关于学业不良学生考试焦虑及考试焦虑形成机制的研究

本研究以小学四年级学生80名、初中一年级学生157名、高中一年级学生89名,共326名学生为被试,采用实验法和测验法研究了学业不良学生的考试焦虑状况和考试焦虑形成的心理机制。研究结果表明：各学习年限段学业不良者的考试焦虑水平普遍高于学业优秀者,尤其初中学业不良者与学业优秀者之间差异极显著;来自智力与学科学习活动挫折可以导致学生焦虑水平提高。     

Peer Attributions and Action Plans for Underachievement: Implications for Peer Counseling

Students playing the role of peer counselors blamed failing students for their poor performances by attributing them to internal, controllable factors.     

When “different” means “worse”: In-group prototypicality in changing intergroup contexts

An experiment with 213 participants provided evidence for in-group projection—the generalization of distinctive in-group attributes to a superordinate category. The frame of reference for in-group (German) judgments was manipulated by presenting either Italians or the British as an out-group. Results showed that attributes on which Germans differed from each out-group were accentuated not only in in-group judgments but also when judging Europeans. By adapting features of the superordinate category to those of the in-group, the in-group's similarity to, and the out-group's deviation from, the prototype of the superordinate category were maintained, if not emphasized. Further, higher in-group prototypicality—compared to out-group prototypicality—for the superordinate category was related to negative out-group attitudes. In-group projection was reduced when a complex representation of the superordinate category was primed.     

A Longitudinal Test of the Model of Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition

Using data from a longitudinal study of college students, this study assessed the relationships among the threat perceptions of realistic threat and intergroup anxiety, the ideological motives of system justification and social dominance orientation (SDO), and political conservatism. Those who had higher perceptions of realistic threat and intergroup anxiety at the end of their first year of college showed higher levels of system justification and SDO at the end of their second and third years of college, controlling for precollege expressions of each variable. Higher levels of these two ideological motives at the end of students' second and third years of college were associated with more politically conservative attitudes at the end of students' fourth year of college, again controlling for precollege expressions. These longitudinal results are discussed in terms of a model of political conservatism as motivated social cognition.     

“We” are familiar but “It” is not: Ingroup pronouns trigger feelings of familiarity

The notion that language can shape social perception has a long history in psychology. The current work adds to this literature by investigating the relationship between ingroup-designating pronouns and perceptions of familiarity. In two experiments, participants were exposed to nonsense syllables that were primed with ingroup (e.g., we) and control (e.g., it) pronouns before perceptions of the syllables’ familiarity (Experiments 1 and 2) and positivity (Experiment 2) were assessed. Because previous work has shown that ingroup pronouns are perceived positively (Perdue, Dovidio, Gurtman, & Tyler, 1990), and that positivity can trigger familiarity (e.g., [Garcia-Marques et al., 2004] and [Monin, 2003]), we predicted that syllables primed with ingroup-designating pronouns would be perceived as more familiar and positive than would syllables primed with control pronouns. These predictions were confirmed. Additionally, Experiment 2 provided suggestive evidence that the effect of ingroup pronouns on perceived familiarity is mediated by positivity. Implications of these results for the literatures on how language shapes intergroup biases and on how positivity triggers feelings of familiarity are discussed.     

Support for harmful treatment and reduction of empathy toward blacks: “Remnants” of stereotype activation involving Hurricane Katrina and “Lil’ Kim”

Two experiments involving White participants tested the influence of media-based Black stereotypes on subsequent responses to Black and White persons-in-need. Experiment 1 showed that priming the “Black criminal” stereotype through exposure to photographs of Blacks looting after Hurricane Katrina produced greater application of the criminal stereotype and support for harmful treatment toward Black evacuees-in-need (i.e., police firing gun shots directly over evacuees’ heads) relative to control conditions. Experiment 2 showed that priming the “promiscuous Black female” stereotype through exposure to sexual rap music elicited greater application of the promiscuity stereotype and reduced empathy for a Black pregnant woman-in-need relative to control conditions. The influence of priming Black stereotypes through media exposure on support for harmful treatment and empathic responses was mediated by stereotypical attributions.     

Locomotion, assessment, and regulatory fit: Value transfer from “how” to “what”

Regulatory fit is experienced when people pursue a goal in a manner that sustains their regulatory orientation. Previous research on promotion and prevention orientations has found that regulatory fit increases people’s perception that a decision they made was “right,” which in turn transfers value to the decision outcome, including being willing to pay more for a product than those who chose the same product without regulatory fit (Higgins, 2000; Higgins et al., in press). We predicted that the effect of regulatory fit on monetary value could be generalized to locomotion and assessment orientations. Participants were willing to pay over 40% more for the same book-light when it was chosen with a strategy that fit their regulatory orientation (assessment/“full evaluation”; locomotion/“progressive elimination”) than when it was chosen with a non-fit strategy.     

Cognitive behavior modification: ‘Motivated learning’ reading treatment with subprofessional therapy-technicians

A method of treating reading deficits based upon an extrinsic motivational system previously employed successfully with a single subject was extended to eighteen additional subjects. The junior-high age subjects included retarded children in special classes, several emotionally disturbed children, and culturally deprived children. The method of training used in the original study was designed to be simple to administer and simple to record the performance of the child. Thus, it was hypothesized that subprofessional personnel could be employed to administer the treatment. Adult volunteers and high school seniors were used as the therapy-technicians.

