The association between self-reported mother-child attachment and social initiative and withdrawal in Chinese school-aged children

The purpose of this study was to examine relations between mother-child attachment and social initiative and withdrawal in Chinese urban children. Participants were 487 school-aged children (247 boys, 240 girls) in Shanghai, the People's Republic of China. Data on mother-child attachment styles were collected from children's self-reports. Information concerning social initiative and social withdrawal (i.e., shyness and social disinterest) was obtained from peer nomination. Path analyses revealed that secure attachment was positively associated with social initiative, whereas ambivalent-insecure attachment was positively associated with shyness. However, avoidant-insecure attachment was not significantly associated with social disinterest. In addition, a number of gender and developmental differences were also observed.     

Culture and the distinctiveness motive: constructing identity in individualistic and collectivistic contexts

The motive to attain a distinctive identity is sometimes thought to be stronger in, or even specific to, those socialized into individualistic cultures. Using data from 4,751 participants in 21 cultural groups (18 nations and 3 regions), we tested this prediction against our alternative view that culture would moderate the ways in which people achieve feelings of distinctiveness, rather than influence the strength of their motivation to do so. We measured the distinctiveness motive using an indirect technique to avoid cultural response biases. Analyses showed that the distinctiveness motive was not weaker-and, if anything, was stronger-in more collectivistic nations. However, individualism-collectivism was found to moderate the ways in which feelings of distinctiveness were constructed: Distinctiveness was associated more closely with difference and separateness in more individualistic cultures and was associated more closely with social position in more collectivistic cultures. Multilevel analysis confirmed that it is the prevailing beliefs and values in an individual's context, rather than the individual's own beliefs and values, that account for these differences.     

Defend or repair? Explaining responses to in-group moral failure by disentangling feelings of shame, rejection, and inferiority

Research on shame about in-group moral failure has yielded paradoxical results. In some studies, shame predicts self-defensive motivations to withdraw. In other studies, shame predicts pro-social motivations, such as restitution. We think that this paradox can be explained by disentangling the numerous appraisals and feelings subsumed under the label "shame." In 2 studies, we asked community samples of Norwegians about their in-group's discrimination against the Tater minority. Confirmatory factor analysis validated the measures of the appraisals and feelings used in Study 1 (N = 206) and Study 2 (N = 173). In both studies, an appraisal of the in-group as suffering a moral defect best predicted felt shame, whereas an appraisal of concern for condemnation of the in-group best predicted felt rejection. In both studies, felt rejection best predicted self-defensive motivation, whereas felt shame best predicted pro-social motivation. Implications for conceptualizing and studying shame are discussed.     

Bitter struggle for survival: Evolved bitterness embodiment of survival motivation

In four experiments, we tested the hypothesis that survival motivation is grounded in the physical experience of bitter taste. Chinese (Experiment 1) and non-Chinese participants (Experiment 2) who tasted a bitter drink were quicker than the control participants who drank plain water in responding to survival-related words in a lexical decision task. Chinese participants who chewed bitter lotus root were more likely to discount the future than those who chewed sour lemon (Experiment 3). Finally, surprise retention tests revealed that experiencing a bitter rather than sweet taste led to higher retention of words processed for survival rather than mating scenarios (Experiment 4). These findings support our prediction that the taste of bitterness embodies survival motivation because both are adaptations to harsh environment.     

Unimanual and bimanual continuous movements benefit from visual instructions in persons with down syndrome

ABSTRACT The authors' aim was to understand how persons with Down syndrome (DS) perform different tasks and to assess if there were any differences in performance based on the type of instructions. This is important because of neurological differences in persons with DS and neurological demands for performing different types of tasks. Twenty right-handed participants with DS, 20 chronological age-matched (CA), and 20 mental age-matched (MA) performed unimanual, bimanual, discrete, and continuous drumming following visual, auditory, and verbal instructions. Overall, discrete drumming was performed with shorter movement times than continuous drumming and unimanual drumming was performed with shorter movement amplitude than bimanual drumming. With respect to instructions, persons with DS performed with smaller amplitudes, thus more efficient movements, following the visual instructions than auditory and verbal instructions for all types of tasks, whereas CA performed similarly with all instructions and MA performed with smaller amplitudes with visual instructions than auditory instructions. These results suggest that visual instruction provides the best information for people with DS to aid in performance of many different types of movements.     

