position. Each experimental session was preceded by a 9-point eye-tracker calibration and validation procedure. A written reminder of the task instruction followed validation. Instructions were to identify stimulis’ emotional valence as fast and as accurately as possible and report its valence by pressing buttons on a keyboard. Each trial started with two position holders and a central fixation on the screen for 800 ms, follow a “★” on left or right about 200ms. Then, go back to the first picture, after 300ms, fixation “+” was replaced by a “★”, and first picture presented for 300-400ms (eliminate fatigue and expectations). At last, a picture was showed equally probably on the valid or invalid position. Every participant completed 360 trials in total (24 practice trials, 336 experimental trials). 30 college right-handed students participated. Results showed that the reaction time to target in valid-cued locations was significantly longer than that in invalid-cued locations, indicating the IOR effect. Compared with positive and neural stimuli, negative stimuli have longer reaction time. There is a main effect on emotional types. In addition, the analysis of eye movements data showed a main effect of emotional type. In Region of interest (ROI), negative stimulis have more fixations, longer saccade latency and total fixation duration. Indicaing that emotional informaton induce attention bias. In conclusion,we found IOR effect is stable, and result from eye movements indicating that emotional information have an impact on earlier attention capture.
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    The influence of video games on cognitive abilities and its neural basis
    Qing LI An-Tao CHEN
    2018, 41(6): 1318-1324. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (613KB) ( )  
    Video game is a game which we play thanks to an audio-visual apparatus and which can be based on a story. Most of the previous studies focus on the impact of violent video games on individual negative behavior, such as aggression and violence. But this article explored the relationship between video game training and cognitive abilities, in view of attention, memory, executive control in cognitive activities, so that the public look at the impact of video games on individual psychology and behavior dialectically. It is worth noting that video game training has its own advantages. On the one hand, because video games are interesting, challenging and attractive, the motivation that individuals participate in video game training is significantly higher than other cognitive training. On the other hand, the transfer effect of video game training is better than that of other cognitive training. Therefore, researchers have taken video games as the focus of research. This article discussed the influence of video games on cognitive abilities and its neural basis from the perspective of behavioral and cognitive neuroscience. After analyzing previous studies, we found that video game training can improve individual cognitive abilities, such as attention, memory, executive control, and it can also significantly change the structure and function of the brain region, such as prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex and hippocampus. The changes of these brain areas are the important neural basis that video game training enhances cognitive abilities. In addition, according to previous studies and the features of video games, we constructed a model of the neural basis of video game training enhancing cognitive abilities, so that we can illustrate the regulatory role of neural basis and reward expectation on cognitive abilities in video game. Although the research on video game training has made some progress, there are still some problems to be further explored over the course of the study. At present, researchers usually divide video games into action video games and non action video games, but it is not clear what the specific basis of the classification is. And it needs to further explore whether different types of video games have different effects on the structure and function of the brain. Furthermore, how long the training effect of video game will be kept need to be further studied. At last, the scope of research objects need to be further expanded, and researchers should pay special attention to the adolescents. Therefore, future research should determine video game genres for specific cognitive ability, focus on the lasting effect of training, and expand the scope of research objects. Researchers need develop a standardized video game training standard. Based on the standardization of training processes, future research should focus on target brain regions affected by video game, and apply video game training to enhance specific brain function.
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    The Influence of Body Movement Trend on Congruency Effect of Space-Morality
    Yue-Qing DONG Ning Fan
    2018, 41(6): 1345-1352. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (651KB) ( )  
    In daily life, people often use spatial concepts to describe moral vocabulary, such as "exemplary conduct and nobility of character".This congruency effect of space-valence has been confirmed in experiments, but it is unclear whether its internal mechanism is influenced by conceptual metaphor or polarity correspondence.Based on the classic space-valence congruency paradigm, this study controls the upward and downward movement trends and their range, and discusses the influence of body movement trends on the congruency effect of space-morality. Use e-prime2.0 to write experimental procedure. In experiment one, the subjects were required to judge the moral potency of vocabulary rendered at the top of the screen (the fixation points were at 12% of the vertical space, and the stimuli were randomly presented at 5% and 20%) or the lower of the screen (the fixation points were at 87% of the vertical space, and the stimuli were randomly presented at 80% and 95%).The experimental design included 2 (vision: upper and lower) × 2 (vertical position: upper and lower) × 2 (moral potency: moral and immoral words), and 32 undergraduates were tested in the experiment.The analysis results of repeated measurement variance show that both the top and the lower of the screen have the interaction between moral potency and vertical position. All the immoral vocabulary has the space-valence congruency effect, but the moral vocabulary has the effect only in the lower place. The moral words are influenced by polarity in the upper vision, resulting in theceiling effect. In experiment two, the fixation points were placed at the center of the screen (50% of the vertical space), the vertical distance between the upper and lower vocabulary positions was changed, and the subjects were asked to judge the moral lexical potency.Under the condition of large space, the stimuli were randomly presented in 5% and 95% of the vertical space; under the condition of small space, the stimuli were randomly presented in 45% and 55% of the vertical space.The experimental design included 2 (space: large and small) × 2 (vertical position: upper and lower) × 2 (moral potency: moral and immoral words), and 32 undergraduates were tested in the experiment.The analysis results of repeated measurement variance show that significant space-valence congruency effect occurs under the condition of small space and is influenced by conceptual metaphor.However, under the condition of large space, only the main effect of vertical position and moral potency appears. There is no interaction between moral potency and vertical position, and the congruency effect disappears. The lexical response is completely controlled by polarity correspondence. The two experiments show that the body movement trend (raise and lower head) will lead to polarity, but will not change the space-valance consistency effect of moral words.The extent of the body movement will affect the space-valance consistency effect of the moral words which only happens when the body movement is small. Big body movement will make the consistency effect disappear.The space-valance consistency effect of moral words comes from the combined effects of conceptual metaphor and polarity correlation. The polarities of body movement, vertical position, and valance have an effect on the connection of conceptual metaphors.
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    Contagion of Academic Anxiety among Intimate Senior High School Students
    2018, 41(6): 1382-1388. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (747KB) ( )  
    State-like academic anxiety can have a detrimental effect on academic performance of students, as well as their physical and psychological well-being. Although considerable research attention has been devoted to the conceptualization, antecedents and outcomes of academic anxiety, the contagion of state-like academic anxiety among intimate peers has received surprisingly little, if any, empirical attention. To address this problem, we investigated the effect of state-like academic anxiety of one’s most intimate friends on the occurrence and development of his or her state-like academic anxiety. In addition, we hypothesized that the observed contagion of academic anxiety among intimate peers may differ depending on their peer acceptance levels. A total of 107 dyads of intimate peers were assessed daily for a whole week (five days). The repeated MAOVE analysis shows no significant different in state-like academic anxiety among different measurement points, indicating that high school students show a stable state-like academic anxiety over a short period. Most correlations between study variables are significant (p < .05) and in the expected direction. It is important to note that the correlations among state-like academic anxiety measured at different times range from .26 to .40, indicating that there may be a substantial intra-individual variability in state-like academic anxiety over the study period. We tested our hypotheses with multilevel analyses. As expected, the results show that after controlling for some important individual- and dyad-level variables, such as trait anxiety, academic stress, and academic control, the actor’s academic anxiety at the previous day can have a significant effect on his or her own academic anxiety at the next day (γ = .11,t = 2.91, p < .05), as well as his or her partner’s academic anxiety at the next day (γ = .14,t = 4.05, p < .05). There is a comparable contagion effect of state-like academic anxiety among close friends, regardless of their peer acceptance. A better understanding of the emotions of significant others on students’ state-like anxiety is of theoretical and practical importance, and contributes to the development of more effective interventions to prevent negative emotions from spreading around in the classroom. This study has provided important managerial implications for dealing with state-like academic anxiety. It becomes clear from our study that one’s state-like academic anxiety is important not only for themselves, but also for those students with whom they interact frequently. This emphasizes the importance for school administrators to take proactive steps to develop positive academic emotions on the one hand and prevent negative academic anxiety on the other hand.
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    The Relationship between Family Socioeconomic Status and Child Word Comprehension: Analysis of the Multiple Mediating Effects
    2018, 41(6): 1359-1365. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (803KB) ( )  
    Abstract The language ability of preschool children is the basis for the development of their learning ability and can predict their academic achievement effectively in the future. Socioeconomic Status (SES), one of the family environment components that children are exposed to, is an important indicator for predicting differences in individual development. Based on the previous researches, SES had a significant influence on children's language development, especially in word comprehension. However, the mechanism that SES affects language development is not clear. Some researchers have pointed that cognitive stimulation provided by parents may be a significant mediator. With the advent of the digital age, cognitive stimulation related to children's learning in the family is changing. The home literacy environment(HLE)and electronic media exposure are important cognitive stimulation in the most families. Previous?researches?had?found that HLE and electronic media exposure can affect the development of children's language. It is worth exploring whether they work independently or in tandem. This study tried to explore the multiple mediating roles of HLE and electronic media exposure in SES and children’s word comprehension. In addition, maternal education level may have a more potent influence than income on children’s word comprehension. So the current study would further explore the mediating role of HLE and electronic media exposure between the maternal education level and the word comprehension. The participants in the current study were consisted of 278 children (girls = 141, boys= 130, missing value = 7) from four kindergartens in Beijing. The family information questionnaires were used to measure parents’ education level, income and the total time of children using electronic media. The Home Literacy Environment Questionnaire was used to measure the quality of home literacy environment. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was used to assess children’s word comprehension score. The main results were as follows: (1) SES, HLE dimensions (except hle5) and word comprehension were positively correlated, and SES, HLE dimensions and word comprehension were negatively correlated with electronic screen time. (2) HLE could mediate the association between SES and child word comprehension, and SES had an indirect significant effect on word comprehension through the chain mediation of HLE and electronic screen time. In this composited model, χ2 = 55.00, df = 28, p < .01, CFI = .96, TLI = .93, RMSEA = .07, which indicated that the model is fitted well. (3) HLE also played a mediating role in association between maternal education level and children’s word comprehension, and maternal education level also had an indirect significant effect on word comprehension through the chain mediation of HLE and electronic screen time. In this composited model, χ2 = 51.13, df = 28, p < .01, CFI = .96, TLI = .94, RMSEA = .06, which indicated that the model is fitted well, too. The present study concluded that HLE and electronic screen time played multiple mediating effects in the associations between SES and children’s word comprehension, HLE could act as a mediator alone, or played a chain intermediary role with the electronic screen time.
