The Wick in the Candle of Learning: Epistemic Curiosity Activates Reward Circuitry and Enhances Memory

ABSTRACT— Curiosity has been described as a desire for learning and knowledge, but its underlying mechanisms are not well understood. We scanned subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they read trivia questions. The level of curiosity when reading questions was correlated with activity in caudate regions previously suggested to be involved in anticipated reward. This finding led to a behavioral study, which showed that subjects spent more scarce resources (either limited tokens or waiting time) to find out answers when they were more curious. The functional imaging also showed that curiosity increased activity in memory areas when subjects guessed incorrectly, which suggests that curiosity may enhance memory for surprising new information. This prediction about memory enhancement was confirmed in a behavioral study: Higher curiosity in an initial session was correlated with better recall of surprising answers 1 to 2 weeks later.     

记忆重构和信心评估:商标属性与使用经验的影响

记忆是重现,还是重构?已有理论存在争论。本研究以商标信息为实验材料,应用任务分离范式、元记忆检测范式等方法,探讨了商标属性和用户使用经验对记忆重构的影响。结果发现:(1)商标信息的正确回忆频数及成绩显著低于错误回忆的频数和成绩。(2)简单商标的记忆成绩高于复杂商标的记忆成绩;同时,忠实用户对商标信息的记忆成绩显著高于非忠实用户;(3)在回忆任务之前,人们对商标信息的回忆及其信心评估存在分离;但在回忆任务后二者的变化趋于一致。这表明,复杂程度对商标信息的记忆重构存在显著影响,而且存在用户类型差异;商标信息的记忆重构过程中元认知判断及信心评估会发生变化。     

祛病延年的良药--幽默

当今世界不少国家在紧张的劳作之余,创办各种新奇的幽默组织,借以消除疲劳,松弛情绪,增进健康。幽默杂志美国健康学家创办的幽默杂志《疯狂》被西欧一些国家读者评为世界最佳幽默杂志。被它挖苦过的社会时弊,常常成为美国公民口中流传的笑柄。勤奋的美国人在操劳之余,从《疯狂》     

Stigma building blocks: how instruction and experience teach children about rejection by outgroups

Gaining an understanding of intergroup relations and outgroup rejection is an important childhood development. Children learn about rejection by outgroups via their own experiences and external instruction. A comparison of the impact of experience and instruction on first-, third-, and fifth-grade children's evaluations of rejection by outgroups in a minimal-groups paradigm suggests that the relative impact of experience and instruction differs as children age. In Study 1, younger children were more influenced by instruction, and older children were more influenced by what they experienced for themselves. In Study 2, younger children were more influenced by instruction, even when that instruction conflicted with what they experienced; older children were more influenced by their own experiences, even when those experiences contradicted what they were told to expect. These findings suggest that children begin learning about outgroup rejection through instruction but start to rely more on their own experiences as they age.     

Personalized persuasion: tailoring persuasive appeals to recipients' personality traits

Persuasive messages are more effective when they are custom-tailored to reflect the interests and concerns of the intended audience. Much of the message-framing literature has focused on the advantages of using either gain or loss frames, depending on the motivational orientation of the target group. In the current study, we extended this research to examine whether a persuasive appeal's effectiveness can be increased by aligning the message framing with the recipient's personality profile. For a single product, we constructed five advertisements, each designed to target one of the five major trait domains of human personality. In a sample of 324 survey respondents, advertisements were evaluated more positively the more they cohered with participants' dispositional motives. These results suggest that adapting persuasive messages to the personality traits of the target audience can be an effective way of increasing the messages' impact, and highlight the potential value of personality-based communication strategies.     

On Public Aid to Christian Schools in the United States: A Reformed Christian Perspective

This paper seeks to provide a conceptual framework for understanding the topic of public aid to Christian schools in a Reformed Christian perspective. To do so, I need to clarify a Reformed Christian approach in regard to this topic and then review the studies of the issue in legal and educational aspects in the light of the Reformed perspective. Through reviewing legal and educational discussions, I argue that Christian schools are necessary for people to exercise their religious freedom and make a society more moral and spiritual and thus deserve receiving public aid. Nevertheless, public aid to religious schools needs to be carried out in a careful, restricted way.     

Effects of Racial Discrimination,Childhood Trauma,and Trauma Symptoms on Juvenile Delinquency in African American Incarcerated Youth

To understand racial disproportionality in juvenile delinquency, we studied relationships between 2 possible contributors: effects of manifestations of a structural factor (racism) and psychological consequences of trauma. Informed by Carter’s (2007) theory of race-based trauma, we explored the role of experiences of racial discrimination, childhood trauma, and trauma symptoms in juvenile delinquency through self-reported experiences of incarcerated African American youth. We found that childhood trauma, trauma symptoms, and racial discrimination experiences all significantly contributed to juvenile delinquency, but participants who experienced greater racial discrimination had higher posttraumatic stress symptoms and elevated delinquency rates. Considering the well-documented effects of trauma symptoms on juvenile delinquency, race-based trauma experiences might help us understand one aspect of racial disproportionality in juvenile delinquency.     

The Effect of Ad Skepticism and Celebrity Preference on Brand Attitude Change in Celebrity-Endorsed Advertising

The use of a celebrity endorser who is well recognized and favorably evaluated by the target viewers is a common strategy used by advertisers to increase the persuasiveness of an advertisement. Yet, at the same time, being skeptical of the claim being made by the celebrity endorser is the typical response of the viewers to such persuasion attempts. The present research examines how these effects potentially counterbalance each other as viewers evaluate the advertised brand in a low-involvement setting. The results show that the degree of ad skepticism and the relative allocation of attentional resources to celebrity and brand elements in advertisements determine how preference for a celebrity endorser is transferred to the advertised brand. The findings provide a more complete understanding of the psychological mechanisms by which celebrity preference influences brand attitude change than has previously been available. They indicate that ad skepticism may be the missing link in understanding the effectiveness of celebrity-endorsed advertising.     

Correlating the internal length in strain gradient plasticity theory with the microstructure of material

The internal length is the governing parameter in strain gradient theories which among other things have been used successfully to interpret size effects at the microscale. Physically, the internal length is supposed to be related with the microstructure of the material and evolves during the deformation. Based on Taylor hardening law, we propose a power-law relationship to describe the evolution of the variable internal length with strain. Then, the classical Fleck–Hutchinson strain gradient theory is extended with a strain-dependent internal length, and the generalized Fleck–Hutchinson theory is confirmed here, by comparing our model predictions to recent experimental data on tension and torsion of thin wires with varying diameter and grain size. Our work suggests that the internal length is a configuration-dependent parameter, closely related to dislocation characteristics and grain size, as well as sample geometry when this affects either the underlying microstructure or the ductility of the material.