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.     

Rheumatoid arthritis is associated with negatively variable impacts on domains of female sexual function: evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis

To systematically review the literature to identify the impact of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) on specific female sexual function domains. A meta-analysis was performed and the related literature were searched in MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, CNKI, CBM and Web of Science databases, and in reference lists of articles and systematic reviews. Score of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) was used as the outcome measurement, and mean differences (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Five studies were included, including 346 women with RA and 237 healthy female controls. Each domain of the FSFI score: lubrication (MD, ?2.48; 95% CI, ?3.69, ?1.28), orgasm-1.71 (?2.09, ?1.33), sexual desire-1.27 (?1.59, ?0.95), satisfaction-1.67 (?2.18, ?1.16), arousal-1.83 (?2.85, ?0.82), pain-1.57 (?2.43, ?0.70) and the total score ?8.84 (?11.88, ?5.79) were lower in RA women than healthy controls. Furthermore, lubrication dimension was most severely affected especially. This meta-analysis showed that female RA patients scored lower in each dimension of FSFI, mostly in the lubrication domain. It demonstrated that targeted interventions should be done to improve their sexual function. Future well-designed researches with larger sample sizes are necessary to evaluate the potential risk factors which determine female sexual dysfunction.     

Association between cognitive vulnerability to depression - dysfunctional attitudes and glycaemic control among in-patients with type 2 diabetes in a hospital in Beijing: a multivariate regression analysis

This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the relationship between glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and cognitive vulnerability to depression (dysfunctional attitudes) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. A total of 245 valid records from June 2016 to December 2016 were collected from a hospital in Beijing. Participants were asked to complete four questionnaires (Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale, Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire, Zung Self-rating Depression Scale, and World Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument-Short Form) to assess mental health and quality of life. Multivariate regression analysis was conducted to determine the correlations between HbA1c, mental health, quality of life and other clinical variables. The results showed that dysfunctional attitudes were associated with HbA1c, with a standardized regression coefficient (β) of .13 (p = .01), although 1 h C-peptide (β = ?.75, p < .0001) was the most significant predictor of HbA1c in the regression model. The results indicated that dysfunctional attitudes, as a cognitive vulnerability to depression, were a relevant factor in HbA1c, although further studies are needed to establish the nature of the connection between dysfunctional attitudes and glycaemic control in diabetes patients.     

Posttraumatic growth and parental bonding in young adults of parents with physical disabilites: testing mediation model of resilience

Positive parent-child relationships are associated with positive youth development, but little is known about the relationships between parental bonding, resilience, and posttraumatic growth, which is positive change resulting from the struggle with trauma. This study examined a mediation model among 119 female young adults with disabled parents. The model included resilience as a mediator of the relationship between the paternal Care and posttraumatic growth. The results revealed that resilience did mediate the relationship between the paternal Care and posttraumatic growth. The findings indicate that paternal Care helps to foster female young adults’ resilience, which benefits their growth after suffering adversities.     

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.     

Testing domain general learning in an Australian lizard

A key question in cognition is whether animals that are proficient in a specific cognitive domain (domain specific hypothesis), such as spatial learning, are also proficient in other domains (domain general hypothesis) or whether there is a trade-off. Studies testing among these hypotheses are biased towards mammals and birds. To understand constraints on the evolution of cognition more generally, we need broader taxonomic and phylogenetic coverage. We used Australian eastern water skinks (Eulamprus quoyii) with known spatial learning ability in three additional tasks: an instrumental and two discrimination tasks. Under domain specific learning we predicted that lizards that were good at spatial learning would perform less well in the discrimination tasks. Conversely, we predicted that lizards that did not meet our criterion for spatial learning would likewise perform better in discrimination tasks. Lizards with domain general learning should perform approximately equally well (or poorly) in these tasks. Lizards classified as spatial learners performed no differently to non-spatial learners in both the instrumental and discrimination learning tasks. Nevertheless, lizards were proficient in all tasks. Our results reveal two patterns: domain general learning in spatial learners and domain specific learning in non-spatial learners. We suggest that delineating learning into domain general and domain specific may be overly simplistic and we need to instead focus on individual variation in learning ability, which ultimately, is likely to play a key role in fitness. These results, in combination with previously published work on this species, suggests that this species has behavioral flexibility because they are competent across multiple cognitive domains and are capable of reversal learning.     

The influence of induced mood on music preference

The purpose of this study was to clarify the impact of different self-centered moods on music preference without listening to music. Participants’ affective state (sad vs. happy vs. neutral) were experimentally manipulated through the mood induction procedure, and then their preferences for music were ascertained through self-reports. To understand participants’ internal motivations for their choices, we also asked them to indicate how appropriate he/she felt it would be to select the different music types as well as why they made such choices. Results suggested that participants in a sad mood were inclined to listen to sad (and slow) music, those in a happy mood preferred to listen to happy (and fast) music, and those in a neutral mood did not consistently prefer to listen to neutral music. In addition, participants were averse to sad music when they were in a happy or neutral mood; while they showed no aversion to happy music when they were in a sad mood. In conclusion, individuals select valence-consistent music when they are in an autobiographical memory-induced mood state.     

返回抑制和情绪信息注意偏向的竞争：来自眼动的证据

返回抑制与情绪注意偏向是研究视觉注意的两个视角,二者的优先性一直存在争议。本研究采用线索—靶子范式,在靶子位置呈现情绪图片,结合眼动技术,对整体反应时进行分解,探讨情绪信息与实验任务相关条件下的返回抑制和情绪注意偏向。结果发现：返回抑制效应出现;情绪信息与实验任务的相关性影响了个体对情绪信息早期的注意捕获;有效线索对情绪信息的加工抑制有限,情绪信息的加工表现出了自动化倾向。     

Developmental Psychology Research Based on Educational Practice in China

As a developmental psychologist who has conducted studies in educational practice for about thirty years. A series of developmental psychology studies rooted in Chinese culture were performed, and the findings led us to focus on students’ potential in growth, developmental fullness and educational ecosystem. This article mainly talked about three aspects: the viewpoints about the nature of psychological development formed in the context of school; promoting students’ development by continually constructing cultural ecosystem; the characteristics of researches by taking the perspective of cultural ecology and discoveries about deficiency in basic abilities. All of these were based on educational objectives and conducted in educational practice, so they were integrative and dynamic transformation. In educational intervention, aesthetic potential was also found. The relation between aesthetic potential and full development was put forward.     

Beyond the leftward limit of the perceptual span: Parafoveal processing to the left of fixation in Chinese reading

During reading, Chinese readers have been found to obtain useful visual information from one character to the left to three characters to the right of fixation. The perceptual span is asymmetrical, and its leftward extent seems to be limited compared with the rightward extent. We conducted an experiment to investigate whether Chinese readers could process written information beyond the leftward extent of the perceptual span. We did this by using a variation of the gaze-contingent display change paradigm (Rayner, Cognitive Psychology, 81, 65–81, 1975) in order to manipulate the parafoveal “postview” that was available to the left of where readers were fixating. Each sentence contained an invisible boundary. Once the readers’ eyes crossed the boundary, all of the characters to the left of the boundary except for one, two, or three characters directly to the left of the boundary were replaced with visually similar characters. The change lasted for only one single fixation, resulting in four different “postview” conditions including a control condition (n ? 1, n ? 2, n ? 3, control). The results showed that, compared with the control condition, there were more regressions to the display change area immediately after readers’ eyes crossed the boundary in the n ? 1, n ? 2, and n ? 3 conditions, demonstrating that readers can acquire information from the three characters to the left of fixation at least.