Personality and life satisfaction in China: The birth order effect under the influence of national policy

Individuals’ development is a multilayered affair. The influence of family relationship on personality, such as  and  focusing on birth order, is subject to influence from other social systems in which the families are situated. The current research examined the relation of birth order to personality and life satisfaction in China, where only children have become the majority because of national policy. Across two studies with both between-family data (N = 1468) and within-family data (N = 171), onlyborns and laterborns surpassed firstborns on openness to experience. In addition, only-child participants were more satisfied with their own lives than were sibling participants, especially laterborns. The results offer new insights into the dynamic relations between ecology and personality.     

Social Learning Strategies in Networked Groups

When making decisions, humans can observe many kinds of information about others' activities, but their effects on performance are not well understood. We investigated social learning strategies using a simple problem‐solving task in which participants search a complex space, and each can view and imitate others' solutions. Results showed that participants combined multiple sources of information to guide learning, including payoffs of peers' solutions, popularity of solution elements among peers, similarity of peers' solutions to their own, and relative payoffs from individual exploration. Furthermore, performance was positively associated with imitation rates at both the individual and group levels. When peers' payoffs were hidden, popularity and similarity biases reversed, participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered. We conclude that when peers' solutions can be effectively compared, imitation does not simply permit scrounging, but it can also facilitate propagation of good solutions for further cumulative exploration.     

Developmental trends in auditory processing can provide early predictions of language acquisition in young infants

Auditory processing capabilities at the subcortical level have been hypothesized to impact an individual's development of both language and reading abilities. The present study examined whether auditory processing capabilities relate to language development in healthy 9‐month‐old infants. Participants were 71 infants (31 boys and 40 girls) with both Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) and language assessments. At 6 weeks and/or 9 months of age, the infants underwent ABR testing using both a standard hearing screening protocol with 30 dB clicks and a second protocol using click pairs separated by 8, 16, and 64‐ms intervals presented at 80 dB. We evaluated the effects of interval duration on ABR latency and amplitude elicited by the second click. At 9 months, language development was assessed via parent report on the Chinese Communicative Development Inventory ‐ Putonghua version (CCDI‐P). Wave V latency z‐scores of the 64‐ms condition at 6 weeks showed strong direct relationships with Wave V latency in the same condition at 9 months. More importantly, shorter Wave V latencies at 9 months showed strong relationships with the CCDI‐P composite consisting of phrases understood, gestures, and words produced. Likewise, infants who had greater decreases in Wave V latencies from 6 weeks to 9 months had higher CCDI‐P composite scores. Females had higher language development scores and shorter Wave V latencies at both ages than males. Interestingly, when the ABR Wave V latencies at both ages were taken into account, the direct effects of gender on language disappeared. In conclusion, these results support the importance of low‐level auditory processing capabilities for early language acquisition in a population of typically developing young infants. Moreover, the auditory brainstem response in this paradigm shows promise as an electrophysiological marker to predict individual differences in language development in young children.     

Selective and nonselective inhibition of competitors in picture naming

The present study examined the relation between nonselective inhibition and selective inhibition in picture naming performance. Nonselective inhibition refers to the ability to suppress any unwanted response, whereas selective inhibition refers to the ability to suppress specific competing responses. The degree of competition in picture naming was manipulated by presenting targets along with distractor words that could be semantically related (e.g., a picture of a dog combined with the word cat) or unrelated (tree) to the picture name. The mean naming response time (RT) was longer in the related than in the unrelated condition, reflecting semantic interference. Delta plot analyses showed that participants with small mean semantic interference effects employed selective inhibition more effectively than did participants with larger semantic interference effects. The participants were also tested on the stop-signal task, which taps nonselective inhibition. Their performance on this task was correlated with their mean naming RT but, importantly, not with the selective inhibition indexed by the delta plot analyses and the magnitude of the semantic interference effect. These results indicate that nonselective inhibition ability and selective inhibition of competitors in picture naming are separable to some extent.     