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    A Study on the Relationship between Positive Feedback and Grade One Junior School Students' Setback Reaction Mode
    2018, 41(6): 1389-1395. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (736KB) ( )  
    When students answer questions or perform well at school, teachers will involuntarily give positive feedback, which can be divided into two types: person-oriented feedback and process-oriented feedback. Previous studies have shown that person-oriented feedback has potential negative effects on individuals who receive it. Whereas the process-oriented feedback have positive effects on individuals. The different impacts on individuals are in part reflected in the individual response pattern when encountered setbacks. Some people are not afraid of difficulties. They struggle over times. However, other people are frustrated when they meet failure. That's two different reaction patterns to failure. Needless to say, the former pattern plays a positive role on individuals, which is called mastery-oriented pattern. While the latter pattern which is known as helpless pattern, has obvious negative impact on people. We are all hoped to be perseverant towards difficulties. Is positive feedback given to the individuals could help to get the mastery-oriented pattern? What kind of positive feedback can help individuals to get mastery-oriented pattern? What impacts the different kinds of feedback have on the students who tend to show different patterns? Generally, traditional wisdom told us that teachers are expected to give more positive feedback to the students who need it more, such as the students who are discouraged, shy and helpless. Is that true? To explore the interaction between different frustration patterns and different positive feedback methods, and to provide the basis for teachers' targeted teaching feedback. Method In the study 1, 102 junior high school teachers were taken as subjects, and the role-playing method was used to explore whether the positive feedback behavior of junior high school teachers to students would be different due to the different modes of student frustration response. In the study 2, 291 first-grade junior high school students were used as subjects. Through the method of collective surveying, giving the forms of written comments to explore whether different positive feedback modes have different effects on the follow-up responses of subjects with different setback reaction patterns. Result Compared to the students who show mastery-oriented patterns originally, teachers tend to express more personal feedback to the students with helpless patterns. Meanwhile, contrasting with the students who show helpless patterns originally, teachers tend to express more process feedback to the students with mastery-oriented patterns; (2) Personal positive feedback backfires in children with helpless pattern. However, there is no significant effect on the individuals with mastery-oriented pattern; (3) Process feedback and simple feedback about the results are helpful for the helpless ones to improve their following performance; (4) Compared with the control condition, there is neither negative nor positive impact of process positive feedback on students with different response patterns. Our study made three innovations: (1) Complementing the blank of domestic research on positive feedback in junior high school, and verifying the effectiveness of positive feedback on junior high school students. (2) The research provides empirical support for the hypothesis model of "the interaction between positive feedback and response mode" proposed by the researcher (Xing Shufen, 2008, 2011). That is, the positive feedback behavior of teachers will be different due to the different characteristics of students, and the different characteristics of students will also be different for different ways of feedback. (3) The study uses the method of collective assessment of written comments to study, the results confirmed the effectiveness of this method, with limited time and effort, is an economically viable option for researchers.
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    Comparison and Application of IRT Model in English Reading Comprehension Test
    2018, 41(6): 1374-1381. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1107KB) ( )  
    Testlet is common in reading comprehension tests. Compared to traditional tests which consist of several single items, test with testlet can not only reduce test time and cost, but also build tasks which are more similar to the real-world situations, to improve the validity of the test. However, if reading materials within testlet have different impacts on examinees with different knowledge backgrounds, the testlet effect occurs. As is shown in previous researches, when testlet effect exists, the estimates of item parameters will be biased if traditional IRT model is applied. To solve this problem, researchers extended the Testlet Response Theory by adding testlet parameter into standard IRT models. This article summarized the models dealing with testlet effect, and then analyzed data from a high school English reading comprehension test, which consists of one cloze test and five reading comprehension tests. Item types are multiple-choice items, including 4 options and 5-answers-out-of-7-options items. The sample size of this research was 934. Two different kinds of measurement models were compared for this kind of situation, which were two-parameter logistic item response (2PL-IRT) model and 5 two-parameter logistic testlet item response (2PL-TRT) models. Each of the 2PL-TRT model has different number of testlets. The most complicated model (5T_TRT) contains all 5 reading comprehension testlets. Then, according to the magnitude of testlet effect, the number of testlets was reduced in the models. The simplest 2PL-TRT model (1T_TRT) only contains one testlet, which has the largest testlet effect. Firstly, to ensure that all of the reading comprehensions violate the Local Independent Hypothesis (LID), the Q3 values of each testlet were calculated in R. As expected, the absolute values of all 5 reading comprehensions’ Q3 values were exceeded 0.20, which indicated all 5 reading comprehensions violate the Local Independent Hypothesis. After that, the ability estimates of every examinee, the estimates of discrimination parameter (a) and difficulty parameter (b) of every item were estimated by SCORIGHT 3.0. For the estimates of ability, there were no obvious difference among 5 two-parameter-logistic-testlet item response models. For the examinees with abilities between -1.50 to 0.50, IRT model will lead to biased estimates of ability parameter. For the estimates of item parameters, if the testlet effect of a reading comprehension test reaches 0.50, the items within the test should not be viewed as local independent items. Therefore, these items should be analyzed by the TRT model as a testlet. Otherwise, if these items are regarded as local independent items mistakenly, the estimates of item parameters will be seriously biased. The bias will increase as the testlet effect become larger. According to the results, in practice, if a good balance between the accuracy of parameter estimates and the simplicity of models is desired, it is necessary to take two things into consideration: the type of parameter and the magnitude of testlet effect. In addition, researchers accentuated the importance of the rationality of the reading materials. To avoid testlet effects, it is important to take the article subject and item types into consideration before test construction.
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    The Relationship between Implicit Sequence Learning and Central Executive Function
    DIANZHI NMNLIU
    2018, 41(6): 1366-1373. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (937KB) ( )  
    More and more studies in recent years showed the correlations between implicit learning, intelligence and general cognitive abilities, which reflects the individual differences in implicit learning ability. And the relationship between working memory (WM) and implicit sequence learning can help explore the nature of implicit sequence learning. Most early studies suggested no correlation between working memory and implicit sequence learning. However, recent studies demonstrated that working memory span and central executive function are both related to implicit sequence learning. Researchers testing Visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) revealed that working memory span relates to implicit sequence learning significantly. Furthermore, researches on the relationship between central executive function and implicit learning showed that there is negative relationship between central executive function and implicit sequence learning. In order to explore relationship between working memory(especially central executive function) and implicit sequence learning, it is necessary to divide central executive function into inhibition, memory updating and switching. In this study 69 undergraduate students of Soochow University participated the research and they were chosen by random sampling to explored the correlation between implicit sequence learning and central executive function by a series of experiments with different stimuli conditions and different restraint loads. Moreover, together with the technique of event-related potentials (ERPs) it analyzes the brain mechanism involved in implicit sequence learning and central executive function. Experiment 1, as a preliminary investigation into the correlation between implicit sequence learning and central executive function, adopted the currently popular and classic paradigm to research implicit learning --- to test it via implicit learning of serial positions. The central executive function is measured through its three related, independent and separable ingredients of inhibition, memory updating and switching tested respectively by the paradigms of numerical Stroop task, One-back memory updating task and numerical transfer task. In this experiment behavior data and ERP data was collected at the same time. Experiment 2 set the implicit sequence learning environment in the inhibition load condition by using the way of putting the color word Stoop in the sequences and then used the same method to test inhibition, memory updating and switching. Thus, we explored the changed relationship between central execution function and implicit sequence learning in this situation. In experiment 1, the implicit sequence learning showed positive relationship with the reaction time of inhibition(r=0.682,p<0.01), and negative relationship with memory updating scores(r=-0.590,p<0.01), and no significant relationship with reaction time of switching(r=-0.32,p>0.05).The longer reaction time of inhibition is ,the worse the function is. So such results mean there was negative relationship between implicit sequence learning and inhibition and memory updating function. However, there was no significant relationship between implicit sequence learning and switching. In addition, the results showed that implicit sequence learning doesn’t has significant relationship with all of inhibition, memory updating and switching in control group. From the data of ERPs, it showed the same relationship. In experiment 2. The results showed the opposite relationship between implicit sequence learning and reaction time of inhibition(r=-0.434,p<0.05) comparing with that in experiment 1.Which means the relationship between implicit sequence learning and inhibition function turned into positive. And it showed in that situation, implicit sequence learning has no relationship with both memory updating(r=-0.247,p<0.05) and switching(r=-0.324,p<0.05). Specifically, this research can be concluded as follows:1.There is the negative correlation between implicit sequence learning and inhibition and memory updating function but no correlations between implicit sequence learning and switching. 2.Study finds that wave N200 of the inhibition function and the wave P300 of the memory updating function have a significant negative correlation with the difference in waves N200 of implicit sequence learning, which proves the connection in the brain mechanism between implicit sequence learning and central executive function. 3.There is the positive correlative relationship between implicit sequence learning and the central executive function in high load inhibition which suggest that in different situation, there is different relationship between implicit sequence learning and central executive function.
