高感觉寻求者对危险意义声音的自动加工优势：N1、P2和MMN的证据

Zuckerman关于感觉寻求特质的唤醒理论认为,高感觉寻求者为提高其大脑唤醒,会不惜以冒险方式来寻求高强度、变化、新异和复杂的刺激经验。既往研究已经证实了高感觉寻求者对高强度的、变化的和新奇的刺激材料的认知加工偏向,但尚缺乏来自复杂的和具有危险意义刺激材料的研究证据。我们运用反转Oddball实验范式,以听觉N1、P2和MMN（Mismatch negativity）为ERPs指标,系统比较了高、低感觉寻求者对危险意义声音的自动唤醒、注意偏向和特征探测这三个方面的认知加工差异。结果发现,高感觉寻求者的N1、P2和MMN波幅均显著大于低感觉寻求者。结果表明,高感觉寻求者对危险意义声音产生了更高的唤醒水平、注意偏向和特征探测自动加工优势,这些优势可能是其偏于冒险行为的认知神经机制。     

A Cross‐Cultural Comparison of U.S. and Japanese Trainees’ Emotion‐Recognition Ability

This study investigated the ability of non‐Hispanic White U.S. counseling psychology trainees and Japanese clinical psychology trainees to recognize facially expressed emotions. Researchers proposed that an in‐group advantage for emotion recognition would occur, women would have higher emotion‐recognition accuracy than men, and participants would vary in their emotion‐intensity ratings. Sixty White U.S. students and 60 Japanese students viewed photographs of non‐Hispanic White U.S. and Japanese individuals expressing emotions and completed a survey assessing emotion‐recognition ability and emotion‐intensity ratings. Two four‐way mixed‐factor analyses of variance were performed, examining effects of participant nationality/race, participant gender, poser nationality/race, and poser gender on emotion‐recognition accuracy scores and intensity ratings. Results did not support the in‐group advantage hypothesis, rather, U.S. participants had higher accuracy rates than Japanese trainees overall. No gender differences in accuracy were found. However, respondents varied in their intensity ratings across gender and nationality. Implications for training applied psychology students and for future research are presented.     

Developing equivalent Chinese and English scale‐point labels for rating scales used in survey research

Rating scales are the most frequently‐used response tool in surveys, and the scale levels are commonly described with words [verbal scale‐point labels (VSPL)]. In this study, Chinese VSPL were identified which employ five‐point scales that are psychometrically equivalent to English VSPL. In several bilingual studies, a total of 61 Chinese and 44 English items addressing intensity, frequency, and agreement rating modalities were tested. For each VSPL, three aspects were measured: position between minimum and maximum, familiarity, and appeal. The correspondence between pertinent Chinese and English words was also assessed. Based on these findings, we recommend specific VSPL that are best‐suited for achieving equivalence between Chinese and English in rating scales.     

Judgment Difficulty and the Moral Intensity of Unethical Acts: A Cognitive Response Analysis of Dual Process Ethical Judgment Formation

This study analyzes cognitive responses to explore a dual processing perspective of ethical judgment formation. Specifically, the study investigates how two factors, judgment task difficulty and moral intensity, influence the extent of deontological and teleological processing and their effects on ethical judgments. A single experiment on 110 undergraduate research participants found that judgment task difficulty affected the extent of deontological and teleological processing. Although moral intensity affected ethical judgments, it did not produce effects on either deontological or teleological cognitive responses. Results did not support the hypotheses that deontological and teleological cognitive responses would mediate the relationships between the experimental factors and ethical judgments. Overall, the results support continued research of factors that affect the nature of information processing in ethical decision situations and the use of cognitive response analysis as a tool for conducting this research.     

The irrelevant sound effect in short-term memory: Is there developmental change?

With two experiments, effects of irrelevant speech and classroom noise on serial recall of common nouns presented pictorially were investigated in children and adults. Experiment 1 used fixed list lengths for children (first graders) and adults. Experiment 2 used list lengths adjusted to participants' (second–third graders, adults) individual spans. In both experiments, children and adults were equally impaired by irrelevant speech. This contrasts with a related study (differences in methodology) by Elliott (2002), who reported severe increase in the detrimental impact of irrelevant speech with decreasing age. In both experiments, classroom noise had no effect in overall analyses. For Experiment 1, however, separate group analyses revealed impairment in children. Results suggest that effects of irrelevant sounds on serial recall stem from two separate mechanisms: Specific interference due to the sounds' automatic access to short-term memory, and/or attention capture. Only for the latter there is developmental change.     

