Attentional bias of students toward negative feedback in bad outcome situations: the mechanism of self-defense

The main goals of the present study were to investigate the effects of outcome valence on attentional bias toward feedback and examine the internal mechanism of self-defense. We systematically manipulated the outcome valence by providing a bogus score in a rational thinking task and recorded the time positive feedback and negative feedback was viewed in experiment 1. We added the intervention of self-affirmation to examine the self-defense mechanism in experiment 2. The results suggest that (1) in good outcome situations, the participants viewed negative feedback longer than positive feedback. There was a tendency to slightly reduce the attention given to negative feedback in bad outcome situations. (2) Self-affirming participants in bad outcome situations increased their viewing time of negative feedback, which supported the activation of defensiveness.     

社会支持对流动儿童社会退缩的影响:心理弹性的中介作用

目的:探讨心理弹性在社会支持与流动儿童社会退缩之间的中介作用。方法:采用社会支持评定量表、青少年心理弹性量表和班级戏剧量表对258名流动儿童进行调查。结果表明:(1)活跃退缩与社会支持、心理弹性呈显著负相关; 安静退缩与社会支持相关不显著,与心理弹性呈显著负相关; 社会支持与心理弹性呈显著正相关;(2)社会支持、心理弹性显著负向预测流动儿童的活跃退缩;(3)心理弹性在社会支持与流动儿童活跃退缩之间具有完全中介作用。     

反馈时间、反馈类型和掩蔽类型对概率类别学习的影响

通过操纵反馈时间(即时,延迟)、反馈类型(简单,丰富)和掩蔽类型(塔罗牌,空白矩形),考察概率类别学习的学习机制。结果发现:(1)被试的学习成绩在即时反馈条件下显著优于在延迟反馈条件下;(2)在即时反馈条件下,仅给予简单反馈,被试虽能出色地完成天气预报任务,但是不能正确地判断卡片预测晴天的概率,倾向内隐学习;(3)在其他条件下,被试能正确地判断卡片预测晴天的概率以及各卡片在天气预报任务中预测天气的重要程度,表明被试能外显地意识到这些线索的作用。综上,概率类别学习采用的是双系统学习机制,既依赖内隐学习,又依赖外显学习。     

Discrimination threshold for haptic volume perception of fingers and phalanges

Humans exhibit a remarkable ability to discriminate variations in object volume based on natural haptic perception. The discrimination thresholds for the haptic volume perception of the whole hand are well known, but the discrimination thresholds for haptic volume perception of fingers and phalanges are still unknown. In the present study, two psychophysical experiments were performed to investigate haptic volume perception in various fingers and phalanges. The configurations of both experiments were completely dependent on haptic volume perception from the fingers and phalanges. The participants were asked to blindly discriminate the volume variation of regular solid objects in a random order by using the distal phalanx, medial phalanx, and proximal phalanx of their index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger. The discrimination threshold of haptic volume perception gradually decreases from the little finger to the index finger as well as from the proximal phalanx to the distal phalanx. Overall, both the shape of the target and the part of the finger in contact with the target significantly influence the precision of haptic perception of volume. This substantial data set provides detailed and compelling perspectives on the haptic system, including for discrimination of the spatial size of objects and for performing more general perceptual processes.     

Symmetry and its role in the crossmodal correspondence between shape and taste

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Despite the rapid growth of research on the crossmodal correspondence between visually presented shapes and basic tastes (e.g., sweet, sour, bitter, and...     

Moral Emotions Toward Others at Work and Implications for Employee Behavior: a Qualitative Analysis Using Critical Incidents

We propose a theoretical framework for and, via critical incidents, inductively investigate (a) the situations that trigger moral emotions toward others at work and (b) worker responses to these situations. Critical incidents were collected from a heterogeneous sample of 423 workers. Participants described an incident that caused each of four moral emotions (gratitude, anger, admiration, and contempt) and their response. Incidents and responses were coded, and frequencies, differences across the moral emotions, and associations between incidents and responses were analyzed. Several morally relevant situations at work were found to trigger the moral emotions. Participants responded in ways that had implications for their performance and their own well-being. The incidents largely align with moral foundations theory (Haidt and Graham in Social Justice Research, 20, 98–116, 2007). Responses also show evidence for social exchange, social learning, and rational expectancy-based processes and behavior. The incidents specify several practices for managers and organizations to encourage and avoid. This was the first qualitative study of moral emotions at work and one of the few workplace studies to examine these emotions empirically. Several understudied factors and behavioral responses emerged.     

Superheroes for change: Physical safety promotes socially (but not economically) progressive attitudes among conservatives

Across two studies, we find evidence for our prediction that experimentally increasing feelings of physical safety increases conservatives' socially progressive attitudes. Specifically, Republican and conservative participants who imagined being endowed with a superpower that made them invulnerable to physical harm (vs. the ability to fly) were more socially (but not economically) liberal (Study 1) and less resistant to social change (Study 2). Results suggest that socially (but not economically) conservative attitudes are driven, at least in part, by needs for safety and security.     

Patient Moral Relativism in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Zhuangzi</Emphasis>

Moral relativism familiar in the Western philosophical tradition, according to David Lyons, is either agent relativism (moral judgments are relative to the standards of the agent or the agent group) or appraiser relativism (moral judgments are relative to the standards of the appraiser(s) or appraiser group(s)). As Lyons has convincingly argued, they are both problematic. However, in the ancient Chinese Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi, we can find a different type of moral relativism, which I call patient relativism (moral judgments are relative to the patients’ standards). In the essay, I aim to argue in what sense Zhuangzi is a patient relativist and how patient relativism can avoid the problem of agent relativism and appraiser relativism.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Wh</Emphasis>-Questions,Universal Statements and Free Choice Inferences in Child Mandarin

This study investigated 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children’s comprehension of wh-questions, universal statements and free choice inferences. Previous research has found that Mandarin-speaking children assign a universal interpretation to sentences with a wh-word (e.g., shei ‘who’) followed by the adverbial quantifier dou ‘all’ (Zhou in Appl Psycholinguist 36:411–435, 2013). Children also compute free choice inferences in sentences that contain a modal verb in addition to a wh-word and dou (Zhou, in: Nakayama, Su, Huang (eds.) Studies in Chinese and Japanese language acquisition: in honour of Stephen Crain. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp 223–235, 2017). The present study used a Question-Statement Task to assess children’s interpretation of sentences containing shei + dou, both with and without the modal verb beiyunxu ‘was allowed to’, as well as the contrast between sentences with shei + dou, which are statements for adults, versus ones with dou + shei, which are wh-questions for adults. The 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking child participants exhibited adult-like linguistic knowledge of the semantics and pragmatics of wh-words, the adverbial quantifier dou, and the deontic modal verb beiyunxu.     

Exposure,Agency, Perceived Threat,and Guilt as Predictors of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Veterans

Using a sample of 289 Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, this study examined the contributions of combat exposure, agency, perceived threat, and guilt to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Regression analyses indicated the four variables (together with demographic variables) accounted for 79% of the variance in PTSD symptoms. Guilt was the most important predictor. In addition, guilt mediated between exposure and PTSD symptoms, perceived threat and PTSD symptoms, and agency and PTSD symptoms. Implications of these findings are discussed.