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The Neural Mechanism of Language Context Influencing Self-bias Kong Chao, Liu Huanhuan, Liu Linyan, 2023, 46(2): 258-265.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1186KB) ( )   It is well known that different languages have different impacts on human cognition, emotion, and physiological states. In the context of native language, individuals tend to associate positive emotions with themselves, and negative emotions with others. This leads to the self-positive and other-negative bias. However, using a foreign language may reduce emotional involvement. We hypothesized that using a foreign language may affect the connection between identity (self vs. other) and emotion (positive vs. negative) through reducing emotional involvement. In addition, we hypothesized that the ability of language control when they switch between two languages may also affect bilinguals’ connection between identity and emotion. Language control refers to the choice of using the target language in a specific situation and inhibiting the interference of non-target language. Participants do not need to switch between languages in the monolingual context, which requires less inhibitory processing (global language control occurred). In contrast, participants have to switch from one language to another in bilingual context frequently by inhibiting the interference from nontarget language (local language control occurred). We hypothesized that connection between identity and emotion occurred automatically under global language control, while it required more cognitive resources under local language control. Thus, the automatic process may be weakened in the context of mixed language. In the current study, bilingual context and monolingual context were designed. The stimuli in each scanning run was either presented in twolanguage or in one-language context, corresponding to local and global language control. The variables of language (Chinese vs. English), identity (Self vs. Others) and emotional valence (Positive vs. Negative) were manipulated. Identity cues were represented by " 我", " 他", "I" and "He". The data of 29 unbalanced bilinguals whose native language was Chinese were collected by fMRI scanner. In each trial, the identity cues were presented first, followed by emotional words. The participants were required to determine whether the emotional words were true or pseudoword words (false words were generated by replacing radicals or letters of real words), and their reactions were recorded. The DPABI and SPM were then used to preprocess the data and do F test. For the brain regions with significant interactions of identity and emotional valence, we extracted the beta value of brain region and performed repeated measures ANOVA to compare the activation of different conditions. At the same time, repeated measures ANOVA was also performed for the reaction times. The fMRI results showed that in the monolingual L2 context, the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left inferior parietal lobule showed greater activation in the other-positive condition and the self-negative condition than that in the self-positive condition and the other-negative condition. In bilingual L1 context, the right precuneus exhibited significantly greater activation in self-positive condition than other-positive condition. The response times results showed that the reaction of the self-positive condition was faster than that of the other-positive condition in the monolingual L1 and L2 context, respectively. In the bilingual L2 context, the reaction of the other-negative condition was faster than that of the self-negative condition. Based on the findings, we infer that: (1) In the monolingual L2 context, the self-negative and the other-positive bias were in conflict with each other because they were not consistent with the self-positive bias. The frontoparietal network was employed to process the conflicts. (2) The precuneus activity in the bilingual L1 context may reflect the attribution processes that distinguishing others’ emotions and self-emotion, leading to one of them is more sensitive to self. (3) The differences between global and local language control may indicate that bilinguals have more cognitive resources to solve the conflicts between identity and emotion in foreign language context (global language control occurred), while in the context of mixed language, more cognitive resources are required when processing L2 than L1 (local language control occurred). It seems that participants have extra cognitive resources to process the association between identity and emotion when using their native language. Overall, these findings suggest that language context induces bilinguals’ language control, which affects their resolution of the conflicts between identity and emotional valence. Key words language context, language control, self-bias, emotion, left inferior frontal gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule, right precuneus Participants do not need to switch between languages in the monolingual context, which requires less inhibitory processing (global language control occurred). In contrast, participants have to switch from one language to another in bilingual context frequently by inhibiting the interference from nontarget language (local language control occurred). We hypothesized that connection between identity and emotion occurred automatically under global language control, while it required more cognitive resources under local language control. Thus, the automatic process may be weakened in the context of mixed language. In the current study, bilingual context and monolingual context were designed. The stimuli in each scanning run was either presented in twolanguage or in one-language context, corresponding to local and global language control. The variables of language (Chinese vs. English), identity (Self vs. Others) and emotional valence (Positive vs. Negative) were manipulated. Identity cues were represented by " 我", " 他", "I" and "He". The data of 29 unbalanced bilinguals whose native language was Chinese were collected by fMRI scanner. In each trial, the identity cues were presented first, followed by emotional words. The participants were required to determine whether the emotional words were true or pseudoword words (false words were generated by replacing radicals or letters of real words), and their reactions were recorded. The DPABI and SPM were then used to preprocess the data and do F test. For the brain regions with significant interactions of identity and emotional valence, we extracted the beta value of brain region and performed repeated measures ANOVA to compare the activation of different conditions. At the same time, repeated measures ANOVA was also performed for the reaction times. The fMRI results showed that in the monolingual L2 context, the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left inferior parietal lobule showed greater activation in the other-positive condition and the self-negative condition than that in the self-positive condition and the other-negative condition. In bilingual L1 context, the right precuneus exhibited significantly greater activation in self-positive condition than other-positive condition. The response times results showed that the reaction of the self-positive condition was faster than that of the other-positive condition in the monolingual L1 and L2 context, respectively. In the bilingual L2 context, the reaction of the other-negative condition was faster than that of the self-negative condition. Based on the findings, we infer that: (1) In the monolingual L2 context, the self-negative and the other-positive bias were in conflict with each other because they were not consistent with the self-positive bias. The frontoparietal network was employed to process the conflicts. (2) The precuneus activity in the bilingual L1 context may reflect the attribution processes that distinguishing others’ emotions and self-emotion, leading to one of them is more sensitive to self. (3) The differences between global and local language control may indicate that bilinguals have more cognitive resources to solve the conflicts between identity and emotion in foreign language context (global language control occurred), while in the context of mixed language, more cognitive resources are required when processing L2 than L1 (local language control occurred). It seems that participants have extra cognitive resources to process the association between identity and emotion when using their native language. Overall, these findings suggest that language context induces bilinguals’ language control, which affects their resolution of the conflicts between identity and emotional valence. 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Association of Shape Concepts between Name Pronunciation and Faces：the evidence from behavior and ERP Yan Xiangbo, Li Dong, Yang Yi, Tian Yangyang, Li Zhao, Jiang Zhongqing 2023, 46(2): 266-273.  Abstract ( )   PDF (825KB) ( )   In Previous study, we found a cross-modal mapping effect between person's name pronunciation and face shape. Participants tended to think that round lip names match round face, flat lip names match sharp face (Yan et al., 2020). However, there are mainly two different views on the formation mechanism of sound shape cross modal mapping: shared physical perceptual attributes and shared connotative attributes (Sidhu & Pexman, 2018). Considering that the pronunciation of names also contained round lip / flat lip vowels (/ o / or / i /), which had the stimulation basis to convey the concept of shape, and the face shape was also a more vivid feature of the face, there might be conceptual connection between the pronunciation of names and the face. Therefore, this study used ERP technology with high temporal resolution to reveal which stage of the cognitive processing occurs in the cross-modal correspondence effect between name pronunciation and face shape, and to explore whether there is a relationship between name pronunciation and face shape. In the ERP research conducted by Zhou et al. (2016) using the priming paradigm, music clips that can convey the concept of space (closed or open space) were used as the priming material, and pictures showing the space scene (open or closed space scene pictures) were used as the target material, so that the subjects could judge whether the target picture was an open scene or a closed scene. The results showed that music and pictures were related to the spatial concept. Inspired by this research, this study used priming paradigm and face shape judgment task (used name pronunciation as priming stimulus and face material as target stimulus) to investigate whether name pronunciation could directly initiate face shape processing. In behavior results, we found that the correct rate of the subjects under the consistent condition is significantly higher than that under the inconsistent condition, and the reaction time under the consistent condition is significantly lower than that under the inconsistent condition. In event-related potential results, we found that there was no significant experimental effect showed in the early stage of face processing indexed by P1 (occipital area) and N170 (bilateral occipitotemporal area). On the other hand, compared with the consistent condition, we found that N400 was more negative in the central -parietal region of the brain under inconsistent conditions. In summary, the behavioral and ERP results of this study consistently show that there is a relationship between the pronunciation of names and the shape concept of faces, Furthermore, there is no evidence to support that the priming effect occurs in the early stage of face processing, and there is no evidence that name pronunciation and face share physical perceptual attributes. The N400 component reflecting semantic violation presented the difference between the consistent and the inconsistent condition, which confirmed that there is a conceptual connection between the pronunciation of names and the shape of faces. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Saccade-induced temporal distortion and its mechanism Zhai Mengdie, Wu Hongxiao, Wang Yajie, Feng Wenfeng 2023, 46(2): 274-281.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1363KB) ( )   Saccadic eye-movement is a kind of rapid eye movement moving from one fixation to another, which can bring visual stimuli into fovea. However, the image on the retina moves at a speed of hundred degrees per second during a saccade, which distorts the visual time perception, leading to phenomena such as time compression, temporal order reversal and temporal dilation, etc. During fixation and well before or after saccades, time perception remains veridical. However, perisaccadic visual (rather than auditory) short intervals will be underestimated. Specifically, when visual intervals presented close to saccadic onset (e.g. -50 to 50 ms), the subjective interval between two visual stimuli is strongly compressed to approximately half of its true value. Surprisingly, perceived visual temporal order is reversed in a critical window before the saccade onset. This phenomenon is called “temporal order reversal”. In addition to the distortions mentioned above, saccades can also induce “chronostasis” (stopped clock illusion). Saccadic chronostasis demonstrates the subjective overestimation of stimulus duration when the stimulus onset surrounds the offset of a saccade. In our daily life, when we make a saccade to a clock, the first second seems always “longer” than the subsequent seconds. According to the previous studies, time compression and temporal order reversal may be caused by reduced-latency, errors of temporal encoding, and predictive remapping. When the second stimulus which marks the offset of the interval presented shortly before or after saccade onset, its latency is shorter than normal conditions. At the same time, the first stimulus which marks the onset of the interval remains stable. Thus, the temporal order of two stimuli will be reversed. However, the reduced-latency theory cannot fit well with the “time compression” phenomenon. Some researchers suggest that time compression may concern the reduced-contrast which derives from the errors of temporal encoding. At the single-cell level, cells can respond to stimuli presented within spatial positions that will become their receptive field after the saccades. This process is mediated by a corollary discharge signal (CDS). The predictive shift of receptive field enables the representation of visual space in parietal cortex to be remapped from the coordinates of the initial fixation to those of the future fixation. This alternative interpretation names “predictive remapping”. Because of predictive remapping, the stimuli within future receptive fields have longer latencies. When the first stimulus which marks the onset of the interval is presented perisaccadically and the second marker flashes well after the saccades, the interval between two markers compressed. Temporal dilation may derive from perceptual antedating of stimuli that surround the saccade target. When we make saccades, saccadic suppression leaves a perceptual “gap” in perception. However, the perception of visual space remains continuous and stable despite saccades. The brain assumes that the post-saccadic stimuli remain constant during the saccades and brings the onset of stimuli after saccades to the time point prior to the saccades. This interpretation supports the conclusion that the overestimation of stimuli duration will increase with the amplitude (duration) of saccades. And when the target shifts during the saccades, no temporal dilation observed. However, if participants do not notice the displacement, the duration of stimuli will still be overestimated. That is, if the assumption of continuous awareness is incorrect, the onset of stimulus will not be antedated and thus chronostasis will disappear. The investigation on visual stimuli processing under saccades will be of great benefit to explore the natural temporal property of the brain networks. Further research can focus on the visual coordinates to investigate the relationship of different distortions. Also, researchers can discriminate different saccadic steps to identify the contribution of predictive remapping and saccadic suppression. So that researchers will modify the computational models of predictive remapping. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effect of Daily rhythm on Cognitive Functions Peng Yudi, Xie Tian, Ma Ning 2023, 46(2): 282-290.  Abstract ( )   PDF (764KB) ( )   Besides the physiological state, circadian variations have also been found in subjective feelings and neurobehavioral functions crucial for the execution of our daily tasks. However, few studies investigated the effect of daily rhythm based on Chinese native groups, and whether there is a discrepancy in the daily fluctuations of different cognitive functions remains unknown. To reveal effect of daily rhythms on performance in Chinese individuals comprehensively, the present study measured the changes of physiological state (body temperature, cardiac activity and arterial pressure), subjective feelings (self-report sleepiness) and objective performances (vigilance, inhibition control, working memory) in Chinese adults every two hours during a day (9:00-21:00) under laboratory control. To be specific, a single factor (time of day: 9:00,11:00.13:00,15:00,17:00,21:00) within-subject design was employed in the current study, and a total of 27 healthy young adults (11 males, 16 females) were selected as our subjects according to rigorous criteria. At each time point, we firstly used KSS and a seven-point Likert Scale to measure the participants’ subjective sleepiness and mood, respectively. Then, participants were tested on a psychomotor vigilance task, a go/no go task and two working memory tasks under different cognitive loads (one-back and two-back) sequentially. Additionally, participants’ oral temperature, heart rate and arterial pressure were measured as indicators of their physiological state every hour throughout the experiment. In general, the results revealed that participants were at their highest level of cognitive performance in the morning (09:00–11:00), but there was a post-noon dip at 13:00–15:00, suggesting beneficial effect as a short nap on performance. Performance improves again during the evening (17:00–21:00), which is in line with previous research. Moreover, in this study, differences in daily variations have also been found not only between self-assessments and objective measurements but also in the performance of different neurobehavioral functions. Specifically, while the participants showed a stable performance of vigilance during daytime, there was an obvious fluctuation in their self-report sleepiness in the afternoon. At 15:00, subjective sleepiness reached its highest level in the daytime, whereas the objective performance of neurobehavioral functions (vigilance, inhibition control, and working memory) had improved. At 17:00, associated with diminished subjective sleepiness, vigilance and working memory performance were relatively optimal at that time, but the execution in the go/no go task decreased and reached its lowest level, reflecting that inhibition control is worst in the evening independent of other executive functions. Moreover, while the performance of inhibition control improved at 19:00, the performance of vigilance and working memory showed a post-dinner dip at the same time, suggesting a non-optimal time for study and examinations specific to Chinese individuals. Additionally, when the participants performed the working memory tasks under different memory loads, their performance also demonstrated different daily variations at 9:00-13:00. This discrepancy suggests that the impact of daily rhythms on the same neurobehavior function may vary under different cognitive loads and further research is needed to understanding the underlying neural mechanism. Taken together, the present study shows that daily rhythm modifies our subjective feelings and basic neurobehavior functions (attention, inhibition control and working memory) differently, which may explain oscillations in the performance of different tasks during the day. The findings provide valuable insights into planning daily schedules, optimizing working arrangements, and ensuring safety based on human rhythm, providing preliminary evidence for illuminating the relationship between daily rhythms and behavioral performance in the future. Related Articles | Metrics

