How a maximizing orientation affects trade-offs between desirability and feasibility: The role of outcome- versus process-focused decision making

This research examines how maximizers make decisions when they must trade-off between desirability and feasibility attributes. Across four studies, we demonstrate that maximizers tend to prefer choices offering more desirability to those offering more feasibility and respond more favorably to a product's advertising when it highlights desirability more than feasibility attributes. Furthermore, we show that maximizers' focus on outcomes rather than processes drives their preference for desirability, such that changing from an outcome to a process focus can redirect their interest from desirability to feasibility. By contrast, satisficers do not prefer products higher in desirability to those higher in feasibility and are not more receptive to ads highlighting desirability attributes. Furthermore, because satisficers may focus on both the outcome and the process, priming either one is redundant and does not alter their preference for desirability or feasibility.     

在回忆性同一判断中汉字信息提取的研究

继《再认性同一判断中汉字信息的提取》一文之后,我们作了《回忆性同一判断中汉字信息的提取》的研究,进一步研究了在同一性判断中汉字信息的提取问题,旨在比较在回忆与再认条件下人们对汉字信息提取的特点。结果表明,在回忆条件下意同判断的反应时最长,音近其次,形似最短。形似与意同判断,音近与意同判断间反应时差异显著,音近与形似之间不显著。 与前次实验相比。在回忆条件下语音的作用提高了,但形的作用仍然很大,说明字形与字音的编码对提取语义信息都有重要作用。同时,在回忆条件下,特征干扰都大于一般分心物的作用,说明单词的各种特征都影响到汉字信息的提取。     

Expectancy of Chinese Parents and Children's Cognitive Abilities

A total of 142 first grade and 188 fifth grade schoolchildren from Beijing were tested on 11 cognitive tasks. The parents of these children were surveyed with questionnaires to obtain family background materials, and were asked about their expectancies of their children's future careers and future educational achievements. It was found that fifth grade children from high career (professional) expectancy fathers tend to have better developed cognitive abilities, however there is no career expectancy effect on first grade children. Children from high school achievement expectancy fathers tend to have better developed cognitive skills, this educational expectancy effect is stronger for fifth grade children than first grade children. There is a general trend that the higher the educational level of the fathers, the higher expectancy they have for their children.     

图形和汉字视觉认知任务中的部分线索效应

给被试呈现一幅图的不完整信息作为线索会干扰被试对图形的辨认,这是一种部分线索效应。实验一的任务是对模糊图形的辨认,在轮廓相似组图形中,部分线索的干扰作用随呈现模糊级次数的增加而更加显著,但在轮廓非相似组图形中,模糊级呈现次数为２次和３次的情况下,也表现出了显著的部分线索效应。实验二在不完整汉字识别任务中进一步考察了部分线索效应,在事先学习的条件下,形状相似字组汉字的辨认表现出了显著的部分线索效应,而意义相似字组和随机字组汉字的辨认表现出了部分线索的促进作用。在事先不学习的条件下,随机字组和形状相似字组汉字的辨认表现出了显著的部分线索效应,而意义相似字组汉字的辨认没有表现出显著的部分线索效应。本研究用激活的观点对这些结果做出了合理的解释。     

The variability of practice hypothesis in motor learning: does it apply to Alzheimer's disease?

Based on Schmidt's (1975) variability of practice hypothesis, this study examined acquisition and transfer of a gross motor skill, namely tossing, in 58 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 58 healthy older adults under constant, blocked, and random practice conditions. While healthy older adults were able to learn the tossing task equally well under the three practice conditions, only AD patients receiving constant practice showed significant improvements. Tests of intermediate transfer yielded the expected random practice advantage in healthy controls but not AD patients. None of the practice conditions facilitated intermediate transfer in AD patients; however, constant practice did benefit these impaired individuals on tests of near transfer. These results indicate that the variability of practice hypothesis does not extend to AD patients. As motor learning and transfer were clearly a function of constant practice, future attempts to retrain basic activities of daily living in AD patients should emphasize consistency in training.     

Temporal integration of speech prosody is shaped by language experience: an fMRI study

Differences in hemispheric functions underlying speech perception may be related to the size of temporal integration windows over which prosodic features (e.g., pitch) span in the speech signal. Chinese tone and intonation, both signaled by variations in pitch contours, span over shorter (local) and longer (global) temporal domains, respectively. This cross-linguistic (Chinese and English) study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that pitch contours associated with tones are processed in the left hemisphere by Chinese listeners only, whereas pitch contours associated with intonation are processed predominantly in the right hemisphere. These findings argue against the view that all aspects of speech prosody are lateralized to the right hemisphere, and promote the idea that varying-sized temporal integration windows reflect a neurobiological adaptation to meet the 'prosodic needs' of a particular language.     

Regulation of glutamate synapses by nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in auditory cortex

Acetylcholine plays an important role in regulating the processing of sensory stimuli, and understanding its specific cellular actions is critical to understanding how sensory cortex develops and functions in different behavioral states. Here we review recent work on the cellular effects of nicotinic receptor activation in auditory cortex and describe how these actions could affect systems-level auditory function. In particular, we describe a novel function of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors to regulate glutamate synapses containing N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors during early postnatal development. The transient regulation of developing glutamate synapses also defines a window of vulnerability during which exposure to exogenous nicotine disrupts synapse development. Thus, it appears that nicotinic regulation of glutamate synapses is a critical feature of auditory cortex development.     

One size does not fit all: face emotion processing impairments in semantic dementia, behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease are mediated by distinct cognitive deficits

Patients with frontotemporal dementia (both behavioural variant [bvFTD] and semantic dementia [SD]) as well as those with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show deficits on tests of face emotion processing, yet the mechanisms underlying these deficits have rarely been explored. We compared groups of patients with bvFTD (n = 17), SD (n = 12) or AD (n = 20) to an age- and education-matched group of healthy control subjects (n = 36) on three face emotion processing tasks (Ekman 60, Emotion Matching and Emotion Selection) and found that all three patient groups were similarly impaired. Analyses of covariance employed to partial out the influences of language and perceptual impairments, which frequently co-occur in these patients, provided evidence of different underlying cognitive mechanisms. These analyses revealed that language impairments explained the original poor scores obtained by the SD patients on the Ekman 60 and Emotion Selection tasks, which involve verbal labels. Perceptual deficits contributed to Emotion Matching performance in the bvFTD and AD patients. Importantly, all groups remained impaired on one task or more following these analyses, denoting a primary emotion processing disturbance in these dementia syndromes. These findings highlight the multifactorial nature of emotion processing deficits in patients with dementia.     

More Than Two Choices: The Influence of Context on the Framing Effect

The framing effect demonstrates that two options with different risk levels affect people??s risk preferences, even if both options are logically equivalent. However, in reality we are almost always confronted with more than two choices, rather than a single manipulated message. In this paper, we simultaneously manipulate the framing effect and the context effect, including the attraction effect and the compromise effect, to examine the influence of context on framing. The results of two studies show that context influences the original choice preference arising from the framing effect. Moreover, the framing effect is reduced when context effects are introduced to the original choice set.     

Role ambiguity, employee gender, and workplace friendship

The importance of workplace friendship is recognized by researchers and practitioners, but its antecedents with respect to work roles are not well understood. Employees' gender might moderate a relationship between work roles and friendships. Data from a survey of 221 international tourist hotel employees showed that a key aspect of job support, role ambiguity, was negatively related to having workplace friendships. However, employees' gender did not moderate this relationship. Role clarity (the opposite of role ambiguity) may facilitate workplace friendships.