Shared Knowledge Matters: Culture as Intersubjective Representations

The intersubjective representation approach to culture focuses on cultural members’ shared knowledge representations about the culture that they are in. Members of the same culture tend to share certain knowledge representations of the central characteristics of the culture. These shared cultural representations are established and perpetuated through dynamic communicative processes. Recent empirical research has provided support for the incremental value of intersubjective cultural representations in research on cultural identity, social cognition, and behaviors. The intersubjective representation approach complements extant research on culture as self and external artifacts. In doing so, it allows for a more comprehensive understanding of culture’s role in social and personality psychological processes.     

Asian adolescents’ perceptions of parent, peer, and school support and psychological adjustment: The mediating role of dispositional optimism

This investigation examines the respective contributions of perceived support from parents, peers, and school to the psychological adjustment of 519 thirteen-year-old Asian adolescents from a middle school in Singapore, and the mediating role dispositional optimism plays in these relationships. The findings suggest that positive supportive relationships with parents, peers, and the school are important contextual factors influencing the psychological well-being of these adolescents. Dispositional optimism partially mediates support from each of these three sources and psychological adjustment. Sex differences were noted. This study contributes to a small body of research highlighting the role of a positive mechanism that underpins emotional wellbeing and psychological adaptation in the three developmental contexts that are important in shaping the beliefs, thinking and behavior of the growing Asian adolescent, particularly with respect to girls. Implications arising from this study are discussed. This study was supported by the Academic Research Fund grant (RI 5/04 YLS) from National Institute of Education to Lay See Yeo.     

Psychological motives and online games addiction: a test of flow theory and humanistic needs theory for Taiwanese adolescents.

Obviously, the negative impact of online games has received much attention as well as having become a popular research topic. This research explored, from flow theory and humanistic needs theory, the psychological motivations of Taiwanese adolescents who are addicted to online games. The purpose of Study 1 was to investigate the relationship between players' flow state and their online games addiction. The results indicated that flow state was negatively correlated with addictive inclination and it was not a significant predictor for players' subsequent additive inclination. Findings also revealed that the addicts' flow state was significantly lower than the nonaddicts. Thus, flow state might not be the key psychological mechanism of players' addiction. In Study 2, the results showed that the psychological needs of players of online games were close to the two-factor theory which depicts satisfaction and dissatisfaction dimensions. Addicted players' need-gratification was similar to the feature of dissatisfactory factor. That is, the absence of playing online games is more likely to generate sense of dissatisfaction; the addicts' compulsive use of online games seems to stem from the relief of dissatisfaction rather than the pursuit of satisfaction. In contrast, online games tend to provide the nonaddicts with a sense of satisfaction rather than a sense of dissatisfaction.     

Group-serving attributions across intergroup contexts: Cultural differences in the explanation of sex-typed behaviours

This research attempted to integrate Tajfel's (1978) social identity theory with self-presentational concerns by exploring attributions about perceived group differences in behaviour. As such, it dealt with group-level rather than individual-level attributions, exploring whether bias in making such verbal attributions varied as a function of the interviewer's group identity and the presence of an ingroup audience. Undergraduate men and women at The Chinese University of Hong Kong rated the appropriateness of ingroup-favouring and outgroup-favouring explanations for male-typed and female-typed behaviors in a face-to-face interview. A group-serving bias was found for female-typed behaviours, but only when the same-sex audience was absent. A conceptual replication of the experiment was run in the United States to examine the possible cultural basis for the Chinese moderation of favouritism in the audience condition. The group-serving bias was more robust for the American undergraduates, extending across male- and female-typed behaviours and also across audience conditions, It was argued that these cultural differences in attributional bias appear to reflect the strength of the movement for women's liberation and norms surrounding the avoidance of conflict in the United States and Hong Kong.     

When modesty fails: The social impact of group-effacing attributions following success or failure

This study explored how group members perceived a fellow group member who made either group-serving or group-effacing attributions following success or failure. Forty male undergraduates from the Chinese University co-operated in pairs with a confederate on a demanding group task. After learning that their group's performance had exceeded or failed to meet a standard, the subjects heard their confederate-partner make group-effacing or group-serving attributions. As predicted, subjects evaluated the group-serving partners more highly (p < 0.05). Preference for group-enhancing members was discussed as a pancultural response arising from the interdependence of group members. Given the process of social categorization, group members rise or fall together and are therefore socialized to support their group.     

北京农村4-6岁幼儿性格发展与家庭教育关系的调查研究

本文研究家庭教育方式对农村4—6岁儿童性格发展的影响。采用问卷调查,要求幼儿园教师和家长分别对儿童的性格特点评分,并要求家长对家庭教育方式评分。结果表明,儿童的一些优良性格品质与父母的某些良好的教育方式有密切关系;在调查的性格特征上,没有发现独生与非独生予女之间有明显差别;教师和家长对儿童的评分之间有高度相关,说明本调查信度是高的。     

藏族双语人双语态度的调查研究

以藏、汉杂居地区的藏族成年人为对象,运用问卷、访谈、观察等方法,研究双语人对母语、汉语以及不同交际情境中的语言选择和语码转换的态度。结果表明,双语人对母语的态度中情感因素起重要作用,有强烈的保持自己母语的愿望;双语人对汉语的态度更多地含有理性的或认知的成份,对学习汉语持积极的态度;双语人在家庭和本民族成员中主要使用母语,如果谈话者使用母语,而对方用汉语回答,或对方讲掺杂着汉语的混杂母语,大多数双语人对此都持否定态度     

师生认知方式与藏族双语儿童学业成绩关系研究

以藏族双语儿童和任课教师为被试,采用北师大心理系编制的CSFT工具,测查了师生认知方式相互作用对双语儿童学业成绩的影响,研究结果表明：师生认知方式的相互关系对学生的学业成绩有显著的影响,这种影响与学科性质、学习任务有关;双语儿童的认知方式是影响其汉语文、数学成绩的重要因素;不周性别师生认知方式的相互匹配对其汉语文的学习有显著影响;师生认知方式的相互作用对双语儿童学习成绩的影响并非是线性的,师生间性别、认知方式相互作用都是影响双语儿童学业成绩的重要变量。     

错误记忆的无意识机制初探

研究表明,错误记忆十分顽固,一经产生便难以消退,即使是在严格的有意识控制之下,比如预先警告条件下等。这就引起研究者对错误记忆中无意识机制的探讨。本文以错误记忆的这一顽固性特征为切人点,结合多种形式错误记忆的研究成果,尝试剖析错误记忆发生过程中无意识的作用机制,并对近年来兴起的错误记忆无意识机制的实证研究进行了介绍。     

Regulating the effects of depletion through monitoring

A robust finding is that participants who perform a depleting initial self-regulatory task are less persistent on a contiguous second task than are those who perform a less arduous initial self-regulatory task. We explain this regulatory depletion effect in terms of a monitoring process. According to this view, depleted individuals focus on the resources they have devoted to a second task, neglect to monitor their performance against their standards for such activities, and prematurely suspend their performance. Consistent with this view, we demonstrate that the regulatory depletion effect can be eliminated when individuals are encouraged to monitor their performance against some standard (Studies 1, 2, and 4) or when they have a proclivity to engage in such monitoring (Studies 3 and 4).