Resting Heart Rate Mediates the Relationship between Parenting Style and Callous-Unemotional Traits in Chinese Children

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Despite increasing knowledge of social and biological risk factors for callous-unemotional (CU) traits, relatively less is known about how these...     

Flexible Computerized Adaptive Tests to Detect Misconceptions and Estimate Ability Simultaneously

The Scaling Individuals and Classifying Misconceptions (SICM) model is an advanced psychometric model that can provide feedback to examinees’ misconceptions and a general ability simultaneously. These two types of feedback are represented by a discrete and a continuous latent variable, respectively, in the SICM model. The complex structure of the SICM model brings difficulties in estimating both misconception profile and ability efficiently in a linear test. To overcome this challenge, this study proposes a flexible computerized adaptive test (FCAT) design as a new test delivery method to increase test efficiency by administering an individualized test to examinees. We propose three item selection methods and two transition criteria to determine adaptive steps based on the needs of estimating one or two latent variables. Through two simulation studies, we demonstrate how to select an appropriate item selection method for an adaptive step and what transition criterion should be used between two adaptive steps. Results reveal the combination of the item selection method and the transition criterion could improve the estimation accuracy of a specific latent variable to a different extent and thus provide further guidance in designing an FCAT.     

The Other Accent Effect in Talker Recognition: Now You See It,Now You Don't

The existence of the Language Familiarity Effect (LFE), where talkers of a familiar language are easier to identify than talkers of an unfamiliar language, is well-documented and uncontroversial. However, a closely related phenomenon known as the Other Accent Effect (OAE), where accented talkers are more difficult to recognize, is less well understood. There are several possible explanations for why the OAE exists, but to date, little data exist to adjudicate differences between them. Here, we begin to address this issue by directly comparing listeners’ recognition of talkers who speak in different types of accents, and by examining both the LFE and OAE in the same set of listeners. Specifically, Canadian English listeners were tested on their ability to recognize talkers within four types of voice line-ups: Canadian English talkers, Australian English talkers, Mandarin-accented English talkers, and Mandarin talkers. We predicted that the OAE would be present for talkers of Mandarin-accented English but not for talkers of Australian English—which is precisely what we observed. We also observed a disconnect between listeners’ confidence and performance across different types of accents; that is, listeners performed equally poorly with Mandarin and Mandarin-accented talkers, but they were more confident with their performance with the latter group of talkers. The present findings set the stage for further investigation into the nature of the OAE by exploring a range of potential explanations for the effect, and introducing important implications for forensic scientists’ evaluation of ear witness testimony.     

创伤后应激障碍个体对威胁刺激的注意偏向：眼动研究的证据

对威胁刺激的注意偏向是创伤后应激障碍(PTSD)个体的一种表现。近年来, 研究者利用眼动技术探讨了注意偏向的加工特点及其内在机制。尽管针对是否存在注意定向加速、注意解除困难或注意回避的研究结果并不一致, 但都试图为验证如警戒-回避模型、注意保持模型等提供眼动证据。未来研究在记录PTSD个体注视模式时, 不仅需要从多个维度构建、整合PTSD个体的眼动模型, 也要结合多种技术从多模态角度共同考察PTSD个体的威胁信息注意偏向机制。     

The Impact of Affective States and Affective Shifts on Creative Ideation and Evaluation

This study aims to examine the impact of affective states and affective shifts on ideation and evaluation of creativity. Affects were induced by a two‐stage imagination procedure of recalling autobiographical experiences. Three periods of divergent thinking were measured to represent the participants’ creative ideation at different times. Creative evaluation was measured by estimating the originality of each response provided by the participants. The results indicate that (a) during the initial period of ideation, groups with positive affect obtain better creative ideation than the groups with neutral or negative affect. (b) The ideation in positive affect groups gradually decreases over time, while the ideation in negative affect groups gradually increases over time. (c) During the evaluation of originality, groups with negative affect have a higher proportion of over‐estimates and a lower proportion of under‐estimates than groups with positive affect. The viewpoints of cognitive tuning theory, which posit that the affective state influences creativity, are supported.     

EAST ASIA AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE—A PERSONAL QUEST

This essay is a reflection on the ways we understand East Asia, as well as how East Asia is related to our knowledge construction. In spite of the personal tone, which I use strategically to formulate arguments in a carefully designed narrative flow, the article remains critical throughout and its conclusion is clear: exploration of the essence of East Asian civilization can constitute a meaningful effort to reevaluate and even restructure our current world of knowledge.     

The Semantic Network Model of Creativity: Analysis of Online Social Media Data

The central hypothesis of Semantic Network Model of Creativity is that creative people, who are exposed to more information that are both novel and useful, will have more interconnections between event schemas in their associations. The networks of event schemas in creative people’s minds were expected to be wider and denser than those in less creative people’s minds. Based on this theory, data from Chinese online social media, also known as “Weibo microblogging,” were analyzed. Each user’s score consisted of the metric of coverage, which represented the spread of the network, as well as the metric of density, which represented the interconnections among nodes in the network. The results showed that occupations had a significant effect on people’s creativity score. Academic scholars and writers in general had higher scores compared to other groups, such as entertainment celebrities and sport stars. The implications and limitations of this method of quantifying people’s creativity were discussed.     

Parental Migration and Rural Left-Behind Children’s Mental Health in China: A Meta-Analysis Based on Mental Health Test

Parental migration has been an important predictor of left-behind children’s developmental outcomes. Based on the ecological model of rural left-behind children’s development, we systematically reviewed studies related to rural left-behind children’s mental health in China and investigated left-behind children’s mental health and its influencing factors. Thirty-two studies involving 28,629 participants met the inclusion criteria were included in our meta-analysis to compare mental health of left-behind children and non-left-behind children. Twenty-two studies involving 8,634 participants were included in gender difference meta-analysis. The results indicated that left-behind children report more mental health problems than non-left-behind children, left-behind girls were confronted with higher level of mental health problems than left-behind boys, left-behind children in primary school and junior high school reported more mental health problems than those in senior high school, and self-guardian children have more serious mental health problems than children guarded by grandparents, former generation, and single parent. Implications for future practice were analyzed from family, school, and government perspectives.     

Evaluation of a Sexual Abuse Prevention Program for Children with Intellectual Disabilities

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a sexual abuse prevention program for children with intellectual disabilities. Three children with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities participated in the study. They were taught skills relative to identifying body parts and discrimination between appropriate and inappropriate situations, refusal skills (verbal refusing and leaving situations), and reporting skills through this program. A multiple probe across participants design was used to determine the effects of the program. Results demonstrated that the program was effective for teaching the skills to all three children with intellectual disabilities. In addition, these skills generalized in probes conducted in real‐life settings and maintained at 10‐week follow‐up probes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Profiles of meaning and search for meaning among prisoners

Meaning in life and searching for meaning are central in how people organize their lives and deal with various challenges during them. Studies on meaning and the search for meaning among prisoners are virtually nonexistent. Based on the presence of meaning in their lives and on their search for meaning, we discovered four different profiles in a sample of 365 prisoners: High Presence High Search, High Presence Low Search, Low Presence High Search, and Low Presence Low Search. Compared to prisoners with low meaning profiles, those whose profiles were marked by higher levels of meaning displayed less distress, more positive world assumptions, and higher levels of self-worth. They also show more empathy for others. Older prisoners and prisoners who were sexually abused during childhood were more represented in the profile that was marked by extremely low levels of meaning and low levels of search for meaning.