From Spontaneous to Planned Urban Development and Quality of Life: the Case of Ho Chi Minh City

This paper studies the quality of life (QOL) that residents perceive in typical urban patterns in Ho Chi Minh City. Its major focus is to examine the improvement in the QOL through public intervention into the urban development process. There are four findings. First, moderate government intervention to correct market failures in areas where spontaneous urban development has occurred generates similar levels of satisfaction to areas with planned development. Second, urban planning is important as housing values and subjective satisfactions in planned areas are higher than those in spontaneous development areas. Third, redevelopment negatively affects the QOL in areas undergoing redevelopment. Finally, the contrast between the housing value and the subjective life satisfaction in spontaneous development areas undergoing redevelopment shows the problem of relying on the revealed preference assumption in traditional economics and the need for having alternative approaches.     

Developmental changes associated with cross-language similarity in bilingual children

The main goal of the present study was to investigate how the degree of orthographic overlap between translation equivalents influences bilingual word recognition processes at different stages of reading development. Spanish–Basque bilingual children with ages ranging from 8 to 15 years were tested in an explicit translation recognition task with a large set of items. Critically, the degree of cross-language similarity (i.e. the cognate status) between the references and the correct targets was manipulated along a continuum in order to investigate how the reliance on cross-language orthographic overlap varies as a function of reading experience. Results showed that younger children were significantly more sensitive to the cognate status of words than older children while recognising translation equivalents, and that this difference did not depend on the speed of response of the participants. These results demonstrate that the influence of cross-language similarity progressively diminishes as a function of increased exposure to print together with the maturation of the mechanisms responsible for language interference suppression, as suggested by developmental models of bilingual lexical access.     

句子加工的脑成像研究

近年来句子加工的脑成像研究大量涌现,并集中于揭示句子语义与语法加工的神经机制以及之间的联系。文章首先对这些研究所采用的范式加以分析与比较,从而将句子加工脑成像研究的研究思路与常用范式进行了归纳与总结。其次,讨论了语义加工与语法加工的神经机制,并根据现有的研究结果,对句子语义与语法两个成分在认知加工与神经机制上的共性与特性做出推论。最后,从语言的多样性以及影响句子加工的因素两个角度,对以后的句子加工脑成像研究做了展望。     

Children like dense neighborhoods: Orthographic neighborhood density effects in novel readers

Previous evidence with English beginning readers suggests that some orthographic effects, such as the orthographic neighborhood density effects, could be stronger for children than for adults. Particularly, children respond more accurately to words with many orthographic neighbors than to words with few neighbors. The magnitude of the effects for children is much higher than for adults, and some researchers have proposed that these effects could be progressively modulated according to reading expertise. The present paper explores in depth how children from 1st to 6th grade perform a lexical decision with words that are from dense or sparse orthographic neighborhoods, attending not only to accuracy measures, but also to response latencies, through a computer-controlled task. Our results reveal that children (like adults) show clear neighborhood density effects, and that these effects do not seem to depend on reading expertise. Contrarily to previous claims, the present work shows that orthographic neighborhood effects are not progressively modulated by reading skill. Further, these data strongly support the idea of a general language-independent preference for using the lexical route instead of grapheme-to-phoneme conversions, even in beginning readers. The implications of these results for developmental models in reading and for models in visual word recognition and orthographic encoding are discussed.     

When sanctions fail to increase cooperation in social dilemmas: considering the presence of an alternative option to defect

Previous social dilemma research has shown that sanctioning defection may enhance cooperation. The authors argue that this finding may have resulted from restricting participants to two behaviors (cooperation and defection). In this article, the authors introduce the concept of a "social trilemma" (a social dilemma in which an alternative option to defect is present) and tested the effect of a sanction. The authors show that a sanction only increased cooperation and collective interests in the traditional social dilemma. In a social trilemma, the sanction failed because it caused some people to choose the alternative option to defect. Moreover, the results indicate that this was especially the case when people did not expect fellow group members to cooperate. In this case, the sanction even worked counterproductive because it decreased collective interests. It is concluded that allowing individuals to consider alternative options to defect can reveal the potential detrimental effects of sanctioning systems for the collective.     

