Capacity limit of ensemble perception of multiple spatially intermixed sets

The visual system is remarkably efficient at extracting summary statistics from the environment. Yet at any given time, the environment consists of many groups of objects distributed over space. Thus, the challenge for the visual system is to summarize over multiple groups. The current study investigates the capacity and computational efficiency of ensemble perception, in the context of perceiving mean sizes of multiple spatially intermixed groups of circles. In a series of experiments, participants viewed an array of one to eight sets of circles. Each set contained four circles in the same colors, but with different sizes. Participants estimated the mean size of a probed set. The set that would be probed was either known before onset of the array (pre-cue condition) or afterwards (post-cue condition). By comparing estimation error in the pre-cue and post-cue conditions, we found that participants could reliably estimate mean sizes for approximately two sets (Experiment 1). Importantly, this capacity was robust against attention bias toward individual objects in the sets (Experiment 2). Varying the exposure time to stimulus arrays did not increase the capacity limit, suggesting that ensemble perception could be limited by an internal resource constraint, rather than the speed of information encoding (Experiment 3). Moreover, we found that the visual system could not encode and hold more individual items than ensemble representations (Experiment 4). Taken together, these results suggest that ensemble perception provides an efficient way of information processing but with constraints.     

Life satisfaction trajectories among junior high school students in China: The role of parent–child communication

A 3-year follow-up test (from grades 7 to 9) was administered to 807 junior high school students from two regions in Hunan Province, China, using multilevel analysis to examine trends in junior high school students' life satisfaction, differences by gender and location of life and the effects of father–child/mother–child communication on the development of life satisfaction. The results showed that (1) Chinese junior high school students' life satisfaction showed a decreasing trend from the seventh grade to the ninth grade, and there was a significant decreasing process in the eighth grade; (2) father–child communication and mother–child communication had a significant positive predictive effect on Chinese junior high school students' life satisfaction and (3) father–child communication and mother–child communication had a significant negative predictive effect on the decreasing trend of life satisfaction, in which the effect of mother–child communication was particularly significant.     

Which types of income matter most for well‐being in China: Absolute,relative or income aspirations?

China has experienced remarkable economic growth, but that has not been associated with increases in individual well‐being, implying that well‐being may not be sensitive to increases in absolute income (AI). Thus, the relationship between well‐being and other types of income is worth investigating. This study employed a national sample of 5471 respondents from 31 provinces of China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) to compare the effects of AI, relative income (RI) and income aspirations (IA) on individual well‐being in China. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis found that, compared to AI and RI, IA explained more variation in well‐being. These findings highlight the importance of IA for well‐being among the Chinese.     

Sociolinguistic awareness and false belief in young Cantonese learners of English

In this study, we examined whether sociolinguistic awareness and false belief were uniquely related in 3- and 4-year-old Cantonese-speaking children learning English as a second language. The English-use background of these children varied so that they possessed sociolinguistic awareness to different degrees. Results indicated that sociolinguistic awareness predicted false belief uniquely after controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, English vocabulary, and family income for both the second language learners and the more balanced bilinguals. The group difference in false belief was adequately explained by the corresponding difference in sociolinguistic awareness over and above the other variables. Such findings provide evidence for the claim that false belief understanding is critically related to sociolinguistic awareness, which in turn is influenced by how a second language is learned.     

