Age-Related Differences in Metamemory Accuracy among the Elderly: The Effect of Declining Inhibitory Function

To explore the age-related difference in metamemory accuracy during older adulthood, we measured the metamemory calibration and resolution of older participants. In Study 1, we divided the participants into four groups by age: 60–64, 65–69, 70–74, and above 75 years. We used young adults as a contrast group. The results revealed the inconsistency of age-related differences in calibration and resolution. The young adults had higher calibration in global prediction than the four groups of older adults before the study, whereas there were no differences among the four elderly groups. There were no differences in resolution between the 60- to 64-year, 65- to 69-year and young adult groups, but these three groups had higher resolution than the 70- to 74-year and above 75-year groups for item-by-item prediction. In Study 2, we measured the older participants’ inhibitory function to explore whether impaired inhibitory function led to a decline in metacognitive ability in the elderly. The results showed that the inhibition function was highly correlated with the accuracy of judgments of learning (JOL) and can predict the accuracy of JOL to a certain extent.     

Collinear masking effect in visual search is independent of perceptual salience

Searching for a target in a salient region should be easier than looking for one in a nonsalient region. However, we previously discovered a contradictory phenomenon in which a local target in a salient structure was more difficult to find than one in the background. The salient structure was constructed of orientation singletons aligned to each other to form a collinear structure. In the present study, we undertake to determine whether such a masking effect was a result of salience competition between a global structure and the local target. In the first 3 experiments, we increased the salience value of the local target with the hope of adding to its competitive advantage and eventually eliminating the masking effect; nevertheless, the masking effect persisted. In an additional 2 experiments, we reduced salience of the global collinear structure by altering the orientation of the background bars and the masking effect still emerged. Our salience manipulations were validated by a controlled condition in which the global structure was grouped noncollinearly. In this case, local target salience increase (e.g., onset) or global distractor salience reduction (e.g., randomized flanking orientations) effectively removed the facilitation effect of the noncollinear structure. Our data suggest that salience competition is unlikely to explain the collinear masking effect, and other mechanisms such as contour integration, border formation, or the crowding effect may be prospective candidates for further investigation.     

大学生情绪社会分享的公众观

以189名大学生为被试,在开放式问卷预调查的基础上.编制包含4方面内容,78个项目的情绪社会分享公众观正式调查问卷.对210名大学生正式调查的结果表明:大学生认为情绪社会分享具有情绪改善、认知应对、人际融洽三类功能,具有传播负效、承载负效两类风险;分享对象的反应促进和反应阻断行为以及分享事件性质和分享限制行为影响分享过程.     

Testing a model of the predictors and consequences of body dissatisfaction

A cross-sectional study, testing a model of predictors and consequences of body dissatisfaction, was undertaken in Taiwan from December 30, 2006 to January 10, 2007. Two hundred and thirty-two female college students enrolled at a major university completed the self-administered questionnaire. Analytical results revealed that body dissatisfaction among respondents increased with BMI (beta=.32, p<.001), perceptions of how others viewed their bodies (beta=.38, p<.001), and upward social comparisons (beta=.17, p<.01). Body dissatisfaction also markedly influenced respondent weight-loss intentions (beta=.51, p<.001). Results imply that medical, psychological and social factors must be considered by school health educators wishing to understand the causes and consequences of body dissatisfaction among female college students.     

Age-related positivity enhancement is not universal: older Chinese look away from positive stimuli

Socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that with age, people are motivated to derive emotional meaning from life, leading them to pay more attention to positive relative to negative/neutral stimuli. The authors argue that cultures that differ in what they consider to be emotionally meaningful may show this preference to different extents. Using eye-tracking techniques, the authors compared visual attention toward emotional (happy, fearful, sad, and angry) and neutral facial expressions among 46 younger and 57 older Hong Kong Chinese. In contrast to prior Western findings, older but not younger Chinese looked away from happy facial expressions, suggesting that they do not show attentional preferences toward positive stimuli.     

The Roles of Relative Linguistic Proficiency and Modality Switching in Language Switch Cost: Evidence from Chinese Visual Unimodal and Bimodal Bilinguals

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - The current study investigated the mechanism of language switching in unbalanced visual unimodal bilinguals as well as balanced and unbalanced bimodal...     

条件推理和选择任务的关系：选择任务中的条件推理逻辑

要求大学生被试在相同的情境和规则下先后完成选择任务和条件推理任务,从而系统考察两项条件命题任务之间的关系。结果表明,当规则的语义表征意义为条件命题和反条件命题时,两项任务的反应模式具有一致性;当为双向条件和非条件命题时,两项任务的反应模式出现了分歧,而且四种推理形式和四张卡片之间不存在直接的对应关系。两项条件命题任务之间的关系表现在,它们可能享有共同的语义关系表征空间,但推理过程和策略有所不同。     

Contextual effects on number-time interaction

Time perception has long been known to be affected by numerical representations. Recent studies further demonstrate that when participants estimate the duration of Arabic numbers, number magnitude, though task-irrelevant, biases duration judgment to produce underestimation for smaller numbers and overestimation for larger numbers. Such effects were found in the present study to be significantly reduced when a weight unit gram was suffixed to the numbers rendering the mental magnitude differences between different numbers less distinctive. The effects were enhanced when a different unit kilogram was suffixed to the numbers enlarging the perceived magnitude differences between different numbers. The results indicate that effects of number magnitude on duration estimation should not be attributed to the mathematical differences between numbers but to how the numbers are perceived to differ from each other in magnitude in specific contexts when they denote concrete items. The results also provide new evidence for the theoretical proposal of a common generalized magnitude system and indicate that the system must be extended to include other action-oriented magnitudes, such as weight.