The Perception of Ideal Best Friends by Chinese Adolescents

This study examines the characteristics of ideal best friends endorsed by Chinese adolescents. A comprehensive measure of person perception was used in order to assess those dimensions of personality where gender, similarity, and complementarity might be related to the rating of ideal best friends. Results indicated that ideal female best friends were rated higher on the communal dimension of Helpfulness; ideal male best friends were rated higher on the agentic dimensions of Extroversion, Assertiveness, and Application. Similarity effects were found for Openness to Experience, Extroversion, and Emotional Stability; complementarity effects for Assertiveness. These results were explained in terms of Chinese gender stereotypes and the requirements for harmonious dyadic interaction.     

领域知识与自我解释策略间关系的实验研究

从领域知识的个体差异的角度,研究领域知识与自我解释策略之间的关系,探讨自我解释在示例学习中的作用。研究结果表明,（１）在学习示例时,高领域知识组被试倾向于使用发现意义和建立新旧信息间联结的解释策略对示例进行认知加工;低领域知识组被试主要采用句法加工策略对示例进行加工;（２）领域知识对监控活动的制约,主要体现在被试监控到理解失败之后所采取的对策上。高领域知识组被试利用解释策略解决问题,低领域知识组被试利用句法加工策略解决问题。     

Epidemic genital retraction syndrome: environmental and personal risk factors in southern China

Koro is the term used to define the fear that one's sex organ is retracting into the body and that the complete retraction of the organ will result in death. While koro is found mainly among the Chinese and other Asian societies near China, the condition is most prevalent in southern China, where repeated epidemics have occurred. In that region, koro is found only among the Hans, the dominant ethnic group, and is over-represented among people under age 24 years. Koro provokes considerable anxiety in the individual in question and his/her family and neighbors, and is more prevalent among males than females. Men try to pull the penis out from the body or to prevent it from shrinking further by tying a string around the penis or securing it with a clamping device. Some Asian women have reported shrinking breasts, nipples, or labia. Relatives and neighbors of the same sex often help to rescue the organ in question, especially in applying anchoring devices. Others may also believe a person has koro and attempt to rescue their organ without the individual's consent. Injury to the sex organ, including bruises, bleeding, and infection, is common and sometimes results in permanent damage. In general, however, koro attacks are acute, brief, and tend not to recur. The 1984-85 koro epidemic in Hainan Island and Leizhou Peninsula is reviewed to shed light upon prevailing cultural attitudes and beliefs, news and rumors about koro, and anxiety in neighborhoods which may be causative environmental risk factors for koro. Education, age, and marital status are considered as individual risk factors. Koro in China is best described as a social sickness supported by cultural myths which tend to affect young people who are deprived of proper sex information to explain their physical development.     

Assessment of Major Life Events for Hong Kong Adolescents: The Chinese Adolescent Life Event Scale

Previous Chinese research on adolescent life stress adopted life event scales that were directly translated from Western measures. To address the methodological and cultural issues overlooked by the import approach, the present research aimed at constructing a life event scale for Hong Kong adolescents. Study 1 was conducted to congregate items for the Chinese Adolescent Life Event Scale (CALES). The CALES contains 44 items derived from 618 Hong Kong adolescents. Study 2 revealed adequate test–retest reliability and criterion-related validity for the CALES. Moreover, the CALES yielded stronger relationships with depression than did the translated life event measures. Results suggest that the CALES is appropriate for assessing life events for Hong Kong adolescents. Both unique features of the CALES and life events found only in the translated measures are examined. Implications for Chinese research on life stress are discussed.     

Parental stress, coping styles, and social supports in chinese families with hepatitis-b-carrying children

The purpose of the study was to examine the hypothesis that parents’ psychological well-being can be affected by a child’s illness and their social situations. In this study, we discuss the roles of coping, social support and situational context related to stress. These factors cannot only affect stress levels but can also influence whether the individual adopts a certain type of coping style for stressful events. Parental stress, coping styles and social support were compared between groups of parents of Hepatitis B virus (HBV) carrier children or healthy children. Results showed that parents of affected children were significantly more stressed and psychologically at risk, and tended to mobilize personal resources and to rely more on themselves to solve stressful life events. They also sought help from social resources more often than did parents of healthy children. Parents of healthy children had a higher number of close friends and relatives available to them. Ninety Chinese parents and their HBV or healthy children participated in this study. These families were all living in the city of Guangzhou, China.     

