Neural and behavioral effects of interference resolution in depression and rumination

Individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) often ruminate about their depression and their life situations, impairing their concentration and performance on daily tasks. We examined whether rumination might be due to a deficit in the ability to expel negative information from short-term memory (STM), and fMRI was used to examine the neural structures involved in this ability. MDD and healthy control (HC) participants were tested using a directed-forgetting procedure in a short-term item recognition task. As predicted, MDD participants had more difficulty than did HCs in expelling negative, but not positive, words from STM. Overall, the neural networks involved in directed forgetting were similar for both groups, but the MDDs exhibited more spatial variability in activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region critical for inhibiting irrelevant information), which may contribute to their relative inability to inhibit negative information.     

Do Differences in Grammatical Form between Languages Explain Differences in Ontology between Different Philosophical Traditions?: A Critique of the Mass-Noun Hypothesis

It is an assumed view in Chinese philosophy that the grammatical differences between English or Indo-European languages and classical Chinese explain some of the differences between the Western and Chinese philosophical discourses. Although some philosophers have expressed doubts about the general link between classical Chinese philosophy and syntactic form of classical Chinese, I discuss a specific hypothesis, i.e., the mass-noun hypothesis, in this essay. The mass-noun hypothesis assumes that a linguistic distinction such as between the singular terms and the predicates is sufficient to justify or necessarily leads to a specific ontological distinction such as the distinction between the particular and the universal. I argue that one cannot read off semantic properties simply from syntactic ones and hence the syntactic differences do not automatically translate into the semantic differences between languages, that the syntactic features of Chinese nouns do not have explanatory significance in explaining why the particular-universal problem does not arise in the classical period of Chinese philosophy, and that the part-whole ontology allegedly informed by the mass-noun-like semantics does not provide a natural or intuitive picture of the language-world relation.     

两种条件下的妒忌分离:间接测量的优势

通过间接测量和直接测量考察被试的妒忌感受(实验1),并测量两种测量条件下被试的敏感性和反应偏向的分离(实验2).结果发现:间接测量组的被试比直接测量组报告更多的妒忌感受,两种条件下被试所采用的判定标准没有变化,但间接测量中被试的敏感性高于直接测量,这说明两种测量测得了妒忌的不同层面,间接测量在测量妒忌的无意识方面更具优势;而两种条件下被试对于妒忌者都比被妒忌者要更为敏感,则表明了被试在无意识中对妒忌者更为偏好;两种条件下对于妒忌的评定均无性别差异.     

真实自豪与自大自豪倾向量表的修订及适用

对Tracy和Robins编制的真实自豪与自大自豪倾向量表进行中文版修订并初步考察我国大学生自豪感的特点,分别选取202名和484名大学生进行问卷预测和正式施测。验证性因素分析表明修订后量表仍保持英文版的双维结构,两分量表的α系数为0.785和0.743,重测信度为0.978和0.952。修订后量表具有良好的心理测量学指标,可以用于我国大学生的测试。进一步发现我国大学生的真实自豪显著高于自大自豪,大学生自豪感不存在性别差异,自大自豪存在显著的年级差异。     

Understanding antecedents of continuance intention in social-networking services

Given the extreme advances and large investments in social-networking services (SNS), it has become important to analyze users' decision-making processes in order to understand their continued use of SNS. This study attempted to develop an integrated model that incorporates subjective norm into the expectation-confirmation model. The research model was empirically tested within the context of Cyworld. The analysis revealed that the proposed theoretical model provided an in-depth understanding of user continuance behavior toward SNS. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.     

Seeing and doing: ability to act moderates orientation effects in object perception

We investigated whether the impact of an object's orientation on a perceiver's actions (an orientation effect) is moderated by the perceiver's ability to act on the object in question. To do this, we manipulated the physical location of presented objects (Experiment 1) and the perceiver's action capacity (Experiment 2). Regardless of the physical distance of the object, manual responses were sensitive to the object's orientation (the orientation effect) when the object was within the participant's action range but not when the object was outside of the action range. These results support an embodied view of object perception and shed light on peripersonal space representation.     

Embodied Cultural Cognition: Situating the Study of Embodied Cognition in Socio‐Cultural Contexts

Embodiment research has demonstrated that cognition is grounded in bodily interactions with the environment and that abstract concepts are tied to the body’s sensory and motor systems. Building upon this embodiment perspective and advancing our understanding, we discuss the extension of embodied cultural cognition. We propose that some associations between bodily experiences and abstract concepts are not randomly formed; rather, the development of such associations is situated in a socio‐cultural context, informed by cultural imperatives, values, and habits. We draw evidence supporting this view of embodied cultural cognition in body–mind linkages manifested in construal of emotions, time perception, person perception, social power, and moral reasoning. To further extend this research avenue that synthesizes the studies of embodied cognition and culture, we also suggest potential future research directions inspired by this view. This embodied cultural cognition account is useful in understanding and organizing accumulating discoveries of cultural variations in embodiments; it also highlights the social situatedness of embodied cognition and is, therefore, highly compatible with theorizing and research in social and cultural psychology.     

Impaired body but not face perception in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder

Background. Empirical evidence involving the processing of social information by patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) has been relatively scarce. Our study investigated the perceptual abilities of patients with OCD to recognize human faces and bodies. Method. Fifty‐four drug‐free or drug‐naïve patients with OCD and 42 healthy controls performed discrimination tasks consisting of four types of stimuli: two sets of faces that were manipulated with regard to configuration and features, human bodies, and chairs. The stimuli were presented in upright and upside‐down orientations. Results. Patients with OCD were significantly less accurate in discriminating pairs of bodily postures implying actions. However, we found no significant differences between patient and control groups in the ability to recognize faces and chairs. The inversion effects for bodies and faces were also comparable between the two groups. Conclusions. The current findings suggest that patients with OCD experience difficulty in perceiving static forms of bodily postures, but are able to adequately recognize human faces. Our data indicate a selective deficit in the perception of bodily postures in those with OCD and suggest that this deficit is probably not related to the abnormal configurational processing of social objects.     

当前科学无神论面临的难题和专家建议

近年来,社会上许多研究科学无神论的专家学者对当前我国社会中无神论教育宣传的现状,以及比较普遍地存在的信仰缺失,而各种有神论却呈流行趋势的现象,发表了自己的看法。他们的一些认识、思考和建议,对我们进一步加强科学无神论的工作,有着重要的启发。