人事筛选和挑选决策策略的比较

本研究采用了多特征决策研究中的过程追踪技术,对人事筛选和挑选决策的策略进行了单步跳转和多步跳转分析与比较。结果发现,在人事挑选时,被试更多采用基于方案的补偿性策略,并以有关合适人选的心理映像为标准做出决策;而筛选时更多采用基于特征的非补偿策略以减少认知负荷,同时,以方案间比较为目的的补偿性策略也更多使用。这些策略变化体现了决策者的认知适应性。     

老年人情绪记忆中的积极效应及其产生机制

有关情绪与记忆的研究发现, 老年人经常表现出积极效应, 即对积极刺激的记忆比对消极刺激的记忆更好。从动机层面来讲, 社会情绪选择理论认为老年人比年轻人更倾向于进行情绪调节。在记忆任务中, 这种情绪调节的动机使得老年人具有表现出积极效应的倾向, 但这种倾向只有在满足一定条件的情况下才能表现出来。情绪调节对记忆的影响可以通过注意选择、加工资源分配、情绪抑制、认知再评价等多种方式进行。未来研究需要进一步细分年龄段考察情绪的各维度如何影响老年人记忆的各个阶段。     

老年人行为决策:领域现状与挑战

老年人的决策特点在多个领域各有不同,具体表现为消费领域的信息搜索数量下降,风险决策中的风险规避倾向,医疗决策中对框架效应敏感性的下降以及日常决策中存在经验优势等。总的来说,老年人在一部分决策任务中表现较差,而在另一部分决策任务中表现与年轻人无差异甚至优于年轻人。老年人的决策效度主要受到个体认知、情绪和任务特征等因素的交互影响,遵循个体-情境拟合理论。未来研究除了要继续探讨老年决策者在不同领域决策任务下的表现及影响因素,并深入解决决策质量及策略等方面争议外,还应进一步加强对被试特征、决策策略、跨文化等一系列变量及认知神经机制的研究。     

情绪调节策略对表情视觉搜索的影响

表情视觉搜索任务是让作为目标的情绪面孔在其他干扰面孔中呈现,并要求被试快速搜索目标以做出反应.本研究采用实验的方法,以表情面孔图片作为实验材料,比较了情绪诱发状态下,情绪调节策略使用与否以及两种不同的情绪调节策略对搜索绩效的影响,同时探讨了目标情绪面孔特征和搜索者即时情绪状态对搜索绩效的作用.结果发现:(1)对微笑面孔的搜索快于生气面孔,且存在显著差异,说明人们对积极的信息有觉察优势;(2)中性情绪状态优于正性和负性情绪状态,且存在显著差异,说明情绪唤起会干扰搜索过程;(3)认知重评和表达抑制策略均优于无情绪调节策略,且存在显著差异.因此,表情搜索绩效与是否使用调节策略、搜索目标特征及搜索者情绪状态有关.     

不同搜索情境下老化对自上而下注意加工的影响

在视觉搜索过程中,老年人是否可以在不同情境下调节自上而下和自下而上的加工水平尚不明确。为了探讨老化对认知灵活性的影响,研究采用空间线索范式,通过比较有效线索和无效线索来考察对线索的注意加工水平（注意捕获、注意抑制）,通过比较目标相关和目标无关线索的注意加工水平来考察自上而下和自下而上的作用,通过改变分心物一致性来调控不同的目标凸显情境。结果发现,年轻组在目标非凸显时的空间线索效应高于目标凸显时,表明年轻人会依据目标凸显性调整自上而下的加工水平;但老年组却没有产生这种差异,其更依赖自上而下的加工,注意系统会对目标相关的线索进行注意捕获,对目标无关的线索进行注意抑制。结果表明,随着年龄的增长,认知控制的灵活性下降,表现出对自上而下加工较多的依赖;此外,老年人依然保留着注意捕获和注意抑制的能力,这对认知老化中抑制能力受损的观点提出了挑战。     

焦虑对社会决策行为的影响

焦虑是在人类日常生活中常见的一种负性情绪。探讨焦虑情绪在个人生活和工作中扮演的角色, 是生理学界和心理学界的一项重要课题。过往研究显示焦虑水平的提高会对社会能力和社交技巧造成显著的影响。在社会决策领域中, 这种影响的具体表现是高焦虑者比低焦虑者更倾向于采取回避风险的策略。但是, 过往研究主要关心包含经济因素的社会决策, 而对其他类型的社会行为的探索存在不足。以下问题值得未来研究者们关注：在个体层面上, 高焦虑者是否会更容易受到外界信息的影响, 表现出更强的从众行为和权威依从倾向, 与他人进行社会比较或社会竞争的动机是否会被削弱？在群体层面上, 高焦虑者是否更容易表现出人际信任, 以及是否会表现出更强的服从集体倾向？考察这些问题将会为针对焦虑情绪的认知研究和临床研究起到促进作用。     