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    Responsible Leadership: A Review of Concept Development, Theoretical Perspectives and Implications for Indigenous Research
    Jian PENG
    2018, 41(6): 1464-1469. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (470KB) ( )  
    In light of the increasing societal and environmental problems, corporates and their leaders are expected to contribute to public welfares, such as public administration (health, education, and social security) and environmental protection. Accordingly, the concept of responsible leadership was proposed and highlighted, increasingly garnering incredible attention in recent years. Among the large number of studies on responsible leadership, many scholars posited that such leadership style could help corporates copy with the global challenges and maintain their competitive advantages. Considering the important role that responsible leadership plays in balancing economic benefits and social benefits, this current research summarizes existing literature on responsible leadership with regard to definitions, measurements and theories, while providing some suggestions for the future research. To date, researchers defined responsible leadership mainly in three perspectives, including relational perspective, procedural perspective and behavioral perspective. For example, Pless and Maak (2005) defined responsible leadership as a value-based leadership style that emphasizes ethical principles driven relationship between leaders and stakeholders. Voegtlin (2011) understood responsible leadership as awareness and consideration of the consequences of a company’s actions for all stakeholders, as well as the exertion of influence by enabling the involvement of the affected stakeholders and by engaging in an active stakeholder dialogue. Besides, Stahl and de Luque (2014) classfied responsible leadership into two types of socially responsible behavior: “doing good” and “avoiding harm.” Doing good means that leaders engage in activities that are aimed at enhancing societal welfare (e.g., goes beyond minimum legal requirements to provide employment opportunities for disabled workers). Avoiding harm means that leaders refrain from activities that have harmful consequences for others (e.g., strictly enforces safety regulations). In terms of measurements, Voegtlin (2011) and Doh et al (2011) respectively explored the constructs of responsible leadership and developed a scale to measure it. Such scales have been given support of good reliability and validity. Additionally, this paper provides an overview of existing research on responsible leadership, and summarizes seven theoretical perspectives for explaining the antecedents and consequences of responsible leadership. Moral identity and personality can predict the emergence if responsible leadership. However, through the lens of situational strength theory, big five personality, cognition, moral philosophy and affective trait have a predictive effect on responsible leadership only when the strength of situational factors is low. The consequences of responsible leadership include attitudinal and behavioral outcomes in both individual level and organizational level. In terms of individual level outcomes, responsible leadership can shapes followers’ job performance and ethical behaviors through affective events, social-exchange relationship, social learning mechanism and social information processing. In terms of organizational level outcomes, responsible leadership can contribute to the organizational performance and sustainable business through the accumulation of social capital and corporate social responsibility practice. Future research can exert efforts to distinguish the multi-pathways linking responsible leadership to work outcomes. For example, does the social-information induced cognitive pathway explain more variance in the mediating effect of responsible leadership on work outcomes than affective-event driven emotional pathway? Besides, indigenous scholars also can explore the mergence mechanism of responsible leadership in Chinese context from the perspective of collectivism orientation. , In light of the increasing societal and environmental problems, corporates and their leaders are expected to contribute to public welfares, such as public administration (health, education, and social security) and environmental protection. Accordingly, the concept of responsible leadership was proposed and highlighted, increasingly garnering incredible attention in recent years. Among the large number of studies on responsible leadership, many scholars posited that such leadership style could help corporates copy with the global challenges and maintain their competitive advantages. Considering the important role that responsible leadership plays in balancing economic benefits and social benefits, this current research summarizes existing literature on responsible leadership with regard to definitions, measurements and theories, while providing some suggestions for the future research. To date, researchers defined responsible leadership mainly in three perspectives, including relational perspective, procedural perspective and behavioral perspective. For example, Pless and Maak (2005) defined responsible leadership as a value-based leadership style that emphasizes ethical principles driven relationship between leaders and stakeholders. Voegtlin (2011) understood responsible leadership as awareness and consideration of the consequences of a company’s actions for all stakeholders, as well as the exertion of influence by enabling the involvement of the affected stakeholders and by engaging in an active stakeholder dialogue. Besides, Stahl and de Luque (2014) classfied responsible leadership into two types of socially responsible behavior: “doing good” and “avoiding harm.” Doing good means that leaders engage in activities that are aimed at enhancing societal welfare (e.g., goes beyond minimum legal requirements to provide employment opportunities for disabled workers). Avoiding harm means that leaders refrain from activities that have harmful consequences for others (e.g., strictly enforces safety regulations). In terms of measurements, Voegtlin (2011) and Doh et al (2011) respectively explored the constructs of responsible leadership and developed a scale to measure it. Such scales have been given support of good reliability and validity. Additionally, this paper provides an overview of existing research on responsible leadership, and summarizes seven theoretical perspectives for explaining the antecedents and consequences of responsible leadership. Moral identity and personality can predict the emergence if responsible leadership. However, through the lens of situational strength theory, big five personality, cognition, moral philosophy and affective trait have a predictive effect on responsible leadership only when the strength of situational factors is low. The consequences of responsible leadership include attitudinal and behavioral outcomes in both individual level and organizational level. In terms of individual level outcomes, responsible leadership can shapes followers’ job performance and ethical behaviors through affective events, social-exchange relationship, social learning mechanism and social information processing. In terms of organizational level outcomes, responsible leadership can contribute to the organizational performance and sustainable business through the accumulation of social capital and corporate social responsibility practice. Future research can exert efforts to distinguish the multi-pathways linking responsible leadership to work outcomes. For example, does the social-information induced cognitive pathway explain more variance in the mediating effect of responsible leadership on work outcomes than affective-event driven emotional pathway? Besides, indigenous scholars also can explore the mergence mechanism of responsible leadership in Chinese context from the perspective of collectivism orientation.
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    Internalized Homonegativity Among Homosexuals: Formation and Influence
    2018, 41(6): 1470-1476. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (490KB) ( )  
    In recent years, living conditions of homosexuals have attracted much attention from psychologists. Because homosexuals constantly stay in an environment filled with prejudice, they often internalize negative social attitudes and develop self-prejudice about their sexual orientation. This internal negative attitude toward one’s sex orientation is called internalized homonegativity. Internalized homonegativity is widespread among the homosexuals. It has been considered as the key risk factor for homosexual’s mental health problem and physical health problem. Nowadays, comprehensive understanding of its formation and influence is in excessive lack. Therefore, we mainly review the formation and influence of internalized homonegativity in this study. Firstly, we introduce the concept of internalized homonegativity. This concept was initially named as ‘internalized homophobia’, which emphasizes one’s fear of his own homosexual orientation. However, more and more researchers hold the view that homosexuals’ negative attitudes towards themselves do not conclude the element of fear, thus this concept has been advised to named as ‘internalized homonegativity’. Nowadays, this concept is often understood as a process or a result. We define the internalized homonegativity as homosexuals’ formed negative attitudes towards themselves through the process of internalization of external prejudice, which emphasizes both the process and the results. Secondly, we discuss the mechanisms of formation for internalized homonegativity. Two general mechanisms (role-taking and conflict resolution) and other influence factors (a series of individual factors and environmental factors) may explain the process of formation. We put forward an integrated theoretical model. In this model, we conclude that the processes of role-taking and conflict resolution play mediating roles between external prejudice and internalized homonegativity, while the other influence factors can affect the degree of exposing to prejudice, the process of role-taking and conflict resolution, and the internalized homonegativity. Thirdly, we review the influences of internalize homonegativity from three perspectives: the conditions of mental health, physical health, and problematic behaviors. Overall, recent studies consistently show that internalized homonegativity has a negative effect on the living conditions of homosexuals. The psychological mediation model can account for the effect of internalized homonegativity on the condition of mental health. This model indicates that coping factors, interpersonal factors and cognitive factors all play mediating roles between internalized homonegativity and psychological distress. We infer that this mechanism could also be used to explain the effect of internalized homonegativity on physical health and problematic behaviors. Additionally, concealment of sexual orientation, which represents a special mechanism, could also play a mediating role between internalized homonegativity and living conditions of homosexuals. We also put forward an integrated model of influence mechanisms of internalized homonegativity. At last, we propose three future research directions. (1) Integrated models of formation and influence mechanisms of internalized homonegativity should be further verified and developed; (2) Protective factors which may be beneficial to buffer the negative effect of the internalized homonegativity should be collected; (3) Localization studies about internalized homonegativity should be developed. These future research directions are drawn from the limitations of the previous research.