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Does Approach Crafting Always Benefit? An Examination from Too-much-of-a-good-thing Effect Li Shanshan, Wang Haining 2023, 46(2): 291-298.  Abstract ( )   PDF (926KB) ( )   Approach crafting is employees’ behaviors to adjust their cognition, relationships, tasks, resources or demands to create favorable job characteristics and positive psychological state. It is a kind of extending job crafting behavior. Despite the burgeoning evidence of the positive outcomes of approach crafting, some empirical studies still confirm its dysfunctional consequences. Therefore, the controversial conclusions about approach crafting as found in prior researches indicate that more nuanced examinations should be conducted. To gain more insights, based on self-efficacy theory, the current study investigates the potential dysfunction of approach crafting and proposes a nonlinear relationship between approach crafting and task performance. In particular, this study tests the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect (inverted U-shape relation) between approach crafting and task performance, as well as the mediating role of self-efficacy and the boundary condition of task interdependence. Data were collected from 316 employees, using a two-stage matching survey method to avoid the possible response bias. All the participants are full-time employees, and are employed in different occupations including accountants, human resource specialists, construction managers, doctors and nurses which all having a certain level of flexibility. At time 1, approach crafting, task interdependence, and control variables (gender, age, education, and working years) were measured and 452 completed surveys were returned. At time 2, self-efficacy and task performance were measured by sending WeChat messages, e-mails and paper surveys to the respondents at time 1. After deleting the invalid forms, a total of 316 effective surveys were retained. The Cronbach’ alpha for the scales of approach crafting, self-efficacy, task interdependence, and task performance was .90, .89, .81, .84 (all greater than .80). This study used hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrap method to test hypotheses by applying SPSS 22.0 and Amos 23.0. The results show that after the influence of fixed control variables, there is a too-much-of-a-good-thing effect between approach crafting and task performance, whereby positive phenomena reach inflection points at which their effects turn negative. Self-efficacy is also curvilinearly related to task performance such that self-efficacy shows initial positive effects, then inflects toward negative effects at higher levels and plays an important mediating effect in the inverted U-shaped relationship between approach crafting and task performance. In addition, the inverted U-shaped relationship between approach crafting and task performance is moderated by task interdependence, such that it is more significant when the task interdependence was lower, and is more likely to be linear when the task interdependence was higher, that is, the inverted U-shaped relationship could be alleviated to some extent by task interdependence. Taken collectively, approach crafting can make individuals perceive more self-efficacy, and thus help to improve task performance. However, its positive effects will stop and turn to dysfunctional as individuals engage in more approach crafting. Furthermore, approach crafting is a contextually embedded phenomenon and task interdependence negatively moderates the relationship between approach crafting and task performance. Accordingly, the study gives answer to the question “Does approach crafting always benefit?”: approach crafting is not inherently positive and there are some boundary conditions influencing its effects. The conclusion is consistent with the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect, which indicates that the positive relation could reach inflection points after which the relation would turn asymptotic and often negative, resulting in an overall pattern of an inverted U-shape. This study further developed and added empirical evidence for a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of approach crafting. Moreover, the conclusions that approach crafting does not constantly benefit and some organizational contextual factor plays a moderating role indicate that managers should take several measures to guide or manage employees’ crafting activities to maximize the positive effects and minimize the negative effects, such as inspiring team crafting and implementing job crafting intervention. Related Articles | Metrics

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Use Your Ears Instead of Your Eyes When You Care about the Feelings of Others Sun Binghai, Yue Tengyu, Li Weijian, Shao Yuting 2023, 46(2): 299-306.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1454KB) ( )   Empathic accuracy, or the degree to which one accurately understands another person's thoughts and feelings, is widely thought to be related to better social functioning, especially for women. Although previous studies have consistently found voice-only communication enhanced empathic accuracy relative to visual-only communication, there are still contradictions whether there is a difference between voice-only communication and audio-visual communication. There are 3 different assertions responding to 3 different results. The first assertion supports the prediction that voice-only communication enhanced empathic accuracy relative to audio-visual communication. Researchers support this assertion claim that accuracy is mainly the role of specific types of clues, other clues are misleading. The second assertion supports the prediction that both voice-only communication and audio-visual communication can enhance empathic accuracy because they both cotnain verbal clues. The last assertion supports the prediction that combined audio-visual communication enhanced empathic accuracy relative to voice-only communication because of more clues available in audio-visual communication. Comparing studies with different results, we found difference in inference task. Is it possible that perceivers in the empathic accuracy paradigm might direct their attention to different kinds of clues if they were asked separately about feelings versus thoughts, and accuracy might be influenced accordingly? The present paper addresses this question based on standard video paradigm of empathic accuracy in two experiments on women participants. Experiment 1 followed standard instruction condition (infer thoughts and feelings) to explore the effect of channel conditions on empathic accuracy. Three kinds of materials (full video, audio only, and silent video) were presented to 100 participants (17 - 25 years old，M = 19.15, SD = 1.47). They were asked to infer thoughts and feelings of targets in the materials. Participants wrote down their thoughts in table and estimated 25 discrete emotion words using 7-point Likert scales (0 = not at all, 6 = a great deal). Results showed that, the analysis yielded a significant main effect of channel conditions (p < .001) both in inferring thoughts and feelings. For thoughts inference, participants in full video (p < .001) and audio only (p < .001) condition exhibited higher accuracy relative to participants in silent video condition. For feelings inference, participants in audio only condition exhibited higher accuracy relative to participants in full video (p < .01) and silent video (p < .01) condition. Experiment 2 modified instruction to infer thoughts or feelings in different blocks to explore the effect of inference task on audio-visual channel effect in empathic accuracy. Full video, audio only were presented to 73 participants (17 - 23 years old，M = 19.51, SD = 1.21). Results showed that, the analysis yielded a significant interaction between channel conditions and inference task (p < .01). Simple-effects tests revealed that participants in audio only condition exhibited higher accuracy relative to participants in full video condition only for feelings inference. There was no significant difference for thoughts inference. These results suggested that voice-only communication contributed more to empathic accuracy than visual-only communication in inferring both thoughts and feelings. Whether there is a difference between voice-only communication and audio-visual communication depend on tasks to infer. Voice-only communication enhanced empathic accuracy relative to audio-visual communication only for feelings inference. Related Articles | Metrics

