腹内侧前额叶在内隐认知重评中的因果作用

情绪调节对维持个体心理健康、适应社会生活十分重要, 然而以往研究主要关注外显情绪调节, 目前我们对内隐情绪调节的认知神经机制的了解还非常有限。为揭示内隐情绪调节的核心脑区, 本研究使用句子整理任务启动内隐认知重评, 并采用经颅直流电刺激(transcranial direct current stimulation, tDCS)激活内侧前额叶特别是腹内侧前额叶(ventromedial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC), 考察该脑区在内隐情绪调节中的因果作用。结果表明, vmPFC被激活的被试组(实验组, n = 40)在内隐认知重评启动条件下比tDCS伪刺激组(对照组, n = 40), 在观看负性图片时报告了更少的负性情绪, 同时负性图片诱发的晚正成分(late positive potential, LPP)波幅更低(LPP是情绪体验强度的客观指标)。同时, 实验组比对照组在观看负性图片时表现出更低的枕区P1波幅(P1为早期视觉注意程度的客观指标)。以上结果说明, 激活以vmPFC为代表的内侧前额叶不但能增强内隐情绪调节的效果, 还能减少被试对负性刺激的早期注意分配。本研究是采用tDCS技术考察启动引起的内隐情绪调节的首次尝试, 研究结果不但表明了以vmPFC为代表的内侧前额叶在内隐认知重评中的关键作用, 还为临床应用研究指出了增强内隐情绪调节能力的神经调控潜在靶点。     

汉语听觉阈下启动效应：来自听觉掩蔽启动范式的证据

使用汉语双字词为实验材料,采用听觉掩蔽启动范式,通过3个实验考察汉语听觉阈下启动效应。结果发现,真词的听觉阈下重复启动效应显著,并且听觉阈下重复启动效应不受启动、目标发音者性别一致性的影响。但真词的阈下语音、语素和语义启动效应及假词的阈下重复和首字启动效应都不显著。这些结果说明,听觉通道阈下呈现的汉语双字词的词汇水平信息可以得到无意识加工。汉语双字词的听觉阈下启动效应可能是基于启动词整词表征的无意识激活。     

反事实思维对行人交通安全行为意向的影响

反事实思维是对过去发生事情进行否定而产生的假设性思维表征,对行为改变和绩效改善有显著影响。因此,作为一种重要的认知策略,反事实思维常常被用于行为干预的研究。本研究采用单因素(反事实启动/经验启动)被试间实验设计,以4种常见的行人不安全行为为实验材料,运用顺序启动范式的语义启动分别激活自变量的两个水平,将遵守交通规则行为意向的评分和反应时双变量作为因变量指标,探索反事实思维对行人安全行为的促进作用。结果表明:与基线水平和经验启动相比,反事实启动诱导产生的行人交通安全行为意向更加积极,并且产生的自动化水平更高。文章最后讨论了研究的理论意义和对安全管理实践的启发。     

Priming Effects on Cooperative Behavior in Social Dilemmas: Considering the Prime and the Person

We test whether people with a relatively more intrinsic vs. extrinsic value orientation (RIEVO) are particularly likely to enact cooperative behavior in resource dilemmas when they are primed with relatedness goals. In Study 1, high RIEVO participants primed with relatedness exhibited more restrained fishing behavior in a resource dilemma than their unprimed counterparts or participants low in RIEVO. Study 2 replicated this effect and further showed that the prime must signal the possibility of satisfying a valued goal (relatedness satisfaction) in order to elicit the value-consistent behavior. We discuss these results in the context of recent process models of goal priming, and also discuss how these findings contribute to our understanding of cooperative behavior and the predictive power of value constructs more broadly.     

I need you closer to me: Effects of affiliation goals on perceptions of interpersonal distance

People's perceptions are often distorted in a way that aligns with their desires and goals. We argue that having a goal to affiliate changes the perception of interpersonal distance in a way that may help to fulfil this affiliation goal. As other people are goal‐relevant when having an affiliation goal, we expected that people with affiliation goals would estimate the distance between themselves and another person as smaller than people with no affiliation goals. In two studies, we manipulated affiliation goals by priming participants with affiliation or control words. Our main dependent variable was the estimated interpersonal distance between themselves and the experimenter. Results showed that participants primed with affiliation estimated the interpersonal distance as smaller compared with participants primed with control words. We did not obtain reliable differences between the affiliation and control conditions on other distance and height estimations. Our results suggest that having or not having affiliation goals influences people's perception of the distance between them and other people.     

Enhanced semantic priming in synesthetes independent of sensory binding

Synesthesia is the phenomenon in which individuals experience unusual involuntary cross-modal pairings. The evidence to date suggests that synesthetes have access to advantageous item-specific memory cues linked to their synesthetic experience, but whether this emphasis on item-specific memory cues comes at the expense of semantic-level processing has not been unambiguously demonstrated. Here we found that synesthetes produce substantially greater semantic priming magnitudes, unrelated to their specific synesthetic experience. This effect, however, was moderated by whether the synesthetes were projectors (their synesthetic experience occurs in their representation of external space), or associators (their synesthetic experience occurs in their ‘mind’s eye’). That is, the greater a synesthetes’s tendency to project their experience, the weaker their semantic priming when the task did not require them to semantically categorize the stimuli, whereas this trade-off was absent when the task did have that requirement.     

Verbal social primes alter motor contagion during action observation

We investigated whether prosocial and nonsocial word primes prior to action observation modify subsequent initiation and execution of the observer's own reach-to-grasp actions. Participants observed a model performing exaggeratedly curved (vertical deviation) or natural straight reaches to a vertical dowel and always performed a straight reach to a dowel themselves. Observing curved movements slowed initiation times and increased the vertical deviation of the participants’ movements. Observing curved movements enhanced vertical deviation only in the prosocial word primes condition. We suggest that social context priming can modulate initiation of movement as well as the extent of motor contagion (in this case, the extent of vertical deviation) between model and observer.     

Priming effect in affirmative complex conditional connectives

We report the results of an experiment that examined the mental representations underlying the comprehension of complex conditional connectives (such as “A, on condition that B”) and the conditional if (such as “A, if B”). The mental representations during the comprehension stage were analysed using a “priming methodology”. The experiment showed that participants read the possibility “A and not-B” faster when it was primed by “A, if B” than when it was primed by “A, on condition that B”. The finding suggests that people understand the sentence “A, on condition that B” as biconditional; other possibilities (“A and B”, “not-A and B”, “not-A and not-B”) were primed equally by both connectives. We discuss the implications of this for current theories of reasoning.     

On the relationship between negative affective priming and prefrontal cognitive control mechanisms

Although several studies have examined inhibition of affective stimuli, valence-dependent cognitive control effects remain poorly understood. Behavioural and functional imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) data were collected from 17 healthy participants to examine neural correlates of the Negative Affective Priming (NAP) task. We created relative ratio scores considering the reaction times of prime trials in order to assess the amount of interference after the presentation of negative and positive distracter words. Behavioural results showed an attenuated NAP effect for negative distracters compared to neutral stimuli. Furthermore, priming negative distracters generated more interference by reacting to the probe target than positive distracters. Neuroimaging data revealed a stronger prefrontal activation during negative NAP trials compared to positive NAP and neutral control trials, which was reflected in a heightened activation of superior and middle frontal gyrus as well as parietal cortex. The findings show the impact of negative distracters on prefrontal response, contributing to the understanding of NAP effects in healthy subjects.