The effects of verbal information on children's fear beliefs about social situations

Two experiments explored the role of verbal information in changing children's fear-related beliefs about social situations. In Experiment 1, 118 6- to 8- and 12- to 13-year-olds heard positive, negative, or no information about individuals' experiences of three social situations. Fear beliefs regarding each situation were assessed before and after this manipulation. Verbal information had no significant influence on children's fear beliefs. In Experiment 2, the same paradigm was used with 80 12- to 13-year-olds, but the information took the form of multiple attitude statements about the situations expressed by groups of peers, older children, or adults. An affective priming task of implicit attitudes was used to complement the explicit questions about fear beliefs. Negative information influenced both explicit and implicit fear beliefs. The source of information and the child's own social anxiety did not moderate these effects. Implications for our understanding of the socialisation of childhood fears are discussed.     

抑郁症的流行病学研究与预防——读《中国人群死亡及其危险因素流行水平、趋势和分布》有感

根据《中国人群死亡及其危险因素流行水平、趋势和发布》的报告和相关研究表明,全世界约有1亿人患有抑郁症,且数量有增无减,抑郁症将成为本世纪一种相当流行的病症.由于抑郁症是一种患病率高,严重危害人类身心健康,具有高自杀风险的精神疾病,更需要我们采取措施积极预防.目前采用的主要预防方法有:积极的心理健康教育、处理好家庭与社会的关系、社会支持、心理调适和体育锻炼等.     

Living with Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Type 1: Decent Care-Insufficient Medical and Genetic Information A Qualitative Study of MEN 1 Patients in a Swedish Hospital

This qualitative study explores how 29 Swedish patients with Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia type 1 (MEN1) experience living with the condition, appraisal of the clinical follow-up program, and surveys their future expectations. The aim of this study is to build knowledge about this patient group in order to provide optimal care. The participants describe physical, psychological, and social limitations in their daily activities and how these limitations influence quality of life. Our findings indicate that a majority of patients have adjusted to their situation, describing themselves as being healthy despite physical symptoms and treatment. The participants received decent care in the clinical follow-up program, - however, greater effort should be put into patient information. These patients might benefit from genetic counseling. Health professionals involved should recognize their potential impact and influence on a patient’s ability to adjust to these circumstances. Antonovsky`s Sense of Coherence theory is used to discuss these findings.     

情绪对职业决策的影响

职业决策是决策研究领域的重要课题,引起了心理学家和决策研究者的高度关注.本文在以往研究的基础上,引人情绪和职业种类变量探讨了情绪对职业决策的影响,结果显示:(1)无论是四种还是八种职业决策任务,积极情绪的被试同消极情绪的被试相比,信息搜索的时间较长,信息搜索的深度显著增加;(2)在职业选择策略上,积极情绪的被试更加倾向于基于选项的加工,而消极情绪的被试随着从四种职业决策任务到八种决策任务的转变,逐渐倾向于基于属性的加工;(3)情绪影响了决策者职业决策的信息加工能力.     

中文句子阅读中语义信息对眼动预视效应的影响

采用句子为阅读材料,变化句子中一个单字词形成语义连贯与语义违背两种实验条件,通过两个眼动实验探讨中文句子阅读中预视效应的产生是否受语义信息的影响。实验一运用自然阅读范式,考察当语义连贯与违背两类信息被读者直接注视时,读者眼动模式的变化。结果发现,在语义连贯与违背两种条件下,读者的眼动模式在目标位置立即产生差异,违背条件下首次注视时间更长,说明中文句子理解中语义加工可以进行得十分即时。实验二运用边界技术,使实验一的语义连贯与违背两类关键字只呈现在预视位置上,当读者的注视点越过边界时,两类预视字均变为另一个与句子意义连贯的目标字。结果发现,语义违背预视条件下,读者对预视位置将进行更长时间的加工。上述结果表明,中文句子阅读过程中,语义信息可以对预视效应产生影响     

Better safe than sorry: Precautionary reasoning and implied dominance in risky decisions

In four studies, student and nonstudent participants evaluated the possible outcomes of binary decisions involving health, safety, and environmental risks (e.g., whether to issue a dam‐failure evacuation order). Many participants indicated that false positives (e.g., evacuation, but no dam failure) were better than true negatives (e.g., no evacuation and no dam failure), thereby implying that the more protective action dominated the less protective action. A common rationale for this response pattern was the precautionary maxim “better safe than sorry.” Participants apparently evaluated outcomes partly on the basis of the decisions that might lead to them, in conflict with consequentialist decision models. Consistent with this explanation, the prevalence of implied dominance decreased substantially when the emphasis on decisions was reduced. These results demonstrate that an initial preference for a decision alternative can alter the evaluation of possible consequences of both the preferred alternative and a competing alternative, suggesting positive feedback loops that reinforce the initial preference. The rationality of considering the decision itself as an attribute of possible outcomes is discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

信息呈现方式与学习者的个性特征对多媒体环境下学习效果的影响

采用两个实验:实验一以陈述性知识为学习内容,实验二以程序性知识为学习内容,在这两种情况下,分别用组间设计探讨信息呈现方式对不同认知风格和空间能力的学习者在多媒体环境下学习效果的影响。结果表明:(1)认知风格对陈述性知识在多媒体环境下的学习效果产生影响,而选择的多媒体信息呈现方式和被试的空间能力则对其不产生影响;(2)对于程序性知识的保持,多媒体信息呈现方式和被试认知风格都会对学习效果产生影响,被试空间能力则不会产生影响,而且被试不同的认知风格在不同的多媒体信息呈现方式上会产生不同的影响;(3)对程序性知识的迁移,多媒体信息呈现方式、被试认知风格和空间能力都会对多媒体环境下的学习效果产生影响,而且被试不同的认知风格和空间能力在不同的多媒体信息呈现方式上都会产生不同的影响。     

The development and robustness of young children’s understanding of aspectuality

We investigated whether 6-year-olds’ understanding of perceptual aspectuality was sufficiently robust to deal with the presence of irrelevant information. A total of 32 children chose whether to look or feel to locate a specific object (identifiable by sight or touch) from four objects that were hidden. In half of the trials, the objects were different on only one modality (e.g., four objects that felt different but were the same color). In the remainder of the trials, the objects also differed (partially) on one irrelevant modality (e.g., four objects that felt different, two red and two blue, where the goal was to locate the soft object). Performance was worse on the latter trials. We discuss children’s difficulty in dealing with irrelevant information.     

Lateralization of egocentric and allocentric spatial processing after parietal brain lesions

The purpose of this paper was to verify whether left and right parietal brain lesions may selectively impair egocentric and allocentric processing of spatial information in near/far spaces. Two Right-Brain-Damaged (RBD), 2 Left-Brain-Damaged (LBD) patients (not affected by neglect or language disturbances) and eight normal controls were submitted to the Ego-Allo Task requiring distance judgments computed according to egocentric or allocentric frames of reference in near/far spaces. Subjects also completed a general neuropsychological assessment and the following visuospatial tasks: reproduction of the Rey-Osterreith figure, line length judgement, point position identification, mental rotation, mental construction, line length memory, line length inference, Corsi block-tapping task. LBD patients presented difficulties in both egocentric and allocentric processing, whereas RBD patients dropped in egocentric but not in allocentric judgements, and in near but not far space. Further, RBD patients dropped in perceptually comparing linear distances, whereas LBD patients failed in memory for distances. The overall pattern of results suggests that the right hemisphere is specialized in processing metric information according to egocentric frames of reference. The data are interpreted according to a theoretical model that highlights the close link between egocentric processing and perceptual control of action.