Interpreting the uninterpretable: The effect of self-esteem on the interpretation of meaningless feedback

People often seek out and retain positive information about themselves via self-enhancement processes. Under other circumstances, they seek out and retain self-confirmatory information via self-verification processes. Research on both of these self-evaluation processes has been based heavily on domains such as social skills, in which people have a large database of prior information that presumably influences the way in which incoming self-relevant information is interpreted. In the present research, participants were asked to evaluate themselves on a set of imaginary "pseudotraits" to investigate how self-esteem influences the self-evaluation process when prior information is unavailable. Participants who had been identified through pre-testing as either high or low in self-esteem received false feedback on five pseudotraits (e.g., "casortic"), after which they evaluated the favorability of this feedback. High self-esteem participants tended to view their feedback as favorable, whereas low self-esteem participants did not.     

Time flies when you're having fun: temporal estimation and the experience of boredom

Boredom is a common experience in healthy individuals and may be elevated in various neurological or psychiatric conditions. As yet, very little is known about the cognitive or neural bases of the subjective experience of boredom. We examined temporal perception and the temporal allocation of attention in healthy individuals reporting high- or low-levels of boredom. We found no difference in high- or low-boredom-prone individuals in the temporal allocation of attention, while individuals who experienced low-levels of boredom tended to underestimate time more so than high-boredom-prone individuals. Furthermore, high-boredom-prone individuals demonstrated higher error values when estimating time indicating that the subjective perception of the passage of time may be a critical component to the experience of boredom.     

寻求儒家思想形而上的价值依据--《易传》儒道结合的政治思想

本文对<易传>之成书及学派归属问题得出自己的结论后,从人类社会演进图式与"三材之道"、<易传>与理想人格塑造、<易传>与主体价值的实现三个层面对<易传>儒道结合的政治思想特征做了深入剖析,指出<易传>思想是以儒家思想为基本价值观,在吸收和借鉴道家思想及阴阳家思想的基础上,把它们与儒家思想结合起来,为儒家思想注入了新的思想内容,在更高层次上建构了儒家的天道观和人道观,从而达到为儒家思想寻求形而上价值依据的目的.     

青少年的人格特征与互联网信息服务使用的关系

互联网上的信息服务为青少年的个性化学习提供了可能,如何使青少年健康地进行网上冲浪,使他们在冲浪的过程中增强自律意识,就需要我们深入地了解互联网信息服务在哪些方面能够满足青少年的需要。该研究通过对339名中学生进行问卷调查,对青少年的人格特征、社会支持与互联网信息服务之间的关系进行了探讨,结果表明:(1)开放性、客观社会支持和对社会支持的利用对互联网信息服务的使用偏好有直接而显著的影响。(2)宜人性和外向性通过社会支持的三个方面间接地对互联网信息服务的使用偏好产生影响。(3)客观社会支持会影响主观社会支持,主观社会支持对社会支持的利用水平也有影响。     

Color term knowledge does not affect categorical perception of color in toddlers

Categorical perception of color is shown when colors from the same category are discriminated less easily than equivalently spaced colors that cross a category boundary. The current experiments tested various models of categorical perception. Experiment 1 tested for categorical responding in 2- to 4-year-olds, the age range for the onset establishment of color term knowledge. Experiment 2 tested for categorical responding in Himba toddlers, whose language segments the color space differently from the way in which the English language does so. Experiment 3 manipulated the conditions of the task to explore whether the categorical responding in Experiments 1 and 2 was equivalent to categorical perception. Categorical perception was shown irrespective of naming and was not stronger in those children with more developed color term knowledge. Cross-cultural differences in the extent of categorical perception were not found. These findings support universalistic models of color categorization and suggest that color term knowledge does not modify categorical perception, at least during the early stages of childhood.     

Categorizing facial identities, emotions, and genders: attention to high- and low-spatial frequencies by children and adults

Three age groups of participants (5-6 years, 7-8 years, adults) matched faces on the basis of facial identity. The procedure involved either low- or high-pass filtered faces or hybrid faces composed from two faces associated with different spatial bandwidths. The comparison stimuli were unfiltered faces. In the three age groups, the data indicated a significant bias for processing of low-pass information in priority. In a second task, participants were asked to identify the emotion (smiling or grimacing) or gender (male or female) of hybrid high-pass/low-pass faces. Opposite results emerged in the two tasks irrespective of the age group; the gender discrimination task indicated a bias for low-pass information, and the emotion task indicated a bias for high-pass information. These differences suggest independent processing routes for functionally different types of information such as emotion, gender, and identity. These routes are already established by 5 years of age.     

Relationships of Functional Flexibility with Individual and Work Factors

To investigate how functional flexibility is related to demographics, personality traits, and work perceptions, 250 employees of a large Dutch passenger transport firm filled out a written questionnaire. Two dimensions of functional flexibility were discerned: willingness and ability to be flexible. Analysis of variance showed the support staff and managers were higher on willingness and ability to be flexible than workers. Hierarchic regression analysis showed that willingness to be flexible was positively related to initiative and trust in management, and was negatively related to age and task formalization. Ability to be flexible was positively related to general self-efficacy and initiative, and was negatively related to task formalization. It was concluded that willingness to be flexible depends on fair treatment and freedom provided by their organization and that ability to be flexible is part of the development of general self-efficacy.     

中学生受欺负状况与心理控制感的关系

该研究采用自陈问卷方法,考察了108名中学生的心理控制感与受欺负状况的关系。结果:在生活外控、社交内控、受身体欺负上,男高于女。高中生受身体欺负比初中生少,而未知控制更多。受社会性欺负与外部控制有正相关。受言语欺负与社交外控、生活外控、外部控制有正相关;与社交内控、躯体内控有负相关。受财产欺负与外部控制有正相关。外部控制对受社会性欺负、言语欺负和财产欺负有预测作用;躯体内控对受言语欺负有预测作用。     

Evidence that baroreflex feedback influences long-term incidental visual memory in men

Sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity at the time of acquisition is associated with human memory. However, rather than SNS activity per se, it may be afferent baroreflex feedback that is responsible for this effect. A pharmacological design was employed to unload (SNP, sodium nitro-prusside) and load (norepinephrine) baroreceptors. In addition to two placebo periods, epinephrine and esmolol (a peripherally acting beta1-blocker) served as control conditions for altered cardiac perception. During drug infusion blood pressure, heart rate, and perception of heartbeat were tested. Twenty-four healthy men were participated. The participants viewed emotional slides while their electromyographic eye blink responses to random noise bursts were measured (affective startle modulation paradigm) to determine potential drug impact on emotional processing. Subjects were not informed that memory testing would take place after 4 weeks. Drugs did not impact startle, thus indicating unbiased emotional processing at the time of acquisition. Norepinephrine had no effect on heartbeat perception, but improved (p = .002) recognition memory. SNP (p = .0001) increased heartbeat perception but impaired (p = .038) recognition memory. Epinephrine, on the other hand, increased heartbeat perception (p = .0001) yet did not impair but partially improve memory (effect on high arousing pictures only: p = .05). Heartbeat perception in the placebo condition did not correlate with recognition memory (p's > .5). We suggest that baroreflex unloading, with subsequent feedback activation of the SNS, impairs long-term incidental visual recognition memory in humans while baroreflex loading enhances it. Further, we propose that these memory effects are neither secondary to cardiac sensations that accompany SNS activation nor to altered emotional picture processing at the time of acquisition.