The hope of the future: The experience of pregnancy influences women’s implicit space–time mappings

It has long been observed that speakers employ spatial concepts “front” and “back” to talk about temporal concepts “past” and “future.” However, the direction of space-time mappings varies across cultures. According to Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH), people’s implicit associations between space and time are conditioned by their temporal focus. Here we tested whether pregnancy can affect Chinese women’s temporal focus and thereby influence their space-time mappings. One of the most striking characteristics of pregnant women noted by previous research is their future-oriented thought. Based on this, we predicted that pregnant women should be more future-focused. Consistent with this prediction, the results demonstrated that pregnant women tended to be more future-focused than non-pregnant women and demonstrated a greater tendency to conceptualize the future as in front of them, supporting the TFH. The current research offers a new perspective that culture-external factors such as pregnancy can also influence people’s spatialization of time.     

Different Effects of Cognitive Shifting and Intelligence on Creativity

The relationship between creativity and executive control has long been controversial. Some researchers view creative thinking as a defocused process with little executive control involvement, whereas others claim that executive control plays a vital role in creative thinking. In this study, we focused on one subcomponent of executive control, cognitive shifting, and examined its relationship with creativity by using latent variable analysis and structural equation modeling. We also analyzed whether this relation was mediated by intelligence. The results showed that: (a) cognitive shifting ability had a positive relationship with creativity, but only on the quantitative aspects (fluency and flexibility); (b) Intelligence had a positive relationship with both quantitative and qualitative aspects (originality) of creativity, and its effect on qualitative aspect was stronger than that on the quantitative aspect; (c) There was a mediating effect of intelligence on the relationship between creativity cognitive and shifting.     

Victimization Mediates the Longitudinal Association Between Depressive Symptoms and Violent Behaviors in Adolescence

Despite evidence of a positive link between depressive symptoms and violent behaviors, the pathways underlying this longitudinal association remain unknown. Depressive symptoms might drive and reinforce victimization which in turn could increase risk of individuals becoming violent towards others. Thus, we tested whether victimization mediated the link between depressive symptoms and violent behaviors using a 6-year longitudinal study of a community sample of adolescents. The sample included 682 Dutch adolescents (54% boys) from an ongoing longitudinal study RADAR (Research on Adolescent Development and Relationships). From ages 13 to 18 years, depressive symptoms, victimization experiences, and violent behaviors were annually assessed. We conducted longitudinal mediation analyses to test pathways to violence in adolescents with depressive symptoms. Longitudinal analyses revealed that victimization mediated the association between depressive symptoms and violent behaviors from early to late adolescence. As part of this, we found that adolescents’ depressive symptoms predicted victimization, and this victimization increased risk of subsequent violent behaviors. In conclusion, links between depressive symptoms and violent behaviors are potentially important to understand adolescent development. Decreasing the occurence of victimization is likely to be an important target for the prevention of violent behaviors in adolescents with depressive symptoms.     

Hintikka’s Independence-Friendly Logic Meets Nelson’s Realizability

Inspired by Hintikka’s ideas on constructivism, we are going to ‘effectivize’ the game-theoretic semantics (abbreviated GTS) for independence-friendly first-order logic (IF-FOL), but in a somewhat different way than he did in the monograph ‘The Principles of Mathematics Revisited’. First we show that Nelson’s realizability interpretation—which extends the famous Kleene’s realizability interpretation by adding ‘strong negation’—restricted to the implication-free first-order formulas can be viewed as an effective version of GTS for FOL. Then we propose a realizability interpretation for IF-FOL, inspired by the so-called ‘trump semantics’ which was discovered by Hodges, and show that this trump realizability interpretation can be viewed as an effective version of GTS for IF-FOL. Finally we prove that the trump realizability interpretation for IF-FOL appropriately generalises Nelson’s restricted realizability interpretation for the implication-free first-order formulas.     

父子依恋、母子依恋与儿童应激下皮质醇反应的关系

本研究以北京115名五、六年级的学生为被试,采用儿童版特里尔社会应激测试(Trier Social Stress Test for Children,TSST-C),探究父子依恋、母子依恋与儿童应激下皮质醇反应的关系。研究分别在基线阶段、TSST-C开始前、TSST-C结束后、TSST-C结束后的10分钟、25分钟和50分钟收集儿童的唾液样本,并让儿童完成亲子依恋问卷。采用SPSS 20.0进行方差分析和回归分析。结果发现:(1)安全型父子依恋儿童的应激下皮质醇反应显著高于不安全型父子依恋儿童,反映在皮质醇值和皮质醇基于增加的曲线下面积(area under the curve with respect to increase,AUCI)两个指标上;(2)不同母子依恋类型儿童的应激下皮质醇反应(即皮质醇值和AUCI)不存在显著差异;(3)在控制了人口学变量之后,父子依恋依旧可以显著地正向预测儿童的皮质醇反应(皮质醇AUCI),但母子依恋对儿童皮质醇反应的预测作用不显著,且父子依恋对儿童皮质醇反应的预测作用边缘显著大于母子依恋对儿童皮质醇反应的预测作用。研究结果表明,安全型父子依恋与儿童应激下更高的皮质醇反应相关。     