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Age-related Differences in Emotional Conflict Control between Adolescents and Adults: A Behavioral and ERP Study lin -zhang 2023, 46(2): 307-319.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1190KB) ( )   Described as a "stormy period", adolescents may have a greater need for emotional inhibition and control than younger children and older adults. The ability of emotion control is associated with risk-taking behavior, abnormal psychological and behavioral development, and is crucial for adolescents. Previous researches suggested that there may be an undifferentiated and inefficient manner in which adolescents recruited the process of cognitive control and conflict detection. Thus, emotional information processing and emotional control during this special and critical period must be better understood. The first objective of the present study was to investigate differences in emotional conflict control between adolescents and adults. The event-related potential (ERP) was used to examine the differences in emotional conflict control between adolescents and adults. The second objective was to examine individual performance in the face-judging task and word-judging task. 31 early adolescents (12 females; Mage=12.66 years old) and 33 adults (17 females; Mage =20.15 years old) completed the face-word Stroop task. In this task, emotional words were overlaid on the emotional faces to generate congruent conditions (CC) and incongruent conditions (IC), and participants were asked to judge the valence of faces (face-judging task) or words (word-judging task). The participants' electroencephalography (EEG) signals were recorded during the whole task. Age differences in behavioral performance and ERP components related to emotional information processing between the two groups were analyzed. The results showed that: (1) Stroop effect was found in adolescents in the face-judging task (the response time was shorter in the congruent conditions than in the incongruent conditions), but for adults, the Stroop effect was found in both face and word judging task; (2) In adolescents, the N450 amplitude induced by incongruent conditions was significantly larger than that induced by congruent conditions; (3) The Stroop effect of N450 only appeared in the word judging task, while the Stroop effect of SP only appeared in the face judging task. The behavioral results might because of the worse conflict detection and resolution of adolescents, and the effort (RT) expended for the congruent stimuli is equivalent to that for the incongruent stimuli. The results of N450 might indicate that adolescents devote more cognitive and neural resources than adults to detecting conflict. These results provide neurological evidence that adolescents are less able to deal with emotional conflict than adults, which may be related to the immaturity of the prefrontal cortex associated with emotional control. Moreover, emotional conflict control is composed of conflict detection and conflict resolution, and  the accumulation of cognitive and neural resources in the former process may affect the latter process. Both the behavioral and neural results show that adolescents seemed to be less capable of emotional conflict control because of the immaturity of prefrontal regions. However, factors such as participants' age-related reading experience, selection and independent assessment of face stimulus materials, and control for the congruent of word and face stimuli should all be taken into account. Future research could consider conflict control of positive emotions as a study object, and examine comparative characteristics over a larger age range. Related Articles | Metrics

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Different Affective Arousal and Adaptation Pattern between Core and Moral Disgust: Evidence from Subjective Emotional Experience and Autonomic Nervous System Activity Wang Qin, Wang Yuqi, Liu Xinyu, Xu Huifang, Luo Wenyu 2023, 46(2): 320-328.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1050KB) ( )   Abstract: Disgust has been considered as one of six basic emotions that has the adaptive function to protect us from the harmful substances. Previous studies have shown that disgust is accompanied by increased parasympathetic responses. However, opposite results have been reported. Different types of elicitor may have contributed to existing contradictory findings. A wide range of stimuli can evoke disgust. Core disgust refers to the original form of disgust, triggered by potentially toxic visual, gustatory, or olfactory stimuli that could contaminate the body (i.e., contaminated foods). Moral disgust seems unique to humans, triggered by the violation of moral values or socially inappropriate people and behaviors. It is generally assumed that core disgust serves a disease-avoidance function by facilitating rejection and avoidance of contamination-related stimulus, while moral disgust play an important role in the regulation of social behavior and is crucial for maintenance of social norms. The evolutionary adaptation theory holds that disgust has evolved from the antecedent distaste response and different types of disgust originate from core disgust. Empirical studies on the homogeneity and heterogeneity between core and moral disgust are sparse and inconsistent. There has been increased debate concerning whether disgust reactions elicited by different types of elicitor have the common origin. The major aim of the present study was to explore whether core and moral disgust may dissociate in their affective self-reports and response patterns of the autonomic nervous system, as well as the time-course of emotional responses. Laboratory psycho-physiological experiment was conducted to examine subjective and physiological responses to disgust-evoking pictures. 32 female university students (16 in the core disgust group and 16 in the moral disgust group) were tested individually in a quiet testing room, with each participant session lasting around 40 mins. Disgust pictures were presented to each participant in a random order via Super Lab system on a monitor screen. Automatic physiological responses were collected continuously by Biopac MP150 physiological recording system. The skin conductance, heart rate and heart period variability were recorded and analyzed. Participants were shown 10 pictures at four different time points to explore the emotional arousal and development of two types of disgust. The experiment used a two-factor repeated measures design of 2 (group: core disgust and moral disgust)?2(stage: 0, 2, 4, and 6min), in which the group was the between-subjects design and the stage was the within-subjects design. Within each disgust condition, 10 pictures were presented and each picture lasted for 10s on the screen. Participants were asked to rate the intensity of each emotion (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear) before and immediately after exposed to disgust pictures on a scale of 1-7(where 1 indicated an absence of that emotion and 7 indicated strong intensity). Repeated Measures ANOVAs were used to analyze the subjective, electrodermal and cardiovascular reactions of core and moral disgust. The results showed that core and moral disgust pictures used in this study generated similar overall levels of subjective disgust reaction. Both types of disgust were concomitant with other negative emotions. Core disgust elicitors generated more fear, whereas sociomoral stimuli evoked more angry and sad. The disgust-induced subjective responses were associated with different patterns of autonomic reactivity. Core disgust increased high frequency component of heart period variability and sociomoral disgust increased heart rate. Moreover, responses to core and sociomoral disgust elicitors varied in different ways over time. Participants experienced decreased disgust when core disgust elicitors repeatedly presented and a decrease in high frequency component of heart period variability was observed. Repeated exposure to sociomoral disgust elicitors increased skin conductance responses, while self-reported disgust response seemed more resistant to change over time. Taken together, these results suggested that core disgust and moral disgust are separate emotions, appears to elicit heterogeneous subjective and autonomic reaction. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Intergenerational Effect of Value Orientation and Its Relations with Adolescents' Psychological and School Adjustments Li Dan, Zhu Ningning, Xia Yanyu, Yang Panpan, Ding Xuechen, Liu Junsheng, Chen Xinyin, Zhang Minghao 2023, 46(2): 329-338.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1622KB) ( )   Values refer to the deep structure of individual attitudes and ideas that dominate the perception and reaction to life and world. Self-orientation and group-orientation are two typical value orientations, which represent two different ways in which individuals view and interact with their surroundings. Self-orientation is characterized by individuality and independence, and focus on its own unique and independent views and behavior style. Group-orientation is characterized by concern for the well-being and obligation of the group, and tends to respect the views and feelings of others. The intergenerational transmission of value orientation is an important process in the formation of children's values. The similarities of values between parents and children is often regarded as a index of successful transmission. A lot of studies have found the similarities of values between parents and children. In addition, researchers also have conducted further analyses on the intergenerational transmission of values and found that social culture and value orientation characteristics affect the value transmission between parents and children. China is a typical collectivistic culture, however, whether the value orientation is more easily transmitted in China's family remains under-investigated. At the same time, the adjustment outcomes of adolescents have been widely concerned by researchers. Studies have found that the different implications of value orientations on adolescents’ adjustment. For example, self-orientation is more likely to bring success, while group-orientation is more likely to get social support, thus contributing to psychological adjustment. In the context of Chinese culture, both self- and group- orientations are important, which can help individuals to maintain good interpersonal relationships with others and pursuing personal goals. As the main socialization goal of adolescents, parents also play a key role in the process of adolescents' adjustment. Parents' cultural orientation or belief system will promote specific parenting strategies, which linking cultural customs and social behaviors of adolescents dynamically. Therefore, the value orientation of parents could affect the development of adolescents directly or indirectly through their own values. Drawing upon previous findings, the present study adopted self-reports and teacher-ratings to examine 1730 adolescents and their parents in grade 7 (1007) and grade 9 (729) in Shanghai, Henan, Shandong and Gansu provinces. The primary goal of the present study was to investigate the intergenerational effect of value orientation and its relations with adolescent psychological and school adjustments. The results showed that :(1) Both parents’ group-orientation could positively predicted the group responsibility dimension of adolescents' values; Paternal group-orientation and maternal self-orientation could positively predicted adolescents' friendship; Paternal self-orientation and maternal group-orientation could positively predicted adolescents' self-improvement, and only maternal self-orientation positively predicted adolescent's fashion orientation. (2) Both parents’ group-orientation could positively predicted adolescents' psychological adjustment through adolescents' collective responsibility; Parents’ self-orientation and maternal group-orientation could positively predicted adolescents' psychological and school adjustments through adolescents' self-improvement. (3) Maternal self-orientation positively predicted adolescents' psychological adjustment, and negatively predicted adolescents' school adjustment through adolescents' friendship; but maternal self-orientation negatively predicted adolescents' psychological and school adjustments through adolescents' fashion. These results revealed the intergenerational transmission effect of value orientation between parents and children and highlighted the importance of intergenerational effect on adolescents' psychological and school adjustments. Related Articles | Metrics