Effects of Phonetic Similarity in the Identification of Mandarin Tones

Tonal languages differ in how they use phonetic correlates e.g. average pitch height and pitch direction, for tonal contrasts. Thus, native speakers of a tonal language may need to adjust their attention to familiar or unfamiliar phonetic cues when perceiving non-native tones. On the other hand, speakers of a non-tonal language may need to develop sensitivity to tonal correlates absent from their native system. The current study examines and compares five language groups’ perception of two synthesized Mandarin tones: the high level tone and the high falling tone. It aims to examine how listeners from tonal and non-tonal backgrounds identify and categorize acoustically equidistant pitches varying along two phonetic dimensions: pitch onset and slope. Results reveal “universal” perceptual patterns across groups and also tendencies caused by native tonal systems. Our findings confirm that L1 tonal and prosodic systems affect speakers’ sensitivity to novel perceptual cues and their abilities to discern relevant phonetic differences.     

Implicit learning and emotional responses in nine-month-old infants

To study the interplay between motor learning and emotional responses of young infants, we developed a contingent learning paradigm that included two related, difficult, operant tasks. We also coded facial expression to characterise emotional response to learning. In a sample of nine-month-old healthy Chinese infants, 44.7% achieved learning threshold during this challenging arm-conditioning test. Some evidence of learning was observed at the beginning of the second task. The lowest period of negative emotions coincided with the period of maximum movement responses after the initiation of the second task, and movement responses negatively correlated with the frequency of negative emotions. Positive emotions, while generally low throughout the task, increased during peak performance especially for learners. Peak frequency of movement responses was positively correlated with the frequency of positive emotions. Despite the weak evidence of learning this difficult task, our results from the learners would suggest that increasing positive emotions, and perhaps down-regulating negative emotional responses, may be important for improving performance and learning a complex operant task in infancy. Further studies are necessary to determine the role of emotions in learning difficult tasks in infancy.     

论伽达默尔对实践哲学和解释学的融合

对实践问题的思考贯穿了伽达默尔整个学术生涯,构成了他哲学思想的起点和归宿。实践哲学不仅影响了他的哲学解释学思想的形成,而且他还将哲学解释学应用于实践问题,发展出解释学的实践哲学。实践哲学和解释学在他的思想发展中是一种互动的、相互启发的关系。他对实践哲学和解释学的融合,可分为三个阶段。早期他通过对柏拉图的政治思想研究关注到理解和相互理解问题,此外海德格尔对《尼各马可伦理学》的阐释使其注意到实践智慧概念。在中期的代表作《真理与方法》中他通过实践智慧概念阐明解释学的应用问题。后期他通过将哲学解释学应用于对现代社会的反思,寻求对实践合理性的理解,希望以此来引导人们的生活,避免技术文明对人造成的异化。对实践哲学和解释学的融合体现伽达默尔作为一个人文知识分子的现实关怀,对于我们思考现代人的生存处境具有重要启发意义。     

评价中心结构效度的多元概化理论分析研究

评价中心技术是现代人事测评的一种主要形式,主要通过多种模拟任务来测评高级管理人才。然而,少有研究能证明它具有理想的结构效度。该研究运用多质多法分析了某金融企业一次真实的评价中心测评项目,发现测评的结构效度并不理想。接着,通过多元概化理论的分析,探讨了结构效度不理想的原因,并指出了评价中心任务与所测维度之间的关系,以及对各维度的测量信度。最后,根据分析结果,探讨了优化评价中心结构效度和提升整体测量信度的途径。     

汽车驾驶行为的眼动研究

对汽车驾驶行为的眼动研究具有重要的理论和实践意义。本文重点介绍了不同路况下的驾驶行为及影响其行为的心理和生理因素的眼动研究．分析了用眼动分析方法研究交通心理学的特点．并对了该领域今后的发展趋势进行了展望。     

中小学教师的工作倦怠与其相关因素的关系研究

本研究旨在探讨中小学教师的工作倦怠与其职业压力应对策略、教学效能感和社会支持的关系。用教师工作倦怠问卷、职业压力应对策略调查表、教学效能感量表和社会支持评定量表对766名中小学教师进行了问卷调查。结果发现：（1）中小学教师的工作倦怠与其职业压力应对策略、教学效能感和社会支持之间存在显著的相关关系;（2）教师的主动应对、被动应对、教学效能感和社会支持分别对教师的整体工作倦怠感及其情绪衰竭、非人性化和低成就感等维度具有显著的预测作用。