Psychometric properties of a Chinese translation of the political skill inventory

Ferris and colleagues defined political skill in organizations as "the ability to effectively understand others at work and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one's personal and/or organizational objectives." In this study, the psychometric properties of a Chinese translation of the Political Skill Inventory were investigated, supporting construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validities. The results suggested that the Chinese translation retained a four-factor structure. Political skill was positively correlated with self-monitoring, conscientiousness, political savvy, emotional intelligence, extraversion, agreeableness, and proactive personality, and was negatively correlated with trait anxiety and external locus of control. After controlling for age, sex, and job tenure, political skill was predictive of task performance, work contribution, and interpersonal help.     

Gait speed measure: the effect of different measuring distances and the inclusion and exclusion of acceleration and deceleration

The purposes of this study were to examine the effects of different distances and the inclusion and exclusion of acceleration and deceleration distances on the measurement of self-paced and fastest gait speeds in younger and older adults. The self-paced and fastest gait speeds of younger and older adults were measured over 4-m and 10-m walkways with the acceleration and deceleration distances included and excluded in the measuring distance. The results indicated gait speeds (both self-paced and fastest) measured over different distances were comparable only if a distance for acceleration and deceleration was excluded from the measuring distance to obtain stable and comparable gait speeds. Similar results were found for younger and older groups.     

Am I the Only One This Supervisor is Laughing at? Effects of Aggressive Humor on Employee Strain and Addictive Behaviors

Prior literature on humor primarily documents its positive effects on employees’ attitudes and behaviors, though increasing research on aggressive humor suggests some conflicting viewpoints. This paper proposes a model based on social comparison and attribution theories to examine the influence of supervisors’ aggressive humor on employees’ strain and addictive behaviors. The tests of the research model entailed a 2‐wave study with 243 frontline employees from 4 manufacturing companies of a group corporation in China. The results showed that supervisors’ aggressive humor with employees related positively to employees’ strain. This positive association became stronger when the supervisors did not use aggressive humor with the peers of the focal employees. Employees’ strain mediated the interactive effects of supervisors’ aggressive humor with the focal employees and those with their peers on employees’ addictive behaviors (e.g., problematic use of Internet, alcohol, and tobacco). As well as having practical implications, this study offers theoretical insights for research into humor, leadership, and addictive behaviors.     

Modeling cross-situational word-referent learning: prior questions

Both adults and young children possess powerful statistical computation capabilities--they can infer the referent of a word from highly ambiguous contexts involving many words and many referents by aggregating cross-situational statistical information across contexts. This ability has been explained by models of hypothesis testing and by models of associative learning. This article describes a series of simulation studies and analyses designed to understand the different learning mechanisms posited by the 2 classes of models and their relation to each other. Variants of a hypothesis-testing model and a simple or dumb associative mechanism were examined under different specifications of information selection, computation, and decision. Critically, these 3 components of the models interact in complex ways. The models illustrate a fundamental tradeoff between amount of data input and powerful computations: With the selection of more information, dumb associative models can mimic the powerful learning that is accomplished by hypothesis-testing models with fewer data. However, because of the interactions among the component parts of the models, the associative model can mimic various hypothesis-testing models, producing the same learning patterns but through different internal components. The simulations argue for the importance of a compositional approach to human statistical learning: the experimental decomposition of the processes that contribute to statistical learning in human learners and models with the internal components that can be evaluated independently and together.     

Competition and cooperation among similar representations: toward a unified account of facilitative and inhibitory effects of lexical neighbors

One of the core principles of how the mind works is the graded, parallel activation of multiple related or similar representations. Parallel activation of multiple representations has been particularly important in the development of theories and models of language processing, where coactivated representations (neighbors) have been shown to exhibit both facilitative and inhibitory effects on word recognition and production. Researchers generally ascribe these effects to interactive activation and competition, but there is no unified explanation for why the effects are facilitative in some cases and inhibitory in others. We present a series of simulations of a simple domain-general interactive activation and competition model that is broadly consistent with more specialized domain-specific models of lexical processing. The results showed that interactive activation and competition can indeed account for the complex pattern of reversals. Critically, the simulations revealed a core computational principle that determines whether neighbor effects are facilitative or inhibitory: strongly active neighbors exert a net inhibitory effect, and weakly active neighbors exert a net facilitative effect.