Media influence on drive for thinness,body satisfaction,and eating attitudes among young women in Hong Kong and China

The present study examined the impact of thin-ideal media exposure on Chinese women’s drive for thinness, attitudes towards body shape, and eating attitude. Women were assigned to one of two video conditions, which portrayed the thin-ideal (experimental) or was neutral (control group), in terms of content. A total of 83 young women from Hong Kong (N = 38) and Shanghai (N = 45), aged between 18 and 25 years (M_age = 22.7) participated in the study. A significant interaction was observed between the experimental video condition and location. Hong Kong women in the experimental group experienced greater levels of body dissatisfaction than Shanghai women exposed to the same condition. Exposure to thin-ideal media produced an increase in drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction and problematic eating attitudes regardless of location, with a greater immediate impact shown in Hong Kong women.     

Study of posed emotion in facial EMG asymmetry

37 subjects' facial electromyographic activity at the corrugator and zygomatic muscle regions were recorded while they were posing with happy and sad facial expressions. Analysis showed that the mean value of EMG activity at the left zygomatic muscle region was the highest, followed by the right zygomatic, left corrugator, and right corrugator muscle regions, while a happy facial expression was posed. The mean value of EMG activity at the left corrugator muscle region was the highest, followed by those for the right corrugator, left zygomatic, and right zygomatic muscle regions while a sad facial expression was posed. Further analysis indicated that the power of facial EMG activity on the left side of the face was stronger than on the right side of the face while posing both happy and sad expressions.     

Involuntary awareness and implicit priming: role of retrieval context

This study examined the role of retrieval context in implicit priming by manipulating percentage of word-stem index as shallow and deep processing while performing a word-stem completion task. 80 subjects were randomly divided into four groups each of 20 subjects: shallow processing or deep processing with few retrieval indices, and shallow processing or deep processing with many retrieval indices. Analysis indicated that proportion of word-stem completion was significantly higher for studied words than for nonstudied words in all four groups and that the subjects in the groups with many retrieval indices had a significantly increased proportion of word-stem completion between studied and nonstudied words than those in the groups with few retrieval indices. Postquestionnaire analysis indicated that more previously studied items were retrieved if many studied items were available during implicit word-stem completion and that only a small proportion of word-stem completion was finished with studied words by the subjects who were aware of the prior studied and test word relations in all four groups. It was concluded that having more studied words retrievable contributed to more being retrieved and that involuntary awareness had very limited influence on the priming in the implicit word-stem completion.     

Social desirability bias in diary panels is evident in panelists' behavioral frequency

The purpose was to analyze a large-scale database, a national sample of 1108 heads of households collected by AT&T, to show that behavioral frequencies of the activities of consumer diary panelists may regress toward the population mean during the diary-keeping period given social desirability bias produced by the conditioning effect of keeping diaries. This effect is distinguished from regression toward the mean, a statistical phenomenon reflecting happenstance of extreme initial values. Social desirability bias is demonstrated in two ways-by observing decreasing coefficients of variation over time and by detecting a greater proportion of panelists' behavioral frequencies moving toward the population mean than moving away from it. Both cannot be explained by regression toward the mean. Social desirability bias was manifest only during the early stages of the diary-keeping period and only for activities high in involvement. The presence of social desirability bias in diary panels implies that, when people are subjected to observation, diary observations may be contaminated, leading to the mistaken impression that the population is more homogeneous than it actually is. Thus it is important for researchers to monitor the diary panel carefully to detect social desirability bias when engaged in longitudinal studies.     

Personality,Leisure Experiences and Happiness

This study explored the relationships among personality, leisure involvement, leisure satisfaction and happiness in a representative sample of Chinese university students (n = 423). We found that (1) extraversion significantly correlated with almost all kinds of leisure involvement, but neuroticism did not correlate with leisure activities at all; (2) extraversion significantly positively correlated with leisure satisfaction while neuroticism significantly negatively correlated with leisure satisfaction; and (3) while extraversion and neuroticism were significant predictors of happiness, leisure satisfaction had its incremental effects after those of personality traits and other domain satisfaction were controlled. Implications of these findings for developing a Chinese psychology of leisure were discussed.     

Extending General Processing Tree Models to Analyze Reaction Time Experiments

General processing tree (GPT) models are usually used to analyze categorical data collected in psychological experiments. Such models assume functional relations between probabilities of the observed behavior categories and the unobservable choice probabilities involved in a cognitive task. This paper extends GPT models for categorical data to the analysis of continuous data in a class of response time (RT) experiments in cognitive psychology. Suppose that a cognitive task involves several discrete processing stages and both accuracy (categorical) and latency (continuous) measures are obtained for each of the response categories. Furthermore, suppose that the task can be modeled by a GPT model that assumes serialization among the stages. The observed latencies of the response categories are functions of the choice probabilities and processing times (PT) at each of the processing stages. The functional relations are determined by the processing structure of the task. A general framework is presented and it is applied to a set of data obtained from a source monitoring experiment. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

监狱基层男性警察情绪劳动调查分析报告

目的了解广州市监狱基层男性警察的情绪劳动状况。方法采用随机抽样法对100名监狱基层男性警察进行问卷调查。结果表明①监狱基层男性警察的情绪劳动表现策略在受教育程度上无显著差异;②26～30岁监狱基层男性警察使用表面表现的频率比较多;③在职位方面,干事使用深层表现的频率比一般管理警察的高;④警龄长和已婚的监狱基层男性警察运用自然表现的频率比高。结论监狱基层男性警察在情绪劳动表现策略中最经常使用的自然表现,其次是深层表现,最后是表面表现。     

Effects of Material Emotional Valence on the Time Course of Massive Repetition Priming

Learning through repetition is a fundamental form and also an effective method of language learning critical for achieving proficient and automatic language use. Massive repetition priming as a common research paradigm taps into the dynamic processes involved in repetition learning. Research with this paradigm has so far used only emotionally neutral materials and ignored emotional factors, which seems inappropriate given the well-documented impact of emotion on cognitive processing. The present study used massive repetition priming to investigate whether the emotional valence of learning materials affects implicit language learning. Participants read a list of Chinese words and made speeded perceptual judgments about the spatial configuration of the two characters in a word. Each word was repeated 15 times in the whole learning session. There were three types of words, negative, positive, or neutral in their emotional valence, presented in separate blocks. Although similar levels of asymptotic performance were reached for different valence conditions showing comparable total effects of learning, learning of the positive words was found to be associated with fewer plateaus of shorter durations and to reach saturation earlier, compared with neutral and negative words. The results showed for the first time that the emotional valence of learning materials has significant effects on the time course of learning so that positive materials are learned faster and more efficiently, relative to negative and neutral materials. The study indicates the importance to explicitly consider the role of emotional factors in implicit language learning research.     

词汇的获得年龄效应:ERP研究

采用听觉呈现条件下的词汇判断任务和ERP技术探讨了汉语双字词获得年龄效应。结果发现:1)在行为数据上,同晚获得词相比,早获得词的反应时更短且错误率更低。2)在ERP数据上,早获得词和晚获得词所诱发的LPC(800m s~1000m s)的平均波幅存在显著差异,同晚获得词相比,早获得词所诱发的LPC波幅更大,且这种差异主要是在中央顶区,说明获得年龄是影响汉语双字词识别的一个重要因素,获得年龄效应出现在认知加工进程的后期。