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    The Effect of Emotional Intelligence on Principals of Rural Primary Schools’ Job Burnout: The Chain Mediating Effect of Leadership Efficiency and Job Satisfaction
    2018, 41(6): 1430-1435. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (529KB) ( )  
    Proper pressure can stimulate principals of rural primary schools’ potential. But if principals of rural primary schools can’t cope with pressure successfully, and the pressure has not been released for a long period of time, he/she will be anxious, depressed, tired out and will descend in working efficiency, even be exhausted. The phenomenon is called job burnout. It is not only directly influence the physical and mental health of principals of rural primary schools, but also serious influence their interpersonal relationships and work capability. So it is completely necessary to investigate the potential mechanisms of principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout so as to design effective prevention and intervention programs. Among many factors affecting principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout, the role of emotional intelligence has increasingly been recognized by both practitioners and researchers over the past few years. There is literature documenting that emotional intelligence has an important influence on principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout, but little is known about mediating processes underlying this relation. In relative literatures, leadership efficiency and job satisfaction are conducive to the decline of principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout. Leadership efficiency and job satisfaction are the reliable and powerful predictors of principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout. So we tested whether leadership efficiency and job satisfaction served as mediators of the relationship between emotional intelligence and principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout. To examine how emotional intelligence influenced principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout, 258 principals of rural primary schools were recruited in the study to complete self-report questionnaires. Emotional intelligence was measured with the emotional intelligence scale which consists of 16 items. The respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with each statement on a 7-point Likert scale. Leadership efficiency was measured with the leadership efficiency scale which consists of 9 items. The respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with each statement on a 5-point Likert scale. Job satisfaction was measured with the job satisfaction questionnaire which consists of 8 items. The respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with each statement on a 7-point Likert scale. Job burnout was measured with the job burnout questionnaire which consists of 22 items. The respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with each statement on a 5-point Likert scale. The results implicated that: ① Emotional intelligence significantly negatively predicted principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout; ② Leadership efficiency mediated the effect of emotional intelligence on principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout; ③ Job satisfaction mediated the effect of leadership efficiency on principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout. Therefore, leadership efficiency and job satisfaction played chain mediating effect between emotional intelligence and principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout. These findings supported our model that the link between emotional intelligence and principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout was complex. The conclusion of the study had important reference value for preventing and reducing principals of rural primary schools’ job burnout.
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    Effect of Information Integrity and the Amount of Candidates on Recruiters’ Decision-making with Different Need for Cognitive Closure
    2018, 41(6): 1410-1415. 
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    For job-hunter and employers, most jobs need an interview. Especially for some jobs with higher demands, employers will have multiple interviews, psychological tests, and so on, to fully understand candidates’ abilities so as to determine which one is more suitable for the job, and finally finish the task of recruitment. Recruitment is a mutual process of selection between recruiters and candidates. Previous studies have shown that individuals’ need for cognitive closure has an impact on the decision-making process. However, it is unclear whether it has an impact on the decision-making process of recruitment. In addition, previous studies also presented that information loss and the change of the number of alternatives in the actual recruitment decision-making process had an influence on the actual decision. In fact, the result of recruitment is not only influenced by environmental factors, but also influenced by the personal characteristics of the recruiter. Therefore, the present study intends to explore whether the cognitive closure need, information integrity and the number of candidates can affect the process of recruitment decisions-making or not. We have two experiments: pre-experiment and formal experiment. The preliminary experiment is mainly to form a questionnaire of the 30 words recruiters’ concerning summarized by domestic scholars, and 40 subjects will finish it by selecting the important information. Then the importance of the top nine words will be used in an information board. In the formal experiment, 59 subjects were divided into high and low cognitive closure needs group by the cognitive closure requirement scale. The formal experiment was mixed experimental design of 2 (high need for cognitive closure, low need for cognitive closure) ×2 (Information integrity, information loss) ×2 (4 candidates, 8 candidates). The two groups of subjects need to finish simulating recruitment decision-making under 4 kinds of experimental conditions by information board to examine the effect of the need for cognitive closure, information integrity and the number of candidates on the recruitment decision-making process through simulating recruitment decision-making. The results and conclusions are as follows: (1) Compare to low need for cognitive closure group, the high ones are shorter in average decision time and more shallow in depth of search. With the increasing of cognitive closure need, it reduces the depth of the individual's search for information when completing recruitment decision task; (2) when the number of candidates increases, individuals tend to attribute search mode. This significantly prolongs the recruitment time for low need for cognitive closure groups; (3) for candidates, the improvement of information integrity reduces the depth of information searching when recruiters complete the recruitment decision task. And it significantly shortens the time for those with low need for cognitive closure to finish the task. This study focuses on the research of recruitment decision-making process. At present, the impacts of information integrity and the need of cognitive closure on the recruitment process have not yet been fully explored. In addition, it is not clear whether the amount of candidates in actual situations has an impact on recruitment decisions. Our findings fill the gaps in this field and open up a new path for future researchers.
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    Individual and Team Situation Awareness of Emergency Rescue Team: Social Network Relationship as Moderator
    2018, 41(6): 1416-1422. 
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    Situation awareness (SA) plays a key role in decision quality and performance (Durso & Gronlund, 1999), and studies on SA have been widely used for aviation, medical and traffic fields, however, there is little research on application of SA to emergency management. Currently, a large body of literature shows that team situation awareness (TSA) is not a simple addition of individual situation awareness (ISA); the degree to which team members hold the same ISA is shared situation awareness (SSA) (Endsley & Jones, 2001), as for emergency rescue team, “sharing” is not the most important, but “compatible” is (Salmon et al., 2007). Social network relationship is also essential to information transmission in team: the greater network density or structure holes is, the smoother of information flow becomes (Burt, 1992; Luo, 2010). The purpose of this study is to examine SA’s application on emergency rescue team: (1) whether ISA is not directly correlated with TSA; (2) whether SSA is correlated negatively with TSA; (3) as for dense network team, whether structure hole can moderate relationship of SSA and TSA positively; (4) as for sparse network team, whether structure hole can moderate it negatively. There were 99 senior students of fire command department who were recruited as participants, and students were divided into 10 groups, they were asked to perform the task of transferring trapped people from collapsed building after earthquake. After finishing rescue drill, ISA of each student was measured by 7-point Situation Awareness Rating Technique (SART) questionnaire including 10 items (Taylor, 1990). TSA of each group was measured by behavior observation scale, which combined with Situational Awareness Linked Indicators Adapted to Novel Tasks (SALIANT) (Muiiiz, Stout, Bowers & Salas, 1998), the scale had 29 indicators, and during the drill, it was observed by 3 experts and filled in the scale. SSA can be calculated as similarity of ISA (Bolstad, Cuevas, Gonzalez & Schneider, 2005), in this study, SSA for each team was represented by variance of all ISAs in this team. Students were also asked to complete questionnaires concerning two types of their social network relationships: their own relationship with each other members in his team and any other pairs of members’ relationship in his team, which was developed by Burt (1992), and the relationship was rated as four levels of closeness degree. The results showed that as to emergency rescue team: (1) ISA was not correlated with TSA: for each group, average ISA (p=.267), top 3 ISA (p=.063) and median ISA (p=.379) were all not correlated with TSA; (2) SSA was correlated negatively with TSA (p=.004): for each group, the more different of ISAs are, the higher TSA is; (3) as for dense network team, structure hole can moderate relationship of SSA and TSA positively(p=.002); (4) as for sparse network team, structure hole can moderate it negatively(p=0.066). In conclusion, as for emergency rescue team, social network relationship can moderate the effect of different ISA on TSA. It is an innovative application on SA and a significant conclusion to formation of TSA.
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    The Effect of Knowledge Governance Mechanisms on Knowledge Sharing Hostility:The Mediation of Employee’s Relations
    有明 宋
    2018, 41(6): 1450-1456. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (862KB) ( )  
    With the accelerating process of global economic integration, knowledge sharing is the key role to improve the core competitiveness and innovation ability of the organization, and how to promote the behaviour of knowledge sharing is becoming the important strategic goal of the organizational knowledge managment. However, knowledge sharing hostility behaviors, such as the reasons of knowledge hoarding, the reasons of knowledge rejecting, and so on, commonly exist in all kinds of organizations, and have a huge negative impact on obtaining competitive advantage for those organizations. Thus, reasons and the governance of the production of Knowledge Sharing Hostility gradually become the focuses of knowledge managers and researchers. As to the phenomenon of hindering the sharing of knowledge in organizations, this research makes an open type questionnaire survey and analyzes documents about the knowledge sharing hostility behaviors. This thesis also analyzes reasons of this phenomenon from three dimensions: the reasons of senders hoarding knowledge, the reasons of receivers rejecting knowledge and the reasons of passive attitudes towards sharing knowledge about mistakes, defining this phenomenon as Knowledge Sharing Hostility, and the Questionnaire for Knowledge Sharing Hostility is also made. After analysis on exploratory elements, we would find that this Questionnaire includes three determiners: the reasons of knowledge hoarding, the reasons of knowledge rejecting, and the reasons of passive attitudes towards sharing mistakes and failures. There are also ten items in this questionnaire. Reliability coefficient of inner consistency between determiners and total scale are respectively: .865, .796, .705; .849. The result of confirmatory factor analysis shows the model matching each other well (χ2=40.959, df=32, χ2/df=1.280, CFI=.988, NFI=.947, GFI=.946, RMSEA=.045). From the empirical perspective, this paper intends to examining the relation between Knowledge Governance Mechanisms and Knowledge Sharing Hostility, as well as discussing the impact on this relation from interpersonal relationship among employees of the enterprises, the Questionnaire for Knowledge-governance Mechanisms, the Questionnaire for Knowledge-sharing Hostility, and the Questionnaire for Employee’s Relations were tested on 212 employees in knowledge-based enterprises, as well as data analysis with AMOS21 software. The results are as following: first, transaction-based mechanisms has a significant and positive impact on knowledge hoarding and knowledge rejecting, commitment-based mechanisms has a significant and negative impact on knowledge hoarding, knowledge rejecting and passive attitudes towards sharing mistakes and failures; Transaction-based mechanisms has a significant and positive impact on instrumental relationship, commitment-based mechanisms has a significant and positive impact on affective relationship, and has a significant and negative impact on instrumental relationship. Instrumental relationship has a significant and positive impact on knowledge hoarding and knowledge rejecting, affective relationship has a significant and negative impact on passive attitudes towards sharing mistakes and failures. Secondly, instrumental relationship plays a complete mediator role between transaction-based mechanisms and the reasons of knowledge hoarding and the reasons of knowledge rejecting, instrumental relationship plays a partial mediator between commitment-based mechanisms and the reasons of knowledge hoarding and the reasons of knowledge rejecting, affective relationship plays a partial mediator between commitment-based mechanisms and passive attitudes towards sharing mistakes and failures.