Pink for Girls,Red for Boys,and Blue for Both Genders: Colour Preferences in Children and Adults

Colours carry social connotations like pink for girls and blue for boys. In a cross-sectional study, we investigated whether such early gender coding might be reflected in absolute colour preferences in children and adults of both genders. In two studies, participants selected their favourite (and least favourite, Study 2) colour from an unrestricted sample of colours. We tested 129 Swiss children (Study 1, 10–14 years-old, 68 boys) and 180 Swiss adults (Study 2, 17–48 years-old, 88 men). In children, we observed that girls chose pink/purple as their favourite hue more often than boys did, the most common favourite hue in girls and boys was blue, and boys chose red as their favourite more often than girls did. In adults, we observed that both genders almost never choose pink as their favourite, blue was a common favourite colour, and women were more likely to favour red than were men. In an additional study (n?=?183 Swiss participants, 47 men), we tested whether liking of pink, blue, and red was related to emotion associations with these colours. Pink was associated with positive emotions to the same extent as blue and red. Women further associated more positive emotions with pink than did men. We conclude that some commonalities (blue) and gender differences (pink and red) exist in absolute colour preferences. These differences, however, cannot be fully accounted by emotional associations. We speculate about these gendered colour preferences in relation to gender stereotypes and status differences between men and women.

     

Perfectionism mediated the relationship between brain structure variation and negative emotion in a nonclinical sample

In maladaptive respects, perfectionism reflects an individual’s concern over making mistakes and doubting the quality of his or her own actions excessively, which would affect one’s emotion. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms associated with the perfectionism and negative affect. In this study, voxel-based morphometry was performed to identify the brain regions underlying individual differences in perfectionism, which was measured by the Chinese Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (CFMPS), in a large sample of nonclinical young adults. Our results showed that the two subdimensions of the perfectionism, concern over mistakes (CM) and doubts about actions (DA), were both positively correlated with the self-reported anxiety and depression as well as the gray matter volume (GMV) in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a pivotal brain region in cognitive control, affective state, and regulation. Moreover, CM, DA, and organization scores were respectively correlated with distributed brain regions involved in multiple cognitive and emotion processes. Our results furthermore revealed that the score of DA acted a mediational mechanism underlying the relationship between the GMV of ACC and self-rating negative affect (anxiety and depression). Taken together, these results might suggest the neuroanatomical basis of perfectionism and the association among the perfectionism, negative emotion, and brain architecture. This study emphasized that perfectionism could play a crucial role in the arousal of negative affect.     

When an Object Appears Unexpectedly: Object Circumvention in Adults

Obstacles often appear unexpectedly in our pathway and these require us to make immediate adjustments. Despite how regularly we encounter such situations only few studies have considered how we adjust to unexpected obstacles in the pathway that require us to walk around them. The authors considered how adults adjust to the possibility of an obstacle appearing and then also how foot placement is adjusted to circumvent an obstacle. Fifteen healthy adults walked down an 11-m walkway, initially they were told this was a clear pathway and nothing in the environment would change (no gate), they then performed a series of trials in which a gate may (gate close) or may not (gate open) partially obstruct their pathway. The authors found that mediolateral trunk velocity and acceleration was significantly increased when there was the possibility of an obstacle but before the obstacle appeared. This demonstrates an adaptive walking strategy that seems to enable healthy young adults to successfully circumvent obstacles. The authors also categorized foot placement adjustments and found that adults favored making shorter and wider steps away from the obstacle. They suggest this combination of adjustments allows participants to maintain stability while successfully circumventing the obstacle.     

英语阅读中单词注释对词汇学习的影响研究

本研究以中学生为被试,探讨了英语阅读过程中不同形式的单词注释对词汇学习的影响。结果发现：中文注释与英文注释对词汇获得的影响视不同学习水平与学习进程而异;阅读前、阅读中或阅读后呈现注释对词汇获得也具有不同的作用机制。