父母亲职压力与儿童对立违抗行为的关系:一项交叉滞后分析

采用亲职压力量表和对立违抗行为表现评估表调查了来自北京、山东和云南三地14所小学有ODD(oppositional defiant disorder)行为表现的301名儿童及其父母。通过为期两年的追踪研究,采用交叉滞后分析探讨了父母亲职压力与儿童的ODD行为之间的关系。结果发现:(1)在第一年和第二年的数据中,父母亲职压力和儿童的ODD行为表现均存在显著正相关;(2)第一年和第二年的父母亲职压力得分显著正相关,同样,两年的儿童ODD行为表现得分也显著正相关;(3)交叉滞后分析发现,对于有ODD行为表现的男孩来说,其父母第一年的亲职压力能预测他们第二年的ODD行为表现,但对于有ODD行为表现的女孩来说,其父母第一年的亲职压力并不能预测她们第二年的ODD行为表现;而不管是男孩,还是女孩,第一年的ODD行为表现都不能预测第二年的父母亲职压力。研究结果揭示出男孩父母的亲职压力可预测男孩的ODD行为表现,而不论是男孩或女孩的ODD行为表现都不能预测其父母亲职压力,说明父母亲职压力可能是男孩ODD行为表现的影响因素。     

集体心理干预对癌症患者应对方式影响的研究

为了探索集体心理干预对癌症患者应对方式的影响,本研究在90名癌症患者中随机选取46人进行干预研究。为考察干预效果,在干预后分别以医学应对方式问卷各维度因子的前测得分为协变量,以医学应对方式问卷各维度因子的后测得分为因变量,进行2(分组:实验组、对照组)×2(性别:男、女)×3(年龄:低龄组、中龄组、高龄组)的三因素协方差分析。结果表明,经过集体心理干预的实验组在应对方式各分量表上的得分要显著高于对照组,集体心理干预在性别和年龄上不存在显著差异。研究结果表明集体心理干预能够有效地改善癌症患者的应对方式。     

质化研究在心理治疗过程-效果研究中的应用

心理治疗的有效性已被证实并毋庸置疑,在针对解答心理治疗如何有效这个问题上,过程-效果研究可以做到考察过程变量对治疗效果造成的影响;而进一步将质化研究应用于过程-效果研究之中,更能加深对治疗整体的认识和理解。主要介绍了过程-效果研究的相关研究方式和质化研究的发展变化、主要方法,并简要描述质化研究运用于过程-效果研究中的相关特点、方式、优势及不足并举例说明,以及因质化研究应用的特点所决定其将要面临的机遇与挑战。     

How facial attractiveness affects sustained attention

The present study investigated whether and how facial attractiveness affects sustained attention. We adopted a multiple‐identity tracking paradigm, using attractive and unattractive faces as stimuli. Participants were required to track moving target faces amid distractor faces and report the final location of each target. In Experiment 1, the attractive and unattractive faces differed in both the low‐level properties (i.e., luminance, contrast, and color saturation) and high‐level properties (i.e., physical beauty and age). The results showed that the attractiveness of both the target and distractor faces affected the tracking performance: The attractive target faces were tracked better than the unattractive target faces; when the targets and distractors were both unattractive male faces, the tracking performance was poorer than when they were of different attractiveness. In Experiment 2, the low‐level properties of the facial images were equalized. The results showed that the attractive target faces were still tracked better than unattractive targets while the effects related to distractor attractiveness ceased to exist. Taken together, the results indicate that during attentional tracking the high‐level properties related to the attractiveness of the target faces can be automatically processed, and then they can facilitate the sustained attention on the attractive targets, either with or without the supplement of low‐level properties. On the other hand, only low‐level properties of the distractor faces can be processed. When the distractors share similar low‐level properties with the targets, they can be grouped together, so that it would be more difficult to sustain attention on the individual targets.     

Tragedy or tragicomedy: Mixed feelings induced by positive and negative emotional events

Based on the theory of appraisal, we predicted that positive and negative events happening to the same people or things in a specific chronological order (i.e., a negative event following a positive event) would induce different mixed feelings than the same events happening to different people or things. Pairs of emotional pictures with different captions were used to create two event groups. In the “tragic event” group, the positive and negative events happened to the same person or things, and in the “tragicomic event” group, the positive and negative events happened to different people or things. We designed two experiments to explore and compare the generation of mixed feelings in those two groups. In Experiment 1, the negative event was shown first, and in Experiment 2, the negative event was shown second (although the chronological order of the depicted events was the same). The participants were 381 undergraduates: 195 in Experiment 1 and 186 in Experiment 2. In both experiments, we found that tragic events introduced less intense mixed feelings than did tragicomic events due to fewer pleasurable feelings induced by the tragic events. There was no significant difference in the report of negative emotions between the groups. Appraisal theory and negative bias effects may explain these results.     

