A model of plausibility

Plausibility has been implicated as playing a critical role in many cognitive phenomena from comprehension to problem solving. Yet, across cognitive science, plausibility is usually treated as an operationalized variable or metric rather than being explained or studied in itself. This article describes a new cognitive model of plausibility, the Plausibility Analysis Model (PAM), which is aimed at modeling human plausibility judgment. This model uses commonsense knowledge of concept-coherence to determine the degree of plausibility of a target scenario. In essence, a highly plausible scenario is one that fits prior knowledge well: with many different sources of corroboration, without complexity of explanation, and with minimal conjecture. A detailed simulation of empirical plausibility findings is reported, which shows a close correspondence between the model and human judgments. In addition, a sensitivity analysis demonstrates that PAM is robust in its operations.     

Uncertainty about the rest of the sentence

A word-by-word human sentence processing complexity metric is presented. This metric formalizes the intuition that comprehenders have more trouble on words contributing larger amounts of information about the syntactic structure of the sentence as a whole. The formalization is in terms of the conditional entropy of grammatical continuations, given the words that have been heard so far. To calculate the predictions of this metric, Wilson and Carroll's (1954) original entropy reduction idea is extended to infinite languages. This is demonstrated with a mildly context-sensitive language that includes relative clauses formed on a variety of grammatical relations across the Accessibility Hierarchy of Keenan and Comrie (1977). Predictions are derived that correlate significantly with repetition accuracy results obtained in a sentence-memory experiment (Keenan & Hawkins, 1987).     

Construct validity of a personality assessment game in a simulated selection situation and the moderating roles of the ability to identify criteria and dispositional insight

There is scant research on the validity of personality assessment games in selection situations. Therefore, in two experimental simulated selection studies, the construct validity of an assessment game developed to assess honesty-humility was tested. Both studies found no differences between a control condition and a simulated selection condition on honesty-humility game scores. Moreover, convergent and discriminant validity with self-reported personality were not affected by the manipulation. We obtained mixed evidence that individual differences in dispositional insight and the ability to identify criteria influenced the validity of the game. As the validity of the personality assessment game was not significantly affected in the simulated selection context, our findings may imply that well-designed personality assessment games can be used for high-stakes selection assessments.     

Exploring adolescent social media and internet gaming addiction: The role of emotion regulation

Behavioral addictions such as social media addiction and internet gaming disorder are prevalent among adolescent populations. Although studies have investigated predictors of these addictive behaviors with international samples of adolescents, less is known about American adolescents. In this study, we investigated the predictive nature of emotion regulation after controlling for age, gender, and race with regard to social media addiction and internet gaming disorder severity. Results indicate that gender and emotion regulation significantly predicted both forms of behavioral addictions with small to moderate effects. Specifically, female gender and lower emotion regulation significantly predicted social media addiction and male gender and lower emotion regulation significantly predicted internet gaming disorder severity. Implications for mental health professionals are discussed.     

TEACHING SELF-ADMINSTRATION OF NASOGASTRIC TUBE INSERTION TO AN ADOLESCENT WITH CROHN DISEASE

We examined the effectiveness of simulation training to teach an adolescent male with Crohn disease to self-administer nasogastric tube insertion. Nasogastric tube insertion was taught using simulation training, after which self-insertion skills were assessed. Results across skill components indicated that this subject was able to self-administer insertion of the nasogastric tube.     

Blind ethics: Closing one's eyes polarizes moral judgments and discourages dishonest behavior

Four experiments demonstrate that closing one’s eyes affects ethical judgment and behavior because it induces people to mentally simulate events more extensively. People who considered situations with their eyes closed rather than open judged immoral behaviors as more unethical and moral behaviors as more ethical. In addition, considering potential decisions with closed eyes decreased stated intentions to behave ethically and actual self-interested behavior. This relationship was mediated by the more extensive mental simulation that occurred with eyes closed rather than open, which, in turn, intensified emotional reactions to the ethical situation. We discuss the implications of these findings for moral psychology and ethical decision making.     

Development and content validity of a screening instrument for gaming addiction in adolescents: The Gaming Addiction Identification Test (GAIT)

This study describes the development of a screening tool for gaming addiction in adolescents – the Gaming Addiction Identification Test (GAIT). Its development was based on the research literature on gaming and addiction. An expert panel comprising professional raters (n = 7), experiential adolescent raters (n = 10), and parent raters (n = 10) estimated the content validity of each item (I‐CVI) as well as of the whole scale (S‐CVI/Ave), and participated in a cognitive interview about the GAIT scale. The mean scores for both I‐CVI and S‐CVI/Ave ranged between 0.97 and 0.99 compared with the lowest recommended I‐CVI value of 0.78 and the S‐CVI/Ave value of 0.90. There were no sex differences and no differences between expert groups regarding ratings in content validity. No differences in the overall evaluation of the scale emerged in the cognitive interviews. Our conclusions were that GAIT showed good content validity in capturing gaming addiction. The GAIT needs further investigation into its psychometric properties of construct validity (convergent and divergent validity) and criterion‐related validity, as well as its reliability in both clinical settings and in community settings with adolescents.     

汉语句子理解中物体隐含颜色心理模拟的ERPs研究

当前研究采用事件相关电位(ERPs)技术,同时沿用经典的句图匹配范式,考察句子理解中物体典型颜色与非典型颜色的心理加工过程在脑电活动上的反映。实验中被试先阅读句子再判断句子后呈现的图片物体是否在句子中出现过,句子中隐含的物体颜色或是关键物体的典型颜色或是非典型颜色。实验结果发现,典型颜色句子版本下句图不匹配条件比句图匹配条件引发了更大的N400效应;而非典型颜色句子版本下两者N400差异不显著。研究结果表明,人们在汉语句子理解过程中会实时对隐含的物体颜色信息进行心理模拟。并且,句子隐含物体颜色的典型性是造成匹配易化或不匹配易化的关键因素之一。     

The Mediating Effects of Motivation for Playing Pokémon Go on Internet Gaming Disorder and Well–Being

This study explored the influence of parenting, middle school students’ temperament, motivation for playing Pokémon Go on Internet Gaming Disorder and well-being. In particular, the mediating effects of motivation for playing Pokémon Go between parenting and Internet Gaming Disorder, as well as between students’ temperament and well-being were also examined. A total of 500 students were selected to participate in an experiment involving Pokémon Go gaming. Students were required to complete scales that measured parenting, temperament, motivation for playing Pokémon Go, well-being, and the IGD-20 test after 6?weeks of game playing.