Effects of semantic discrimination of Chinese words on N400 component of event-related potentials.

20 subjects' event-related brain potentials were measured during a lexical decision task in which Chinese characters were used in both conditions of related (antonym) and unrelated words. Analysis indicated that the mean reaction time for unrelated words was 130 msec. longer than that elicited by related words. The condition of unrelated words elicited a significant N450, and an obvious P500 was evoked by related words at each of the 17 recording sites. Furthermore, the amplitudes of N210 and N450 were larger in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere but the amplitude of P500 was larger in the right hemisphere than in the left hemisphere.     

Landmark-based spatial search in honeybees. II.

Honeybees were trained to find sugar water at a fixed location in front of a rectangular block or a gap in a row of rectangular blocks aligned east-west. Bees learned to use both blocks and gaps to pinpoint a target place. In approach, the bees tended to head directly towards the block but not the gap. In approaching the gap, they tended to approach the wall, and then fly parallel to the wall until the gap was encountered. In approaching the block, they approached from varying directions. When the width of the block or gap was doubled, bees still searched at the same perpendicular distance from the landmark. When the height of the block was doubled, they searched farther away but not as far as double the distance on control tests, with variations across individuals. Near the target area, the bees tended to face almost parallel to the gap or block, turned slightly towards the landmark by 0–30°. In all setups, bees showed a tendency to search near the landmark, and to search on average closer than the training distance. The results confirm the basic processes identified for landmark-based search in bees, but show variations in how the steps are carried out.     

The social context of Hong Kong's booming elderly home industry

Hong Kong experienced a rapid increase in private homes for elderly people in recent years. This paper examines the social background of that development. Private elderly homes thrived in a context of rising demand due to changing demographics, particularly massive emigration secondary to political instability, which created a large potential market of elderly people in need of residential care. However, entrepreneurs would not be attracted unless it is a profitable business, and much of that profit is likely derived from social security payments to elderly people. Because the amount of social security benefits is way below the level required for purchasing good quality service in the private sector, many elderly people are bound to live in very poor residential settings. The preparation of this article was supported in part by CPHK Grant No. 903089. I am grateful to Alfred Chan, Man-fuk Leung, Alice Chong, Nicky Hamid, Murray Levine, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the article.     

锌对大鼠学习记忆作用的研究

锌参予体内200多种金属酶的合成,是机体必需的微量元素之一。近年来锌对精神、神经和行为活动方面的作用日益被重视。Sandstead(1985)报告母鼠孕期缺锌可引起子鼠脑发育异常。Prasal等研究指出缺锌可导致淡漠、嗜睡、活动减少、情绪紊乱和体     

Performance on inhibitory tasks does not relate to handedness in several small groups of Callitrichids

Animal Cognition - Brain lateralization, a trait ubiquitous in vertebrates and invertebrates, refers to structural differences between the left and right sides of the brain or to the left and right...     

Consumer intention to purchase and corporate social responsibility: Evidence from an experiment in an entrepreneurial context

Previous research has addressed the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives on consumer purchase intention (CPI). However, most of the empirical evidence is based on the analysis of mature large-scale firms; much less examines the effects of CSR initiatives on CPI in entrepreneurial contexts. In this study, we address this gap by investigating whether entrepreneurial start-ups' declaration of CSR engagement affects consumers' purchasing intent. We assert that consumers may consider firms' CSR engagement as a signal for unobserved product quality. We exploit a vignette experimental approach to test our theoretical predictions. In our experiment, participants received online invitations to subscribe to an electronic catalog that advertised various products supplied by entrepreneurial start-ups. The invitations are of five types, some of which presenting different CSR-related information on the suppliers to the participants. Overall, we find that the displayed information on CSR engagement promotes participants' willingness to subscribe to the electronic catalog, indicating that consumers will increase their purchase intentions for ethically oriented suppliers. Moreover, we find that among all the initiatives, external CSR initiatives (social contribution and environmental responsibility) promote consumers' intentions to purchase most effectively. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to explore the effects of different CSR initiatives on entrepreneurial start-ups in entrepreneurship literature. We highlight the heterogeneous effects of CSR initiatives on CPI, contributing new insights to research on CSR and consumer behavior.     

