The role of posttraumatic fear and social support in the relationship between trauma severity and posttraumatic growth among adolescent survivors of the Yaan earthquake

Middle school students in Lushan county (N = 315) were assessed 6 months after the Yaan earthquake using a trauma severity questionnaire, a posttraumatic fear questionnaire, a social support questionnaire and a posttraumatic growth inventory to examine the effects of posttraumatic fear and social support in the relationship between trauma severity and posttraumatic growth (PTG). The results showed that posttraumatic fear mediated the relationship between trauma severity and PTG, and social support moderated the relationship between posttraumatic fear and PTG. These findings suggested that trauma severity could be positively associated with PTG in a direct way or in an indirect way through posttraumatic fear. Moreover, posttraumatic fear had a positive relation to PTG under the condition of high social support level, whereas the relation was non‐significant when the level of social support was low. These results were discussed in terms of their implications for adolescents after trauma.     

Chinese children's imaginary companions: Relations with peer relationships and social competence

We investigated relationships between Chinese children's imaginary companions (ICs) and peer relationships and social competence in 160 children, aged 5–6 years old. Children and their mothers participated in the interviews regarding the details of the children's ICs, including the type of the companion and the quality of the child–IC relationship. Peer relationships were assessed using sociometric nomination and perceived popularity nomination. Teachers rated children's social competence. Here, 55 children (34.3%) were deemed to have engaged in imaginary companion play. There was no relationship between imaginary companion types and child–IC relationship qualities. Children with invisible friends received more positive nominations than children with personified objects. Children with egalitarian relationships received more positive nominations and popularity nominations, but fewer negative nominations and unpopularity nominations than children with hierarchical relationships. Compared with children with hierarchical relationships, teachers rated the children with egalitarian relationships higher in social competence. The results suggest that imaginary companion types and relationship qualities may represent different dimensions of imaginary companions, calling attentions to the different mechanisms underlying imaginary companion types and relationship qualities with respect to social functioning.     

The Ability of Face Viewpoint Transformation Remains Immature at Age of 12: Evidence from Recognition of Faces with Different Familiarity in Children

Children are immature in face recognition, particularly in face configural decoding. This study examines the developmental difference of face recognition in another mechanism: viewpoint transformation processing. Adults and sixth‐grade children were instructed to match a series of one‐tone black face silhouettes to their corresponding front‐view faces. This task involves sophisticated calculation in pictorial information, precise viewpoint transformation, and most probably a 3‐D face representation. The results showed that although the performances were well above chance level in the recognition of familiar faces, for children, they were at chance level in the recognition of unfamiliar faces. The results indicate that children, at least to the age of about 12 years, are still immature in the processing of face viewpoint transformation compared to adults.     

Still a Hetero-Gendered World: A Content Analysis of Gender Stereotypes and Romantic Ideals in Chinese Boy Love Stories

Boy’s Love (BL) stories are a fictional fantasy textual story that describes a romantic relationship between men. Previous qualitative studies claimed that BL stories have depicted androgynous characters and egalitarian love relationships. The current study undertook a quantitative content analysis of 87 randomly sampled popular Chinese BL stories. Our coding system for coding both the masculinity and femininity of each main character in the selected BL stories was developed based on several previous studies. Gay male characters in BL stories were depicted as either similar to traditional masculine men (i.e., scoring high in masculinity and low in femininity) or similar to traditional feminine women (i.e., scoring high in femininity and low in masculinity). In the romantic relationships, BL stories typically paired a masculine character with a feminine character. In addition, heterosexual romantic ideals were prevalent in BL stories. Such an analysis challenges the previous analysis of BL stories. It suggests that heteronormative gender stereotypes exist in BL stories, even if these stories depict gay male characters and romantic relationships. These findings have important implications for understanding media effects in stereotypes toward gay men in contemporary Chinese society. It also encourages further research on alternative explanations for women’s motivation in reading and writing BL stories.     

Childhood abuse in Chinese patients with borderline personality disorder

This study examined (1) the relative prevalence of childhood abuse and other pathological childhood experiences in China reported by outpatients with borderline personality disorder (BPD), with other personality disorders, and without personality disorders; and, (2) whether the primary predictors of BPD in North America are associated with the development of BPD in China. The childhood experiences of 203 outpatients with BPD, 109 outpatients with other personality disorders, and 70 outpatients without Axis II diagnoses were assessed with the Chinese version of the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse Questionnaire (CECA.Q). Patients with BPD reported significantly more physical, emotional, and sexual abuse than either comparison group. Four types of childhood experiences were significant predictors of BPD: maternal neglect, paternal antipathy, sexual abuse, and maternal physical abuse. The findings suggest that maternal physical abuse is as strong a predictor of BPD in China as sexual abuse, a finding not replicated in North America.     