Family and School Influences on Youths' Behavioral and Academic Outcomes: Cross-Level Interactions between Parental Monitoring and Character Development Curriculum

The authors examined the joint (interactive) roles of the Second Step curriculum (a validated social-emotional learning and bullying prevention program; Committee for Children, Seattle, WA) and parenting practices on students' behavioral and academic outcomes in Grades 5–8. Participants were 763 parents and their children from 22 schools (8 control and 14 treatment). A 2-level random coefficient model was conducted to assess the effect of parental monitoring on school outcomes, as well as the interaction between character development curriculum and parental monitoring. Results indicated that parental monitoring was a significant predictor of school behaviors and school grades. Furthermore, the Second Step curriculum moderated the relationship between parental monitoring and problem behaviors, prosocial behaviors, and grades at school. Specifically, in schools without the Second Step curriculum parental monitoring predicted higher school grades but had no impact on students' school behaviors. By contrast, in schools with the Second Step curriculum, parental monitoring predicted fewer problem behaviors as well as more prosocial behaviors. The study results highlight the joint influences of the family and the school in children's behavioral and academic trajectories. Results have implications for education and intervention, including improving the school climate, student behaviors, and learning or achievement.     

Prioritization to visual objects: Roles of sensory uncertainty

Two hypotheses, attentional prioritization and attentional spreading, have been proposed to account for object-based attention. The attentional-prioritization hypothesis posits that the positional uncertainty of targets is sufficient to resolve the controversy raised by the competing attentional-spreading hypothesis. Here we challenge the sufficiency of this explanation by showing that object-based attention is a function of sensory uncertainty in a task with consistent high positional uncertainty of the targets. In Experiment 1, object-based attention was modulated by sensory uncertainty induced by the noise from backward masking, showing an object-based effect under high as compared to low sensory uncertainty. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2 with increased task difficulty, to exclude that as a confounding factor, and in Experiment 3 with a psychophysical method, to obtain converging evidence using perceptual threshold measurement. Additionally, such a finding was not observed when sensory uncertainty was eliminated by replacing the backward-masking stimuli with perceptually dissimilar ones in Experiment 4. These results reveal that object-based attention is influenced by sensory uncertainty, even under high positional uncertainty of the targets. Our findings contradict the proposition of attentional spreading, proposing instead an automatic form of object-based attention due to enhancement of the perceptual representation. More importantly, the attentional-prioritization hypothesis based solely on positional uncertainty cannot sufficiently account for object-based attention, but needs to be developed by expanding the concept of uncertainty to include at least sensory uncertainty.     

Developing a new measure of independent and interdependent views of the self

Following concepts introduced by Markus and Kitayama [Markus, H. R. & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: implication for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.], two studies were conducted to develop and test a new scale to measure individualism and collectivism, each with its seven constituent facets. The proposed two-dimensional structure was supported by exploratory factor analyses of Chinese and British samples of general populations. The new Independent and Interdependent Self Scale (IISS) was found to have satisfactory reliability and validity across five independent samples of Chinese and British students and community adults. The strengths and limitations of the present research as well as future directions for research are discussed.     

作为文本指向型哲学的中期柏拉图主义

和中期柏拉图主义相关的许多研究都是从学说角度展开的,这些研究假设了中期柏拉图主义的多样性,但却无法说明各种中期柏拉图主义学说为何会被统称为柏拉图主义。为了从一个统一的角度理解作为一个整体的中期柏拉图主义,本文假设古希腊哲学可以分为事实指向型和文本指向型两种形态,它们代表了做哲学的两种不同方式。中期柏拉图主义属于文本指向型哲学,以对柏拉图哲学对话的评注为做哲学的首要任务,因而这些评注活动强调柏拉图及其文本的权威地位。本文认为,我们应当在评注活动的语境中来理解柏拉图的权威,柏拉图的权威本质上是知识取向的,而非道德取向的。     

脑损伤和年老化研究的新视角——认知储备

认知储备是个体通过使用不同的大脑网络使成绩最优化的能力,反映了个体认知策略的选择。它最初来自临床心理学的观察,即个体的脑病理或脑损伤的程度与其临床表现之间没有直接的相关关系,包括储备和补偿两种机制。个体的受教育程度、职业水平、智力水平、健康状况、智力活动等都能反映其认知储备能力。对老年人和AD患者的人口统计学和脑成像研究表明,个体的认知储备能力越强,延缓其认知老化(或AD)的可能性就越大。