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Children’s Competence Evaluations of the Group that Received Help and the Effect of Perceiving Task’s Difficulty Zhang Wenjie, Dai Wenchun, He Ru, Zhong Yiping 2023, 46(2): 339-346.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1177KB) ( )   Receiving help may send some kind of signal to bystanders: the group members who have received help are incompetent because they are unable to complete the target task by themselves. The study mainly adopted the behavioral experiment method to examine the competence evaluations of the group that received help by children aged 3 to 5 years, and it explored whether the children's perception of the difficulty of the task can improve the children's competence evaluations of the group that received help. In order to explore whether there are negative evaluations about the competence of groups that received help in different age groups (n = 93). After watching the situational video, each child needed to score the competence of those who received help and those who did not. We used the generalized estimating equations (GEE) to analysis the results. It show that the main effect of the group being evaluated was very significant, B = -1.581, SE = .1187, Wald’s χ2(1) = 164.769, p < .001. The competence score of the group that received help was significantly lower than that of the group that didn’t receive help, p < .001. The main effect of age group was significant, B = -.452, SE = .1426, Wald’s χ2(2) = 8.358, p < .05. The competence scores of 4-year-old children and 5-year-old children were significantly lower than those of 3-year-old children, ps < .05. However, there was no significant difference between the competence scores of the 4-year-old and 5-year-old children, p > .05. In order to further investigate whether the perception of task’s difficulty can improve children’s competence scores of 4-year-old and 5-year-old children (n = 120). In Experiment 2, each participant first needed to operate the puzzle and evaluated the difficulty of the puzzle task, and then they watched the video to score the competence of the group that received help and the group didn’t. It was found that the main effect of the group being evaluated was extremely significant, B = -1.150, SE = .0700, Wald’s χ2(1) = 89.570, p < .001.The competence score of the group that received help was significantly lower than the group that didn’t received help, p < .001. At the same time, the main effect of the perception of task’s difficulty was extremely significant, B = -.117, SE = .0414, Wald’s χ2(1) = 1682.659, p < .001. Under the condition of the perception of low task’s difficulty, children’s competence evaluations of the evaluated group was significantly lower than that of the perception of medium task’s difficulty, p < .05, under the condition of the perception of medium task’s difficulty, children’s competence evaluations of the evaluated group was significantly lower than that of the perception of high task’s difficulty, p < .001. But the main effect of age group was not significant, B = .017, SE = .285, Wald’s χ2(1) = .810, p > .05. The interaction between the evaluated group and the perception of task’s difficulty was extremely significant, B = -.467, SE = .0725, Wald’s χ2(2) = 42.983, p < .001. After further simple effect analysis, it was found that under the three perception conditions of task’s difficulty, children’s competence scores of the group that received help were significantly lower than the group that didn’t received help, ps < .001. The results showed that: (1) 4-years-old is the age turning point for children to evaluate the competence of those who received help, and receiving help has a negative impact on the evaluations of recipients’ competence; (2) children's perception of the difficulty of the task can reduce this negative impact. The results of this study are helpful to understand how young children evaluate the competence of those who received help and how to reduce the negative impact of receiving help. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Academic Performance on Academic Self-efficacy of Primary School Students: The Mediating Role of Academic Stress and Self-esteem and Its Gender Differences Li Wenhui, Jiang Feng 2023, 46(2): 347-354.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1720KB) ( )   The stage of primary school is an important period for the development of students' academic self-efficacy. Previous studies of academic self-efficacy were mostly conducted from the perspective of its function and role, and the empirical research on the formation mechanism of academic self-efficacy was few. According to Bandura's self-efficacy theory, the effect factors of self-efficacy include individual success or failure experiences, individual emotion and physiological state. Among them, academic performance is the most direct factor affecting academic self-efficacy , and academic stress as a negative emotional experience will have a negative impact on academic self-efficacy. And, as a self-concept closely related to self-efficacy, self-esteem can also affect academic self-efficacy. In addition, there are gender differences in academic stress and self-esteem in primary school students. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the impact of academic performance on academic self-efficacy in primary school students, as well as the chain mediating effect of academic stress and self-esteem, the moderating effect of gender. This study recruited 404 students (203 boys and 201 girls) from grade 4 to 6 in a primary school. The students' age were from 9 to 12 years, and average age was 10.14 (standard deviation was 1.32 years). All students filled out academic stress questionnaire, academic self-efficacy questionnaire and Rosenbers' self-esteem scale in a quiet classroom. We collected the academic performance of students from the nearest final examinations (Chinese, Math and English). SPSS 20.0 software and Amos 26.0 software were used for Common method biases analysis, correlation analysis, bootstrap mediating effect analysis and multiple group analysis. The results implicated that: (1) Primary school students' academic performance can positively predict academic self-efficacy. In other words, more academic performance of students can cultivate a higher level of academic self-efficacy. Thus, in primary school, we should help students to gain positive experience with high academic performance, which will effectively improve their academic self-efficacy. (2) In the relationship between academic performance and academic self-efficacy, academic stress and self-esteem played a role of chain mediated effect. Specifically, there were a negative mediated effect of academic stress, a positive mediated effect of self-esteem, and a chain mediated effect of self-esteem and academic stress. (3) There were gender differences in the chain mediating effect. In the girls group, there were a partial mediating effect and three mediating paths (the separate mediating effect of academic stress, the separate mediating effect of self-esteem and the chain mediating effect of academic stress and self-esteem); in the boys group, there were a complete mediating effect and two mediating paths (the separate mediating effect of self-esteem and the chain mediating effect of academic stress and self-esteem). This result suggested that we should pay attention to gender differences in the process of improving students' academic self-efficacy. Related Articles | Metrics

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Two-year-olds Use Body Part Information to Speed up Verb Comprehension Chen Yongxiang , Zhu Liqi 2023, 46(2): 355-362.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1368KB) ( )   Though Chinese-speaking children could understand and speak many verbs before three years old, few studies examined how young children process these verbs. Previous studies found that early-learned verbs were associated with specific body regions in both English (Maouene, Hidaka, & Smith, 2008) and Mandarin Chinese (Chen & Zhu, 2014) native speakers, yet whether children could utilize body part information to speed up spoken verb comprehension remains unclear. In the present study, whether semantic factor (i.e., body part information) and learning factor (i.e., age) influenced young childrens' and adults' verb comprehension was investigated using the looking-while-listening procedure. A total of 32 two-year-olds and 32 adults participated in a verb comprehension task using a looking-while-listening procedure and eye tracking approach. Eleven additional children were excluded due to not passing drift correction (4 children), losing more than 50% of eye tracking trials (4 children), unwilling to stick marker on their forehead (1 child), experimenter error (1 child), and fussiness (1 child). After the experiment, all children got some stickers as presents, and all adult participants received a small amount of cash as a reward. A 2×2 mixed design was used, two independent variables were: 1) semantic distracters (same body region, different body regions; within subjects); 2) age groups (children, adults; between subjects). The dependent variables were the ratio of looking at the target side and the looking time of the target side. The results showed that the main effects of the body part consistency (i.e., semantic distracters) and age group were both significant. The analysis of the looking time ratio to the target side showed that the adults could comprehend action pictures better than children. The adults group could utilize multiple clues, including target onset and semantic cues (i.e., inconsistency of body regions), to recognize target verbs swiftly under both conditions; while the two-year-olds could only use both cues only under the different body regions condition. Moreover, the time course analysis showed a significant effect of body part consistency at 200~650 ms time-window in adults and at 300~1800 ms time-window in two-year-olds in the verb comprehension task. As a whole, through the use of looking-while-listening procedure and eye movement tracking, this study found that: (1) both two-year-old children and adults could use body part information to understand oral verbs, and adults respond faster than children; (2) In the inconsistent condition, two-year-old children could use the onset information of word pronunciation to quickly infer vocabulary semantics, while adults could do so under both conditions. The results provide an empirical basis for revealing the processing of Chinese verbs by young children and adults. More specifically, since both adults and children as young as two-year-old could use body part information to speed up oral verb comprehension, it suggests that body part information is an important part of verb semantic lexicon from a young age. However, adults are more proficient native speakers who could comprehend verbs faster than young children, while young children are less skillful in this process. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Maternal mind‐mindedness predicts creative potential of Chinese preschool children: Moderation of attachment Fan Miaomiao, Dong Shuyang, Wang Qiang, Wang Zhengyan 2023, 46(2): 363-369.  Abstract ( )   PDF (619KB) ( )   Creative potential is a cognitive potential reflecting to which degree an individual can generate novel and useful things and ideas. The early development of creative potential is shaped by parenting behaviors and incubated in parent-child relationships. However, little research has examined specifically how this development occurs during the preschool years in Chinese children and how parental verbal comments related to a child's mental states (i.e., mind-mindedness) are predictive of this development. Thus, the first aim of the current study is to examine whether maternal mind-mindedness in toddlerhood predicts child creative potential during the preschool period. Moreover, as in toddlerhood mothers give comments on various mental states of a child (e.g., desire, cognition, and emotion) with different frequencies, we surmise that young children might have different levels of need for those maternal verbal inputs. In turn, those comments may exhibit different developmental relevance to children's cognitive outcomes including creative potential. Therefore, the second aim is to examine whether maternal comments on desire, cognition, and emotion might potentially differentially predict child creative potential overtime. Furthermore, previous studies have shown that the influences of early parenting behaviors are relationship-dependent to some extent, further suggesting that how maternal mind-mindedness and its corresponding components foretell child later creative potential may be different for mother-child dyads with varying levels of attachment security. Therefore, the third aim of this study is to examine whether mother-child attachment security might moderate the longitudinal association between maternal mind-mindedness (or the comments on cognition, desire, and emotion) and child creative potential. Drawing from 92 children and their families (boys = 39, girls = 53), we coded mother-child attachment security in the Strange Situation task at 14 months. At 25 months, maternal mind-mindedness and its components including comments on desire, cognition, and emotion were observed in three 5-min free-plays. At 61 months, child creative potential was assessed by the Thinking Creativity in Action and Movement Test. Results were found that maternal mind-mindedness at 25 months was positively associated with child creative potential at 61 months. This association was further moderated by 14-month attachment security, showing that for children who were relatively securely attached to the mother, no association was found, whereas for children who were insecurely attached, maternal mind-mindedness was positively associated with child creative potential. Although the three specific components of mind-mindedness were not directly related to child creative potential, similar moderations of 14-month attachment security were found for comments on desire and comments on cognition, indicating that for children who were insecurely attached, maternal comments on desire or cognition could scaffold their later creative potential, whereas such scaffolding of maternal mental state comments were less effective for children who were securely attached. Taken together, the current findings suggest that maternal mind-mindedness could facilitate child later creative potential in early childhood, yet the strength of this positive association depends on the security of mother-child attachment. Therefore, our research is informative for future interventions and education programs. It is possible that young children with poorer parent-child relationships could benefit more from the verbal inputs of parents than their peers for having their creative potential facilitated. Related Articles | Metrics