Timing light and tone signals in pigeons

Pigeons' ability to time light and tone stimuli was examined in four experiments. In Experiment 1, two groups of pigeons were trained to discriminate between 2- and 8-s durations of lights or tones and then were transferred to reversal or nonreversal discriminations in the alternate modality. Pigeons learned the light discrimination faster than the tone discrimination and showed immediate positive intermodal transfer from tone to light but not from light to tone. In Experiments 2-4, the peak procedure was used to study birds' timing of 15- and 30-s fixed-interval light and tone signals. Peak times on empty trials under baseline conditions closely approximated the length of fixed-interval signals. When pigeons were tested with time-outs and intermodal switches introduced midway through an empty trial, they tended to reset the timing mechanism and begin timing again from 0 s. With both estimation and production procedures, pigeons were less accurate when timing the tone stimuli than when timing the light stimuli. A comparison of these data with data from timing experiments with rats suggests several possible differences in timing processes between pigeons and rats.     

The process of verifying affirmative and negative sentences against pictures

Experiments 1 and 2 investigated sentence context effects on picture encoding in a sentence-picture verification and a picture naming task, respectively. The results showed that a picture following a sentence was encoded faster when the two were congruent than when they were incongruent. Experiment 3 compared two conditions: Under one condition, true affirmatives, false affirmatives, true negatives, and false negatives were mixed in each block of presentation. Under the other condition, different sentence types were presented in different blocks. The results showed (l) that errors committed in verification were largely negation errors, but seldom falsification errors, and (2) that there was a decrease of falsification time, but a resistance to change in negation time from the mixed to the blocked presentation. These results were interpreted to mean that falsification time results from a longer time to encode the picture and to confirm or disconfirm the truth index value by the polarity of the sentence in false affirmatives and true negatives than in true affirmatives and false negatives, whereas negation time and negation errors result from a response-suppression operation.     

注意分心对定义一体化编码的影响

通过考察编码阶段注意分心对定义一体化条件下联结记忆成绩的影响,探究定义一体化编码对注意资源的依赖程度。使用注意分心范式,在记忆编码过程操作无分心、奇偶分心和大小分心条件,比较不同注意条件下的联结记忆成绩。结果发现:与无分心条件相比,定义一体化下的联结记忆成绩在两种分心条件下没有显著变化,而造句下的联结记忆成绩在两种分心条件下显著降低。当前发现表明了定义一体化编码较少依赖于注意资源,这深化了对定义一体化编码机制的认识。     

拓广分部评分模型下计算机自适应测验变加权选题策略

摘要: 在计算机自适应测验中, 对0-1评分模型按a-分层选题是高效安全的策略,但多级评分模型的项目难度/步骤参数有多个而无法直接应用这种选题策略。信息函数能够很好地综合项目所有参数及能力参数,但最大信息量选题策略会影响考试安全。本文提出一种变加权选题策略,它通过调用一个与信息量相关联的函数,该函数与信息量成正比,与区分度的某个幂函数成反比,从而达到既能综合项目所有参数又按a分层的效果。在GPCM模型下用蒙特卡罗实验进行比较研究,结果显示新的选题策略总体效果比已有相关结果好。     

Distinguishing genuine from spurious causes: a coherence hypothesis

Two opposing views have been proposed to explain how people distinguish genuine causes from spurious ones: the power view and the covariational view. This paper notes two phenomena that challenge both views. First, even when 1) there is no innate specific causal knowledge about a regularity (so that the power view does not apply) and 2) covariation cannot be computed while controlling for alternative causes (so that the covariation view should not apply), people are still able to systematically judge whether a regularity is causal. Second, when an alternative cause explains the effect, a spurious cause is judged to be spurious with greater confidence than otherwise (in both cases, no causal mechanism underlies the spurious cause). To fill the gap left by the traditional views, this paper proposes a new integration of these views. According to the coherence hypothesis, although a genuine cause and a spurious one may both covary with an effect in a way that does not imply causality at some level of abstraction, the categories to which these candidate causes belong covary with the effect differently at a more abstract level: one covariation implies causality; the other does not. Given this superordinate knowledge, the causal judgments of a reasoner who seeks to explain as much as possible with as few causal rules as possible will exhibit the properties that challenge the traditional views. Two experiments tested and supported the coherence hypothesis. Both experiments involved candidate causes that covary with an effect without implying causality at some level, manipulating whether covariation that implies causality has been acquired at a more abstract level. The experiments differed on whether an alternative cause explains the effect.