Crossover of burnout from leaders to followers: a longitudinal study

The primary purpose of this 6-month two-wave longitudinal study among 104 Chinese leader–follower dyads is to investigate whether burnout could cross over from leaders to followers, and if so, whether this crossover process could be mediated by changes of followers’ job and personal resources. As expected, the structural equation modelling results show that after controlling for follower burnout at T1, leader burnout at T1 is negatively related to changes of followers’ job and personal resources over a period of 6 months, which in turn are negatively related to follower burnout at T2. Our longitudinal study has demonstrated that resource loss plays a mediating role in the crossover of burnout from leaders to followers. The implications of these findings for the intervention of burnout in the work context are discussed.     

Influences of motor contexts on the semantic processing of action-related language

The contribution of the sensory–motor system to the semantic processing of language stimuli is still controversial. To address the issue, the present article focuses on the impact of motor contexts (i.e., comprehenders’ motor behaviors, motor-training experiences, and motor expertise) on the semantic processing of action-related language and reviews the relevant behavioral and neuroimaging findings. The existing evidence shows that although motor contexts can influence the semantic processing of action-related concepts, the mechanism of the contextual influences is still far from clear. Future investigations will be needed to clarify (1) whether motor contexts only modulate activity in motor regions, (2) whether the contextual influences are specific to the semantic features of language stimuli, and (3) what factors can determine the facilitatory or inhibitory contextual influences on the semantic processing of action-related language.     

Chinese–English bilinguals processing temporal–spatial metaphor

The conceptual projection of time onto the domain of space constitutes one of the most challenging issues in the cognitive embodied theories. In Chinese, spatial order (e.g., “大树前”/da shu qian/, in front of a tree) shares the same terms with temporal sequence (三月前”, /san yue qian/, before March). In comparison, English natives use different sets of prepositions to describe spatial and temporal relationship, i.e., “before” to express temporal sequencing and “in front of” to express spatial order. The linguistic variations regarding the specific lexical encodings indicate that some flexibility might be available in how space–time parallelisms are formulated across different languages. In the present study, ERP (Event-related potentials) data were collected when Chinese–English bilinguals processed temporal ordering and spatial sequencing in both their first language (L1) Chinese (Experiment 1) and the second language (L2) English (Experiment 2). It was found that, despite the different lexical encodings, early sensorimotor simulation plays a role in temporal sequencing processing in both L1 Chinese and L2 English. The findings well support the embodied theory that conceptual knowledge is grounded in sensory-motor systems (Gallese and Lakoff, Cogn Neuropsychol 22:455–479, 2005). Additionally, in both languages, neural representations during comprehending temporal sequencing and spatial ordering are different. The time–spatial relationship is asymmetric, in that space schema could be imported into temporal sequence processing but not vice versa. These findings support the weak view of the Metaphoric Mapping Theory.     

The automatic and the expected self: separating self- and familiarity biases effects by manipulating stimulus probability

Attentional control over prepotent responses has previously been shown by manipulating the probability with which stimuli appear. Here, we examined whether prepotent responses to self-associated stimuli can be modulated by their frequency of occurrence. Participants were instructed to associate geometric shapes with the self, their mother, or a stranger before having to judge whether the sequential shape–label pairs matched or mismatched the instruction. The probability of the different shape–label pairs was varied. There was a robust advantage to self-related stimuli in all cases. Reducing the proportion of matched self pairs did not weaken performance with self-related stimuli, whereas reducing the frequency of either matched mother or stranger pairs hurt performance, relative to when the different match trials were equiprobable. In addition, while mother and stranger pairs jointly benefitted when they both occurred frequently, there were benefits only to self pairs when the frequency of self trials increased along with either mother or stranger trials. The results suggest that biases favoring self-related stimuli occur automatically, even when self-related stimuli have a low probability of occurrence, and that expectations to frequent, self-related stimuli operate in a relatively exclusive manner, minimizing biases to high-probability stimuli related to other people. In contrast, biases to high-familiarity stimuli (mother pairs) can be reduced when the items occur infrequently and they do not dominate expectations over other high-frequency stimuli.