Factors influencing readability of rapidly presented text segments

Experiment 1 compared paragraph comprehension for texts shown either as normal pages on a computer terminal screen or as rapid serial visual presentations (RSVPs) of small text segments to a common location. Over several days of practice, reading comprehension was equivalent in the normal presentation mode and the RSVP format. When successive RSVP segments contained some information in common, to mimic the experience of successive parafoveal and foveal views of words in normal reading, comprehension was somewhat worse than when successive segments contained no overlapping information. Experiment 2 used a variety of segment size and segment duration combinations to investigate the optimal means of presenting text in the RSVP format. Across a variety of presentation rates and text difficulties, comprehension was maximal for segments averaging about 12 character spaces in length. In Experiment 3, texts were divided into short idea units or into random segments of equal average length. Comprehension was shown to be greater in the structured condition than in the random condition. An optimal means of presenting text in the RSVP format could be superior to normal presentation methods for reading and other text-processing tasks.     

刺激-效应的统一模型

本文通过对某些神经生理学实验结果的分析,从人体感受器官能够经受信号强度的巨大变化出发,建立了反映刺激τ和效应E一般关系的效应方程E=Blog(1+τ)。式中系数B为与效应E同量纲或性质的条件恒量。 值得注意的是,效应方程把心理学领域中许多不相关的经验定律用统一的模型联系起来。例如,从效应方程出发,能够推出实验心理学中的遗忘定律、海曼公式,心理物理学中的费希纳定律、韦伯定律、费瑞—帕特定律和格拉涅-哈帕公式等。 此外,对遗忘定律进行了修正,使其能适用于0≤t<1的时间范围,从而变得较全面。对费希纳定律也作了类似的修正,避免了出现负的感觉,并从不同角度阐述了效应E与感觉S的某些性质。对格拉涅-哈帕公式则作了较前更为合理的解释。 在推导关于闪光融合频率的费瑞-帕特定律时,得出一条影响中枢神经处理信息的速度和精度的规律。 作为这一模型的直接验证,可以从前人所作的一些实验数据分析中得出。本文举的例子为鲎鱼单根神经的实验;在另文里将举出反应时间依赖于刺激强度的另一个实例。     

How solitude relates to well-being in old age: A review of inter-individual differences

Older adults are more likely to live alone and engage in solitary activities than young adults, leading to decrement in their well-being. However, researchers have discovered beneficial implications of solitude, and some of them even have established that the negative and positive effects of solitude coexist. The study's purposes are to investigate the relationship between solitude and well-being among older adults and to further examine the inter-individual differences in this relationship. In the database of Google Scholar, the systematic review methods are used and 17 articles meet the inclusion criteria. The study concludes that older adults experience solitude both negatively and positively; the complex relationship between solitude and well-being can be better understood and explained by inter-individual differences based on intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cultural factors. This systematic review adopts a perspective that spans individual and social/cultural levels and helps grasp the link between solitude and well-being in older adults. Based on this review, the researcher can develop appropriate interventions to help older people maximize the benefits of solitude while minimizing the drawbacks to further achieve a higher quality of life.     

Too hot to help or too cold to care? On the links between ambient temperature,volunteerism, and civic engagement

We investigated the relationship between ambient temperature and prosocial behaviour in real-life settings. It was guided by two mechanisms of opposite predictions, namely (1) higher temperatures decrease prosociality by harming well-being, and (2) higher temperatures increase prosociality by promoting the embodied cognition of social warmth. In Study 1, U.S. state-level time-series data (2002–2015) supported the first mechanism, with higher temperatures predicting lower volunteer rates through lower well-being. Study 2 furthered the investigation by probing the relationship between neighbourhood temperature and civic engagement of 2268 U.S. citizens. The data partially supported the well-being mechanism and reported findings contradictory to the social embodiment mechanism. Higher temperatures predicted lower interpersonal trust and subsequently lower civic engagement. The unexpected finding hinted at a cognitive effect of heat and a compensatory mechanism in social thermoregulation. We discussed the findings regarding their methodological strengths and weaknesses, with cautions made on ecological fallacies and alternative models.     