Anxiety symptom interpretation in high-anxious,defensive high-anxious,low-anxious and repressor sport performers

Abstract

For the first time in a sport setting this study examined the intensity and direction of the competitive state anxiety response in collegiate athletes as a function of four different coping styles: high-anxious, defensive high-anxious, low-anxious and repressors. Specifically, the study predicted that repressors would interpret competitive state anxiety symptoms as more facilitative compared to high-anxious, defensive high-anxious, and low-anxious performers. Separate Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVA) were performed on the intensity and direction subscales of the modified Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2). A significant main effect was identified for trait worry revealing that low trait anxious athletes reported lower intensities of cognitive and somatic anxiety and higher self-confidence and interpreted these as more facilitative than high trait anxious athletes. The prediction that performers with a repressive coping style would interpret state anxiety symptoms as more facilitative than performers with non-repressive coping styles was not supported.     

Discrimination of sea-bird sounds vs. garden-bird songs: Do Scottish and German-Saxon infants show the same preferential looking behaviour as adults?

Birdsong and human speech share some genetic origins (Haesler, Rochefort, Georgi, Licznerski, Osten, & Scharff, 2007 Haesler, S., Rochefort, C., Georgi, B., Licznerski, P., Osten, P. and Scharff, C. 2007. Incomplete and inaccurate vocal imitation after knockdown of FoxP2 in songbird basal ganglia nucleus area X. PLOS Biology, 5: e312–e321.  [Google Scholar]; Vargha-Khadem, Gadian, Copp, & Mishkin, 2005 Vargha-Khadem, F., Gadian, D. G., Copp, A. and Mishkin, M. 2005. FoxP2 and the neuroanatomy of speech and language. Nature Review of Neuroscience, 6: 131–138. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In two studies (N = 67 infants and N = 28 adults) in Scotland (UK) and Saxony (Germany), perceptual discrimination of innate, repetitive, lower frequency sea-bird sounds vs. learned, melodic, higher frequency garden-bird songs was tested in infants in their first year as well as in adults, using the conditioned head-turn procedure (CHTP; e.g., Jusczyk, Friederici, Wessels, Svernkerud, & Jusczyk, 1993 Jusczyk, P. W. and Krumhansl, C. L. 1993. Pitch and rhythmic patterns affecting infants' sensitivity to musical phrase structure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19: 627–640.  [Google Scholar]). Infants and adults reliably distinguished between the two types of sounds. Independently of environment, infants paid more attention to sea-bird sounds than to garden-bird songs, while adults showed the reverse preference. Further analysis revealed additional insights into the underlying processes.     

Psychosocial correlates of hiv-related sexual behavior in an inner city std clinic

Little is known about the relationship between smoking and meaning in life, although the association of meaninglessness with other addictive behaviours has been widely investigated. The aim of this study is to examine whether a relationship exists between meaning in life and intensity of smoking as measured by cigarettes smoked per day. The study population was 3506 current smokers from the Hungarostudy 2002 Hungarian representative cross-sectional survey. Age, educational level, marital status, subjective financial status, household income, coffee consumption, hazardous alcohol use, general well-being, anxiety, and depressive symptomatology were included in the analyses as covariates. On the bivariate level, life meaning was associated with smoking intensity in the total sample and among women (p < 0.001), while for males, only a tendency was found (p = 0.069). In the multivariate analyses, life meaning proved to be a significant negative predictor of smoking intensity for females (p = 0.005) even after controlling for the covariates, whereas in men, meaning in life completely lost its significance (p = 0.852). In the total sample, both meaning in life (p = 0.005) and its interaction with gender (p = 0.024) related to the dependent variable. Further research is needed to confirm these explorative findings concerning the protective role of life meaning against more intense smoking among women.     

Elasto-hydrodynamics of quasicrystals with a crack under sudden impacts

ABSTRACT

In this paper, a mode-III crack in one-dimensional (1D) hexagonal quasicrystals subjected to anti-plane impact loading is analyzed. The elasto-hydrodynamics of quasicrystals is adopted, where the phonon field obeys wave equation, and the phason field obeys diffusion equation. By introducing a new auxiliary function, the coupled wave-diffusion equations are converted to a single higher-order partial differential equation. With the aid of the Laplace transform, an associated mixed initial-boundary value problem is reduced to two sets of dual integral equations, and then transformed into two coupled Fredholm integral equations of the second kind. Numerical results of transient phonon and phason stress intensity factors and crack-centre displacement jump are obtained through the numerical inversion of the Laplace transform and are presented graphically to show the influences of the phason.