Age-related differences in attentional networks of alerting and executive control in young, middle-aged, and older Chinese adults

Previous studies suggest that aging is associated with impairment of attention. However, it is not known whether this represents a global attentional deficit or relates to a specific attentional network. We used the attention network test to examine three groups of younger, middle-aged, and older participants with respect to the efficiency of three anatomically defined attentional networks: alerting network, orienting network, and executive control network. Age-related change was found to have the greatest effect on the executive network and the least effect on the alerting network as well as on overall mean response time. Impairment of the orienting network was found to be insignificant. Age-related deterioration of the prefrontal lobe, the dopaminergic system, and function of specific genes may explain the age-related changes in executive attention, which occur after the fourth decade of life.     

Acquiring contextualized concepts: a connectionist approach

Conceptual knowledge is acquired through recurrent experiences, by extracting statistical regularities at different levels of granularity. At a fine level, patterns of feature co-occurrence are categorized into objects. At a coarser level, patterns of concept co-occurrence are categorized into contexts. We present and test CONCAT, a connectionist model that simultaneously learns to categorize objects and contexts. The model contains two hierarchically organized CALM modules (Murre, Phaf, & Wolters, 1992). The first module, the Object Module, forms object representations based on co-occurrences between features. These representations are used as input for the second module, the Context Module, which categorizes contexts based on object co-occurrences. Feedback connections from the Context Module to the Object Module send activation from the active context to those objects that frequently occur within this context. We demonstrate that context feedback contributes to the successful categorization of objects, especially when bottom-up feature information is degraded or ambiguous.     

(De)colonizing Culture in Community Psychology: Reflections from Critical Social Science

Since its inception, community psychology has been interested in cultural matters relating to issues of diversity and marginalization. However, the field has tended to understand culture as static social markers or as the background for understanding group differences. In this article the authors contend that culture is inseparable from who we are and what we do as social beings. Moreover, culture is continually shaped by socio-historical and political processes intertwined within the globalized history of power. The authors propose a decolonizing standpoint grounded in critical social science to disrupt understandings of cultural matters that marginalize others. This standpoint would move the field toward deeper critical thinking, reflexivity and emancipatory action. The authors present their work to illustrate how they integrate a decolonizing standpoint to community psychology research and teaching. They conclude that community psychology must aim towards intercultural work engaging its political nature from a place of ontological/epistemological/methodological parity.     

Perceived entitativity of social networks

Four studies examined how people perceive entitativity of small and large social networks based on the graphical information of interaction among individuals. Participants rated social network graphs on entitativity while controlling for the number of individuals and connectivity of social relationships. Overall, network connectivity corresponded to the degree of interaction among individuals in a social network. Whereas entitativity of small social networks slowly increased with a higher level of connectivity, entitativity of large social networks rapidly increased with a lower level of connectivity. The difference in the increase rates of entitativity is explained in terms of how individuals typically interact in different sizes of social networks.     

Cross-domain analogies as relating derived relations among two separate relational networks

Contemporary behavior analytic research is making headway in analyzing analogy as the establishment of a relation of coordination among common types of trained or derived relations. Previous studies have been focused on within-domain analogy. The current study expands previous research by analyzing cross-domain analogy as relating relations among separate relational networks and by correlating participants' performance with a standard measure of analogical reasoning. In two experiments, adult participants first completed general intelligence and analogical reasoning tests. Subsequently, they were exposed to a computerized conditional discrimination training procedure designed to create two relational networks, each consisting of two 3-member equivalence classes. The critical test was a two-part analogical test in which participants had to relate combinatorial relations of coordination and distinction between the two relational networks. In Experiment 1, combinatorial relations for each network were individually tested prior to analogical testing, but in Experiment 2 they were not. Across both experiments, 65% of participants passed the analogical test on the first attempt. Moreover, results from the training procedure were strongly correlated with the standard measure of analogical reasoning.     