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Prospective Associations between Mentor’s Holding Behaviors and Work Engagement among New Graduate Nurses Li Qirong, Li Chunxuan, Yang Yanyu, Chang Naifang 2023, 46(2): 370-377.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1226KB) ( )   Work engagement (WE) is one of the most important constructs in both nursing and management literature. The states of nurses' work engagement affect their nursing quality and the level of medical services. However, the level of work engagement reported by nurses was lower than the level of work engagement reported by other occupational groups in the hospital. Considering their working role as highly stressful and specialized, it is necessary to provide new graduate nurses with holding work environments. Despite of the accumulated knowledge, to date the reciprocal relationship between holding behaviors(HB) and work engagement among new graduate nurses remains ambiguous. Some scholars pointed out that holding behaviors from mentors are a key predictor of newcomers’ work engagement (e.g., new graduate nurses). However, other scholars held the opposite view and found mixed or even contradictory findings from a longer time frame. Thus, many scholars have called for future research to unravel the complex relationship between holding behaviors and work engagement. Some studies, using longitudinal correlations or cross-lagged regression, have provided initial evidence about the influence and possible direction of holding behaviors and work engagement. However, these studies ignored a different trajectory per participant as marked by a different (subject-specific) intercept and slope. Without accounting for the overall trajectories of the variables over time, spurious cross-lagged effects might appear while they essentially do not exist. To clarify the effect of holding behaviors on work engagement, this study used autoregression latent trajectory model (ALT) which combines a latent trajectory model (LTM) with an autoregressive (AR). The sample consisted of 215 new graduate nurses from 5 large or medium-sized hospitals in Guangdong province with five measurement occasions over a week period. In this study, there were 110 males (51.16%) and 105 females (48.84%). This distribution of gender was consistent with that of the new graduate group of nurses. The age range of the participants was from 19 to 23 years old (M = 20.93, SD = 1.25). The level of nurse work engagement and perceived holding behaviors from their mentors were measured by Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and Holding Behaviors Index for Mentor, respectively. For our analyses, we conducted the ALT approach in Mplus 8.0 models. First, latent curve model (LCM), autoregressive (AR) and ALT models were tested for holding behaviors and work engagement separately. Second, multivariate LTM (estimating the progression of HB and WE over time for each individual, and the possible association between HB and WE trajectories), AR (estimating time-specific associations of HB and WE and their possible influence on each other from day to day), and ALT models (allowing for the examination of both processes simultaneously) were estimated. As ALT is a complex model, it should always be compared with simpler models to assess if its complexity improves significantly the representation of the data. The findings showed a positively concurrent effect of HB (T) on WE (T) and a positively cross-lagged effect of WE (T) on HB (T+1). Results also showed that the trajectories of HB and WE in new graduate nurses were relatively stable. More importantly, we found that the slope of HB was negatively correlated with the slope factor of WE. It implied that for new graduate nurses, increased in HB related to decreased in WE. Overall, the findings of the present study had three major contributions: First, from a dynamic process perspective, this study clarified the potential negative path of holding behaviors in work engagement, which provided rich empirical evidence for future studies. Second, this study confirmed the reverse relationship between perceived holding behaviors and work engagement and revealed the intra-individual dynamic nature of holding behaviors and work engagement. Third, future research should carefully interpret the between-person level results of work engagement and sincerely infer these findings to the within-person level in order to enhance our further understanding in work engagement research. Related Articles | Metrics

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Do Leader Political Skills Inhibit Employee Silence? -- The Role of Trust in Leader and Power Distance Zheng Xiaoxu, He Yuqian, Dong Haoran, Zhou Xiangyang, Meng Hui 2023, 46(2): 378-385.  Abstract ( )   PDF (584KB) ( )   Employee silence refers to the behavior of employees deliberately withholding their true opinions about organizational issues or ideas related to improving the organization. Studies show that employee silence in the organization will affect the timely feedback of information of organizational management, reduce the quality of organizational decision-making and the ability to correct mistakes, and hinder the progress and development of the organization. As an important component of organizational environment, leader is considered to be one of the key factors affecting employee silence. leaders’ personal characteristics and management styles have received extensive attention from scholars in research, yet far less attention has been put to the leaders’ personal abilities, such as leader political skill (LPS). LPS is defined as the ability to effectively understand others at work and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance leader's personal and/or organizational objectives. Previous studies have shown that psychological state may play an important role in the relationship between LPS and employees’ work behavior. However, few researchers examine the underlying mechanism. In order to make up for this research gap, we built a moderated mediation model based on social exchange theory. We investigated the influence of LPS on employee silence from the perspectives of work team and individual. Moreover, the mediating role of trust in leader (TIL) and the moderating role of power distance (PD) were examined. In this study, we adopted a multi-temporal longitudinal research design, in order to reduce the common method biases, this survey distributed the questionnaires in three stages, with one interval between each stage. The data was collected from eastern coastal cities of China, and a total of 255 employees (54.1% were male, 52.5% were with bachelor’s degree, mean age=27.98) from 68 work teams (mean size=3.75) returned the questionnaires. To examine the distinctiveness of the study variables, we first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis by using SPSS 23.0, then we employed Mplus 7.4 to test our hypotheses. The results of the multi-level linear model showed that: (1) at the team level, LPS was significantly positively correlated with TIL (γ = .29, p <.01); TIL was significantly negatively correlated with silent behavior (γ = -1.47, p <.001); (2) at the individual level, LPS was significantly positively correlated with TIL (β = .25, p <.001); TIL and silent behavior were significantly negatively correlated (β = -.20, p <.05); TIL played a mediating role between LPS and silent behavior (unstandardized indirect effect =-.05, 95% CI [-.10, -.00]). Our findings provided some theoretical and practical implications. Firstly, the previous studies rarely focused on the relationship between leader's ability and employee silence. Our research enriched the relevant field. Secondly, this research examined the mediating mechanism of TIL, expanded researchers’ understanding of the relationship between leader’s ability and subordinates’ behavior. Beyond the theoretical implications highlighted above, there are a number of practical strategies that organizations can put into practice. Firstly, due to the importance of LPS, organizational managers should increase their attention to political skills when conducting leadership selection or training. Secondly, organizations can increase employees’ trust in leader by improving the relationship between superiors and subordinates, establishing a sense of organizational fairness or a positive and sincere communication atmosphere, thereby reducing employee silence. Related Articles | Metrics

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Common In-Group Identity Promotes Ethnic Psychological Compatibility: The Mediating Roles of Positive Interpretation Bias Liang Fangmei, Zhao Yufang, Yin Chenzu 2023, 46(2): 386-393.  Abstract ( )   PDF (634KB) ( )   The study of the promoting effect of common in-group identity on ethnic psychological compatibility has great theoretical and practical value for creating a strong sense of Chinese nation community and strengthening the national integration. By constructing the common superior identity, common in-group identity weakens the inter-ethnic boundary and perceives non-ethnic groups as members of in-group, and thus the positive bias of in-group will be extended to non-ethnic groups. However, will it be possible to promote ethnic psychological compatibility by improving the positive interpretation bias of non-ethnic information? To reveal the cognitive process of common in-group identity’s promotion of ethnic psychological compatibility, two experiments were conducted to explored the mechanism of ethnic psychological compatibility promoted by common in-group identity from the perspective of interpretation bias. Studies have shown that in the absence of competition or conflict, common in-group identity can promote ethnic psychological compatibility. Whether common in-group identity can promote ethnic psychological compatibility in competitive situations remains to be further explored. Experiment 1 investigated the role of on-line interpretation bias in the relationship between common in-group identity and ethnic psychological compatibility in group competition situation. In this study, Zhuang and Miao college students (N=138) were recruited to create a group situation (with or without competition). Through re-categorizing the common in-group identity, and measured on-line interpretation bias (including automatic interpretation and iterative interpretation) and psychological compatibility. Experiment 2, the same participants and experimental paradigm were used to further explores the role of off-line interpretation bias in promoting ethnic psychological compatibility in common in-group identity. The results showed that: (1) The main effect of categorization strategy was significant, with significantly higher ethnic psychological compatibility in the common in-group group than in the independent group.The third-order interaction of categorization strategy, ethnic and situation was significant. In the competitive situation, for the Miao participants, ethnic psychological compatibility was significantly higher for the common in-group group than for the independent group; In the non-competitive condition, ethnic psychological compatibility in the group of common in-group group for Zhuang participants was significantly higher than that the separate group. (2) The mediating effect of automatic positive interpretation bias was significant. (3) The mediating effect of off-line positive interpretation bias was significant. The two experiments jointly proved that, in competitive and non-competitive contexts, common in-group identity can promote ethnic psychological compatibility, and its promotion effect happened at the stage of meaning activation of cognitive processing (automatic positive interpretation) and the post-interpretation of information (off-line positive interpretation). The study improves the stage model of interpretive bias and extends the common in-group identity model. In this study, interpretative bias is classified into three stages of cognitive processing: initial meaning activation of cognitive processing (automatic interpretation), meaning selection of information (iterative interpretation) and post interpretation of information (off-line interpretation), the stages of interpretative bias are refined. Common in-group identity promotes positive inter-group relations because it improves the automatic positive interpretation bias and off-line positive interpretation bias of external group information and expands the common in-group identity model from the perspective of cognitive processing. Related Articles | Metrics