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    The Effects of Social Anxiety on Body Dysphoric Disorder among Undergraduates: The Mediating Role of Appearance-based Rejection Sensitivity
    Yun-Xiang CHEN
    2018, 41(6): 1396-1402. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (486KB) ( )  
    The prevalence of body dysphoric disorder was slightly higher in undergraduates. Considerable studies have demonstrated that individuals’ social anxiety functions as an important predictor of the development of body dysphoric disorder symptoms, especially the fear of negative evaluation, which occupies the cognitive core of social anxiety. Individuals’ fear of negative evaluation and body dysphoric disorder symptoms both lead to a bias processing of social information. For example, they may selectively pay attention to their appearance defects when concerned about physical appearance and misinterpret the threat information of appearance in the ambiguous situations. Upon previous researches, we assumed that the predicting effect of social anxiety on body dysphoric disorder was via the appearance-based rejection sensitivity. Appearance-based rejection sensitivity is defined as a dispositional tendency to exhibit anxiety-provoking expectations, readily perceive and overreact to cues of interpersonal rejection based on physical appearance. On the one hand, appearance-based rejection sensitivity positively predicted the body dysphoric disorder symptoms, which had been proved within college students sample and body dysphoric disorder sample. On the other hand, appearance-based rejection sensitivity was closely correlated to the social anxiety. Individuals with higher social anxiety would show greater anxiety of others’ negative evaluation and rejection based on their appearance, they would also expect what they were anxious about to happen. In brief, appearance-based rejection sensitivity might act as a mediator in the relationship between social anxiety and body dysphoric disorder. The aims of this study were (a) to explore the relationships among the social anxiety, appearance-based rejection sensitivity and body dysphoric disorder in Chinese undergraduates, and (b) to investigate the mediating effect of appearance-based rejection sensitivity on the relation between undergraduates’ social anxiety and body dysphoric disorder. In the present study, participants (N = 888) were recruited randomly from universities in Beijing, Sichuan and Anhui provinces. They anonymously completed the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE), Appearance-based Rejection Sensitivity Scale (ARS), Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) and Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (RSQ). A total of 875 valid questionnaires were received (523 females), with ages ranging from 16 to 23 (M = 18.92, SD = 1.23). The main findings were as follows: (1) There were significant gender differences in social anxiety and appearance-based rejection sensitivity, with girls’ levels being both higher than boys’ (t = 5.38, p < .001; t = 3.31, p < .01). (2) Participants’ social anxiety, appearance-based rejection sensitivity and body dysphoric disorder were positively associated with one another significantly (r = .41, .26, .48, Ps < .01). (3) Appearance-based rejection sensitivity could mediate the relationship between social anxiety and body dysphoric disorder, and the mediating effect accounted for 62.34% of the total effect. First, we discussed the relationships among the social anxiety, appearance-based rejection sensitivity and body dysphoric disorder, and the results were consistent with the conclusions of prior studies. Second, the present study revealed that appearance-based rejection sensitivity was an important mediator in the link between social anxiety and body dysphoric disorder. Social anxiety not only influenced body dysphoric disorder directly, but also had indirect effect on it through appearance-based rejection sensitivity. This was the most important result in our study. The results suggested that in individuals with body dysphoric disorder, changing their unreasonable beliefs about the appearance rejection was crucial in the process of cognitive behavior therapy.
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    The Relationship of Client Engagement with Session Outcome and Treatment Outcome
    2018, 41(6): 1457-1463. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (851KB) ( )  
    It is generally acknowledged that client engagement is a prerequisite for clients to benefit from counseling and psychotherapy, but there is still no unanimous conclusion on the relationship between client’s engagement and outcome. This study was aimed to explore the relationship between client engagement and instant session outcome, as well as associations between client initial engagement and treatment outcome. To investigating the relationship between client engagement with instant session outcome, Client Engagement Questionnaire (CEQ, self-developed) and Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) were employed. One hundred and forty-two clients from 7 mental health education center in universities and 1 mental health clinic in hospital were acted as partisans (46 males and 70 females; Mean age = 20.84 ± 2.23, some clients provided no information of sex and age; Mean session-time = 5.87 ± 5.34), most of whom were college students. Clients were requested to fill in the CEQ and SEQ after one given session, and correlation between CEQ and SEQ were computed. Findings revealed that client engagement may have positive effect on session outcome. Concretely speaking, intra-session engagement, inter-session reflection, inter-session action, session adherence (four of five dimensions of CEQ) had a significant positive correlation with instant session outcome, but session attendance (one dimension of CEQ) was not the case. The second study examined the associations between different dimensions of clients’ initial engagement and treatment outcome assessed by continuous self-report among 38 college students (4males and 34females; Mean age = 20.41 ± 2.28; Mean session-time = 4.39 ± 1.23). This was a tracking study, clients were requested to complete Outcome Rating Scale (ORS) before each session until the counseling ends, while Client Engagement Questionnaire (CEQ) was completed only after the second session. Multilayer linear model analysis results showed that clients’ ORS score increases with the increase of dose of psychotherapy, which approved that clients could benefit from psychological counseling, but there was significant individual difference on the changing speed of ORS score, and have shown no linear relationship between clients’ initial engagement and treatment outcome (the changing speed of ORS score). This might indicate that traditional linear correlation analysis methods were incomplete to describe the relationship between engagement and outcome. Further regression analysis showed that the relationship between clients’ initial engagement and treatment outcome showed a U-shape curve relationship. For very few clients who showed lowest level of engagement obtained moderate level outcome; for those who had middle level of initial engagement, the worst of outcome were obtained; and clients with the highest level of initial engagement got best treatment outcome. Generally speaking, it is proved that the client engagement had influence on the outcome, yet this relationship was also influenced by other factors. One possible explanation is that treatment outcome may be influenced by clients’ engagement, clients’ internal resources and severity of symptoms. Specifically, for those very few clients with lowest level of engagement, they may have little symptoms with self-exploration consulting goals, or have little symptoms with positive goals for change, both of whom have more internal resources(e.g., more capable of self-awareness, more motivation for change), the relationship between engagement level with counseling outcomes were not clear up to now. Well for most clients who really seek professional psychological help, their benefits from counseling may depend on their motivation for change and internal resources, higher level of engagement could bring them significant counseling outcomes.
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    Negative Effects of Empathy in Preschool Teachers: A Moderated Mediation Model
    2018, 41(6): 1423-1429. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (693KB) ( )  
    There are numerous studies investigating the positive effects of empathy upon individuals, whereas less attention has been paid to the potential negative effects (e.g. empathy may lead to emotional exhaustion). Yet, these insufficient research resources focusing on the negative effects of empathy have several limitations. Firstly, previous studies on the negative effects of empathy primarily sampled from typical helping professions, such as medical staffs and psychological consultants. The narrowness in sampling raised concerns on the generalizability of their findings. Secondly, previous studies on the negative effects of empathy seldom distinguished between affective empathy and cognitive empathy, and the measures used in these studies usually confused empathy with other constructs. Thus, the true relationship between different components of empathy and emotional exhaustion was unclear. Thirdly, few studies have examined the mediating processes and the boundary condition between empathy and emotional exhaustion. The present study aimed to explore (1) the relationship between both components of empathy and emotional exhaustion; (2) the moderated mediation effect among affective empathy, emotional exhaustion, emotion labor and social support after controlling for demographic variables. Specifically, this study not only examined the indirect effect of affective empathy on emotional exhaustion via emotion labor, but also examined the moderating effect of social support in this indirect relation. A sample of 253 preschool teachers from 10 kindergartens in mainland China was recruited to complete the Measure of Empathy, Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey, Emotional Labor Strategy Scale and Perceived Social Support Scale. The results indicated that: (1) Affective empathy was positively associated with emotional exhaustion, while cognitive empathy was negatively associated with emotional exhaustion. (2) Emotional labor played a mediating role between affective empathy and emotional exhaustion. (3) Social support moderated the mediating effect of emotional labor. In the context of low social support, with the increase of emotional labor, preschool teachers’ emotional exhaustion had an ascending trend. However, in the context of high social support, preschool teachers’ emotional exhaustion had no obvious change with the increase of emotional labor. These findings supported our theoretical hypothesis. First of all, the negative effect of empathy was repeatedly verified. Furthermore, the negative effect of empathy stemmed from affective empathy, rather than cognitive empathy. In addition, the ralationship between empathy and emotional exhaustion was complex and would change depending on other factors. The theoretical and practical implications of the results were further discussed. Firstly, due to the opposite result of the relationship between the two components of empathy and emotional exhaustion, preschool teachers should make more use of cognitive empathy, and avoid frequent vicarious experience for preschool children’s negative emotions. Secondly, it is suggested that preschool teachers actively search for social support to supplement their emotional resource consumed by empathy, therefore to prevent emotional exhaustion.
