An exploration of Taiwanese adolescents' impulsive buying tendency

The purpose of this study was to examine via a questionnaire the personal characteristics and impulsive buying tendencies of 15- to 19-year-old Taiwanese adolescents. Results indicated that the impulsive buying was significantly associated with gender, age, and amount of pocket money available. Females indicated more impulsive buying than did males, and gradually increased with age. Impulsive buying significantly increased with the increase in the amount of pocket money available. Possible extensions of the research in this area are offered.     

Stereotype content model explains prejudice for an envied outgroup: Scale of anti-Asian American Stereotypes

The Stereotype Content Model hypothesizes anti-Asian American stereotypes differentiating two dimensions: (excessive) competence and (deficient) sociability. The Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes (SAAAS) shows this envious mixed prejudice in six studies. Study 1 began with 131 racial attitude items. Studies 2 and 3 tested 684 respondents on a focused 25-item version. Studies 4 and 5 tested the final 25-item SAAAS on 222 respondents at three campuses; scores predicted outgroup friendships, cultural experiences, and (over)estimated campus presence. Study 6 showed that allegedly low sociability, rather than excessively high competence, drives rejection of Asian Americans, consistent with system justification theory. The SAAAS demonstrates mixed, envious anti-Asian American prejudice, contrasting with more-often-studied contemptuous racial prejudices (i.e., against Blacks).     

Thematic relations in adults' concepts

Concepts can be organized by their members' similarities, forming a kind (e.g., animal), or by their external relations within scenes or events (e.g., cake and candles). This latter type of relation, known as the thematic relation, is frequently found to be the basis of children's but not adults' classification. However, 10 experiments found that when thematic relations are meaningful and salient, they have significant influence on adults' category construction (sorting), inductive reasoning, and verification of category membership. The authors conclude that concepts function closely with knowledge of scenes and events and that this knowledge has a role in adults' conceptual representations.     

Sex differences in intercultural communication apprehension,ethnocentrism, and intercultural willingness to communicate

Communication predispositions influence interactions between individuals from different cultures. Three such predispositions have been found to affect behavior in intercultural contexts: Apprehension about intercultural communication, ethnocentrism, and intercultural willingness to communicate. This study examined differences between men (n = 130) and women (n = 175) on those three predispositions. The analysis showed that men reported experiencing higher apprehension about intercultural communication, being more ethnocentric than women, and being less willing to communicate interculturally than women. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Testing the bidirectional relationship between belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and psychological distress: A five-wave longitudinal study

Previous studies have primarily focused on understanding why people believe conspiracy theories, especially during societal crises (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). The investigation of how such conspiracy beliefs would influence people's mental well-being has just begun recently. The present research aims to address this crucial question by testing the relationships between psychological distress and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs with a five-wave longitudinal study. On the one hand, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs could be more appealing to people with heightened distress, as these theories apparently help people to make sense of the uncertainty and life-threatening disease outbreak. On the other hand, conspiracy theories could be a source of existential threat and thus, would induce rather than reduce psychological distress. We tested these possibilities empirically by a series of cross-lagged model analyses. Using the random intercept cross-lagged panel model analysis, we only found a between-person association but not a cross-lagged within-person relationship between the two. COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs was predicted by being more politically conservative. These findings were further corroborated by the supplementary latent growth curve analyses. Overall, our findings suggest that conspiracy beliefs may not induce or reduce psychological distress in the context of COVID-19.     

Effects of preceding context on discrimination of voice onset times

When discriminating pairs of speech stimuli from an acoustic voice onset time (VOT) continuum (for example, one ranging from /ba/ to /pa/), English-speaking subjects show a characteristic performance peak in the region of the phonemic category boundary. We demonstrate that this "category boundary effect" is reduced or eliminated when the stimuli are preceded by /s/. This suppression does not seem to be due to the absence of a phonological voicing contrast for stop consonants following /s/, since it is also obtained when the /s/ terminates a preceding word and (to a lesser extent) when broadband noise is substituted for the fricative noise. The suppression is stronger, however, when the noise has the acoustic properties of a syllable-initial /s/, all else being equal. We hypothesize that these properties make the noise cohere with the following speech signal, which makes it difficult for listeners to focus on the VOT differences to be discriminated.     

脑复康、石杉碱甲、绞股蓝、豆腐果甙和樟柳碱对动物旷场行为的影响

脑复康、石杉碱甲、绞股蓝、豆腐果甙和樟柳碱都是近年来研制的新的中枢神经药物。除脑复康以外,它们都是由我国的植物化学家首次从中草药中提取的新的生物碱或有效成分。本文报道了脑复康、石杉碱甲、绞股蓝、豆腐果甙和樟柳碱对动物旷场行为的影响。结果表明,脑复康、石杉碱甲、绞股蓝和豆腐果甙对动物的旷场行为产生明显的抑制反应,而樟柳碱则使动物的旷场行为引起兴奋反应。     

Overconfident prediction of future actions and outcomes by self and others

In a follow-up study to Dunning, Griffin, Milojkovic, and L. Ross (1990), which had investigated the phenomenon of overconfidence in social prediction, two samples of first-year undergraduates were invited to make predictions about their own future responses (and, in the case of Sample 2, also those of their roommates) over the months ahead. These predictions were accompanied by confidence estimates and were evaluated in the light of actual responses reported later by the subjects in question. The primary finding was that self-predictions, like social predictions, proved to be consistently overconfident. As in Dunning et al., moreover, overconfidence could be traced to two sources. First, expressions of particularly high confidence rarely proved to be warranted; as confidence increased, the gap between accuracy and confidence widened. Second, predictions that went against relevant base rates yielded very low accuracy in the face of relatively unattenuated confidence levels. The implications of these results are discussed, and one potentially important underlying mechanism--the failure to make adequate inferential allowance for the uncertainties of situational construal--is proposed for further research.     

同时颜色对比机制的空间特性

为研究同时颜色对比机制的空间特性,本实验用光学投影方法产生出不同空间频率的同时颜色对比光栅。实验结果表明,同时颜色对比机制具有低通空间频率反应特性,即随空间频率下降,颜色对比效应增强。这一结果可能为同时颜色对比机制参与图形探测的推论提供一个实验支持。实验中也测试了几种不同条件下人眼对比敏感度函数。     

恒河猴对数多少概念的高次抽象判断

本实验训练三只恒河猴在多个非概念性和多种概念性的符号线索指令下,对同时呈现的从2到7三个数目刺激的多少概念进行高次抽象判断。一只被试猴学会了在三种符号线索交替指令下能对多、中、少作出正确的选择判断,出色完成全部程序的13个训练课题,其他两只猴成绩差些。本实验进一步证实了恒河猴具有抽象的数多少概念。实验还表明恒河猴能对中间数值作出正确判断,说明动物具有客观对象量值的序列概念。实验中符号线索实际上是语汇性符号,具有指代意义,在这种抽象符号指令下的数多少概念判断是更高层次的抽象判断。