情绪智力及相关变量对职业决策线索加工的影响

以66名应届或往届大学生为被试,运用何小蕾（2004）修订的情绪智力量表和信息板技术探讨了决策时限、选项数量及情绪智力对职业决策过程中线索加工的影响。结果发现：（1）决策时限和选项数量影响职业决策过程中各条线索的平均点击次数和平均加工时间,说明完成信息板任务过程中被试加工线索的策略会因为决策时限和选项数量的变化而发生改变;（2）情绪智力水平对职业决策中的信息搜索模式有显著影响,高情绪智力水平者倾向于采用基于选项的复杂搜索策略;（3）情绪智力的各维度对职业决策中信息加工的平均决策时间、搜索深度和搜索模式具有不同的影响,其中管理情绪、表达情绪对决策时间和搜索深度均有显著影响,理解情绪对决策时间有显著影响,利用情绪对搜索深度和搜索模式有显著影响,而情绪发展对决策时间有显著影响。     

老年人描述性和经验性决策改变的不对称性及其神经基础

根据备择选项的信息是否完整,可以将决策分为描述性决策与经验性决策两个类别。随着年龄的增长,老年人在完成两类决策任务时的行为改变及其神经基础尚不明确。年轻人和老年人在fMRI扫描舱内分别完成了描述性和经验性决策任务。行为结果发现,相较于年轻人,老年人描述性决策能力保留而经验性决策能力受损,表现出决策能力改变的不对称性。神经影像学证据显示,在两种决策任务中老年人均表现出决策相关脑区的过度激活,但是这种过度激活更多是在描述性决策中起到了补偿作用,揭示了老年人决策能力改变不对称性的潜在神经基础。研究结果提示年老化对决策行为和神经活动均产生影响,相较于描述性决策老年人经验性决策能力更容易受到增龄的影响,研究结果对老年人群的决策干预提供了方向。     

儿童社会信息加工的情绪－认知整合模型

回顾与总结了社会认知中情绪过程对儿童社会能力发展作用的研究成果,探讨了社会信息加工过程中情绪过程和认知的关系问题。发现就个人--社会决策活动而言,情绪过程具有核心作用。并且由此介绍了社会情绪--认知整合模型及其对情绪过程的理解。在此基础上,重点综述了情绪过程在社会情境中对儿童社会信息的线索编码与解释、目标分类、反应提取与决定及行为实施的影响。     

选项数量和属性重要性对决策中信息加工的影响

本研究采用决策过程研究方法中的信息板技术,以现实生活中的职业选择作为决策任务,考察了选项数量和选项属性的重要性对决策过程中信息加工的影响方式。结果表明:选项数量对决策过程的信息搜索深度、搜索模式和策略的补偿性产生了影响;选项属性的重要性并不影响决策者对属性的查看时间,但影响了决策者对属性的点击次数。     

The aging decision maker: cognitive aging and the adaptive selection of decision strategies

Are older adults' decision abilities fundamentally compromised by age-related cognitive decline? Or can they adaptively select decision strategies? One study (N = 163) investigated the impact of cognitive aging on the ability to select decision strategies as a function of environment structure. Participants made decisions in either an environment that favored the use of information-intensive strategies or one favoring the use of simple, information-frugal strategies. Older adults tended to (a) look up less information and take longer to process it and (b) use simpler, less cognitively demanding strategies. In accordance with the idea that age-related cognitive decline leads to reliance on simpler strategies, measures of fluid intelligence explained age-related differences in information search and strategy selection. Nevertheless, both young and older adults seem to be equally adapted decision makers in that they adjust their information search and strategy selection as a function of environment structure, suggesting that the aging decision maker is an adaptive one.     

Aging and motivated cognition: the positivity effect in attention and memory

As people get older, they experience fewer negative emotions. Strategic processes in older adults' emotional attention and memory might play a role in this variation with age. Older adults show more emotionally gratifying memory distortion for past choices and autobiographical information than younger adults do. In addition, when shown stimuli that vary in affective valence, positive items account for a larger proportion of older adults' subsequent memories than those of younger adults. This positivity effect in older adults' memories seems to be due to their greater focus on emotion regulation and to be implemented by cognitive control mechanisms that enhance positive and diminish negative information. These findings suggest that both cognitive abilities and motivation contribute to older adults' improved emotion regulation.     

Strength and vulnerability integration: a model of emotional well-being across adulthood

The following article presents the theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) to explain factors that influence emotion regulation and emotional well-being across adulthood. The model posits that trajectories of adult development are marked by age-related enhancement in the use of strategies that serve to avoid or limit exposure to negative stimuli but by age-related vulnerabilities in situations that elicit high levels of sustained emotional arousal. When older adults avoid or reduce exposure to emotional distress, they often respond better than younger adults; when they experience high levels of sustained emotional arousal, however, age-related advantages in emotional well-being are attenuated, and older adults are hypothesized to have greater difficulties returning to homeostasis. SAVI provides a testable model to understand the literature on emotion and aging and to predict trajectories of emotional experience across the adult life span.     