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    Effects of Relative Deprivation on Cyber Collective and Aggressive Behaviors: A Moderated Dual-pathway Models
    2018, 41(6): 1436-1442. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (572KB) ( )  
    With the cyber group events and cyber violence incidents occurring frequently, researchers have been gradually paying more and more attention on cyber collective and aggressive behaviors. At present, there are only a few theoretical and related researches which are mainly based on the collective behavior theories such as value added theory to analyze and explain the cyber collective and aggressive behaviors. The formation of cyber collective and aggressive behaviors is a complex process, influenced by many variables which are not independent but interacted and mutual influenced the production. Therefore, the current study aimed to examine the relationships between group relative deprivation and cyber collective and aggressive behaviors. In addition, the current study investigated whether the associations were mediated by group-based anger and group efficacy and whether group identity moderated the relationship between group relative deprivation and cyber collective and aggressive behaviors mediated by group-based anger and group efficacy. In order to reach the aim, the questionnaire survey was carried out by using the adaptation of "Mercedes Man striking event" as the background. And 598 undergraduates from different grades and majors took part in the research in the unit of the class. Both surveys included demographics in the first part, followed by a questionnaire on group relative deprivation, cyber collective and aggressive behaviors, group-based anger, and group efficacy and group identity. Most of the questions were based on former researches and were modified for the specific situation. Data was collected and analyzed using SPSS 21.0. The results were as follows: (1) there were significant correlations between group relative deprivation, group-based anger, group efficacy, and group identity and cyber collective and aggressive behaviors. (2) Mediation analyses indicated that both group-based anger and group efficacy mediated the relationships between group relative deprivation and cyber collective and aggressive behaviors. (3) Moderation analyses showed that group identity moderated the mediation effect of group-based anger and group efficacy. In terms of group anger as an intermediary, the indirect effect was stronger for individuals with high group identity than for those with low group identity. Similarly, for individuals with high group identity, the mediating effect of group efficacy was not significant, and group relative deprivation only had a direct effect on cyber collective and aggressive behaviors. (4) There were two moderated mediation models including group relative deprivation, cyber collective and aggressive behaviors, group-based anger, and group efficacy and group identity. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that all fit indexes conformed to statistical requirements. In summary, the current study goes beyond previously applied designs by examining the mediating mechanism caused by group-based anger and group efficacy, and represents an important step in the investigation of how group relative deprivation relates to cyber collective and aggressive behaviors by moderation of group identity. Furthermore, these mediating mechanisms were moderated by group identity. Findings from this study highlighted the importance of studying cyber collective and aggressive behaviors simultaneously and broaden our understanding of the factors and processes that provided a new research idea on how to explore and reduce cyber collective and aggressive behaviors.
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    The Hierarchical Relationship between Relational Self and Collective Self in Self-construal
    2018, 41(6): 1403-1409. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1186KB) ( )  
    Self, as a special psychological construction, had been researched by psychologist and sociologist more than three decades. The self-construal occupies a central role in one’s life because of its relevance to ensuing cognitive, motivational, affective, and behavioral process. The model of cultural difference in self-construal claims that East Asian cultures emphasize fundamental social connection and encourage an interdependent view of a self. There is a considerable evidence that people have three cognitive representations of the self: the individual self (cognitions related to one’s particularly traits, states and behaviors), the relational self (cognitions related to relationships with close others), the collective self (representation of self as an undifferentiated and interchangeable group member). Moreover, researchers found that people had self-advantage during the memory and cognition processing. Individuals identified the faces of their family and race faster than others, indicating people also have self-advantage on relational- and collective-self. Under the background of Chinese traditional culture, Chinese people emphasize the collective sense of honor and belonging. The self of Chinese people is dominated by collectivism. The collectivism can be divided into two forms: relational collectivism and group collectivism. According to the cognitive representation of self, relational collectivism emphasizes the relational self and group collectivism privileges the collective self. However, whether there is a difference between relational self and collective self under Chinese collectivism cultural is not clear yet? According this, we explored the implicit association test (IAT) to examine to implicit positive association with the collective and relational-self. We hypothesis: (1) participants had implicit positive association with both relational- and collective-self. (2) Moreover, according to Chinese traditional culture, young Chinese people have larger implicit positive attitude to collective-self than to relational-self. In the present experiment, we selected mother, father, family and similar words to represent the relational-self, and words of celebrities as non-relational-self. Chinese, the Chinese nation and similar words were selected to represent collective-self, and the words like foreigners were choose to represent non-collective-self. Then, as the typical IAT procedure, participants completed seven tasks. And there were two types of these tasks: consistent task and inconsistent task. During the consistent task, participants needed to combine the relational-/collective-self with positive valence, and combine the non-self-words with negative valence. However, during the inconsistent task, participants needed to combine the relational-/collective-self with negative valence, and combine the non-self-words with positive valence. The results showed that both relational-self and collective-self, the RTs to consistent task were faster than to inconsistent task, and the accuracy of consistent task was also higher. These results indicating that people will be more easily to associate the relational-/collective-self with positive attributes in the implicit level. Chinese young people have implicit positive association with relational-self and collective-self as well. Furthermore, we compared the RTs and accuracies to relational-self and collective-self. The results showed that participants reacted faster to consistent task of collective-self than relational-self. Compared with relational-self, Chinese young people will be more easily to associate the collective-self with positive valence, indicating that the self-construal of people in China is more inclined to group-collectivism on the implicit level.
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    The brain-to-brain correlates of Social Interaction in the Perspective of HyperscanningApproach
    2018, 41(6): 1484-1491. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1029KB) ( )  
    Hyperscanning approach is a type of neuroimaging technique. It refers to measure neural activities simultaneously from two or more agents who are involved in the same social interactions, and then inter-brain coupling (or interpersonal neural synchronization, INS) is analyzed and used to explain brain-to-brain neural correlates of social interactions in the perspective of group level. During the past decade, hyperscanning approach became more and more popular, and has been one of powerful approaches to elucidate intrinsic property of higher cognition with social interactions in condition of higher ecological validity, such as cooperation/competition, behavioral synchrony/imitation, interpersonal communication and economic decision-makings so on. In this paper, we first review and summarize the previous hyperscanning studiesover the past decade, which followed by limitations and future studies on other research fields with social interaction. First, cooperation and competition are fundamental, but pivotal, requirement for survival in human beings (even in animals). Enhanced interpersonal neural synchronization (INS)is consistently obtained in prefrontal cortex (PFC) and/or temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) during two participants perform both the concurrent cooperation task (such as jointkey-press task) and the turn-taking cooperation/competition task (such as disk-game task), while absent or much lower INS was found in control condition. Such evidenceindicates that INS could serve as a neuromarker to depict the cooperation and competition behaviors in social context.Moreover, genders and relationship between interacting agents have been shown to significantly affect prefrontal INS and then social interactions. Second, stronger INS emergesin PFC and/or right TPJ with better coordination performances during singing, instrument playing and game of charades. More interestingly, several pieces of evidence show INS iscorrelated with the empathyand shared knowledge. Third, enhanced prefrontal INS is also observed in the interpersonal communication task (face-to-face verbal communication task, emotional transmission and so on). Further, INS could predict verbal and/or non-verbal communication quality, such as teacher-student interactions during teaching, leader emergence during a non-leader group discussion task. Forth, prefrontal INS has also found in economic games (such as trust game, prisoner's dilemma, et al.) and spontaneous deception so on. To summarize, interpersonal neural synchronization in widely-distributed network in the brain, especially in fronto-parietal network, could explain social interaction in the group level, which gives us a deep understanding the nature of social interaction from the level of sensation/motion, decision making and information transmission. However, the limitations on hyperscanning studies should also be mentioned. First,portable equipment and much higher-resolution fNIRS equipment arerequired to be used in many types of natural social interactions. Second, eye movement and physiological activities are important in social interactions, a multimodal hyperscanning platform with combination of behavioral, physiological, eye movement and brain data needs to be developed. Finally and most importantly, an optimal mathematical model should be built up based on multiple levels of data, which can help us to understand the nature of interpersonal neural synchronization and intrinsic property of social interaction. Finally, hyperscanning approach should have huge potentials in both scientific research and clinic applications, such as dynamic evaluation of teaching quality, dynamic evaluation of psychological counseling, measurement of social function deficiency and optimizing inference resolution in patients with autisms, and schizophrenia so on.
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    Item Selection Methods in Multidimensional Polytomous Computerized Adaptive Testing
    2018, 41(6): 1500-1507. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1791KB) ( )  
    Multidimensional computerized adaptive testing (MCAT) features a combination of computerized adaptive testing and multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) which shows great potential to obtain diagnostic information from examinees’ item responses accurately and efficiently, with its goal of extracting as much information as possible about the multiple abilities required. Currently, most MCAT researches focus on the dichotomous data. However there are large polytomous data in educational and psychological tests in practice. Polytomously-scored items provide more information than dichotomously-scored items do. It could not only measure concepts and skills in greater depth than dichotomous items but also reduce the test length while achieving the same effects, particularly under the CAT context. This paper proposed two new MCAT procedures with polytomous score, called as PMCAT. The first proposed item selection algorithm was RCEM, which used the updating current posterior distribution to replace the fixed prior distribution in the calculation of posterior distribution (equation 3-5). By using the updating prior distribution, the RCEM method could extract more information from the responses. The second method was MKB, which weighted the KL information by the entire posterior distribution. Compared with the KI method, the numerator in equation (8) considered all the possible ability vectors, and weights them accordingly. Because it used Bayesian idea and did not require estimating the ability vector , which might not be accurately described at the early stages of testing, it might show more informative than KI method. To compare the new RCEM, MKB method and the D-optimality, KI, MUI methods proposed by Lin (2012). A Monte Carlo simulation study was conducted under the same simulation conditions as those of Lin (2012). The item pool consisted of 400 items following MGPCM, with the item discrimination parameters and were drawn from . And the distribution of item threshold parameters were as follows: , and , and . Similar to previous MCAT studies, examinee responses were simulated with true abilities on a two-dimensional grid spanning the square . Crossing 13 discrete points on each of two dimensions generated a grid of 169 vector points. In order to balance the random error, 500 replications were run at each point. This was a fixed-length MCAT and the test length was set to 25. The first item was chosen by random. EAP was used as the latent trait estimation approach when the test is ongoing. The prior distribution was to use the standard bivariate normal distribution. The Gauss–Hermite numerical integration formulas from Glas (1992) was used and the integration was taken over the range of ability . The simulation results showed: the estimation accuracy and test security of the proposed methods under PMCAT were all acceptable and reasonable. The estimation accuracy of RCEM and MKB method was better than CEM (MUI) and KI method respectively (see Table 2). Combine with the security of the pool, the proposed RCEM was the ideal of all in that it gained the lowest item exposure rate and had a relatively high accuracy (see Table 3). Consisted with the previous study, D-optimality, MUI and the proposed RCEM, MKB methods had similar estimation and item selection pattern, while KI differed than them (see Table4 and Figure 2). Polytomously-scored items are widely used in Likert-type scale in psychological inventories and are also highly applied in the achievement context. The two kind of new methods showed their superiority in PMCAT by this paper, thus hey might expect a good prospect and application.
