Missed opportunities: Psychological ramifications of counterfactual thought in midlife women

Counterfactual thinking entails the process of imagining alternatives to reality—what might have been. The present study examines the frequency, content, and emotional and cognitive concomitants of counterfactual thinking about past missed opportunities in midlife women. At age 43, nearly two-thirds of the sample of educated adult women reported having missed certain opportunities at some time in their lives. Most of the counterfactual thoughts concerned missed opportunities for greater challenge in work. Emotional distress at age 33 did not predict later counterfactual thought. Instead, counterfactual thinking at age 43 was associated with concurrent emotional distress. However, acknowledging counterfactual thinking about the past was also associated with envisioning ways to change things for the better in the future. This suggests the possibility that the negative appraisal often entailed in counterfactual thinking may be associated with emotional distress in the short run but with motivational benefits in the long run, at least for middle-aged women.     

“类心理学”与心理学的元理论建构——评车文博主编《中外心理学比较思想史》

车文博先生主编的《中外心理学比较思想史》通过＂四方＂文化比较,定义了心理学研究范式的意义,进而建立了一个公正的文化视角下的心理学元理论体系。该书更进一步以心理内容为线索,站在＂类心理学＂的高度描绘了中外心理学范式竞争与演进的历史：古代＂四方＂文化范式呈现相互竞争的态势;在欧洲的科学革命以后,分析理性哲学范式取得了绝对的统治地位。最后,该书中外心理学思想的交流是解决当前心理学范式困难的出路。     

浅析思维风格理论及其在教学中的应用

思维风格是指一个人在解决问题时所偏好的思维方式,不同于思维能力。它是智力与人格的交叉地带。斯腾伯格把人们的思维风格划分成了13种不同的类型。通过对思维风格的理论研究与该理论在教育领域的应用研究发现:师生思维风格的匹配与否、教学方法、教师性别、年级、科目、评价体系等,都不同程度的影响了学生的思维风格。     

Supporting children’s counterfactual thinking with alternative modes of responding

To speculate about counterfactual worlds, children need to ignore what they know to be true about the real world. Prior studies yielding individual differences data suggested that counterfactual thinking may be related to overcoming prepotent responses. In two experiments, we manipulated how 3- to 5-year-olds responded to counterfactual conditional and syllogism tasks. In Experiment 1 (N = 39), children’s performance improved on both conditional and syllogism tasks when they responded with an arrow rather than pointing with a finger. In Experiment 2 (N = 42), 3- and 4-year-olds benefited from both an arrow manipulation and, separately, the introduction of a delay before responding. We suggest that both manipulations help children to overcome an impulsive prepotent response to counterfactual questions arising from a default assumption that information about the past is true.     

Conceptually congruent actions can promote thought

Can action support thought? Previous work suggests that it can. Here, we examined whether actions that are conceptually congruent with thinking facilitate thinking and whether direct action facilitates performance. We found that young children performed addition, a discrete one-to-one math task, better when using discrete one-to-one actions that matched the number of objects than when using discrete actions that matched the number of sums to be added. They performed number line estimation, a continuous math task, better when using a continuous action in which the time and distance of the action were commensurate with the quantity to be estimated, than when using a discrete action that marked a proportional distance. Action congruence facilitated performance beyond spatial congruence. Furthermore, direct manipulation led to better performance than mediated manipulation. Finding advantages of congruent mappings of thought to action supports the Spraction Theory, which asserts that thought is internalized action, and that re-externalizing thought through congruent actions facilitates thought.     

