人际情境对幼儿联合Simon效应的影响机制

联合Simon效应是考察幼儿共同表征能力的一个有效指标,本研究采用联合Simon任务范式通过两个实验考察幼儿联合Simon效应稳定产生的年龄阶段以及不同人际情境对该效应的影响机制。实验1首先以3个年龄段幼儿为研究对象来考察幼儿联合Simon效应产生的年龄阶段,以揭示共同表征能力的发生发展趋势。实验2在实验1基础上以出现稳定联合Simon效应的5岁幼儿为研究对象,进一步考察该能力水平是否受到人际情境的影响及背后的机制。结果表明,与3岁相比,4岁幼儿开始出现联合Simon效应,但尚不稳定,5岁幼儿的联合Simon效应达到更加稳定水平;不同人际情境对幼儿的共同表征能力产生影响,相较合作情境,竞争情境对幼儿联合行动的共同表征能力有抑制作用。本研究结果很好地支持了参考编码理论,并拓宽了对共同表征理论的理解。     

幼儿的自我投射能力对情景预见的影响:来自典型发展儿童和孤独症谱系障碍儿童的证据

情景预见是个体将自我投射到未来某个特定时间和地点预先体验可能发生的未来事件的一种能力。为了考察幼儿的自我投射能力在情景预见中的可能作用,本研究通过两个实验比较了从自己的视角和从他人视角完成情景预见任务时幼儿的表现。实验1选取236名3~5.5岁典型发展（Typically Developing,TD）幼儿,采用被试间设计发现,总体而言,幼儿为他人做预见优于为自己做预见。实验2采用被试内设计,在TD儿童身上验证了实验1的结果,同时发现,孤独症谱系障碍（Autism Spectrum Disorder,ASD）儿童为自己做预见与为他人做预见没有差异。综上,幼儿不成熟的自我投射能力会干扰其自我卷入的情景预见,而自我投射能力受损的ASD儿童则没有表现出这种影响。     

Executive Functioning Among College Students With and Without History of Childhood Maltreatment

This study utilized performance-based and self-report measures to examine differences in executive functions in college students with and without histories of childhood maltreatment. On the performance-based measures of executive function, all scores fell within the normal range for age. However, participants in the childhood maltreatment group reported more problems with metacognition than those without history of maltreatment. Severity of childhood maltreatment was associated with poorer cognitive inhibition/switching and phonetic fluency. Although significant group differences were found on a laboratory-based task of executive function, performance across the other tasks was generally similar. However, those with a history of maltreatment reported more problems with metacognition, suggesting a potential avenue for brief interventions focused on improving metacognitive skills important for success in the college environment. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Sexual abuse and HIV-risk behaviour among black and minority ethnic men who have sex with men in the UK

Black and minority ethnic (BME) men who have sex with men (MSM) face a major burden in relation to HIV infection. It was hypothesised that sexual abuse would predict sexual risk-taking, and that this relationship would be mediated by victimisation and maladaptive coping variables. Four hundred and thirty-two BME MSM completed the survey; 54% reported no sexual abuse and 27% reported sexual abuse. Mann–Whitney tests showed that MSM with a history of sexual abuse reported higher frequency of drug use, and of homophobia and racism than those reporting no prior sexual abuse. A structural equation model showed that the experience of sexual abuse was positively associated with sexual risk-taking and that this relationship was mediated by victimisation variables: frequency of racism and frequency of homophobia and by the maladaptive coping variable: frequency of drug use. The findings can inform the design of psycho-sexual and behavioural interventions for BME MSM.     

A cognitive-based model of tool use in normal aging

While several cognitive domains have been widely investigated in the field of aging, the age-related effects on tool use are still an open issue and hardly any studies on tool use and aging is available. A significant body of literature has indicated that tool use skills might be supported by at least two different types of knowledge, namely, mechanical knowledge and semantic knowledge. However, neither the contribution of these kinds of knowledge to familiar tool use, nor the effects of aging on mechanical and semantic knowledge have been explored in normal aging. The aim of the present study was to fill this gap. To do so, 98 healthy elderly adults were presented with three tasks: a classical, familiar tool use task, a novel tool use task assessing mechanical knowledge, and a picture matching task assessing semantic knowledge. The results showed that aging has a negative impact on tool use tasks and on knowledge supporting tool use skills. We also found that aging did not impact mechanical and semantic knowledge in the same way, confirming the distinct nature of those forms of knowledge. Finally, our results stressed that mechanical and semantic knowledge are both involved in the ability to use familiar tools.     