Effects of computer‐aided instruction on the implementation of the MSWO stimulus preference assessment

This study evaluated a self‐instructional online training package to teach students and staff to conduct a stimulus preference assessment using the multiple‐stimulus without replacement procedure. The training package included a self‐instructional manual and video modeling and was delivered online. Training was evaluated using a multiple‐probe design across a total of six university students and four staff members. Overall, students improved from a mean of 35% correct in baseline to a mean of 94% correct following training, and staff improved from a mean of 23% correct in baseline to a mean of 87% correct following training. During retention and generalization simulated assessments conducted from 7 to 17 days following training, all participants performed considerably above baseline. The online delivery of the self‐instructional manual plus video modeling has tremendous potential for providing an effective method for teaching individuals to conduct stimulus preference assessments without face‐to‐face instruction.     

Socioeconomic status and hippocampal volume in children and young adults

An individual's socioeconomic status (SES) is often viewed as a proxy for a host of environmental influences. SES disparities have been linked to variance in brain structures particularly the hippocampus, a neural substrate of learning and memory. However, it is unclear whether the association between SES and hippocampal volume is similar in children and adults. We investigated the relationship between hippocampal volume and SES in a group of children (n = 31, age 8–12 years) and a group of young adults (n = 32, age 18–25 years). SES was assessed with four indicators that loaded on a single factor, therefore a composite SES scores was used in the main analyses. Hippocampal volume was measured using manual demarcation on high resolution structural images. SES was associated with hippocampal volume in the children, but not in adults, suggesting that in childhood, but not adulthood, SES‐related environmental factors influence hippocampal volume. In addition, hippocampal volume, but not SES, was associated with scores on a memory task, suggesting that net effects of postnatal environmental factors, captured by SES, are more distal determinants of memory performance than hippocampal volume. Longitudinal investigation of the association between SES, hippocampal volume and cognitive functioning may further our understanding of the putative neural mechanisms underlying SES‐related environmental effects on cognitive development.     

Positive factors associated with quality of life among Chinese patients with renal carcinoma: a cross-sectional study

Quality of life and positive psychological variables has become a focus of concern in patients with renal carcinoma. However, the integrative effects of positive psychological variables on the illness have seldom been reported. The aims of this study were to evaluate the quality of life and the integrative effects of hope, resilience and optimism on the quality of life among Chinese renal carcinoma patients. A cross-sectional study was conducted at the First Hospital of China Medical University. 284 participants completed questionnaires consisting of demographic and clinical characteristics, EORTC QLQ-C30, Adult Hope Scale, Resilience Scale-14 and Life Orientation Scale-Revised from July 2013 to July 2014. Pearson’s correlation and hierarchical regression analyses were performed to explore the effects of related factors. Hope, resilience and optimism were significantly associated with quality of life. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that hope, resilience and optimism as a whole accounted for 9.8, 24.4 and 21.9% of the variance in the global health status, functioning status and symptom status, respectively. The low level of quality of life for Chinese renal carcinoma patients should receive more attention from Chinese medical institutions. Psychological interventions to increase hope, resilience and optimism may be essential to enhancing the quality of life of Chinese cancer patients.     

Perceiving high social mindfulness during interpersonal interaction promotes cooperative behaviours

Social mindfulness refers to individual's respect and protection of others’ options in interpersonal interaction. The object‐choosing task is a traditional paradigm to assess social mindfulness. Individuals with high social mindfulness would choose the nonunique object so that others would have more options; on the contrary, individuals with low social mindfulness would choose the unique object, which limits others’ choices. No prior study has examined whether perceiving people with different levels of social mindfulness affects one's cooperation. Based on this background, two experiments were conducted to address this question. In both experiments, a confederate participant's (Player A's) social mindfulness was manipulated by setting the frequency that Player A chose the unique and the nonunique objects. Then, participants were asked to interact with Player A in the public goods game (Experiment 1) or in the centipede game (Experiment 2). Convergent results showed that compared to those interacting with a socially unmindful person, participants interacting with a person perceived as socially mindful contributed more resources in the public goods game and chose to pass on more rounds in the centipede game. These findings suggest that perception of others’ high social mindfulness enhances one's own cooperative behaviour.     

General Need for Autonomy and Subjective Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis of Studies in the US and East Asia

Self-determination theory proposes that human beings have universal basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which when satisfied lead to well-being. The current meta-analysis synthesized the correlations between the need for autonomy and subjective well-being. More specifically, because some researchers have questioned the role of autonomy in well-being in non-Western cultures, our meta-analysis focused on the results reported from studies conducted in the United States (US, a typical individualist culture) and East Asian countries (typical collectivist cultures). Random-effects analyses using 36 independent samples (22 from the US and 14 from East Asian samples including China and Japan) totaling 12,906 participants showed a moderate correlation (r = .46, p < .001) between autonomy and subjective well-being. The difference between correlations for studies conducted in the East and West was not significant (Δr = .05, p > .05). Overall, this study lends support to self-determination theory’s proposition that autonomy is a universal psychological need and provides suggestions for cultural practices and policies.