Assessing Representations of Close Relationships Among Chinese and Japanese Adolescents and Young Adults: Commonalities and Differences in the Two Confucian Cultures

This article proposed an affective relationships model with its assessment instrument and examined how Chinese and Japanese adolescents and young adults construct mental representations of their close relationships, and the influence of Confucian cultural beliefs on these representations. The participants were 1,565 students aged 14 to 24 years living in China or Japan. The students were asked about their relationships with four figures: mother, father, closest friend, and romantic partner. We found that: (a) adolescents and young adults in both cultures constructed constellations of relationships containing multiple figures, and they articulated reasons for each figure's significance; and (b) there were between-group differences in the relationships with the father and the romantic partner for Chinese versus Japanese adolescents and young adults. These differences were partly explained by the influence of Confucianism on the Chinese participants’ cultural beliefs that retained the patriarchal values.     

Crafting Mosaics: Person-Centered Religious Influence and Selection in Adolescent Friendships

This research addresses the intersection of two key domains of adolescents’ lives: religion and peer networks. Religion scholars argue that religion is multi-faceted and better understood by focusing on combinations of indicators (i.e., mosaics), versus a variable-centered approach. We adopt this framework and investigate the interplay between religion and peer networks, both in how religious mosaics are shaped by friends and how religious profiles affect friend selection dynamics. With data from two schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate religious mosaics using latent class analysis (LCA) to identify profiles consisting of combinations of commonly available survey-based measures of religious attitudes, behaviors, and identities. Finding evidence of theoretically expected profiles, we then use stochastic actor–based models (SABMs) to investigate network dynamics for these LCA-based religious profiles. We demonstrate how the profile data can be integrated within the SABM framework to evaluate processes of friend selection and influence. Results show evidence of adolescents influencing one another's religious mosaics, but not selecting friends on that basis.     

Does Partisan Bias Modulate Neural Processing of Political Information? An Analysis of the Neural Correlates of Corruption and Positive Messages

Daily worldwide newspapers print articles exposing government corruption. Yet these messages do not lead to a loss of votes for the corrupt parties. Sympathizers’ partisan bias, which respectively minimizes and maximizes corruption and positive messages of their own parties respectively, is widely considered the main cause of the loss of effectiveness of political communications. Despite the well-established existence of such bias when processing political information, little is known as to its psychological origin. Through the use of neuroscience (fMRI), this study explores the underlying brain mechanisms of negative (corruption) and positive political messages related to a conservative and a socialist Spanish political party, as well as the differences between their sympathizers. The findings reveal that negative (vs. positive) political messages exert the greatest neuroimaging impact on the electorate, as shown in aversive, risk, and disappointment-related brain regions. Interestingly, we show that there exists a main partisan bias against opposite parties (and not a positive bias toward one’s own party) that stems from a higher risk, ambiguity, and disbelief provoked by both positive and negative information about rival parties. Furthermore, this bias was more pronounced among conservative supporters. The current findings provide valuable insights for political parties to improve their communication campaigns.     

Just banter? Friendship,teasing and experimental aggression in adolescent peer networks

Aggressive behaviour serves many useful social functions, yet can also have damaging consequences. In line with evidence showing adolescent development in social cognitive abilities, we hypothesized that the use of aggression would become more sophisticated with age. We investigated adolescent aggression towards peers using an experimental, hypothetical aggression paradigm, the hot sauce paradigm, in a school‐based social network setting. Participants (N = 162 aged 11–17, 98 male) indicated which strength of imaginary hot sauce they would allocate to each of their classmates. A Social Network Questionnaire quantified participants’ perceived dyadic social tie strength with each classmate, and the incidence of mutual or unilateral dyadic real‐world aggression (e.g. teasing). Participants allocated weaker hot sauce to peers with whom they reported strong, positive social ties and an absence of self‐reported unilateral real‐world aggression. With increasing cross‐sectional age, there was a decrease in the impact of social tie strength and an increase in the extent to which hot sauce allocation was predicted by self‐reported mutual real‐world aggression. This pattern of findings is consistent with young (vs. late) adolescent use of experimental, hypothetical Hot Sauce aggression to reflect real‐world animosity, while late adolescents’ behaviour is more subtle. These findings extend our understanding of the dyadic social context of adolescent aggressive behaviour using a novel experimental aggression paradigm.     

价值观的稳定性与可变性：基于认知神经科学的视角

价值观的稳定性和可变性一直是该领域争论的焦点所在。近些年来, 研究者开始从认知神经科学的角度来探讨导致价值观稳定性差异的机制问题。已有的神经反应证据表明, 当某种价值观是基于道义主义的绝对规则来进行认知建构的, 或与自我概念在表征上存在一致性时, 其更倾向于保持稳定的状态; 若非如此, 便可能会在外界影响(如他人劝说)下发生重要程度上的改变。未来需要进一步丰富和完善认识价值观稳定性与可变性关系的认知神经加工模型, 并探索价值观长效改变背后的认知神经机制, 以促进理论研究在价值观教育中的实践和应用。     

瞳孔是心灵的窗口吗?——瞳孔在心理学研究中的应用及测量

瞳孔大小是眼动研究中一个重要的参数指标, 在一定程度上能够反映人的心理活动并影响他人的心理与行为。一方面, 瞳孔变化受到自上而下的知觉与注意、情绪与动机、心理努力、社会认知与发展等因素的影响, 另一方面, 大瞳孔能引起他人更多的积极评价和积极行为。瞳孔的神经机制(蓝斑-去甲肾上腺素系统)和自适应增益理论解释了瞳孔与心理之间存在紧密联系的原因。瞳孔测量(pupillometry)作为一种有效的眼动追踪方法有助于理解瞳孔与心理的关系, 研究者在测量瞳孔时需要关注无关变量(如亮度、注视位置), 原始数据处理(如基线校正、眨眼处理)及瞳孔指标选取(如瞳孔直径、震颤频率)等问题, 未来研究应继续探讨瞳孔与其他心理之间的关系, 并探索更有效地处理和使用瞳孔指标的方法。     

Learning and development in neural networks--the importance of prior experience

Infants can discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar grammatical patterns expressed in a vocabulary that is distinct from that used earlier during familiarization (Cognition 70(2) (1999) 109; Science 283 (1999) 77). Various models have captured the data, although each required that discrimination be distinct, in terms of the computational process, from familiarization. This article describes a simple recurrent network (SRN), equipped only with the assumption that it should predict what comes next, which models the data without distinguishing between familiarization and discrimination. To accomplish this, the SRN requires pre-training on a range of sequences instantiating different structures and different vocabulary items to those used subsequently during familiarization and test. Pre-training enables the network to avoid replacing structure acquired during familiarization with structure experienced at test. An equivalent enabling condition may underpin infants' resistance to catastrophic interference between the different structures and vocabulary items to which they are exposed.