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The effects of class stereotype and theoretical explanation Chen Sai, Yan Lei , Hu Xiuyin , Zhang Yanhong, Chen Wanyi, Wu Bowen , Yang Linchuan 2023, 46(2): 404-410.  Abstract ( )   PDF (422KB) ( )   Social class stereotype is a fixed psychological schema of different social classes. The stereotype content model provides a theoretical framework focusing on the perceived warmth and competence of different social classes. Competence refers to the possibility of the group to realize its intention, which depends on the status of the group (income, wealth, education, job prestige, or title). Warmth represents the group's behavioral intentions, which depend on the willingness to cooperate or the threat of competition. Individuals with high socioeconomic status are perceived ambivalently as competent but cold, whereas Individuals with low socioeconomic status are considered as less competent but warm. Social class stereotypes may affect people’s cognition, emotion, and behaviors. In terms of cognitive effects, social class stereotypes could interfere with memory processes and lead to memory errors during retrieval tasks. In terms of emotional effects, social class stereotypes can help maintain a sense of social justice by positing designating compensatory stereotypes to different classes, in which people with either high or low socioeconomic status have unique advantages. In terms of behavioral effects, social class stereotypes affect students’ performance and impression management strategies. Social class stereotypes could negatively affect students' performance, especially on low-class students doing evaluative tasks. Moreover, in cross-class communication, class stereotypes may affect the choice of impression management strategy. For example, when interacting with subordinates, show tend to project more warmth than competence, whereas when interacting with superiors, they tend to show images with higher competence rather than warmth. Theories that are often invoked to explain the effects of class stereotypes include the system justification theory and the BIAS map theory. The BIAS map treats "warmth" and "competence" as universal dimensions of stereotypes and emphasizes the direct influence of specific class stereotype content on class interaction. The system justification theory believes that individuals are motivated to justify their own social status, and complimentary class stereotypes could meet such justification motivation. This theory emphasizes the indirect influence of class stereotypes on class interaction. Both the BIAS map and the system justification theory recognize the critical role of social class stereotypes in class interaction. However, ther are fundamental differences between the two theories. According to the BIAS map, class stereotypes may lead to negative emotional experiences and behaviors. In contrast, according to the system justification theory, the complementary stereotypes could cause positive emotional experience as they could preserve a semblance of social justice. The main reason for the disagreement is differences in perspectives specifically. The BIAS map theory considers social class stereotypes to be tools to remain dominant and to justify their monopoly on material or psychological resources, while the system justification theory considers social class stereotypes to be psychological resources to cope with stresses and dissonances caused by unequal social structure. Future research could (1) clarify the research orientation and the operational definition of class stereotype, (2) expand research on the effects of class stereotype and its intervention strategies, and (3) integrate the theoretical explanations for the effects of class stereotype. Related Articles | Metrics

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How procedural fairness influences cooperative behavior within the context of opposite-sex person interaction scenarios: A moderated mediation analysis Qian Sun Qing-Lei LI Yong-Fang LIU 2023, 46(2): 411-418.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1190KB) ( )   Cooperation is essential for survival and should not be ignored. When making decisions whether to cooperate or not, people usually face conflict between maximizing personal interests at a social cost and maximizing collective interests at a personal cost. Within such context of social dilemmas, numerous studies have explored factors that facilitate cooperative behavior, and found that procedural fairness is the key antecedent to cooperation. However, the underlying mechanism of the procedural fairness – cooperative behavior link remains elusive. Moreover, past research mainly explored such link in same-sex person interaction scenarios, leaving an open question whether its link is consistent across gender. The current work aims to address these issues by exploring how procedural fairness affects cooperative behavior in opposite-sex person interaction scenarios, assessing the mediating role of cooperative expectations and the moderating role of others’ prior cooperative rates in this causal relation. A total of 152 undergraduates participated this experiment. The opposite-sex person interaction scenarios were generated by introducing participants with an opposite-sex stranger and telling participants to play series games with the stranger. Procedural fairness was manipulated in an allocation task, in which determining an allocation by chance was relatively fairer than by person willingness. Cooperation was subsequently studied by using the chicken game paradigm. Specifically, others’ prior cooperative rates were explicitly manipulated by informing participants the possibility that their interactive partner cooperated in previous experiments. In high cooperative rates condition, participants were informed that allocators who had participated this experiment before averagely chose to cooperate with 75% probability, whereas those in low cooperative rates condition were informed that previous allocators averagely chose cooperate with 25% probability. Next, cooperative behavior was measured by calculating the number of cooperation options in the six rounds; afterwards, cooperative expectations were measured by asking participants to assess how many rounds their partner would choose cooperation/aggression. Results showed that experiencing fair procedures facilitated subsequent cooperation with the opponent, and that the effects were mediated by enhanced expectations of cooperation. Moreover, the positive prediction of procedural fairness on cooperative behavior was stronger in low cooperative rates condition than in high cooperative rates condition. Additionally, the mediating role of cooperative expectations in the associations between procedural fairness and cooperative behavior was significant both in high and low cooperative rates condition, and such mediating effect of others’ prior cooperative rates was larger in low (vs. high) cooperative rates condition. The present work revealed that the effect of procedural fairness on cooperative behavior is robust, because such effect in same-sex person interaction scenarios could also be found in opposite-sex person interaction scenarios. Most importantly, the present work demonstrated that people use their experience of procedural fairness as a cue to formulate cooperative expectations of others and that they subsequently use these expectations to decide on their own cooperation, which would be moderated by interaction partners’ prior cooperative information. In sum, the present work not only shed light on understanding the relationship between procedural fairness and cooperative behavior, but also extended prior fair-related theories (e.g., Fairness Heuristic Theory) and Goal Expectation Theory. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Impact of Poverty Mindset on Intertemporal Decision-making: The Mediating Role of Analytical Thinking and The Moderating Role of Loss-gain Frame Zhang Yanchi , Tong Dandan , Chen Chen , Guo Yongyu 2023, 46(2): 419-426.  Abstract ( )   PDF (781KB) ( )   Specific psychological and behavioral patterns formed in poverty environment are important factors that hinder the poor from getting rid of poverty completely. According to scarcity theory, poverty would automatically capture attention of the poor, forcing them to continuously think about financial and cost issues, constantly weigh and compromise between different needs, which ultimately damages their cognitive function and executive control ability. When individuals use a large amount of psychological resources to regulate emotions and manage scarce economic resources, the psychological resources that he can use to initiate analytical thinking to deal with other tasks will be insufficient, causing them to rely on intuitive thinking during solving problems. Studies have found that reduced analytical thinking or relying on intuitive thinking would increase the time discount rate for intertemporal decision-making. Therefore, we can infer that poverty mindset would affect intertemporal decision-making by reducing the individual's analytical thinking. Individuals who rely on intuitive thinking to make decisions are more susceptible to framework, and the use of analytical thinking can effectively reduce the framing effect. Based on this, it can be inferred that loss-gain frame may regulate the relationship between poverty mindset and intertemporal decision-making. Two studies were conducted to explore the impact of poverty mindset on intertemporal decision-making, the mediation effect of analytical thinking and the moderation effect of loss-gain frame. Study 1 recruited 197 adults and manipulated the poverty mindset (yes vs. no) and frame (loss vs. gain). A multiple-choice question, asking participants whether they can raise a lot of money in a short period of time to deal with emergencies, and a short-answer question, requiring participants to write down 2 to 3 wishes that were difficult to realize due to lack of money, were used to induce poverty mindset. Loss-gain frame was manipulated through changing the expression of intertemporal decision-making tasks. The results showed that the interaction effect between poverty mindset and loss-gain frame was significant: poverty mindset significantly increased participants’ time discount rate under gain frame; poverty mindset had no significant effect on the time discount rate under loss frame. In study 2，we developed a poverty mindset questionnaire consisting of 12 items, and recruited 398 adults. All participants completed the poverty mindset questionnaire (measuring poverty mindset), the cognitive reflection test (CRT, measuring analytical thinking), the loss or gain frame intertemporal decision-making (measuring time discount rate). We analyzed the mediation effect of analytical thinking and moderation effect of loss-gain frame via SPSS macro PROCESS. Results were as follows: (1) poverty mindset significantly reduced analytical thinking; (2) analytical thinking played a mediating role between poverty mindset and intertemporal decision-making; (3) the mediating effect of analytical thinking was moderated by loss-gain frame. Analytical thinking, under gain frame, has a predictive effect on intertemporal decision-making. However, under the loss framework, analytical thinking has no predictive effect on intertemporal decision-making. The two studies consistently show that loss-gain frame has a moderating effect on the relationship between poverty mindset and intertemporal decision-making, suggesting that the proper use of the loss-gain frame may be an effective way to reduce the time discount rate of the poor. In addition, analytical thinking mediates the impact of poverty mindset on intertemporal decision-making, poverty mindset impairs the analytical thinking, which in turn leads to an increase in the time discount rate. During formulation and implementation of anti-poverty policies, the government should pay attention to the impairment of analytical thinking due to poverty mindset, and help the poor get rid of behavioral poverty traps by reducing their cognitive burden and improving their analytical thinking. Related Articles | Metrics

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The more empathic, the fairer: empathic trait modulates the Identifiable Victim effect induced unfairness in resource allocation Xu Yashi, Zhao Hailing, Liu Jie, Cui Fang 2023, 46(2): 427-434.  Abstract ( )   PDF (812KB) ( )   "Identifiable Victim effect" refers to individuals’ tendency to offer greater aid to specific, identifiable victims than to anonymous, statistical victims, which is suggested to be one of the major factors inducing unfairness in resource allocations. The present study examined how the "identifiable victim effect" modulates resource allocation through two experiments. Experiment 1 focused on the priority while experiment 2 focused on the quantity in allocation. Participants played as "resource allocators" and they were instructed to distribute resources to two recipients (one recipient was the identifiable one whose name and image have been shown to the participant while the other one was the unidentifiable one whose information has not been shown). Here the “resource” was not money but "relieving resources" that can eliminate physiological threats the recipients were facing (painful electrical shocks in Experiment 1 and unpleasant noise in Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, two recipients would receive the same number of painful electrical shocks. The participants were endowed with the “relieving resource” that can eliminate one or two electric shocks for one recipient. They were not aware of whether they can eliminate 1 or 2 shocks before they made their first decision. We would mainly focus on how they weighted the priority of allocation by examining which recipient would receive their first aid (i.e. they would eliminate the first electric shock for which recipient). In Experiment 2, two recipients were facing the threat of unpleasant noise while the "relieving resources" were only enough for eliminating all of the noise for one recipient. We would mainly focus on how the participants would distribute the limited relieving resource between the identifiable and unidentifiable recipients. Results of Experiments 1 & 2 revealed that the "identifiable victim effect" does lead to unfairness in resource allocation. Compared to the unidentifiable victim, the identifiable victims get more attention from the allocator and were felt closer to them thus getting higher priority and more quantity of resources. Interestingly, we also found that in Experiment 1 when the participants get the extra resource, he/she would compensate the unidentifiable victim who was neglected in their first aid. Importantly, we found that one sub-component of empathy (i.e., empathic concern) plays a moderating role in the identifiable victim effect in resource allocation, such that people with higher scores of empathic concerns were less influenced by the identifiability of the victims, thus behaving more fairly, which means empathy as a trait did not enhance injustice, but played a role in curbing injustice, allowing decision-makers to better consider the needs of each helping object. These findings shed light on how to promote fairness in resource allocation to maintain social stability. It also has implications for future research in the field of empathy, that is, we should deeply explore the driving role of each sub-component of empathy on social behaviour to understand the psychological mechanism of empathy more comprehensively and deeply. Further, the present findings can also help us refine our understanding of social behavior defects observed in people with empathy disorders, such as autism, antisocial personality and psychopathology. Related Articles | Metrics

