社会判断中的样例激活效应

初步考察了社会判断过程中样例激活效应存在的条件、作用、强度和指向。被试为西北师范大学教育科学学院心理系2年级学生160人。实验结果表明：（1）样例激活效应在强启动和弱启动条件下都存在,而且表现为同化效应。（2）在强启动条件下,样例激活效应表现强烈。进一步讲,正、反样例对高、低效价的靶子都有同化效应,但正面样例对低效价靶子的效应更强;而反面样例对高效价靶子的效应更强。（3）在弱启动条件下,样例效价和靶子效价共同影响着社会判断及其决策过程,样例激活效应明显弱化,具体表现为：①样例激活仅对低效价靶子的判断影响显著,对高效价靶子影响不显著;②从具体样例对高、低效价靶子效应强度的比较看,正面样例对低效价靶子作用更强,反面样例只表现出略微差异。另外,“关联效应”会冲淡样例激活效应     

情感启动行为研究概述

在西方心理学界,情感启动的研究是近20年来的一个比较活跃的研究领域,研究者们采用多种实验任务和研究方法进行了大量实验,取得了一定的研究成果,证明了人的态度能够被自动激活,并提出了三种对情感启动效应的理论解释：激活扩散机制,反应冲突机制,情感匹配机制。但到目前为止,不同的研究之间仍然存在着一定的分歧。今后的研究应该重点探讨评价自动激活的内在机制,从而促进情感启动的无意识研究。     

句子背景下缺失音素的中文听觉词理解的音、义激活进程（Ⅱ）

采用缺失音素的中文双字词为材料,进一步考察了中文听觉词的语音、语义激活进程。共包含两个实验：实验1考察听觉词语音能否同时激活多个与之语音相近的语音、语义结点;实验2考察在听觉词词汇提取后期,是否还存在语音的激活作用。结果表明：⑴中文听觉词的语音能够同时激活与之语音相近的语音、语义结点,这种语音作用在ISI=400ms时处于较低水平;⑵听觉词呈现结束后,语音存在着二次激活现象;⑶对缺失声母的中文听觉词理解后期,除语义背景依赖效应外,还存在明显的语音作用,两者共同作用共同实现对目标词的语义恢复。根据对句子背景下缺失声母的中文听觉词理解的实验结果,作者提出了“中文听觉词理解的激活扩散动态模型”。     

A Systematic Review of Ethnoracial Participation in Randomized Clinical Trials of Behavioral Activation

As of the last available NIH report, people of color (POC) constituted 28.1% of enrollment across all U.S. domestic clinical trials. The literature on prevalence rates of depression among POC is mixed. While the prevalence rates of depression may vary across POC, it remains unknown to what degree POC have been included in outcome clinical trials of depression since NIH’s mandates for inclusion of minorities in clinical outcome research. Following PRISMA guidelines, the present review identified randomized controlled trials of behavioral activation from 1989 to 2021 using the following search engines: PsycINFO, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. We reviewed 5,247 articles and included 28 articles that met full inclusion criteria (n = 5,169 participants). Across studies included in this review, 70% were non-Latinx White, 14.1% were African American, 8.9% were Latinx, 0.5% were Asian, 2.9% were other, and 3.7% were unknown. Results indicated an increase in representation of ethnoracial inclusion rates across time and that recruitment method was not associated with adequate inclusion of POC. However, the university setting was associated with inadequate representation of POC.     

Acceptability of Behavioral Activation for Depression Among Latinas: A Mixed Methods Study

Latinxs represent the largest ethnoracial minority population in the United States. Despite having significant rates of depression, Latinxs underutilize behavioral health services. This, combined with the association between gender and depression (women have higher rates of depression than men), underscores the importance of developing an improved understanding of how Latinas view behavioral activation (BA), an empirically supported treatment for depression. In this mixed methods study, participants consisted of 77 Latinas; participants were provided with a vignette depicting a fictional character that underwent BA for depression. Participants in the quantitative study completed a measure of treatment acceptability of BA (n = 60); participants in the qualitative study completed a semistructured interview assessing their views on BA (n = 17). Latinas had generally positive attitudes about BA, although they also identified some elements that they perceived might act as barriers to treatment success. Because we were interested in the interplay of cultural factors and treatment acceptability, we also examined enculturation and acculturation as predictors of treatment acceptability—enculturation only was a significant predictor treatment acceptability. Our sample was relatively small, social desirability may have influenced our responses, and it is not known to what extent our results generalize to Latinx men. Latina women find BA to be an acceptable treatment for depression, which suggests promise with regard to clinical outcomes for depressed Latinas receiving BA. Addressing potential barriers to treatment engagement may improve outcomes for depressed Latinas receiving BA.     

