Attentional modulation of perceptual comparison for feature binding

We investigated the neural correlates of attentional modulation in the perceptual comparison process for detecting feature-binding changes in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment. Participants performed a variant of a cued change detection task. They viewed a memory array, a spatial retro-cue, and later a probe array. Their task was to judge whether the cued item had changed between the two arrays. Change type was manipulated to be a color-location binding or a color feature change. The retro-cue onset time in the retention interval was manipulated to be early or late. As a consequence of strong inter-item competition, we found strong prefrontal activation for late cues when contrasting the binding-change with the color-change condition. In contrast, we observed a comparable behavioral and neural effect between the two types of change detection when retro-cue was presented early. More importantly, we demonstrated a significant inter-regional correlation between the prefrontal and parietal regions in both binding- and color-change conditions for late cues. In addition, extensive prefrontal-parietal-visual functional connectivity was showed for detecting binding changes in the late-cueing condition. These results support the critical role in prefrontal-parietal-visual functional coupling for resolving strong inter-item competition during the comparison process in the binding-change condition. We provide direct evidence that attention modulates neural activity associated with perceptual comparison, biasing competition in favour of the task-relevant information in order to detect binding changes.     

Sublexical processing in visual recognition of Chinese characters: evidence from repetition blindness for subcharacter components

Repetition blindness (RB) refers to the failure to detect the second occurrence of a repeated item in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). In two experiments using RSVP, the ability to report two critical characters was found to be impaired when these two characters were identical (Experiment 1) or similar by sharing one repeated component (Experiment 2), as opposed to when they were different characters with no common components. RB for the whole character occurred when the exposure duration was more than 50 ms with one intervening character between the two critical characters (lag=1), whereas RB for subcharacter components was more evident at exposure durations shorter than 50 ms with no intervening character (lag=0). These results provide support for the model of sublexical processing in Chinese character recognition.     

Difficulties and coping strategies of Chinese,Japanese, and Korean immigrant students

An exploratory study was conducted to investigate mental health concerns and coping strategies in a sample of 274 Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrant junior high and high school students. Participants responded to two open-ended questions relating to difficulties associated with coming to the United States and attendant coping strategies. Data were coded into several categories, and chi-square and logistic regression analyses were conducted. Results indicated that the most common problem across all three Asian immigrant groups was communication difficulties. The most frequently reported coping strategy was the use of social support networks. In addition, Japanese students were more likely to experience interpersonal problems than were their Chinese and Korean counterparts. Korean students tended to utilize religious practices as a coping strategy more than did Chinese and Japanese students. The implications for research and counseling are discussed.     

Taiwanese students' gender,age, interdependent and independent self-construal,and collective self-esteem as predictors of professional psychological help-seeking attitudes

Interdependent self-construal, collective self-esteem, age, and gender were used to predict attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help among a sample of junior high, high school, and college students in Taiwan (N = 594). Self-construal, collective self-esteem, and help-seeking attitudes were measured by the Self-Construal Scale (T. M. Singelis, 1994), the Collective Self-Esteem Scale Revised (R. Luhtanen & J. Crocker, 1992), and the Attitudes Towards Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale (E. H. Fischer & J. L. Turner, 1970), respectively. By using stepwise regression, each of the independent factors with the exception of age significantly predicted the dependent variable, professional psychological help-seeking attitudes. Implications for counseling and future research are addressed.     

The cultural adjustment and mental health of Japanese immigrant youth

Interviews were conducted with eight Japanese immigrant youth about their experiences with respect to adjusting to life in the United States, dealing with discrimination, and coping with cultural challenges. They were also questioned about their mental health and family and peer relations. Results indicate that participants managed to maintain bicultural identities and to cope with the problems that they encountered. Nevertheless, they experienced the following difficulties: racism and prejudice, language barriers, and conflict regarding identity and values. In terms of coping, participants mostly relied on friends for support; only one had sought the help of a professional counselor. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of working with immigrant youth from Japan.     