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THE INFLUENCE OF POSITIVE EMOJIS ON CONSUMERS’ PURCHASE INTENTION Wang Yaqin, Liu Zishuang, Jiang Jiang 2023, 46(2): 435-442.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1442KB) ( )   With the development of social networks, emojis have become an important tool for people’s daily communication. Sometimes it is difficult for us to express emotions to each other through words. Emojis can solve the “double blind” embarrassment of cross-screen interaction. Now that emojis are not limited to social communication, they have also begun to be widely used in the product marketing field. Two experiments are designed in this research to investigate whether positive emojis can promote consumers’ purchase intentions and explore the mediator effect of involvement and moderator effect of product type. Before the formal study, a pre-survey on the usage trend of emojis had been done. The survey showed that more than 90% of consumers use emojis more frequently. Most of them show a positive attitude and a high evaluation of the use of positive emojis in product design, and think that positive emojis are more suitable for FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods), not luxury goods, such as specific performance in the three categories of food and beverage, daily necessities and clothing. But positive emojis are not applicable to electronic products, luxury goods and other valuables. Study 1 attaches positive emojis to products to explore the influence of positive emojis on purchase intention in product design. This study used a single-factor inter-subject design. In this study, 202 subjects were recruited, 15 subjects who did not answer seriously were excluded, 47 subjects were excluded from group manipulation of independent variables, and 140 subjects remained, which was divided into three groups: positive emoji group (n = 39), blank control group (n = 61) and pattern group (n = 40). It was found that positive emojis in the design of products increased consumers’ involvement, and thus increased their purchase intention, compared with blank controls and patterns (Mpositive emoji group = 4.78, SDpositive emoji group = 1.42; Mpattern group = 3.76, SDpattern group = 1.27; Mcontrol group = 3.09, SDcontrol group = 1.17; F(2,136) = 22.30, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.25). On the basis of Study 1, Study 2 added the moderating variable——product type (hedonic/utilitarian) to further explore whether there are boundary conditions for the influence of positive emojis on consumers’ purchase intention. Slightly different from Study 1, Study 2 used positive emojis in product advertisements and divided the products into hedonic products and utilitarian products to explore the effect of positive emojis on purchase intention in different product types. This study adopted a 2×2 inter-subject design. 212 subjects were assigned randomly to one of four conditions: positive emoji-hedonic (n = 52), positive emoji-utilitarian (n = 54), non-emoji-hedonic (n = 53), non-emoji-utilitarian (n = 53). Studies have shown that positive emojis can further increase consumers’ intention to purchase hedonic products, while when the products are utilitarian, the presence or absence of positive emojis has a relatively small effect on consumers’ purchase intentions (t(210) = 6.40, p < 0.001, d = 0.13). Examining the model of moderated mediating effect, it was found that the process of positive emojis influencing the purchase intention through the involvement is moderated by the product type, and there was a moderated mediating model. Through two experiments, this study revealed that under two marketing methods, product design(Study 1) and advertising(Study 2), positive emojis have a positive impact on consumers’ purchase intention, and positive emojis further improve consumers’ purchase intention by increasing their involvement. And positive emojis are more likely to increase consumers’ purchase intention to hedonistic products than utilitarian ones. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Relationship between Psychological Suzhi and the Trajectory of Anxiety in Senior High School Freshmen during the Transition Period—Based on the Latent Growth Model Lin Nan, Zhao Wenwen, Wu Lili, Zhang Dajun, Cheng Gang 2023, 46(2): 443-449.  Abstract ( )   PDF (702KB) ( )   It is easy for students who are new to a school to have maladaptive problems and induced anxiety due to the change of environment. This is especially true for high school freshmen, because they not only have to adapt to a new school environment but also have to experience dramatic biological and psychological changes in the developmental phase of puberty. That is to say, they have to bear the dual pressure of change in their external environment and turbulence in their internal world at the same time. Moreover, teenagers are in a period of high anxiety, which is not conducive to their physical and mental health development. Previous studies on anxiety in high school freshmen were all cross-sectional investigations and did not investigate the trajectory and characteristics of anxiety. Therefore, this study used a short-term longitudinal research design across four waves to explore the trajectory of anxiety in high school freshmen as well as the mechanism of psychological suzhi. In this study, 326 registered freshmen from a high school in Chengdu were selected as the research participants using cluster sampling. The first baseline test was completed in the first week after entering school as freshmen. The questionnaires were the Psychological Suzhi Questionnaire for Adolescents and the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale. A total of 306 valid questionnaires were collected (the effective response rate was 93.9%), and included 165 male students (53.9%) and 141 female students (46.1%), with an average age of 15.5 years (SD=0.47). The second test was conducted four weeks later, and the third test four weeks after the second. The fourth test was postponed to eight weeks after the third test due to a conflict in the course arrangement schedule. The second, third, and fourth tests were conducted with the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale. The sample sizes were 22, 75, and 67, respectively, due to attrition for various reasons, such as absence or change of school. The latent growth model was used to explore the trajectories and influencing factors of anxiety in high school freshmen during the transition period. The results showed that: (1) anxiety in high school freshmen increased linearly in the first semester; (2) there were no significant gender differences in the initial levels of anxiety, however, male students’ anxiety increased significantly faster than female students’ anxiety in the following four months; and (3) the psychological suzhi of freshmen had a significant predictive effect on the intercept and slope of anxiety, that is to say, freshmen with higher levels of psychological suzhi had relatively low initial levels of anxiety after entrance, and their anxiety had a slower growth rate during the following three months. The above results demonstrated that anxiety in high school freshmen increased linearly, and psychological suzhi had predictive effects on freshmen’s anxiety in this process. Analyzing the test results, this study examined the trajectory and characteristics of anxiety in high school freshmen, and the role of gender and psychological suzhi in its trajectory. The results confirmed that psychological suzhi can effectively prevent and reduce the deterioration of their emotional state. The study deepens the understanding of the mechanism of psychological suzhi in adolescents’ mental health education and provides a targeted empirical basis for the prevention and education of anxiety in the adaptation period for high school freshmen. Related Articles | Metrics

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A SAEM Algorithm for the estimation of item parameters in the 3-Parameter Normal-Ogive Model meng xiangbin, Liu Jia, Ding Rui 2023, 46(2): 450-460.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4976KB) ( )   The normal ogive (NO) model is the first item response theory (IRT) model, which was developed by Lord (1953). However, the NO model has not been widely used in psychological and educational measurement since the estimation of parameters is great low efficiency. The NO model derives from the assumption of normally distributed measurement error and is theoretically appealing on that basis. Recently a lot of the frontier IRT models were developed based on the NO model, for instance, the multilevel IRT model and the response time models. Therefore, to make the NO model can be widely used in practice, it is necessary that a more efficient estimation approach is developed for the NO model, and this is the main work of our study. In this article, the 3-parameter NO (3PNO) model is revised to be a mixture model, and then a stochastic approximation EM algorithm is developed for calculating the marginalized maximum a posteriori estimation (MMAP) of the 3PNO model. The SAEM algorithm is an extension of the EM method, so it must be more efficient than the MCMC sampler which is commonly used for estimating NO model. Furthermore, the 3PNO model under the mixture modelling framework is the exponential distribution family, sufficient statistics exist for the item parameters, which also highly simplified the SAEM algorithm. To investigate the computation efficiency and the impact factors of the SAEM algorithm, two Monte Carlo simulation studies were constructed. Finally, an empirical example is analyzed to display the practical application value of the 3PNO model with the SAEM algorithm. The results from the first simulation study demonstrated that the step size is very important for the performance of SAEM iteration. To ensure the SAEM algorithm is used accurately, we propose some valuable suggestion for implementing the SAEM for the 3PNO model according to the results of simulation study. In the second simulation study, the MMAP\SAEM estimates displayed excellent accuracy, and it is greatly faster than the Gibbs sampler. Finally, the results of the empirical study are that the values of MMAP\SAEM estimates were highly correlated with the same item characteristic values form classical test theory, furthermore, they were stronger positively correlated with the EAP estimates obtained by the MCMC samplers. Therefore, it can be concluded that the MMAP\SAEM estimates are accurate and highly reliability. Furthermore, the fit of the 3PNO model is better than that of the 2PNO model for this real data. According to the results from both the simulation and the empirical studies, it can be concluded that the SAEM algorithm given by us is an accurate and efficiency estimation method for the 3PNO model, and 3PNO model is superior to the 2PNO model. But, there are some important issues should be further studied: First, a SAEM algorithm should be proposed for estimating the multidimension NO model, because the multidimension test is commonly used in psychological and educational measurement. Second, in recent years the four-parameter IRT model is receiving more and more attentions and some studies have displayed that the four-parameter model is valuable for testing design, therefore we believe that it is very interesting to propose a SAEM algorithm for estimating the 4PNO model. Finally, the cognitive diagnostic modeling (CDM) in educational measurement has attracted much attention from researchers nowadays, but its applications have been lagged by the computational complexity of model estimation. So, it is great valuable to give a SAEM algorithm for calculating the CDM estimation. Related Articles | Metrics