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    The Interval Estimation Three Methods of Attribute-level Classification Consistency in Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment
    Wen-Yi WANG Xiao-Ming FANG
    2018, 41(6): 1492-1499. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1071KB) ( )  
    Abstract: As is well known, point estimate contains limited information about a population parameter and could not give how far it could be from the population parameter. The confidence interval of the parameter could provide more information about the precision of estimated parameters. In evaluating the quality of a test, the confidence interval of composite reliability has received more and more attention in recent years. However, there is no research on the estimation of the reliability interval of the cognitive diagnostic assessment. The researchers often only report the reliability point estimation, and no one is concerned about the confidence interval in the report. It is far from enough to report the reliability of the cognitive diagnostic assessment. The confidence interval of reliability in cognitive diagnostic assessment should be taken into account. We can estimate error range from the confidence interval. This study compares three reliability interval estimation methods of the cognitive diagnostic assessment based on DINA model and attribute-level classification consistency (Wang, et al., 2015). There are three approaches to estimate the confidence interval of the cognitive diagnostic assessment: Bootstrap method, Parallel test method, and Parallel test pairing method. Each of the three approaches produces the standard error, average and confidence interval about attribute-level classification consistency reliability. These factors were considered in the simulation design: (a) the number of test attributes(k=5, and 7); (b) the number of test items (5 attributes is t=15, and 31; 7 attributes is t=21, and 42); (c) the quality of test items [U(0.05,0.25), and U(0.25,0.45)]; (d) the number of sample size (n=500, 1000 and 1500); (e)the method for calculating the confidence intervals of attribute-level classification consistency reliability (Bootstrap, parallel test method, and parallel test pairing method). Totally, 72 treatment conditions were generated in terms of the above 5-factor simulation design (i.e., 72=2×3×2×2×3). The simulation results indicated: (1) Whether tests contain 5 or 7 attributes of the independent attribute hierarchical relationship, the standard error and reliability interval which are obtained by three interval estimation methods estimated (Bootstrap method, parallel test method and parallel test matching method) are all affected by the quality of test, sample size or test length. With the increase of the number of test items and subjects, the standard error and the length of confidence interval tend to decrease. As the quality of the subject decreases, the standard error and the length of confidence interval increase; (2) Whether tests contain 5 or 7 attributes of the independent attribute hierarchical relationship, the average of the reliability estimating by three interval estimation methods is affected by the quality of test, sample size or test length. With the increase of the amount of test, the average of the reliability shows a larger increase. With the increase of the number of subjects, the change of the average of the reliability is small; as the quality of the subject declines, the average of the reliability shows a larger decline; (3) The parallel test method and the Bootstrap method are close to the standard errors and confidence intervals estimated when test length and sample size is small. However, with the increase of the number of the subjects, the estimation accuracy of the Bootstrap method is improved rapidly. When a large amount of test items and the number of subjects was large, the result was basically close to the parallel test matching method. Bootstrap method requires the least time, parallel test matching method in practice is difficult to achieve. Therefore, recommended Bootstrap method when estimate the confidence interval of cognitive diagnosis.
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    The inhibiting and facilitating effect on patient in Obsessive compulsive disorder
    2018, 41(6): 1508-1515. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (566KB) ( )  
    Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a kind of mental disorder which is characterized by intrusive thoughts and ritual behaviors. In recent years the failure of inhibition has been widely used as the reason of obsession and compulsion. As a result, the question of whether the failure of inhibition exists on OCD patients preoccupied researchers’ attention. Unfortunately, during the past two decades, although there were plenty of research findings in this field, there were still many limitations, the first of which was the long-standing contradictory conclusions about the existence of inhibition difficult on OCDs due to all the different tasks applicable to the study of inhibition. Moreover, the cognitive neuropsychological mechanisms of inhibition haven’t been extensively studied. Based on the problems mentioned above, we explored the existence of the failure of inhibition by means of experiment and the co-occurrence of inhibition difficult on GADs was studied simultaneously. In particular, whether it has the effect of inhibiting or promoting effect in obsessive compulsive disorder is a need to solve the problems in the current research. Therefore, the international relatively new inhibition and promotion mode will be adopted to explore the inhibitory and promote effect of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and whether they have a common influence on patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder in this study. The study used behavioral experiment to explore this issue. 75 subjects were selected to attend the experiment, including 25 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, 25 patients with anxiety disorder and 25 healthy subjects. The measurement tools included DSM-IV-TR, Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale, Beck Anxiety Inventory and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Chinese Affective Picture System designed by Bai, Ma, Huang and Luo(2005) was chosen as experiment materials. The whole experiment was performed on a PC machine. Experimental design was single factor experiment. Among them, the independent variable is the group (the patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder and normal control group), and the average response time of the test is the dependent variable of the test. In particular, the average reaction time of the subjects was mainly included in the promotion and inhibition of the task of the time point 1 and the time point of the time point of the 2 images to stimulate the reaction time. The main results were as follows: (1) There were two potential mechanisms that might led to the failure of inhibition on OCDs named facilitation and inhibition. By means of a task that could separate the two effects, we found that the failure of inhibition was the main mechanism which led to OCD. Compared with inhibition, the effect of facilitation was negligible. (2) Inhibition of the difficulty is a unique mechanism for patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, rather than the "shared substance" in patients with anxiety disorder "
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    The Association between NR3C1 Gene Bcl1 Polymorphism and Adolescent Depression:The Moderation of Stressful Life Events
    2018, 41(6): 1516-1523. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (588KB) ( )  
    It has been well documented that both gene and environment contribute to and usually interact to affect the development of depression. Despite the fast accumulating evidence for G × E on depression, there are some important issues are less well understood. First, the majority of studies on the G × E have focused on genes of serotonergic and dopaminergic systems which were guided by the monoamine-deficiency hypothesis. However, genes involved in the function of hypothalamic–pituitary–cortisol (HPA) also may underlie depression. Second, compared with identifying genetic variations, the measurement of SLE is readily overshadowed by molecular genetic techniques. Researchers have measured participants’ life stress across varying time periods. As a consequence of these inadequacies, mixed findings regarding G × E were obtained. Third, the observed G × E effects could possibly be an artifact of gene–environment correlation (rGE), but fewer studies sought to control for it. In this study, one of the most widely studied functional polymorphism (Bcl1) in the glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) was used to test G × E effects. To our knowledge, a few studies investigated the interaction between Bcl1 polymorphism and adversities, however, mixed findings were obtained. Besides, the rGE effects should be ruled out before solid conclusions can be drawn. Therefore, SLEs were differentiated as independent SLEs if they had a nonsignificant genetic underlying as prior study. In addition, we also hypothesized that, if the measure of SLEs represents genetic risk, then SLEs would interact with gene even if they occurred after the depression. One thousand and eighty one adolescents (mean age 15.23 years at T3) were assessed three times with an interval of three years. During each assessment, the participants completed self-reported questionnaire on depressive symptoms. At the second assessment, a self-reported SLE questionnaire was completed. All measures showed good reliability. DNA was extracted from saliva. Genotyping at Bcl1 polymorphism was performed for each participant in real time with MassARRAY RT software version 3.0.0.4 and analyzed using the MassARRAY Typer software version 3.4 (Sequenom). To examine whether Bcl1 polymorphism interacts with SLE in predicting depression and whether it is a true G × E effect after controlling for rGE, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted. The findings indicated that no main effect of Bcl1 polymorphism on depression was found. SLE was associated with an increase in depressive symptoms. Both total SLEs by Bcl1 polymorphism interaction and independent SLEs by Bcl1 polymorphism interaction were significantly predicted T3 depression. C allele carriers were more susceptible to the detrimental effects of SLEs. However, such an interactive effect was not observed when predicting T1 depression. These findings highlight there is a true G × E effect underlying the observed interaction between Bcl1 polymorphism and SLEs on depression rather than an artifact of rGE. Besides, it’s important to test and report rGE in G × E studies in future.
