Can semi-supervised learning explain incorrect beliefs about categories?

Three experiments with 88 college-aged participants explored how unlabeled experiences—learning episodes in which people encounter objects without information about their category membership—influence beliefs about category structure. Participants performed a simple one-dimensional categorization task in a brief supervised learning phase, then made a large number of unsupervised categorization decisions about new items. In all three experiments, the unsupervised experience altered participants’ implicit and explicit mental category boundaries, their explicit beliefs about the most representative members of each category, and even their memory for the items encountered during the supervised learning phase. These changes were influenced by both the range and frequency distribution of the unlabeled stimuli: mental category boundaries shifted toward the middle of the range and toward the trough of the bimodal distribution of unlabeled items, whereas beliefs about the most representative category members shifted toward the modes of the unlabeled distribution. One consequence of this shift in representations is a false-consensus effect (Experiment 3) where participants, despite receiving very disparate training experiences, show strong agreement in judgments about representativeness and boundary location following unsupervised category judgments.     

Disordered gambling as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the South Oaks Gambling Screen: evidence for a common etiologic structure

In a previous article, we demonstrated in a large twin study that disordered gambling (DG), as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV), ran in families, that about half of the variation in liability for DG was due to familial factors, and that all of this was explained by shared genetic rather than shared environmental influences (Slutske, Zhu, Meier, & Martin, 2010). The purpose of the present study is to extend this work to include an alternative conceptualization of DG that is provided by the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) item set in order to (a) compare the magnitude of the familial resemblance obtained when using the two definitions of DG (based on the DSM-IV and the SOGS), (b) examine the extent to which the 2 definitions tap the same underlying sources of genetic and environmental variation, and (c) examine whether the same results will be obtained among men and women. The results of bivariate twin model-fitting analyses suggested that DG, as defined by the DSM-IV and the SOGS, substantially overlapped at the etiologic level among both men and women, which supports the construct validity of both the DSM and the SOGS conceptualizations of DG. This study highlights the utility of twin studies for appraising the validity of the diagnostic nomenclature.     

The effect of working memory load on the SNARC effect: Maybe tasks have a word to say

We investigated the effect of working memory load on the SNARC (spatial–numerical association of response codes) effect under different number judgment tasks (parity judgment and magnitude comparison), using a novel dual task. Instead of exerting load over the whole block of number judgment trials, in this dual task, number judgment trials were inserted into each interstimulus interval of an n-back task, which served as the working memory load. We varied both load type (verbal and spatial) and amount (1-load, 2-load, and 3-load). The results indicated that the SNARC effect disappeared even under the 1-load condition for a parity judgment, regardless of the type of load. However, during the magnitude comparison task, the SNARC effect increased with increasing load amounts under spatial load conditions; under verbal load conditions, the SNARC effect decreased with increasing amounts of load, and disappeared during the 3-load task. The difference between the parity and magnitude tasks was not attributable to the interval stimuli or task switching. These findings confirm that different spatial–numerical associations for comparing numerical magnitudes and judgments of parity have different needs with respect to working memory resources.     

Automatic thoughts as a predictor of internalizing and externalizing problems in Chinese adolescents: A test of the cognitive content‐specificity hypothesis with age effects

The main aim of the current study was to test the cognitive content‐specificity hypothesis across internalizing and externalizing problems in Chinese adolescents. The participants consisted of 2,158 adolescents aged 11–19 years from three middle schools, and they completed a number of measures assessing a wide range of automatic thoughts and syndromes related to internalizing and externalizing problems. Multivariate regression analyses demonstrated that thoughts about social threats, personal failure and hostility were the strongest predictors of anxiety, depression, and externalizing problems, respectively. Age was a statistically significant, albeit modest, moderator of the relationship between automatic thoughts about social threat and anxiety. The current study provides support for the cognitive content‐specificity hypothesis in internalizing and externalizing problems in a Chinese sample.     

社会技术系统论视角下的工程伦理学研究

20世纪以来,STS研究中的技术研究从技术决定论、技术的社会建构论向技术与社会共同塑造理论的转变,在一定意义上促进了对于工程伦理学研究的反思。诞生于这一学术运动中的社会技术系统论,有助于从关注社会技术系统复杂性的视角对传统工程伦理学的外在主义进路进行批判。基于社会技术系统论建立的解释—操作—对话模型,是开展社会技术系统语境下的工程伦理学研究的一项积极尝试。     

大学生内隐职业性别刻板印象研究

采用内隐联想测验和刻板解释偏差两种测量内隐社会认知的方法考察了60名大学生被试的内隐职业性别刻板印象。结果表明,大学生也存在非常明显的内隐职业性别刻板印象,刻板程度在性别、专业上没有显著差异。在男女职业评价刻板印象上,男大学生表现出非常明显的刻板印象,女大学生的观念已有所改变。用内隐联想测验和刻板解释偏差测量这两种方法测量大学生的内隐职业性别刻板印象,在被试的性别变量上得到的结果不一致。     

心理资本理论及其教育启示

本文回顾了心理资本的内涵和构成要素,分析了心理资本理论在教育中的价值和意义,并在此基础上提出了培育和开发学生心理资本的一些基本方法。     

不同形式的阅读干预在儿童读写能力发展中的作用

以419名低年级小学生为研究对象,通过为期一年的教学干预研究,探讨了独立阅读和分享阅读对儿童阅读和写作能力的影响。结果发现：（1）分享阅读和独立阅读均可提高学生的阅读能力,阅读量是影响阅读能力发展的重要因素;（2）独立阅读是提高写作能力的最有效方式。     

儿童的决策行为

现有的研究表明,儿童早期就具有一定的利用概率和统计信息来做决策的能力,这种能力随着年龄增长,但和成人相比存在差异;儿童和成人同样运用启发式来做决策,且受许多判断偏见的影响。儿童的决策行为受到人格特征、性别、年龄、任务领域特殊性和信息表征等因素的影响。文中还介绍了决策的自我调节模型和“双过程”理论,从不同的角度解释和预测儿童决策行为的发展。最后分析了儿童决策研究的趋势。     

初级运动区的fMRI实验研究

本实验采用功能磁共振为实验仪器,被试进行运动准备和运动执行两种作业活动,实验设计为延时序列运动任务。在对实验数据进行预处理,反卷积、标准化处理后,采用欧式距离公式进行聚类统计,统计结果显示,M1区不仅具有运动执行和运动准备的功能,还发现其他功能区域的激活,不是单纯的运动执行功能,这一区域与三种活动有关。