Widowhood and the Subjective Well-Being of Older People in China: the Mediating Effects of Lifestyle

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Previous research has illustrated that lifestyle is correlated with widowhood and subjective well-being amongst older people; however, few studies have...     

Asian American-white American differences in expressions of social anxiety: a replication and extension

This study examined whether Asian American-White American differences on a trait measure of social anxiety extend to nonverbal behavior and to reports of anxiety-related emotions during a 3-min social performance task. Forty Asian Americans and 40 White Americans completed a trait measure of social anxiety and rated their emotions before, and immediately after, a social performance task. Their videotaped behavior was coded using microlevel behavioral codes (e.g., gaze avoidance, fidgeting). Results indicated that Asian Americans reported more anxiety than White Americans on the trait measure and on the emotion rating scales but that they did not differ substantially on microlevel behavioral indexes of social anxiety. Implications of ethnic variations in the patterns of anxious responding are discussed.     

Movement substructures change as a function of practice in children and adults

An experiment is reported in which participants at 6 (n = 20), 9 (n = 20), and 24 years (n = 20) of age either received or did not receive practice on a rapid aiming task using the arm and hand. The purpose of the experiment was to document the changes in movement substructures (in addition to movement time) as a function of practice. After receiving 10 baseline trials, subjects in the practice groups received 30 practice trials followed by 10 retention trials on each of 5 days, while subjects in the no-practice group had only baseline and retention trials. Retention-only trials were divided into primary (reflecting the ballistic controlled part of the movement) and secondary (reflecting corrective movement adjustments) submovements. In addition, jerk (the 3rd derivative of movement displacement) was calculated as an estimate of the smoothness of the movement. Participants increased the primary submovement as a function of practice; however, the increases were substantially larger in the children (25-30%) than in the adults (10%). Participants also decreased jerk as a function of practice and the decreases were greater in children than in adults. The results suggest that with practice the primary submovement is lengthened so that it ends nearer the target, especially in children. Associated with the primary submovement covering a larger percentage of the movement length and time, movements became smoother.     

Mental health condition of the only-child: a study of urban and rural high school students in China

The mental health of the only-child continues to generate interest in research literature. The present study examines the issue in China, where the one-child phenomenon is highest due to deliberate government policy. Subjects are 299 and 333 students in two high-rank high schools in urban Harebin and rural Qing an Xian, respectively (mean age = 17.2 years). Both locations are in the Heilongjiang Sheng Province of China. Results showed that urban only-children experienced significantly lower love awareness from family, higher neurotic and social depression, trait anxiety, perceived stressors, and interpersonal dependency than did urban non-only children. No significant differences were found in the rural only- and non-only children. Low love awareness from parents and peers was associated with high negative mental health conditions in the children. Low love awareness also precipitated perceived stressors which resulted in negative mental health in the covariance structure analysis.     

Cocaine exposure is associated with subtle compromises of infants' and mothers' social-emotional behavior and dyadic features of their interaction in the face-to-face still-face paradigm

Prenatal cocaine and opiate exposure are thought to subtly compromise social and emotional development. The authors observed a large sample of 236 cocaine-exposed and 459 nonexposed infants (49 were opiate exposed and 646 nonexposed) with their mothers in the face-to-face still-face paradigm. Infant and maternal behaviors were microanalytically coded. No opiate-exposure effects were detected. However, mothers of cocaine-exposed infants showed more negative engagement than other mothers. The cocaine-exposed dyads also showed higher overall levels of mismatched engagement states than other dyads, including more negative engagement when the infants were in states of neutral engagement. Infants exposed to heavier levels of cocaine showed more passive-withdrawn negative engagement and engaged in more negative affective matching with their mothers than other infants. Although effect sizes were small, cocaine exposure, especially heavy cocaine exposure, was associated with subtly negative interchanges, which may have a cumulative impact on infants' later development and their relationships with their mothers.     

Recognizing faces defined by texture gradients

Texture gradients can reveal surface orientation in a manner similar to shape from shading, and therefore provide an important cue for object recognition. In this study, we tested whether a complex 3-D object, such as a face, can be identified from texture gradients alone. The stimuli were laser-scanned faces for which the texture element was a fractal-noise pattern mapped onto the 3-D surface. An eight-alternative forced choice task was used in which participants matched a face defined by texture gradients to one of eight faces defined by shape from shading (Experiment 1) or by texture gradients (Experiment 2). On average, participants scored 24% and 18%, respectively, above chance in these experiments. Although this performance was much poorer than the performance based entirely on shape-from-shading stimuli (Experiment 3), the results suggest that texture gradient information may be used to recover surface geometry of complex objects.     

Visual perception of surface wrinkles

To study the relationship between visual perception of magnitude of wrinkles and geometrical parameters of surfaces, four potentially relevant parameters of the surface profile were considered: the variance (sigma2), the cutting frequency (Fc), the effective disparity curvature (Dce) of the wrinkled surface over the eyeball distance of the observer, and the frequency component of the disparity curvature (Dcf). Analysis of garment seams with varying amount of pucker showed that, while the logarithm for each of these four parameters has a strong linear relationship with the visually perceived magnitude of wrinkles, following the Fechner Law, the effective disparity curvature (Dce) and the frequency component of the disparity curvature (Dcf) with visual perception appeared stronger. This modeling may be an objective method for measuring magnitude of surface wrinkles.     

The lexical constituency model: some implications of research on Chinese for general theories of reading

The authors examine the implications of research on Chinese for theories of reading and propose the lexical constituency model as a general framework for word reading across writing systems. Word identities are defined by 3 interlinked constituents (orthographic, phonological, and semantic). The implemented model simulates the time course of graphic, phonological, and semantic priming effects, including immediate graphic facilitation followed by graphic inhibition with simultaneous phonological facilitation, a pattern unique to the Chinese writing system. Pseudocharacter primes produced only facilitation, supporting the model's assumption that lexical thresholds determine phonological and semantic, but not graphic, effects. More generally, both universal reading processes and writing system constraints exist. Although phonology is universal, its activation process depends on how the writing system structures graphic units.     

Multiple-object tracking is based on scene, not retinal, coordinates

This study tested whether multiple-object tracking-the ability to visually index objects on the basis of their spatiotemporal history-is scene based or image based. Initial experiments showed equivalent tracking accuracy for objects in 2-D and 3-D motion. Subsequent experiments manipulated the speeds of objects independent of the speed of the scene as a whole. Results showed that tracking accuracy was influenced by object speed but not by scene speed. This held true whether the scene underwent translation, zoom, rotation, or even combinations of all 3 motions. A final series of experiments interfered with observers' ability to see a coherent scene by moving objects at different speeds from one another and by distorting the perception of 3-D space. These reductions in scene coherence led to reduced tracking accuracy, confirming that tracking is accomplished using a scene-based, or allocentric, frame of reference.