Young Children's Reports of When Events Occurred: Do Event Type and Assessment Method Matter?

Studying young children's reporting about when various events occurred informs about the development of episodic memory and metacognition. In two experiments, 55 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children participated in two activity sessions, a week apart. During the activity sessions, they learned novel animal facts and body movements, and they coloured animal pictures and posed for body movement photos. Immediately after the second activity session, children were interviewed about when they experienced the various events. Overall, children were as accurate about learning events as physical events, but they were more accurate when asked temporal distance (e.g. ‘Which did you learn a longer time ago, “X” or “Y”?’) than temporal location questions (e.g. ‘Which did you learn before today, “X” or “Y”?’). The results suggest that young children's apparent difficulty recognizing new learning is not due to a rapid ‘remember‐to‐know shift’. Rather, the way we ask young children about when they experienced various events determines their accuracy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Symptoms of PTSD Among Adolescents and Young Adult Survivors Six Years after the 2010 Haiti Earthquake

This study investigates the long-term consequences for adolescents and young adults who experienced the January 12, 2010, earthquake that struck Haiti. It aims to evaluate the consequences of the earthquake in adolescents and young adults six years after the disaster. During May and June 2016, in Port-au-Prince, 723 adolescents and young adults (364 girls and young women) aged 14 to 24 were assessed by means the Impact of Event Scale–Revised (IES-R) in addition to social demographic characteristics. In our sample, 35.82% reported clinically significant symptoms of PTSD, with a higher prevalence for girls and young women. They also had consistently higher scores than boys and young men on every subscale. Participants with working parents had consistently higher scores across all the subscales than participants whose parents did not work. This study showed that, more than six years after the earthquake, more than one third of the participants assessed had severe PTSD symptoms. Our results may prove useful for setting up mental health programs and devising tools appropriate for the youth population in Haiti.     

自恋与社交网站使用的关系

自恋作为一种人格特质,以膨胀的自我概念、寻求他人持续的关注和肯定为主要特征,而社交网站鼓励多种形式的自我提升行为,深受自恋者的喜欢。在考察社交网站上的一般性使用行为、不同类型社交平台上、不同性质的使用行为以及具体的使用行为时,均发现了自恋的显著预测作用(自我选择效应);不同形式的社交网站使用行为也会强化个体的自恋水平(媒体效应)。自恋和社交网站使用之间相互作用、相互强化(强化螺旋模型)。两者的关系还受性别、年龄和代际差异以及文化等因素的影响。未来研究还需进一步探讨自恋和社交网站使用行为的界定及测量、两者的作用方向以及研究方法的改进等问题。     

Striving for optimal relevance when answering questions

When people are asked "Do you have the time?" they can answer in a variety of ways, such as "It is almost 3", "Yeah, it is quarter past two", or more precisely as in "It is now 1:43". We present the results of four experiments that examined people's real-life answers to questions about the time. Our hypothesis, following previous research findings, was that people strive to make their answers optimally relevant for the addressee, which in many cases allows people to give rounded, and not exact, time responses. Moreover, analyses of the non-numeral words, hesitations, and latencies of people's verbal responses to time questions reveal important insights into the dynamics of speaking to achieve optimal relevance. People include discourse markers, hesitation marks, like "uh" and "um", and pauses when answering time questions to maximize the cognitive effects (e.g., a rounded answer is adequate) listeners can infer while minimizing the cognitive effort required to infer these effects. This research provides new empirical evidence on how relevance considerations shape collaborative language use.     

Action goal selection and motor planning can be dissociated by tool use

The preparation of eye or hand movements enhances visual perception at the upcoming movement end position. The spatial location of this influence of action on perception could be determined either by goal selection or by motor planning. We employed a tool use task to dissociate these two alternatives. The instructed goal location was a visual target to which participants pointed with the tip of a triangular hand-held tool. The motor endpoint was defined by the final fingertip position necessary to bring the tool tip onto the goal. We tested perceptual performance at both locations (tool tip endpoint, motor endpoint) with a visual discrimination task. Discrimination performance was enhanced in parallel at both spatial locations, but not at nearby and intermediate locations, suggesting that both action goal selection and motor planning contribute to visual perception. In addition, our results challenge the widely held view that tools extend the body schema and suggest instead that tool use enhances perception at those precise locations which are most relevant during tool action: the body part used to manipulate the tool, and the active tool tip.