Autonomic conditioning to monetary and social stimuli and aggression in children

Poor conditioning to punishment, such as loud tones or electric shock, has been proposed as an important factor involved in the etiology of aggressive and psychopathic behavior. However, it is not known whether the association holds when monetary or social stimulus is used as the unconditioned stimulus, and if aggressive individuals also have impaired conditioning to rewards. In this study, skin conductance responses in a conditioning task involving both monetary/social reward and punishment as unconditioned stimuli were assessed in 340 male and female 8‐ to 9‐year‐old children from the community. Children reported their reactive and proactive aggression using the Reactive and Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ; Raine et al., 2006). Results showed that monetary/social reward and punishment were effective in eliciting physiological classical conditioning in children, and that reduced reward conditioning was associated with high levels of proactive aggression in particular. Findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between reactive and proactive aggression when examining antisocial behavior in children, and suggest that reward‐oriented treatment programs may not be effective for children with more proactive, instrumental aggressive behavior.

     

延迟间隔和提取条件对短时错误记忆的影响

采用短时DRM迫选任务,探讨提取条件和延迟间隔对短时错误记忆的影响,以进一步考察短时错误记忆的产生机制。结果发现,短时错误记忆的产生主要源于提取时对存贮细节通达的缺失。在无有效提取线索的条件下,延迟间隔能够增加错误记忆率;而有效提取线索存在时,真实记忆痕迹的可通达性增加能够极大避免错误记忆的产生,延迟间隔的作用则不显著。该实验的结果是对错误记忆理论解释的一种补充。     

幼儿父母婚姻冲突与教养方式的关系:父母情绪调节策略的调节作用

以285名幼儿家长为被试,采用问卷法考察婚姻冲突对权威教养和专制教养的差别效应以及父母情绪调节策略在其中的调节作用。结果发现:(1)幼儿父母的婚姻冲突能显著负向预测其权威教养,显著正向预测其专制教养,婚姻冲突对两类教养的预测作用大小无显著差异;(2)父母情绪调节策略对婚姻冲突与权威教养关系的调节作用显著,且这种调节作用不存在家长性别的差异:较少使用认知重评或较多使用表达抑制的家长,其婚姻冲突能显著负向预测权威教养;经常使用认知重评或较少使用表达抑制的家长,其婚姻冲突对权威教养的影响不显著。父母情绪调节策略对婚姻冲突与专制教养关系的调节作用不显著。     

Tracing children's vocabulary development from preschool through the school‐age years: an 8‐year longitudinal study

In this 8‐year longitudinal study, we traced the vocabulary growth of Chinese children, explored potential precursors of vocabulary knowledge, and investigated how vocabulary growth predicted future reading skills. Two hundred and sixty‐four (264) native Chinese children from Beijing were measured on a variety of reading and language tasks over 8 years. Between the ages of 4 to 10 years, they were administered tasks of vocabulary and related cognitive skills. At age 11, comprehensive reading skills, including character recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension were examined. Individual differences in vocabulary developmental profiles were estimated using the intercept‐slope cluster method. Vocabulary development was then examined in relation to later reading outcomes. Three subgroups of lexical growth were classified, namely high‐high (with a large initial vocabulary size and a fast growth rate), low‐high (with a small initial vocabulary size and a fast growth rate) and low‐low (with a small initial vocabulary size and a slow growth rate) groups. Low‐high and low‐low groups were distinguishable mostly through phonological skills, morphological skills and other reading‐related cognitive skills. Childhood vocabulary development (using intercept and slope) explained subsequent reading skills. Findings suggest that language‐related and reading‐related cognitive skills differ among groups with different developmental trajectories of vocabulary, and the initial size and growth rate of vocabulary may be two predictors for later reading development.     

Customer's perceived value of waiting time for service events

The authors address the effects of money gain and loss on individually perceived value as predicted by prospect theory in a time gain‐and‐loss context. Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 results support the prospect theory concept of value function. According to Experiment 2 results, the amount of money involved exerted different impacts on individual perceptions—specifically, study participants preferred gaining $1 on one occasion to gaining 50 cents over two occasions and preferred losing $1 one time to losing 50 cents twice. Further, the combined results indicate that the study participants held different perceptions of the value of “short time” versus “little money”—that is, they preferred saving an extra 2 minutes on one occasion to saving 1 minute on two occasions and preferred waiting an extra 1 minute two times to waiting an extra 2 minutes one time. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Electrophysiological difference between the representations of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory

Causally related concepts like “virus” and “epidemic” and general associatively related concepts like “ring” and “emerald” are represented and accessed separately. The Evoked Response Potential (ERP) procedure was used to examine the representations of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory. Participants were required to remember a task cue (causal or associative) presented at the beginning of each trial, and assess whether the relationship between subsequently presented words matched the initial task cue. The ERP data showed that an N400 effect (250–450 ms) was more negative for unrelated words than for all related words. Furthermore, the N400 effect elicited by causal relations was more positive than for associative relations in causal cue condition, whereas no significant difference was found in the associative cue condition. The centrally distributed late ERP component (650–750 ms) elicited by the causal cue condition was more positive than for the associative cue condition. These results suggested that the processing of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory recruited different degrees of attentional and executive resources.     

Perception of parents as demonstrating the inherent merit of their values: Relations with self‐congruence and subjective well‐being

This study focuses on the parenting practice of inherent value demonstration (IVD), involving parents' tendency to express their values in behaviours and appear satisfied and vital while doing so. Data from Chinese college students (n = 89) confirmed the hypothesis that offspring's perception of their parents as engaged in IVD predicts offspring's subjective well‐being (SWB) through sense of self‐congruence. Importantly, these relations emerged also when controlling for fundamental autonomy‐supportive (FAS) parenting practices such as taking children's perspective, minimising control and allowing choice. These findings are consistent with the view that parents concerned with their children's sense of autonomy may do well to engage in IVD in addition to more fundamental autonomy‐supportive practices. Future research may examine the role of IVD in promoting authentic values that serve as an internal compass that guides children to act in ways that feel self‐congruent.     

Do People Use Their Implicit Theories of Creativity as General Theories?

This study examines whether people use the general implicit theories of creativity or not when applying them to themselves and others. On the basis of the actor–observer asymmetry theory, the authors propose that conception of creativity would be differently constructed depending on the targets of attention: general, self, and other. Three studies attempted to examine this hypothesis. In the preliminary study, a measure was developed to assess the characteristics that describe general creativity. In Study 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses found the conceptual factors of general creativity. In Study 2, the common and specific factors of general, self, and others’ creativity concepts were compared through invariance tests. As a result, it was revealed that the invariance test failed, which means that the general conception of creativity may not be applicable to monitor self and others’ creativity in a consistent way. Implications and limitations of this study are discussed at the end of the study.