For God (or) country: the hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious sources of control

It has been recently proposed that people can flexibly rely on sources of control that are both internal and external to the self to satisfy the need to believe that their world is under control (i.e., that events do not unfold randomly or haphazardly). Consistent with this, past research demonstrates that, when personal control is threatened, people defend external systems of control, such as God and government. This theoretical perspective also suggests that belief in God and support for governmental systems, although seemingly disparate, will exhibit a hydraulic relationship with one another. Using both experimental and longitudinal designs in Eastern and Western cultures, the authors demonstrate that experimental manipulations or naturally occurring events (e.g., electoral instability) that lower faith in one of these external systems (e.g., the government) lead to subsequent increases in faith in the other (e.g., God). In addition, mediation and moderation analyses suggest that specific concerns with order and structure underlie these hydraulic effects. Implications for the psychological, sociocultural, and sociopolitical underpinnings of religious faith, as well as system justification theory, are discussed.     

绘画疗法——心理治疗的艺术途径

绘画疗法是以绘画作为治疗师和患者间的中介物来进行治疗的。目前,我国关于这一心理治疗方法的研究和应用都比较少。本文简单介绍了绘画疗法的理论基础、作用机理、实际操作、应用现状及疗效,并初步提出绘画疗法以后的研究方向。     

Wear behaviour of a gradient surface produced by a punching process in a Cu-30 Ni alloy

The grain size variation in a gradient surface produced by a punching and recovery process on a Cu-30Ni alloy has been observed by atomic force microscopy. The friction characteristics of the gradient surface in a 3.5 wt% NaCl solution were investigated using a micro-indenter probe, a pin-on-disc type tribometer, a strain sensor and an optical microscope. The results showed that the hardness and grain size can be well represented by the Hall–Petch relationship when the gain size is more than 30?nm. The wear rate, friction coefficient and adhesive force all increase depth below the surface. These variations are attributed to a gradual increasing grain size with depth. The morphologies of the worn track were also studied to understand further the corrosive wear behaviour of gradient surfaces.     

汉字输入中认知技能与动作技能的分离

通过20名大学生在采用目光注视屏幕上的键盘完成汉字输入任务的眼动研究,将汉字输入中的认知技能与动作技能实现分离,从而探究关于键盘布局图式的认知技能的发展.结果发现:(1)在标准键盘显示下,汉字输入技能水平高分组与低分组在完成时间上没有显著差异,而空白键盘显示下高分组的完成时间显著快于低分组;(2)两种键盘显示方式下,低分组的眼动指标都没有显著差异,而高分组在空白键盘显示下的平均注视时间要显著多于标准键盘显示下的.     

National Survey of Client's Perceptions of Chinese Psychotherapist Practices

The present study is a cross-sectional survey that investigates ethical practices among Chinese psychotherapists from the perspective of a large representative sample of Chinese clients (N?=?1,100). In reports from clients, we found that psychotherapists did poorly in providing informed consent and had other ethical difficulties in the therapeutic setting and with dual relationships. We conclude that Chinese culture, especially Confucianism, had significant impact on the attitudes toward the psychotherapists' ethical practices, which complicated ethical dilemmas. It is important for cross-cultural psychotherapists to become sensitive to the influences of traditional Chinese culture when counseling Chinese clients.     

How Speech Modifies Visual Attention

Auditory distractions can have serious consequences in critical situations such as driving. Mobile phones, radios, media players, and information devices that interpret and produce speech are increasingly common in vehicles, but the threats to visual attention are not yet fully understood. In three experiments, we found that most speech tasks had relatively small adverse effects on the detection of a briefly presented target among distractors across a 60° subarea of the visual field. Although there was a little impact on detectability, moderately difficult speech tasks slowed responding relative to silence. Our most demanding condition—generating and speaking a word beginning with the last letter of another word—had the greatest effects on accuracy and latency, with responding slowed by about 900 ms. An impairment of this magnitude presents a significant threat to safe driving and calls into question the belief that hands‐free voice‐controlled devices are the answer to the problem of driver distraction. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mapping the time course of the positive classification advantage: An ERP study

The aim of the present study was to investigate the time course of the positive advantage in the expression classification of faces by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). Although neutral faces were classified more quickly than either happy or sad faces, a significant positive classification advantage (PCA)—that is, faster classification for happy than for sad faces—was found. For ERP data, as compared with sad faces, happy faces elicited a smaller N170 and a larger posterior N2 component. The P3 was modulated by facial expressions with higher amplitudes and shorter latencies for both happy and neutral stimuli than for sad stimuli, and the reaction times were significantly correlated with the amplitude and latency of the P3. Overall, these data showed robust PCA in expression classification, starting when the stimulus has been recognized as a face revealed by the N170 component.     

The cognitive advantage for one’s own name is not simply familiarity: An eye-tracking study

Eye-tracking technique and visual search task were employed to examine the cognitive advantage for one’s own name and the possible effect of familiarity on this advantage. The results showed that fewer saccades and an earlier start time of first fixations on the target were associated with trials in which participants were asked to search for their own name, as compared to search for personally familiar or famous names. In addition, the results also demonstrated faster response times and higher accuracy in the former kind of trials. Taken together, these findings provide important evidence that one’s own name has the potential to capture attention and that familiarity cannot account for this advantage.     

A biased-competition approach to spatial cueing: Combining empirical studies and computational modelling

We examined the effects of cue luminance on visual orienting. Experiment 1 established that the commonly-found early facilitation and late inhibition of return (IOR) effects were independent of cue luminance with single cues in terms of their amplitude, although IOR was delayed in the low compared to the high luminance cue condition. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that, with dual cues of mixed luminance, both facilitation and IOR effects were found only with bright cues. When cues had equal luminance, however, there were cueing effects for two cued locations but only when the cues were bright. The data were accommodated in a neural network model of biased competition in which cueing effects emerge at more than one location provided input activation is sufficient to overcome competitive damping of the selection system.     

Updating beliefs in light of uncertain evidence: Descriptive assessment of Jeffrey's rule

Jeffrey (1983) proposed a generalisation of conditioning as a means of updating probability distributions when new evidence drives no event to certainty. His rule requires the stability of certain conditional probabilities through time. We tested this assumption (“invariance”) from the psychological point of view. In Experiment 1 participants offered probability estimates for events in Jeffrey's candlelight example. Two further scenarios were investigated in Experiment 2, one in which invariance seems justified, the other in which it does not. Results were in rough conformity to Jeffrey's (1983) principle.