Filial belief and parent-child conflict

This study examines the relation between filial belief and the frequency, origins, and solutions to parent‐child conflict using an indigenous Chinese perspective. The Dual Filial Piety model is employed to categorize the four types of filial belief: nonfilial, authoritarian, reciprocal, and absolute. Questionnaires were completed by 773 junior and senior high school students from around Taiwan for the study. Results provided support for the indigenous Chinese notion that a child's filial beliefs relate to the level of parent‐child conflict. The results go beyond this common conception to highlight that filial beliefs may have a particular role in decreasing self‐centred but not inappropriate conflict between parents and children, and that reciprocal filial beliefs may have a more important role in decreasing conflict than authoritarian filial beliefs. Clear differences were identified in the reported origins of conflict (Demands Conflict with Desire. Unreasonable Behaviour, Demand Exceeds Ability, Role Conflict, Interparental Dispute. Immoral Demands) and solutions to conflict (self‐sacrifice, compromise, refraining, ego‐centred, escape) among the four filial types. Parent demands conflicting with the child's desire was the greatest source of conflict for each of the four filial types. Nonfilial types reported significantly more conflict than absolute types for four of the six origins of conflict examined. Low incidence of conflict may explain why the filial types did not differ for the remaining two origins. Overall, the four filial types reported self‐sacrifice as their least used solution to parent‐child conflict, and nonfilials reported significantly less use of this solution than the other three filial types. Absolutes and reciprocals reported significantly more use of refraining than the other two filial types. Results of this study provide the first empirical support for the Dual Filial Piety model and constitute a foundation for continued indigenous research on parent‐child relations in Chinese culture. It is expected that an indigenous theory of parent‐child relations incorporating the Dual Filial Piety model can eventually be integrated into a global psychology.     

Development of a mentoring program for Chinese immigrant adolescents' cultural adjustment

The development and evaluation of a peer mentoring program for Chinese immigrant adolescents' cultural adjustment is described. Twenty-three high school students who recently immigrated from Mainland China participated in the year-long program and 4 high school students served as their peer mentors. Data analyses revealed that the students who participated in the mentoring program had significantly higher peer attachment-trust and need for closeness scores at post-test than at pre-test. Implications for working with adolescent immigrants are discussed.     

Asymmetric cross-modal effects in time perception

It is common to judge the duration of an audiovisual event, and yet it remains controversial how the judgment of duration is affected by signals from other modalities. We used an oddball paradigm to examine the effect of sound on the judgment of visual duration and that of a visual object on the judgment of an auditory duration. In a series of standards and oddballs, the participants compared the duration of the oddballs to that of the standards. Results showed asymmetric cross-modal effects, supporting the auditory dominance hypothesis: a sound extends the perceived visual duration, whereas a visual object has no effect on perceived auditory duration. The possible mechanisms (pacemaker or mode switch) proposed in the Scalar Expectancy Theory [Gibbon, J., Church, R. M., & Meck, W. H. (1984). Scalar timing in memory. In J. Gibbon & L. Allan (Eds.), Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: Vol. 423. Timing and time perception (pp. 52–77). New York: New York Academy of Sciences] were examined using different standard durations. We conclude that sound increases the perceived visual duration by accelerating the pulse rate in the visual pacemaker.     

Is a pre-change object representation weakened under correct detection of a change?

We investigated whether a pre-change representation is inhibited or weakened under correct change detection. Two arrays of six objects were rapidly presented for change detection in three experiments. After detection, the perceptual identification of degraded stimuli was tested in Experiments 1 and 2. The weakening of a pre-change representation was not observed under correct detection. The repetition priming effect was observed for a pre-change object and the magnitude was equivalent to the effect for a post-change object. Under change blindness, repetition priming for a pre-change representation was observed when detection did not require report of location in Experiment 1 and was not observed when location was required to be reported in Experiment 2. The results of Experiment 3 showed that a pre-change representation was recognized at a higher rate under correct detection than under change blindness, reflecting a stronger rather than a weaker pre-change representation in the former context.