Conflict,metacognition, and analytic thinking

One hundred and three participants solved conflict and non-conflict versions of four reasoning tasks using a two-response procedure: a base rate task, a causal reasoning task, a denominator neglect task, and a categorical syllogisms task. Participants were asked to give their first, intuitive answer, to make a Feeling of Rightness (FOR) judgment, and then were given as much time as needed to rethink their answer. They also completed a standardized measure of IQ and the actively open-minded thinking questionnaire. The FORs of both high- and low-capacity reasoners were responsive to conflict, such that FORs were lower for conflict relative to non-conflict problems. Consistent with the quantity hypothesis, high-capacity reasoners made a greater distinction between conflict and non-conflict items on measures of Type 2 thinking, namely, rethinking time and probability of changing answers. In contrast to the quality hypothesis, however, this rethinking time did not advantage the ability of the high-capacity group to produce normative answers, except for the base rate task. Indeed, we observed that the correlation between capacity and the probability of normative answers emerged at the initial response, rather than after rethinking.     

Implicit measurement of positive and negative future thinking as a predictor of depressive symptoms and hopelessness

Research using explicit measures has linked decreased positive future thinking, but not increased negative future thinking, with clinical depression. However, individuals may be unable or unwilling to express thoughts about the future, and can be unaware of implicit beliefs that can influence their behavior. Implicit measures of cognition may shed light on the role of future thinking in depression. To our knowledge, the current study presents the first implicit measure of positive and negative future thinking. A sample of 71 volunteers (38 healthy; 33 with sub-clinical depression) completed both implicit and explicit measures of positive and negative future thinking. The findings indicate differences in the evaluation of both positive and negative future events between the two groups. However, group differences were more pronounced on the implicit measure. These findings point to the potential utility of an implicit measure of future thinking in mental health research and clinical practice.     

孔子之思的美学意义

孔子的思想方法具体体现在两个方面:一是从非现成性的识度,从生成与构成的角度理解事物的发生与存在;二是在“子绝四:毋意,毋必,毋固,毋我”中所体现与蕴含的对主体与世界之本然状况的理解。这种思想方法决定了我们不能把他关于艺术和美的言论当作固定的理论教条来理解,而只能将其理解为一定机缘下的缘起状态:理解为在具体对话状态中的有针对性的看法;理解为立足于“仁”这个更加本源、更加深沉的源域对艺术的具体存在状况的损益。孔子的这一思想方法是民族艺术精神的根基所在。     

Explaining modulation of reasoning by belief

Although deductive reasoning is a closed system, one's beliefs about the world can influence validity judgements. To understand the associated functional neuroanatomy of this belief-bias we studied 14 volunteers using event-related fMRI, as they performed reasoning tasks under neutral, facilitatory and inhibitory belief conditions. We found evidence for the engagement of a left temporal lobe system during belief-based reasoning and a bilateral parietal lobe system during belief-neutral reasoning. Activation of right lateral prefrontal cortex was evident when subjects inhibited a prepotent response associated with belief-bias and correctly completed a logical task, a finding consistent with its putative role in cognitive monitoring. By contrast, when logical reasoning was overcome by belief-bias, there was engagement of ventral medial prefrontal cortex, a region implicated in affective processing. This latter involvement suggests that belief-bias effects in reasoning may be mediated through an influence of emotional processes on reasoning.     

Dare to compare: Fact-based versus simulation-based comparison in daily life

We examined the relative frequency of social, counterfactual, past-temporal, and future-temporal comparison in daily life using an experience-sampling method, in which participants were randomly prompted to record thought samples using palmtop computers carried for two weeks. Comparative thought accounted for 12% of all thoughts, and all four comparison types occurred with equivalent frequency. Comparisons may be either fact-based (i.e., based on actuality, as in social and past-temporal comparison) or simulation-based (i.e., based on imagination, as in counterfactual and future-temporal comparison). Because the latter are more “unbounded,” and because greater perceived opportunity invites greater self-improvement, we predicted and found that counterfactual and future-temporal comparison were more likely to be upward (vs. downward) than social and past-temporal comparison. All comparison types focused on approach more than avoidance motives, except for counterfactuals, which showed equivalent focus on both. These findings reveal the prominence of comparative thought in daily life, and underscore the value of an integrative theory that describes social, counterfactual, or temporal comparison using a common theoretical platform.