Aging and goal-directed emotional attention: distraction reverses emotional biases

Previous findings reveal that older adults favor positive over negative stimuli in both memory and attention (for a review, see Mather & Carstensen, 2005). This study used eye tracking to investigate the role of cognitive control in older adults' selective visual attention. Younger and older adults viewed emotional-neutral and emotional-emotional pairs of faces and pictures while their gaze patterns were recorded under full or divided attention conditions. Replicating previous eye-tracking findings, older adults allocated less of their visual attention to negative stimuli in negative-neutral stimulus pairings in the full attention condition than younger adults did. However, as predicted by a cognitive-control-based account of the positivity effect in older adults' information processing tendencies (Mather & Knight, 2005), older adults' tendency to avoid negative stimuli was reversed in the divided attention condition. Compared with younger adults, older adults' limited attentional resources were more likely to be drawn to negative stimuli when they were distracted. These findings indicate that emotional goals can have unintended consequences when cognitive control mechanisms are not fully available.     

Emotion regulation in interpersonal problems: the role of cognitive-emotional complexity, emotion regulation goals, and expressivity

Young, middle-aged, and older adults' emotion regulation strategies in interpersonal problems were examined. Participants imagined themselves in anger- or sadness-eliciting situations with a close friend. Factor analyses of a new questionnaire supported a 4-factor model of emotion regulation strategies, including passivity, expressing emotions, seeking emotional information or support, and solving the problem. Results suggest that age differences in emotion regulation (such as older adults' increased endorsement of passive emotion regulation relative to young adults) are partially due to older adults' decreased ability to integrate emotion and cognition, increased prioritization of emotion regulation goals, and decreased tendency to express anger.     

Why older adults make more immediate treatment decisions about cancer than younger adults

Literature relevant to medical decision making was reviewed, and a model was outlined for testing. Two studies examined whether older adults make more immediate decisions than younger adults about treatments for prostate or breast cancer in authentic scenarios. Findings clearly showed that older adults were more likely to make immediate decisions than younger adults. The research is important because it not only demonstrates the consistency of this age-related effect across disease domains, gender, ethnic groups, and prevalent education levels but begins to investigate a model to explain the effect. Major reasons for the effect focus on treatment knowledge, interest and engagement, and cognitive resources. Treatment knowledge, general cancer knowledge, interest, and cognitive resources relate to different ways of processing treatment information and preferences for immediate versus delayed decision making. Adults with high knowledge of treatments on a reliable test tended to make immediate treatment decisions, which supports the knowledge explanation. Adults with more cognitive resources and more interest tended to delay their treatment decisions. Little support was found for a cohort explanation for the relationship between age and preference for immediate medical decision making.     

The recognition of facial expressions: An investigation of the influence of age and cognition

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to investigate changes in facial expression recognition across the lifespan, as well as to determine the influence of fluid intelligence, processing speed, and memory on this ability. Peak performance in the ability to identify facial affect was found to occur in middle-age, with the children and older adults performing the poorest. Specifically, older adults were impaired in their ability to identify fear, sadness, and happiness, but had preserved recognition of anger, disgust, and surprise. Analyses investigating the influence of cognition on emotion recognition demonstrated that cognitive abilities contribute to performance, especially for participants over age 45. However, the cognitive functions did not fully account for the older adults' impairments on expression recognition. Overall, the age-related deficits in facial expression recognition have implications for older adults' use of non-verbal communicative information.     

注意与记忆中的“积极效应” ——“老化悖论”与社会情绪选择理论的视角

老年人在注意和记忆活动中存在着“积极效应”现象,即对积极材料的加工维持得较好,表现出对积极信息的偏向。社会情绪选择理论从时间的认知评估影响情绪目标的选择来解释这一现象。同时,研究发现信息的加工方式与“积极效应”有密切关联,当控制加工时,“积极效应”出现;而自动加工时,“积极效应”消失。“积极效应”受到时间认知的控制,也受到认知资源和认知能力的限制。目前,随着认知神经科学的发展,利用先进设备与仪器研究老年人认知活动中的“积极效应”有着广阔的前景     

Older adults' motivated choice for technological innovation: evidence for benefit-driven selectivity

This study examined older adults' motivation to adopt technological innovation. Sixty-eight older e-mail users and nonusers discussed the use of e-mail and of traditional communication methods in 18 focus groups. The results show older adults' benefit-driven approach to new communication technology. Regardless of whether their decision about the new technology was positive or negative and irrespective of their e-mail experience, participants focused on benefits rather than costs. For traditional media, both costs and benefits were important. Results contradict the common belief that barriers such as usability problems determine whether older people use new technology and indicate the decisive role of perceived benefits for successful innovation.     

21世纪中国老年心理学研究:现状与未来

本文回顾了近40年中国老年心理学的研究成果,并从研究主题角度与美国老年心理学研究进行了比较。发现中国老年心理学主要聚焦于老年人心理健康研究,同时也在老年人家庭人际关系和社会支持领域研究有较为丰富的研究成果。但国内对老年人的认知能力、人格、情绪情感探讨较少,既缺少前沿的基础研究,也缺少对复杂能力、复杂情感等的系统研究。结合中国人口老龄化现实,本文提出了21世纪中国老年心理学的未来研究取向：基础研究和应用服务研究的双向结合,中国文化特色取向,个体-环境交互作用取向和个体差异取向。