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    What is the Human Mind? Views of the Mind of the New Confucians
    Kang LI Wang Fengyan
    2018, 41(6): 1524-1529. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (356KB) ( )  
    With the development of cultural psychology in the twenty-first century, the connotations of the mind in contemporary psychology have been changed tremendously. It is necessary and urgent to analyze views of the mind (xin, 心) in Chinese traditional culture, which can provide an integral understanding on human mind, and can enrich basic psychological theories and benefit indigenous psychology studies. Therefore, this paper analyzes views of the mind of three New Confucians: Liang Shuming, Xiong Shili and Feng Youlan, and draws the following conclusions. Liang shuming (1879-1985), a famous figure of New Confucianism movement and a pioneer of Chinese indigenous psychology, put forward the point of view on the mind and laid the foundation of Confucian ethics. There are two stages in his view of the mind. First, he regarded intuition as the core element of human mind. During that period, he was mainly influenced by two Western philosophers, Pyotr Kropotkin and Henri Bergson. Second, Liang modified the original theory and argued that mind was constructed by three basic factors: instinct, reason and rationality (li xing, 理性). Among them, rationality which means a mixture of reason and emotion, is the core element. In addition, he also discussed specific multi-level connotation of the mind in the Confucian culture. Xiong Shili (1885-1968) who is widely regarded as the founder of New Confucianism, discussed compositions and connotations of the mind from a metaphysical perspective. He criticized scientific psychology for treating mind as nervous system activities or brain reactions to the objective world, and presented that the human mind is distinguished by the original mind (benxin, 本心) and the habituated mind (xixin, 习心). The two kinds of mind are not actually two separate entities, but a whole. The original mind is the substance (ti, 体), and the habituated mind is the function (yong, 用). He used the metaphor of the ocean and the waves to illustrate this point. Feng Youlan (1895-1990), another important figure of New Confucianism, expressed his connotations of the mind from the neorealism perspective. He argued that the mind consists of two parts: true mind (zhen ji de xin, 真际的心) and actual mind (shi ji de xin, 实际的心). The meaning of life can be changed by realizing mental state from the actual mind to the true mind. In addition, his philosophy of mind is similar with Western constructivism in some aspects. In the third part of the paper, the similarities and differences and deficiencies among the three scholars' views of the mind were discussed. We found that the mind of the New Confucianism is a multi-layered entity, whose aware, dynamic, changing and value-laden part or level is intentionally focused. It is different from views of traditional scientific psychology and humanistic psychology. Views of the mind of the new Confucians can not only enrich theories of cultural psychology and indigenous psychology, but also help researchers to draw historical lessons and get a new understanding on the human mind.
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    The Development of Adolescent Values in Chinese Different Regions
    2018, 41(6): 1300-1309. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (1255KB) ( )  
    Values is an explicit or implicit viewpoint of what is "worthy" (Kluckhohn, 1951), whose formation and development are influenced by the various factors of an individual's own maturity and external environment. According to Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), the social macro-environment plays an important role in the development of adolescent values. The "socialist core values" proposed by the 18th national congress of the communist party of China is to convey the expectations of the macro environment for the adolescent values from the national perspective. Social changes are important factors affecting children's development. In this study, we aimed to study the development of adolescent values and their relations with adjustment variables under the context of rapid social change in China among different regions. Participants were seventh- and ninth-grade students (n=1051). Data were obtained from multiple sources and selected from Minhang district in Shanghai, Renshou county in Sichuan and Yumen county in Gansu. The Chinese Adolescent' Values Questionnaire was used to measure adolescent values. Adjustment variables included academic performance, peer ratings’ social competence and self-report’s depression. The results revealed that: (1) Except the dimension of Fashion, there were significant regional differences in other dimensions of adolescent values: adolescent values score in Shanghai and Gansu were significantly higher than that in Sichuan in the dimensions of Social Equality, Group Orientation, Rule Abiding, Family wellbeing and Self-improvement. In the dimension of Friendship, the order was Shanghai, Gansu and Sichuan. Furthermore, the Personal Happiness’ score in Shanghai was higher than that in Gansu and Sichuan. There was a significant grade differences in Self-improvement values, ninth grade was higher than the seventh grade; (2) In addition to Fashion and Personal Happiness values, adolescent values in each dimension could positively predict academic achievement and social competence, and negatively predict depression. Fashion could predict academic achievement negatively and predict depression positively; (3) There were significant regional differences in adolescent values associated with adjustment variables, specifically, the prediction of social competence by Friendship was higher in Shanghai and Sichuan than that in Gansu. Sichuan was higher than Shanghai and Gansu in the prediction of social competence by Self-improvement. The prediction of depression by Self-improvement and Fashion was higher in Sichuan and Gansu than that in Shanghai. Possible reasons were discussed in the end of the article: firstly, parents had different education levels in three regions, under the background of Chinese society, parents with higher education levels tended to impart children both collectivistic and individualistic orientation values; Secondly, the grade difference of Self-improvement suggested that the pressure of secondary school entrance exam among junior high school students. In addition, the values of adolescents in all regions were closely linked to academic performance. It should be noticed that in Shanghai and Gansu, adolescents with higher Fashion did worse in academic achievement. Moreover, Fashion could positively predict depression in Sichuan and Gansu, but not in Shanghai, suggested that the implication of adolescent Fashion values varied in different economic levels of regions. The study reveals the development of adolescent values in the new era, and provides the empirical basis for guiding adolescents to establish correct values.
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    Research on Adolescent Values and Their Relations with Adjustment in the Changing Chinese Context
    2018, 41(6): 1290-1299. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (978KB) ( )  
    The basic values formed in the adolescence stage establish the value orientation of individual's whole life. At this stage, the youth begin to think and explore their own value orientation, and gradually form the values that can be used as criteria for judging their behavior. The formation and development of adolescent values are influenced by the overall structure and trend of social culture. A certain cultural system and social structure create values of generations of people through cultural communicators and preserver. Since the twenty-first Century, Chinese society has entered a period of rapid change and rapid development, but at present, there is a lack of effective measurement tools for adolescent's values in the complex background of Chinese social changes. Then the primary purpose of this study was to explore Chinese teenagers' characteristics of values and to develop the questionnaire of adolescent values and their associated with school and social adjustment. 780 primary (Grade 7, Grade 8) and senior high school adolescents (Grade 10, Grade 11) in Sichuan province were investigated for two times by the Adolescent' Values Questionnaire. In order to develop the values questionnaire, we conducted item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis and criterion-related validity analysis. Then, the Adolescent Values Questionnaire was used to examine the relationship between various dimensions of values and school and social adjustment in adolescent. School adjustment included academic performance, teacher ratings of school competence and learning problems. Social adjustment included peer ratings of prosocial behavior, social competence and peer preference. The results were as follows: (1) the questionnaire had good reliability and validity, and could be used as a measuring tool for Chinese adolescents' values. The structure of adolescent values included 8 dimensions: Social equality, Group orientation, Rule abiding, Family wellbeing, Friendship, Self-improvement, Fashion, Personal happiness; (2) Boys identified with Friendship more than girls. Junior high school adolescents more identified with Social equality and Family wellbeing, high school adolescents agreed with Personal happiness more; (3) Adolescent values were associated with some aspects of school adjustment. Self-improvement predicted academic performance and school competence positively; Fashion predicted negatively academic performance and prosocial behavior, and predicted learning problem positively; Family wellbeing predicted positively social competence and prosocial behavior respectively; Friendship positively predicted peer preference. The structure of Chinese adolescent values is different from that of Chinese adults and Western adolescents. The value structure reflecting the psychological components of teenagers' values are affected by individual development and social and cultural environment. The interaction of individual characteristics and social and cultural environment may promote the formation and development of adolescent' values. The social environment affects individual in it, and endows individuals with common values in the environment. Those common values are delivered by generations of generations through cultural communicators and preserver in a certain cultural system and social structure. Values in the cultural system and social structure create individual cognitive, emotional and behavioral patterns, which exert subtle influence on people and eventually form a schema shared by some cultures. The characteristics of adolescents' values are influenced by the development of the oneself, social economic development and traditional culture in the new era. The results of our research not only help us to understand the value schema of the youth in a fast changing and diversified social environment, but also help us to further explore the factors that affect the formation and development of the youth's values. The results also help us to understand the role of the formation and development of the youth ' values in their schools and social adaptation, which can promote the education of values and the healthy growth of young people.
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    Developmental Trajectories of Early Adolescents’ Cultural Values in the New Era: The Effect of Peer Acceptance
    2018, 41(6): 1282-1289. 
    Abstract ( )   PDF (762KB) ( )  
    Self- and group-orientation values represent two major different ways in which individuals view, and interact with, the world in relation to one’s self. Whereas self-orientation, as indicated mainly by personal individuality and independence, is concerned with expressing one’s distinct and autonomous views and behavioral styles in interactions, group-orientation, characterized by attention to group wellbeing and mutual obligation with others, taps into a sense of social affiliation, belonging, and fitting in the social context. In most societies, the development of cultural values is considered a major task of children and adolescents. Most previous studies have focused on the regional difference, cross-generational change and the national level’s overall change during social change. However, much less is known about the developmental trajectories of cultural values of early adolescents in the changing Chinese society. Based on the theory of social change and human development, in the Chinese social transition, early adolescents’ cultural values become more self- orientated in the peer interaction. From a “pluralist-constructive” perspective, self- and group-orientation values become more coexisted and integrated. However, to our knowledge, there is no specific research on the development of early adolescents’ cultural values. Accordingly, a longitudinal study was conducted to examine the developmental trajectories of cultural values across early adolescent. A total of 1244 early adolescents were recruited from nine primary schools and participated in this study. They were followed up for three years from grade four to grade six. Assessments of pupils’ cultural values and peer acceptance were obtained from both self-report and peer nomination at three time points. Liner latent growth model was used to examine: (1) initial levels and change in cultural values over time; and (2) the prediction of both initial levels and changes in cultural values from gender and peer acceptance. Among the results, early adolescents’ self- and group-orientation values increased in linear trajectories from grade four (Mean age = 10.36 years, SD = 6.53 months) to grade six. Moreover, although girls had higher initial level of group-orientation values than boys, there was no gender difference in the initial level of self-orientation values and in the change of self- and group-orientation values over time. Lastly, results from liner latent growth model showed that peer acceptance as a time-variant variable at given testing point could positively predict early adolescents’ self- and group-orientation values at that time. Our findings indicate that developmental trajectories of self- and group-orientation values are influenced by peer acceptance at different developmental stages. A better understanding of the causes and consequences of change in cultural values across the critical age period of early adolescence can help early adolescents shape good cultural values.
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