The ‘White Male Effect’ in perceptions of risk of dying from COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic people had to gauge their personal health risks in order to decide which protective behaviors to adopt. We explored whether mortality risk perceptions varied by demographic background. Using data from a nationally representative U.S. survey, we analyzed bi-weekly mortality estimates of 8339 individuals from 1 April 2020 to 21 July 2021. Consistent with a White Male Effect, White men estimated the risk of death to be lower than White women, non-White men, and non-White women. Furthermore, when linking those estimates to the actual risk of dying from COVID-19, as reflected in official fatality rates recorded by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), White men were indeed less likely to die from the coronavirus than would be expected based on their proportion of the populations. In contrast, deaths in non-White men and non-White women were higher than would be expected. Thus, subjective risk perceptions tracked objective mortality risks. Because White men tend to disproportionally hold positions with high decision-making power, although biased risk estimates may be less likely to have negative consequences for themselves, they may be especially detrimental to those for whom such decisions are made.     

How does exposure to masked individuals affect White Americans' attitudes toward Asian American and Pacific Islanders?

Across three studies, conducted between Spring 2020 and Spring 2021, we tested whether exposure to an Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) target person wearing a face mask would increase or decrease White Americans' perceived threat from and positivity toward AAPI individuals. Although results varied by study, a single-paper meta-analysis revealed that the masked (compared to unmasked) AAPI target resulted in greater positivity toward AAPIs, due to reduced perceptions of both symbolic threat to group values and realistic threat to group health. Positivity toward AAPIs did not reliably differ after exposure to a masked versus unmasked White target. Implications for interventions that encourage COVID-safe behaviors and combat anti-AAPI attitudes are discussed.     

Navigating uncertainty in human social decision-making: Consequences and coping strategies

Uncertainty is a fundamental aspect of human social life. Based on fruitful findings, the current review aims to establish a schema that outlines the relationship between uncertainty and human social decision-making: the influences of uncertainty on social decision-making (mainly prosocial behaviors) and the strategies commonly employed to reduce social uncertainty. Human prosocial behaviors are modulated by both social and nonsocial uncertainty. Specifically, uncertainty decreases prosocial behaviors by providing moral wiggling room or promoting loss aversion but also helps maintain relationships by mitigating negative interactions. Moreover, impression formation, impression updating, and compliance with social norms are crucial strategies for coping with social uncertainty, but they are subject to various biases. Finally, we highlight some important issues that need to be addressed in future studies. In summary, the current review deepens our understanding of the role of uncertainty in social behaviors.     

Food word processing in Chinese reading: A study of restrained eaters

Food-related attentional bias refers that individuals typically prioritize rewarding food-related cues (e.g. food words and food images) compared with non-food stimuli; however, the findings are inconsistent for restrained eaters. Traditional paradigms used to test food-related attentional bias, such as visual probe tasks and visual search tasks, may not directly and accurately enough to reflect individuals' food-word processing at different cognitive stages. In this study, we introduced the boundary paradigm to investigate food-word attentional bias for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. Eye movements were recorded when they performed a naturalistic sentence-reading task. The results of later-stage analyses showed that food words were fixated on for less time than non-food words, which indicated a superiority of foveal food-word processing for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. The results of early-stage analyses showed that restrained eaters spent more time on pre-target regions in the food-word valid preview conditions, which indicated a parafoveal food-word processing superiority for restrained eaters (i.e. the parafoveal-on-foveal effect). The superiority of foveal food-word processing provides new insights into explaining food-related attentional bias in general groups. Additionally, the enhanced food-word attentional bias in parafoveal processing for restrained eaters illustrates the importance of individual characteristics in studying word recognition.