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.     

Brief report: Publications from mainland China,Hong Kong,and Taiwan in behavioral journals 1980–2021

Research involving international research communities has been advocated in the field of behavior analysis (Dymond et al., 2000; Martin et al., 2016). The purpose of the present study was to report the status of behavioral research in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, in terms of number of publications, types of research, and frequency of collaboration with international researchers. Fifteen behavioral journals were selected from the list by Cooper et al. (2020). These were searched by hand to find publications conducted in or authored by researchers from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan dating from each journal's inception to December 2021. The earliest publication we found appeared in 1980 in The Psychological Record. Over the following four decades (1980–1989; 1990–1999; 2000–2009; 2010–2021), the number of publications per decade increased dramatically and continues in recent years to rise. Publications include research reports, review papers, and conceptual articles, with the majority being basic research reports published in Behavioral Processes. Approximately half the publications involve collaboration with international researchers, mostly in North America. Implications for behavioral research, practice, and policy in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are discussed.     

Unpacking the effects of information overload on the purchase intention of electric vehicles

China is currently under tremendous pressures to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions. As an energy-saving transportation innovation, electric vehicles (EVs) can alleviate this dilemma. This study adopts the Stimuli-Organism-Response (SOR) framework to explore the effect of information overload on consumers' psychological state and subsequent adoption intentions of EVs. Based on the 367 valid samples from Auto 4S shops in EV pilot cities in Mainland China, this study reveals that information overload negatively impacts perceived value and perceived effectiveness but positively impacts perceived risk. Furthermore, information quality offsets the negative impact of information overload on perceived value and enhances the positive impact of information overload on perceived risk. Interestingly, information quality not significantly affect the relationship between information overload and perceived effectiveness. In addition, perceived value and perceived effectiveness are positively related to purchase intentions, while perceived risk is negatively correlated with consumers' purchase intentions. On the basis of these findings, we discuss the policy implications of EVs and provide suggestions for future development.     

Behavioral and brain wave evidence for automatic processing of orthographically regular letter strings

Evidence for the automatic processing of nonword letter strings was sought in subjects who performed two different perceptual tasks. Twelve subjects detected valid words. Twelve other subjects detected Gestalt patterns that contained no letters. The targets and two types of nonword letter strings were interspersed in a stream of nonletter images. Behavioral data showed significant effects of orthographic regularity of letter strings in the group that detected words, but not in the group that detected Gestalt patterns. Brain-wave responses showed the effect of orthographic regularity in both groups. The responses were significantly larger for regular than for irregular strings. This showed that brain waves can be used to study the operation of reading processes in subjects who are performing a task that does not require reading ability.