Fear conditioning and extinction in anxiety- and depression-prone persons

Anxiety and depression frequently co-occur and may share similar deficits in the processing of emotional stimuli. High anxiety is associated with a failure in the acquisition and extinction of fear conditioning. Despite the supposed common deficits, no research has been conducted on fear acquisition and extinction in depression. The main aim of the present study was to investigate and compare fear acquisition and extinction in anxiety- and depression-prone participants. Non-clinical anxious, depressive, anxious-depressive and control participants performed a fear discrimination task. During acquisition, the CS+ predicted an aversive event (unconditioned stimulus, US) and the CS? safety (no US). During extinction, the CS+ was no longer followed by the US, rendering it (temporarily) into a safety signal. On each CS participants rated their US expectancy; skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured throughout. The expectancy scores indicated that high anxiety resulted in less safety learning during acquisition and extinction; no effect of depression was observed. SCRs showed that high-anxiety persons displayed less discrimination learning (CS+ minus CS?) during acquisition than low-anxiety persons. During extinction, high-depression persons demonstrated more discriminative SCR than low-depression persons. The observed discrepancies in response patterns of high-anxiety and -depression persons seem to indicate distinctive information processing of emotional stimuli.     

小学儿童合取概念的形成及其与元认知的关系

采用个别访谈与问卷相结合的方法．研究了小学四、五、六年级共48名儿童合取概念的形成及其元认知的发展。结果表明．小学儿童形成合取概念的能力发展既具有渐进性,又有不均衡性;其元认知知识水平和元认知监控能力的发展均呈现出稳中有变的趋势;各年级的元认知能力与形成合取概念的步数之间均存在非常显著的相关。     

Who knows what's good to eat? Infants fail to match the food preferences of antisocial others

Humans gather most of their knowledge about the world, including objectively true facts and specific cultural norms, by observing and being taught by others. Some individuals are worthy teachers and objects of imitation, having knowledge of cultural practices and positive intentions to inform. Others are better ignored because they are ignorant, because they mean us harm, or simply because we do not wish to be “like them.” This study examines whether 16-month-olds are sensitive to the pro- or antisocial behavior of a source that demonstrates preference for two novel foods. Infants took the emotional reactions displayed by novel and previously prosocial sources, but not antisocial sources, into account when deciding what to eat. These results suggest that others’ social behavior influences infants’ likelihood to match their preferences, illustrating the influence of social evaluation on social learning.     

类别学习多重系统理论的研究与展望

介绍了国外学者为验证类别学习的多重系统理论所做的行为实验研究及主要结果,包括反馈训练、延迟反馈、反应位置、间断的类别刺激分布等因素对信息整合的类别学习的影响,和数字Stroop任务、序列记忆扫描任务、类别数量等因素对基于规则的类别学习的影响;同时,作者指出了实验中没有很好地解决两种类别结构之间的难度差异等问题,并提出了今后需要进一步研究的课题     

学习不良儿童的家庭心理环境,父母教养方式及其与社会性发展的关系

从２３０８名１０—１５岁儿童中选取４２９名被试的研究结果表明．一般儿童的家庭心理环境、父母教养方式大大优于学习不良儿童,这些家庭资源与学习不良儿童的社会交往、自我概念和社会行为等有着密切的联系,说明家庭心理环境、父母教养方式对学习不良儿童社会性发展产生着重要作用。     

Unconscious preparation: Effects of prime visibility on semantic generalization of task priming

Studies found that subliminal primes can be associated with specific tasks to facilitate task performance, and such learning is highly adaptive and generalizable. Meanwhile, conditioning studies suggest that aversive/reward learning and generalization actually occur at the semantic level. The current study shows that prime–task associations can also be generalized to novel word/neighbour primes from the same semantic category, and this occurs without contingency awareness. Previous studies have counterintuitively suggested that both the learning of task priming and the semantic priming of word neighbours depend on the lack of visibility. Here, we show that semantic generalization indeed depends on reduced visibility, but cannot occur subliminally. The current study shows for the first time that semantic learning and generalization can occur without any emotional or motivational factors, and that semantic priming can occur for arbitrary-linked stimuli in a context completely devoid of semantics.