The eighteen Ss were given 38.2 hr of training in daily half-hour sessions, during which period the average reinforcement earned was $22.29. The mean number of single word reading responses was 94,425. The rate of reading accelerated over the period of training even though the reading material became more difficult. This occurred during a period when progressively less (about one-fourth as much) reinforcement was given per reading response. A mean of 593.5 new words were learned and 70.9 per cent of these were retained in a long-term test. The attention, attendance, cooperation, and diligent work behavior of the various children were maintained in good strength throughout the duration of the study. The results suggest that research be conducted to develop methods for treatment of behavioral deficits that can be widely applied by subprofessional therapy-technicians supervised by clinical psychologists.     

“I am not guilty” vs “I am innocent”: Successful negation may depend on the schema used for its encoding

Negations (e.g., “Jim is not guilty”) are part of our daily language and communication. Linguistic and non-linguistic negations can occur when receivers counter-argue what communicators are saying, when hypotheses are disconfirmed, or through negative cognitive responses and many other social interactive processes. Our study explores how negations are encoded by considering the predictions of two theoretical models. According to the fusion model, the core of a negated message and the negation marker are integrated into one meaningful unit. Thus, Jim in the example might be encoded within the schema “innocence.” According to the schema-plus-tag model, a negated message is represented as a core supposition and a negation tag, allowing for dissociation of the two at a later point in time. We compare the two models by examining the nature of inferences that are facilitated by negations. Our results show that the existence of a schema that accommodates the meaning of the original negation is critical in determining how a negation will be encoded. When such a schema is not readily available, processing a negated message facilitates negation-incongruent associations, in line with predictions of the schema-plus-tag model. This model is also supported by analyses of respondents’ memory. We discuss implications of these findings for the communication of negated information, for discounting theories, and for the assessment of the truth of incoming information.     

Thurstonian-type representations for “same-different” discriminations: Probabilistic decisions and interdependent images

A general Thurstonian-type representation (with stochastically interdependent images and probabilistic decisions) for a “same-different” discrimination probability function is a model in which the two stimuli are mapped into two generally interdependent random images and taking on their values in some “perceptual” space; and the realizations of these two random images in a given trial determine the probability with which and in this trial are judged to be different. While stochastically interdependent, and are selectively attributed to (influenced by), respectively, and , which is understood as the possibility of conditioning and on some random variable R that renders them stochastically independent, with their conditional distributions selectively depending on, respectively, and . A general Thurstonian-type representation is considered “well-behaved” if the conditional probability with which and , given a value of the conditioning random variable R, fall within two given subsets of the perceptual space, possess appropriately defined bounded directional derivatives with respect to and . It is shown that no such well-behaved Thurstonian-type representation can account for possessing two basic properties: regular minimality and nonconstant self-similarity. At the same time, an alternative to Thurstonian-type modeling (a model employing “uncertainty blobs” in stimulus spaces instead of random variables in perceptual spaces) is readily available that predicts these two properties “automatically”.     

Thurstonian-type representations for “same-different” discriminations: Deterministic decisions and independent images

A discrimination probability function obtained in the “same-different” paradigm assigns to every ordered pair of stimuli the probability with which they are judged to be different. This function is said to possess the regular minimality property if, for any stimulus pair ,

     

Motivated learning for the development of autonomous systems

A new machine learning approach known as motivated learning (ML) is presented in this work. Motivated learning drives a machine to develop abstract motivations and choose its own goals. ML also provides a self-organizing system that controls a machine’s behavior based on competition between dynamically-changing pain signals. This provides an interplay of externally driven and internally generated control signals. It is demonstrated that ML not only yields a more sophisticated learning mechanism and system of values than reinforcement learning (RL), but is also more efficient in learning complex relations and delivers better performance than RL in dynamically-changing environments. In addition, this paper shows the basic neural network structures used to create abstract motivations, higher level goals, and subgoals. Finally, simulation results show comparisons between ML and RL in environments of gradually increasing sophistication and levels of difficulty.     

Event-related cerebral hemodynamics reveal target-specific resource allocation for both “go” and “no-go” response-based vigilance tasks

Transcranial Doppler sonography was used to measure cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) in the right and left cerebral hemispheres during the performance of a 50-min visual vigilance session. Observers monitored a simulated flight of unmanned aerial vehicles for cases in which one of the vehicles was flying in an inappropriate direction relative to its cohorts. Two types of vigilance tasks were employed: a traditional task in which observers made button press (“go”) responses to critical signals, and a modification of the traditional task called the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) in which “go” responses acknowledged nonsignal events and response withholding (“no-go”) signified signal detection. Signal detections and global CBFV scores declined over time. In addition, fine-grained event-related analyses revealed that the detection of signals was accompanied by an elevation of CBFV that was not present with missed signals. As was the case with the global scores, the magnitude of the transient CBFV increments associated with signal detection also declined over time, and these findings were independent of task type. The results support the view of CBFV as an index of the cognitive evaluation of stimulus significance, and a resource model of vigilance in which the need for continuous attention produces a depletion of information-processing assets that are not replenished as the task progresses. Further, temporal declines in the magnitude of event-related CBFV in response to critical signals only is evidence that the decrement function in vigilance is due to attentional processing and not specific task elements such as the required response format.     

Questioning Chase and Simon's (1973) “Perception in Chess”: The “experience recognition” hypothesis

Pattern recognition lies at the heart of the cognitive science endeavor. In this paper, we provide some criticism of this notion, using studies of chess as an example. The game of chess is, as significant evidence shows, a game of abstractions: pressures; force; open files and ranks; time; tightness of defense; old strategies rapidly adapted to new situations. These ideas do not arise on current computational models, which apply brute force by rote-memorization. In this paper we assess the computational models of CHREST and CHUMP, and argue that chess chunks must contain semantic information. This argument leads to a new and contrasting claim, as we propose that key conclusions of Chase and Simon's (1973) influential study stemmed from a non-sequitur. In the concluding section, we propose a shift in philosophy, from “pattern recognition” to a framework of “experience recognition”.