Fragile promise: The role of justification in promise-breaking

People who consider themselves moral sometimes use self-serving justifications to rationalize their selfish behaviours. Previous studies have tested the role of ambiguity in justifying wrongdoings, but it remains unclear whether ambiguity also plays a role in justifying promise-breaking behaviour and whether heterogeneity exists. To investigate justification in promise-breaking, we introduced a new experimental paradigm called the card-guessing task and used hierarchical cluster analysis to classify participants based on their promise-breaking decisions in unambiguous and ambiguous conditions. Experiment 1 revealed three clusters of solutions: Cluster 1 always kept their promises (i.e., keepers); Cluster 2 only exploited the vague promises and broke their promises in the ambiguous condition (i.e., intermediates); Cluster 3 tended to take advantage of vague promises and broke their promises irrespective of ambiguity (i.e., breakers). Experiment 2 confirmed that participants in the three clusters differed in their norm-abiding preferences and social value orientations. Keepers were more altruistic and had a stronger sense of norm compliance than intermediates and breakers. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that self-serving justifications were more likely to be employed by people who are moderately sensitive to deviation from social norms, which has implications for strategic interventions and policy formulation concerning unethical behaviour.     

Worldviews about change: Their structure and their implications for understanding responses to sustainability,technology, and political change

People hold different perspectives about how they think the world is changing or should change. We examined five of these “worldviews” about change: Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In Studies 1–4 (total N = 2733) we established reliable measures of each change worldview, and showed how these help explain when people will support or oppose social change in contexts spanning sustainability, technological innovations, and political elections. In mapping out these relationships we identify how the importance of different change worldviews varies across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context-specific factors (e.g., self-reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). Study 5 (N = 2140) examined generalizability in 10 countries/regions spanning five continents, establishing that these worldviews exhibited metric invariance, but with country/region differences in how change worldviews were related to support for sustainability. These findings show that change worldviews can act as a general “lens” people use to help determine whether to support or oppose social change.     

Inspired to donate: How donors' social class impacts charitable donations

Previous research has found that donors' social class affects their own charitable giving. This research explores the effect of donors' social class on others' donation behavior. Specifically, we propose that individuals feel more inspired to engage in prosocial behavior after learning about low-social-class donors (vs. high-social-class donors) perform the giving behavior. A series of five studies, combining online and experimental data, provide converging support for this proposition and its underlying mechanism of inspiration. Furthermore, we show that the effect of donors' social class on individuals' donation behavior is attenuated when the donation currency is goods (instead of money). The article concludes with implications for the marketing of charities and prosocial behaviors.     

The myth of regaining control: Ostracism increases superstitious tendencies

Whether and how interpersonal experiences predispose people to show superstitious tendencies have been largely unexamined by past studies. By adopting a multimethod approach, three studies tested (a) whether ostracism increases superstitious tendencies through thwarted perceived control, (b) whether the dispositional need for closure moderates the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies and (c) whether restoring ostracized people's thwarted control weakens their superstitious tendencies. The results revealed that ostracized participants had higher superstitious tendencies than nonostracized participants did (Studies 1–3). Moreover, thwarted control mediated the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies (Study 2). In addition, the dispositional need for closure moderated the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies, such that the effect was stronger among participants with a high need for closure (Studies 1–2). Finally, restoring ostracized participants' perceived control weakened the effect of ostracism on superstitious tendencies (Study 3). Altogether, these findings feature the essential role of thwarted perceived control in understanding the link between ostracism and superstitious tendencies and the implication of control restoration in weakening the link. They also highlight the importance of dispositional characteristics in moderating people's responses to superstitions following ostracism and related forms of interpersonal maltreatment.