Could sex difference in color preference and its personality correlates fit into social theories? Let Chinese university students tell you

The unclear picture of the sex difference in color preference might result from personality variations. We invited 359 Chinese university students (166 men and 193 women) to undergo a color preference test and the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ), a five-factor model test. Depressive trends were measured by the Plutchik-van Praag Depression Inventory (PVP). There was no significant difference between men and women regarding either ZKPQ or PVP scale scores. However, men preferred blue and green significantly more, and their preference order of yellow was negatively correlated with ZKPQ Sociability. Women preferred purple, pink and white significantly more, their preference order of gray was positively correlated with Neuroticism-Anxiety, and the order of orange negatively with Aggression-Hostility. Our results suggest that, partly from a biological layout, men as hunters and women as gatherers prefer some different colors on the one hand, but from a social structural layout, they might try to adjust some personality traits by preferring other colors on the other, in order to attain a sex-equality but polychromatic world.     

Lateral biases and reading direction: a dissociation between aesthetic preference and line bisection

Perceptual asymmetries for tasks involving aesthetic preference or line bisection can be affected by asymmetrical neurological mechanisms or left/right reading habits. This study investigated the relative contribution of these mechanisms in 100 readers of Japanese and English. Participants made aesthetic judgments between pairs of mirror-reversed pictures showing: (a) static objects, (b) moving objects and (c) landscapes. A line bisection task was also administered. There was a strong effect of reading direction for static and mobile objects whereby Japanese readers preferred objects with a right-to-left directionality (and vice versa for English readers). In contrast, similar patterns were observed for the Japanese and English readers for the landscape and line bisection tasks. The results show that reading habits affect aesthetic judgments for static and moving object tasks, but not the landscape and line bisection tasks. The difference between the tasks may be related to the horizontal/vertical geometry of the stimuli, which makes the landscape and line bisection tasks more prone to universal effects related to cerebral dominance.     

Visual processing speed in old age

Mental speed is a common concept in theories of cognitive aging, but it is difficult to get measures of the speed of a particular psychological process that are not confounded by the speed of other processes. We used Bundesen’s (1990) Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) to obtain specific estimates of processing speed in the visual system controlled for the influence of response latency and individual variations of the perception threshold. A total of 33 non‐demented old people (69–87 years) were tested for the ability to recognize briefly presented letters. Performance was analyzed by the TVA model. Visual processing speed decreased approximately linearly with age and was on average halved from 70 to 85 years. Less dramatic aging effects were found for the perception threshold and the visual apprehension span. In the visual domain, cognitive aging seems to be most clearly related to reductions in processing speed.     

英文阅读材料的颜色对阅读成绩的影响

该文通过档案调查、实验和问卷调查的方法就大学英语六级考试中不同颜色文字对阅读成绩的影响进行了探索。在对北京大学和北京师范大学的2007年12月的5537份六级考试成绩档案的调查过程中,发现不同颜色试卷的阅读部分和总分成绩差异显著(蓝色低于黑色),但是这种差异并不大;选取26名被试进行实验的结果发现,题目难度和颜色之间存在边缘显著的交互作用,简单题目上蓝色比黑色成绩更低,但是这种差异在复杂题目上没有那么明显。进一步地,通过131份问卷调查数据得出,被试的阅读习惯为黑色,主观偏好也为黑色:这也是影响阅读成绩的主要因素。     

Pulling yourself together: Meditation promotes congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem

Self-reported or explicit self-esteem frequently conflicts with indirectly assessed, implicit self-esteem. The present research investigated whether meditation may reduce such inner conflicts by promoting congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Relative to control conditions, meditation led to greater congruence between explicit self-esteem, assessed via self-report, and implicit self-esteem, indicated by name-letter preference (Studies 1 and 2). Low implicit self-esteem was further associated with a slow-down of explicit self-evaluation (Study 2), an effect that mediated the greater congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem in the meditation condition. These results suggest that meditation encourages people to rely more on intuitive feelings of self-worth.     

The development of hand preference in children: The effect of task demands and links with manual dexterity

Lateralisation of hand preference and manual dexterity are known to develop over childhood, while in adulthood strength of hand preference has been shown to interact with extrinsic task demands. Some evidence exists to suggest that strength of hand preference and motor skill may be related. In the current study a handedness inventory, midline crossing (QHP) and peg-moving tasks were used to investigate: (1) the development of hand preference between 4 and 11 years; (2) whether extrinsic task demands affect strength of hand preference, and (3) whether strength of hand preference was associated with manual dexterity. Younger children (4–5 years) showed weak hand preference in comparison to older children (8–11 years), and extrinsic task demands influenced willingness to cross the body’s midline with the preferred hand. Age and peg-moving speed were associated with midline crossing in certain task conditions. Overall, results suggest a coupling between manual dexterity and brain maturation in typical development.