Can low Behavioral Activation System predict depressive mood?: An application of non‐normal structural equation modeling

Previous studies have reported a negative correlation between the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) and the depressive mood. However, which is the cause and which is the effect cannot be determined simply by evaluating the correlation coefficients. In a series of this study, we used non‐normal structural equation modeling, which could provide a statistically plausible answer to the question on the path direction. We tested for the path direction between the variables of interest by statistically comparing all possible models. The models assuming a unidirectional path from the BAS to the depressive mood were consistently supported. This suggested that low BAS could be a predisposition to developing the depressive mood. These findings could enhance our understanding of the mechanism underlying the development of the depressive mood.     

大学生网络幸福感的特点及其与网络使用偏好的关系

采用自编的大学生网络幸福感问卷、网络使用偏好问卷,对400名大学生进行测试,以探索大学生网络幸福感的特点及其与网络使用偏好的关系。结果表明：（1）大学生的网络幸福感总体处于中等偏上水平,网络使用偏好中休闲娱乐维度的得分最高,网络使用偏好类型中普通型居主导地位;（2）网络幸福感和网络使用偏好类型存在显著正相关,其中与休闲娱乐偏好的相关最高;（3）回归分析结果表明,休闲娱乐偏好对网络幸福感有正向预测作用,游戏偏好对网络幸福感中的便利感、活力感、自由感因子有预测作用。     

Suppression of brain activity related to a car-following task with an auditory task: An fMRI study

Driving a car in daily life involves multiple tasks. One important task for safe driving is car-following, the interference of which causes rear-end collisions: the most common type of car accident. Recent reports have described that car-following is hindered even by hands-free mobile telephones. We conducted functional MRI with 18 normal volunteers to investigate brain activity changes that occur during a car-following task with a concurrent auditory task. Participants performed three tasks: a driving task, an auditory task, and a dual task in an fMRI run. During the driving task, participants use a joystick to control their vehicle speed in a driving simulator to maintain a constant distance from a leading car, which moves at varying speed. Language trials and tone discrimination trials are presented during the auditory task. Car-following performance was worse during the dual task than during the single-driving task, showing positive correlation with brain activity in the bilateral lateral occipital complex and the right inferior parietal lobule. In the medial prefrontal cortex and left superior occipital gyrus, the brain activity of the dual task condition was less than that in the single-driving task condition. These results suggest that the decline of brain activity in these regions may induce car-following performance deterioration.     

中国青少年抑郁的核心症状及性别、抑郁程度间的比较：基于网络分析方法

基于精神障碍网络理论,采用中文版流动调查中心抑郁量表对3634名青少年进行调查,使用网络分析方法考察了我国青少年抑郁的核心症状,比较不同性别和抑郁程度青少年的抑郁症状特征网络。结果发现：（1）我国青少年抑郁的核心症状为压抑情绪、失败感、悲伤和乏力;（2）不同性别青少年的抑郁症状网络结构、网络连接强度和核心症状不存在显著差异;（3）不同抑郁程度青少年的抑郁症状网络结构、网络连接强度、核心症状存在显著差异。     

社交网站中的上行社会比较与抑郁的关系:一个有调节的中介模型及性别差异

为明确社交网站中的上行社会比较对青少年抑郁的作用机制,本研究构建了一个有调节的中介模型,重点考察了妒忌在二者关系中的中介作用、反刍思维的调节作用及其性别差异。以836名高中生为被试(M=16.34岁,SD=1.06),采用问卷法对社交网站中的上行社会比较、妒忌、反刍思维以及抑郁进行调查。结果显示:(1)在控制性别、年龄、年级、社交网站好友数量以及平均每天使用社交网站频率、时间后,社交网站上行社会比较对抑郁具有显著的正向预测作用;(2)妒忌能够在社交网站上行社会比较与抑郁的关系中起中介作用,且这种间接效应会受到反刍思维的调节;(3)有调节的中介模型存在性别差异:与男生相比,妒忌的中介效应在女生被试群体中更显著;在男生被试群体中,妒忌的中介作用会受到反刍思维的调节作用的影响,而在女生被试群体中,该调节效应不显著。