First-person approaches in neuroscience of consciousness: Brain dynamics correlate with the intention to act

The belief in free will has been frequently challenged since Benjamin Libet published his famous experiment in 1983. Although Libet’s experiment is highly dependent upon subjective reports, no study has been conducted that focused on a first-person or introspective perspective of the task. We took a neurophenomenological approach in an N = 1 study providing reliable and valid measures of the first-person perspective in conjunction with brain dynamics. We found that a larger readiness potential (RP) is attributable to more frequent occurrences of self-initiated movements during negative deflections of the slow cortical potentials (SCP). These negative deflections occur in parallel with an inner impulse reported by an expert meditator which may in turn lead to a voluntary act. We demonstrate in this proof-of-principle approach that the first-person perspective obtained by an expert meditator in conjunction with neural signal analysis can contribute to our understanding of the neural underpinnings of voluntary acts.     

The role of subjective theories for leadership evaluation

This study reviews prior construct-related validity research in assessment centres. Special focus is placed on disentangling possible explanations for the construct-related validity findings. The conclusion is that we now have a much better picture of the reasons behind the construct-related validity findings. Careful assessment centre design and high interrater reliability among assessors seem necessary albeit insufficient conditions to establish assessment centre construct-related validity. The nature of candidate performances is another key factor. This study next discusses how these empirical findings have changed how assessment centres are conceptualized (theoretical advancements framed in the application of trait activation theory), analysed (methodological advancements), and designed (practical advancements).     

The influence of task characteristics on younger and older adult motor overflow

This study investigated the influence of attentional and motor demands on motor overflow in 17 healthy young (18–35 years) and 17 older adults (60–80 years). Participants performed a finger pressing task by exerting either 33% or 66% of their maximal force output using their dominant or nondominant hand. Overflow was concurrently recorded in the passive hand. Attention was manipulated via a tactile stimulus presented to one or both hands for certain trials. Results showed that older adults exhibited greater overflow than young adults and that the effect of target force was exacerbated in older adults. Further, only older adult overflow was increased when tactile stimulation was directed to one or both hands. Increased overflow in older adults may result from bilateral cortical activation that is influenced by increased task demands. To perform comparatively to younger adults, older adults may compensate for age-related brain changes by recruiting an increased cortical network.     

Semantic activation and letter search: Blocking or suppression?

Two experiments investigated associative priming with a letter-search prime task where either the prime and letter probe were presented simultaneously, or the letter probe appeared 200 ms (Experiment 1) or 300 ms (Experiment 2) after the prime. Weak associative priming was observed in both experiments, but unlike Stolz and Besner (1996) we found no evidence that priming was increased when the probe was delayed. However, strong associative priming was observed when a semantic decision had to be made on the prime (Experiment 3). Our results are consistent with an account where semantic activation of the prime occurs but its action on the target is suppressed by the prime task. The persistence of weak priming effects with the letter search task is explained in terms of the low-frequency items used.     

Mug handle affordance and automatic response inhibition: Behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

Behavioural evidence has shown that the perception of an object's handle automatically activates the corresponding action representation. The activation appears to be inhibited if the object is a task-irrelevant prime mug that is presented very briefly prior to responding to the target arrow. The present study uses an electrophysiological indicator of automatic response priming, the lateralized readiness potential (LRP), to investigate the mechanisms of this inhibition effect. We presumed that this effect would reflect motor self-inhibition processes. The self-inhibition explanation of the effect would assume that the effect reflects activation-followed-by-inhibition observed rapidly after the offset of the prime at the primary motor cortex. However, the results showed that the effect is not associated with modulation of the early LRP deflections. In contrast, the inhibition manifested itself in the later LRP deflections that we assume to be linked to interference in the processing of response-related aspects of the target. We propose that the LRP pattern is similar to what would be predicted from the negative priming explanation of the effect. The study sheds light on understanding inhibition mechanisms associated with automatically activated affordance representations.