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Research on item selection algorithm of polytomous scored cognitive diagnosis adaptive test Gao Xuliang, Wang Fang, Zhao Pengjuan 2023, 46(2): 461-469.  Abstract ( )   PDF (1248KB) ( )   The development of cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive test (CD-CAT) provides a new perspective for obtaining information about students’ mastery or nonmastery of a set of skills in the field of knowledge. In recent years, CD-CAT has received more and more attention in the field of educational evaluation and psychological evaluation. Effective item selection algorithm is the key to the success of CD-CAT system. To date, various item selection methods of CD-CAT have been proposed based on dichotomous cognitive diagnosis model (CDM). There are few researches on the item selection algorithm of polytomous CD-CAT (PCD-CAT). However, in educational assessment, psychological evaluation and many other disciplines, there are a lot of polytomously-scored data. In this article, the authors explored the CD-CAT item selection algorithm based on general polytomous diagnosis model, and proposed two PCD-CAT item selection algorithms, namely, maximum expected posterior distribution variance (EPV) and maximum expected distance (MED). The performances of the proposed item selection algorithms were evaluated through two simulation studies and compared with the KL, PWKL, and HKL algorithms in fixed-length and variable-length PCD-CAT. In the simulation experiment, the size of the item bank was 350, and the maximum score of each item was fixed at 4. The number of attributes was fixed to K = 7. In the first study, we manipulated three factors: the test length (5, 10, 15 and 20), item bank quality (high vs. low), and item selection algorithms (KL, PWKL, HKL, EPV and MED). The results of Study 1 showed that the EPV and MED consistently resulted in the highest attribute pattern recovery rate in all the simulation conditions. The results of Study 1 showed that the pattern correct classification rate (PMR) of EPV and MED was significantly higher than that of KL, PWKL and HKL methods. The EPV and MED had similar PMR under most experimental conditions, but when the test length was short (for example, 5 items), regardless of the quality of the item bank, the PMR of EPV was higher than that of MED. Under all conditions, the KL method had the lowest PMR rate, while the difference in PMR rates between PWKL and HKL was almost negligible. Study 2 investigated the performance of two proposed new item selection algorithms under the condition of variable-length PCD-CAT. In Study 2, when the maximum posterior probability of the attribute vector reaches a prespecified value, the test is terminated. Three factors were manipulated in the Study 2: prespecified termination values (0.6, 0.7, 0.8 and 0.9), item bank quality (high and low) and five item selection algorithms. The results of Study 2 showed that the average test lengths of EPV and MED were roughly similar, and significantly smaller than the average test lengths of KL, PWKL and HKL. Although the results are encouraging, there are still some future research directions that deserve further study, such as, (a) how to use both confirmatory CDM and exploratory CDM in diagnostic evaluation to better analyze data; (b) item calibration technology for cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive test; (c) using computer to realize automatic scoring of polytomously-scored items. Related Articles | Metrics

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An Application of the Odds Ratios Method in Differential Item Functioning: An Illustration with an English Test Liu Chutong, Jin Ruyi, He Ying, Zhang Minqiang, Gao Fangxin 2023, 46(2): 470-477.  Abstract ( )   PDF (919KB) ( )   The detection of differential item functioning (DIF) is an essential step for increasing the validity of a test among groups. A common feature of the conventional DIF approaches is that different groups of examinees are placed on the same metric based on a matching variable. However, contaminated matching variable would make the DIF detection biased. Some investigators developed the odds ratios (OR) method, which does not require matching variables. The OR method is easy to understand and simple for practitioners. However, all previous studies about the OR method are simulation studies, and the application of OR method in the DIF detecting of the academic achievement test needs further investigation. Previous studies indicated that the IRT-based approaches performed well in the DIF detecting of the academic achievement test. The Wald χ^2 test and likelihood ratio test (LRT) are widely used in DIF detection as IRT-based approaches. It is helpful to compare the performance and the operating procedure of OR method with the Wald χ^2 test and the LRT method. The current study aimed to introduce the operating procedure of the OR methods in the DIF detecting of the academic achievement test, and demonstrate that the OR method was a better method in DIF detecting by comparing the performance and the operating procedure among the OR method, the Wald χ^2 test, and the LRT method. An empirical study was conducted, and the data was selected from an English test. Valid data from 3241 senior high school students, including 1427 males (44.03%) were analyzed. The DIF detection was conducted on 35 dichotomous items from the English examination. The difficulty of the 35 dichotomous items were acceptable (from .20 to .80). Besides, the Cronbach’s alphas of the 35 items were .86. The DIF detection results of the OR method, the Wald χ^2 test, and the LRT method on English test would be testified compared. The empirical study found that 16 items were detected as DIF items by the OR method, including both 8 items favoring females and males respectively. And 14 items were detected as DIF items by the Wald χ2 test, including 10 items favoring females and 4 items favoring males. In addition, there were 14 items detected as DIF items by the LRT method, including 8 items favoring females and 6 items favoring males. The DIF detection results of the OR method and the LRT method were consistent for 31 items, and inconsistent for 4 items. The DIF detection results of the Wald χ2 test and the LRT method were consistent for 19 items, and inconsistent for 16 items. Previous studies had provided evidence for the application of the LRT method in the DIF detecting of the academic achievement test. And this study indicated that performance of the OR method was similar to the LRT method, but different to the Wald χ2 test. Thus, the present study also provided evidence for the application of OR method in the DIF detection of the academic achievement test, which was of great empirical value. Besides, concerning the operating procedure, the OR method is easy and simple for practitioners, and the computation task in the OR method is minimized. It is obvious that the OR method is more efficient. Generally speaking, the OR method is practicable and efficient in DIF detection. Related Articles | Metrics

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Cognitive Diagnosis Modelling Based on Response Times Zheng Tianpeng , Zhou Wenjie , Guo Lei 2023, 46(2): 478-490.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3193KB) ( )   The development of computer-based assessments can collect process data for different test evaluation purposes. In current psychological measurement modeling, response time is the most frequently studied process data in log files. The use of response time in cognitive diagnosis assessment can further improve the accuracy of diagnosis. However, almost all of the cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs), particularly those involve response time, pay little attention to process data. Recently, a few CDMs, concerning item response times, have been developed, such as the JRT-DINA model (Zhan, Jiao, & Liao, 2018). In this paper, a more concise CDM, named the RRT-DINA (Reduced Response Times DINA) model was proposed via constructing a direct relationship between the probability of correct responses and person speed parameter. And the MCMC algorithm was applied to estimate both item and person parameters of the RRT-DINA model. Firstly, an empirical study was conducted to compare the performances, which are evaluated by the PISA2012 data, of the RRT-DINA model and JRT-DINA model respectively. The results showed that comparing with JRT-DINA model, the new model had lower -2LL, AIC, BIC and DIC values, which indicated that the new model fitted this empirical data better. Secondly, to further verify the performance of the new model, four factors were investigated in the simulation study, i.e., the sample size (500 examines, 1000 examines, 2000 examines), the test length(15 test items,30 test items), the number of cognitive attributes (3, 5, 7) and the types of data generation models (RRT-DINA and JRT-DINA). The results of simulation studies revealed that: (1) When using the RRT-DINA model to generate the data, the recovery of item parameters and person speed parameters of the new model was decent. And the accuracy of parameter estimation in both CDMs will be higher with the increase of the test length, on the whole. Meanwhile, the AACCR and PCCR values obtained from the RRT-DINA model were much more precise than those got from the JRT-DINA model. Under the biggest gap, the AACCR and PCCR of RRT-DINA model were 11.3% and 20.01% higher than JRT-DINA model respectively. Furthermore, the AACCR and PCCR values of the two models were more accurate as the test length increased ; (2) When using the JRT-DINA model to generate the data, the recovery of item parameters and person speed parameters of the new model was slightly inferior to the JRT-DINA model, but the differences in terms of the recovery between the two were very close to those got from the JRT-DINA model. Under the biggest gap, the AACCR and PCCR of JRT-DINA model were only 2.88% and 11% higher than RRT-DINA model respectively. Similarly, the AACCR and PCCR values of the two models were more accurate as the test length increased. In addition, the authors discussed the reasons for choosing response time as a representative of process data, the influence of Q matrix on model parameter estimation and the question of how to choose between the RRT-DINA model and JRT-DINA model. Finally, this paper ends with the prospects of future researches: (1) Introduction of more types of process data; (2)Extension of the speed parameter to multiple dimensions. In general, this paper proposed a simplified and better-performed CDM which could utilize the response times information. And the new model is based on a more direct modeling method rather than the hierarchical modelling framework. Related Articles | Metrics

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The effect of stress on decision-making under ambiguity: cognitive and neural mechanisms Shen Chengchun , Hu bohua , He Qinghua 2023, 46(2): 500-508.  Abstract ( )   PDF (476KB) ( )   Decision-making under ambiguity, first proposed by American economist Knight, refers to uncertain decisions whose probability distribution is unknown and decision maker must rely on subjective judgment instead of deductive calculation or empirical estimation. Both ambiguity decision-making and risky decision-making belong to the category of uncertain decision making, while risky decision maker is informed of the exact probability. Stress can affect ambiguity decision making, and many ambiguity decisions are often made under stress. Therefore, more and more researchers have been attracted to the research on the influence of stress on ambiguity decision-making. In this field, there have been many mature empirical studies, but unfortunately the results of these studies are not consistent. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the influence mechanism of stress on ambiguity decision-making and clarify the relationship between decision-making cognitive process and stress. This paper systematically reviewed the empirical research literature on the impact of stress on decision making in recent five years, and summarized the effects of stress on ambiguity decision-making in behavioral and neural aspects from three aspects: learning feedback, reward sensitivity and risk preference, based on the detailed analysis of the cognitive perspective, in order to step further in terms of the consistency of different research results. Through literature analysis, it was found that many research results support the view that stress leads to the obstruction of learning feedback, but some studies have found that stress causes the improvement of vigilance and attention, making individuals more inclined to learn how to obtain the maximum and the most long-term return in the ambiguity decision-making situation. In terms of reward sensitivity, most studies showed that stress causes decision makers to overemphasize reward and ignore punishment, while the opposite conclusion is that some people believe that stress significantly reduces reward sensitivity. In terms of risk preferences, the most common conclusion is that stress increases risk-taking behavior, but studies that differ from this conclusion still exist. Although the results of these studies are different, from the perspective of cognitive processing and the influencing mechanism, the effects of stress on ambiguity decision-making tend to be consistent, which are all negative effects of feedback obstruction, heavy reward and light punishment, and increased risk taking. The reason why some studies come to different conclusions is that stress is affected by other factors in the process of ambiguity decision making. For example, some studies carried out the effect of acute stress on decision making in subjects with a male to female ratio of 1:2. It was found that stress promoted better learning feedback of subjects, which actually ignored the influence of gender factor. Studies that suggest that stress makes decision makers more conservative ignore the influence of personality, age and other factors. This paper attempts to explain why the influence of stress on ambiguity decision-making can lead to different results from two theories of "Dual-system Processing" and "Cognitive Resource Occupation". It is common that women under stress can cause "tend-and-befriend" mode of reaction, while men triggering "fight-or-flight". Therefore, studies with more female subjects are more likely to find the positive effect of stress on decision-making, while those with more male subjects are more negative. According to "Cognitive Resource Occupation", the participants' perception of stress determines the impact of stress on decision-making. Generally, identifying stress as "challenge" will lead to positive effects, while identifying it as "threat" will lead to negative effects. Finally, based on the current research progress and shortcomings, it is proposed that future research should focus on the different effects of stress type and intensity on ambiguity decision-making, and further expand the research on the interaction effects of cognition and emotion in ambiguity decision-making under stress. Related Articles | Metrics