当代知识论:出场路径及其作为方法论和认识论

<正>当代知识论(contemporary theory of knowledge)作为哲学运动,是两股支流的汇合:一是它作为关于"知识是信念"的理论,乃孕育于作为方法论的分析哲学;二是它作为关于主体之经验直观能力的理论,乃是对从笛卡尔到康德的传统认识论的延伸。这决定了它包括两个部分,分别作为方法论和认识论。     

Differential trajectories of age-related changes in components of executive and memory processes

Several studies have demonstrated age-related declines in general executive function and memory. In this study, we examined cross-sectional and longitudinal age effects in more specific cognitive processes that constitute executive function and memory. We postulated that, whereas some components of executive and memory functions would show age differences and longitudinal declines, other specific abilities would be maintained or even improve with repeated testing. In a sample of individuals ≥55 years old from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, we found longitudinal declines in inhibition, manipulation, semantic retrieval, phonological retrieval, switching, and long-term memory over a maximum of 14 years follow-up. In contrast, abstraction, capacity, chunking, discrimination, and short-term memory were maintained or even improved longitudinally, probably due in part to repeated testing. Moreover, whereas several different abilities were correlated across participants' cross-sectional performance, longitudinal changes in performance showed more heterogeneous trajectories. Finally, compared with cross-sectional performance, longitudinal trajectories showed better distinction between participants with and those without later cognitive impairment. These results show that longitudinal cognitive aging of executive and memory functions is not a uniform process but a heterogeneous one and suggest that certain executive and memory functions remain stable despite age-related declines in other component processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The Physical Appearance Perfectionism Scale: Development and Preliminary Validation

Eight studies with data from 2316 students are presented describing the development and preliminary validation of the Physical Appearance Perfectionism Scale (PAPS), a brief measure with two subscales: Worry About Imperfection and Hope For Perfection. Results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the measure’s two-dimensional structure. Moreover, correlation analyses provided first evidence for the two subscales’ differential validity: Worry About Imperfection showed negative correlations with positive self-perceptions of one’s appearance (e.g., appearance self-esteem) and positive correlations with maladaptive concerns aspects of perfectionism, physical appearance concerns (e.g., body image disturbances), and body weight control whereas Hope For Perfection showed positive correlations with positive striving aspects of perfectionism, positive self-perceptions, and impression management. In addition, all PAPS scores showed high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) and temporal stability (test-retest). Overall the findings suggest that the PAPS is a reliable and valid instrument to assess positive and negative aspects of physical appearance perfectionism.     

Active coping with stress suppresses glucose metabolism in the rat hypothalamus

We used 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose small-animal positron-emission tomography to determine whether different styles of coping with stress are associated with different patterns of neuronal activity in the hypothalamus. Adult rats were subjected to immobilization (IMO)-stress or to a non-immobilized condition for 30 min, in random order on separate days, each of which was followed by brain-scanning. Some rats in the immobilized condition were allowed to actively cope with the stress by chewing a wooden stick during IMO, while the other immobilized rats were given nothing to chew on. Voxel-based statistical analysis of the brain imaging data shows that chewing counteracted the stress-induced increased glucose uptake in the hypothalamus to the level of the non-immobilized condition. Region-of-interest analysis of the glucose uptake values further showed that chewing significantly suppressed stress-induced increased glucose uptake in the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus and the anterior hypothalamic area but not in the lateral hypothalamus. Together with the finding that the mean plasma corticosterone concentration at the termination of the IMO was also significantly suppressed when rats had an opportunity to chew a wooden stick, our results showed that active coping by chewing inhibited the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis to reduce the endocrine stress response.     

Smaller holistic processing of faces associated with face drawing experience

The type of experience involved with an object category has been regarded as one important factor in shaping of the human object recognition system. Laboratory training studies have shown that different kinds of learning experience with the same set of novel objects resulted in different perceptual and neural changes. Whether this applies to natural real-world objects remains to be seen. We compared two groups of observers who had different learning experiences with faces, using holistic processing as a dependent measure. We found that, while ordinary observers had extensive individuation experience with faces and displayed typical holistic face processing, art students who had acquired additional experience in drawing faces, and thus in attending to parts of a face, showed less holistic processing than did ordinary observers. These results converge with laboratory training studies on the role of type of experience in the development of different perceptual markers for different object categories. It is thus insufficient to categorize expertise simply in terms of object domains (e.g., expertise with faces). Instead, perceptual expertise should be classified in terms of the underlying process or task demand.