Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Spatial interaction is critical for the survival and social interaction of human beings, including domains of spatial language communication and perspective-taking. In spatial language communication, people are usually located in different locations, so the spatial relationships observed from different perspectives are not the same. Therefore, perspective choices and switches are required in spatial language communication. What factors affect perspective choices and switches in spatial language communication is the critical scientific question in this area. Before the spatial language is produced and comprehended, people have recognized that the other’s perspective is different from their own just by visually observing. It involves an important spatial cognitive mechanism, which is called “perspective-taking”. The core issue in this area is: What factors affect the efficiency and spontaneousness of perspective-taking? The three elements of spatial interaction are the subject, object, and spatial environment, so this process is not only related to spatial cognition but also closely related to social cognition. Traditionally, studies on strategy selection and efficacy of spatial interaction focus on the effects of spatial factors. However, recent studies investigated multiple social factors, including the individual’s social cognitive traits, the partners’ social attributes, and social cues in the spatial environments. An individual’s social cognitive traits mainly involve social skill, empathy, psychopathy. The partners’ social attributes mainly involve human/nonhuman attributes, spatial cognitive ability, and sight state. Social cues in the spatial environments mainly involve the affordance of objects and the alignment between spatial orientation and partners’ orientation. All these factors would affect the perspective choice of individuals. The theoretical explanations of the influence of social factors on spatial interaction are limited or under debate. Currently, the main theoretical explanation in spatial language communication is the principle of least collaborative effort, and the main theoretical explanations in perspective-taking are implicit mentalizing and submentalizing. According to the principle of least collaborative effort, the conversation partners, instead of minimizing the speaker’s or the addressee’s effort individually, take account of both sides’ effort and adapt their perspective to share the cognitive burden and facilitate their coordination. Thus both the speaker and the listener are influenced by social factors in themselves, in partners, and in the environment. The theoretical hypothesis of implicit mentalizing assumes that perspective-taking is the processing of others’ mental states. In contrast, the hypothesis of submentalizing assumes that perspective-taking is caused by attentional shifting. Based on these two hypotheses, others’ mental states, sights, and spatial cues in the environment will affect the process of perspective-taking. Currently, there are some limitations in this research area, such as unbalanced research focuses, attributing spatial interaction targets with single and limited criteria, exploring social factors unsystematically and not extensively, and providing empirical evidence without theoretical constructs. Future research should focus on these limitations and promote the cross-domain integration between social cognition and spatial cognition.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： HPA axis (Hypothalamic - Pituitary - Adrenal, HPA) dysfunction determines the formation or deterioration of stress-related emotional disorders. As a special stress-related disease, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) appears before menstruation and disappears after menstruation. This stable and explosive phenomenon reflects acute stress. On the other hand, the premenstrual discomfort symptoms are considered chronic stress, which may last about 30 years. In order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the pathological mechanisms of PMS, we relied on two types of the activity patterns of HPA axis, namely activity patterns at the baseline level and activity patterns after experimental manipulations on stress levels. The current meta-analysis study included 32 studies (total sample size N = 1280) from 1990 to 2021. We investigated the difference of cortisol levels in luteal phase and follicular phase between PMS women and controls. In addition, we investigated the moderating roles of the cortisol measurement method, cortisol measurement time, PMS/PMDD sample size, and diagnostic type. Because of age-related changes in female hormone secretion and regional differences in menstruation attitude, we further investigated the moderating roles of age and area. 牋We found that the cortisol of PMS individuals in the luteal phase was significantly lower than that of the controls at the baseline level. This effect was moderated by the time of cortisol measurement. At follicular stage, there was no significant difference in cortisol content between PMS women and controls. Similarly, in the experimental studies manipulating stress levels, the cortisol content of PMS women in the luteal phase was significantly lower than that of the controls, but the two groups did not differ in the cortisol content of the follicular phase. The moderating roles of cortisol measurement method, PMS/PMDD sample size, diagnostic type, age and area were not significant. 牋The findings suggested that the persistent changes of the HPA axis and blunted reactivity of HPA axis to pressure might be pathological mechanisms of PMS. The inactivation of the HPA axis at the baseline reflected the lasting change of the neurobiological system due to long-term ineffective activation, while the inactivation of the HPA axis in the experimental studies directly showed blunted reaction to subsequent stressors. Blunted baseline cortisol response may be a risk factor to the development of PMS. Thus, future studies need to further clarify the role of blunted baseline cortisol response on the occurrence of PMS using a longitudinal design. 牋In addition, the results of the follicular phase were unstable in both the baseline and experimental studies, influenced by depression history and trauma experience. 牋The study responds to the controversy of the existing research findings on the topic and provides a deeper understanding for the pathological mechanisms of PMS. Based on the findings of this study, the roles of the time effect of cortisol measurement and stress regulation strategies should be considered in future research.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Emotion regulation provides an effective way to understand and control our emotion. The lack of emotion regulation skill is viewed as one of the major causes of emotional problems, such as depression, anxiety disorder and others. Researchers have attempted to find an effective way to improve individuals’ emotion regulation ability. In recent years, a promising direction is working memory updating, which is an essential element in the central executive component of working memory. Some studies suggest that working memory updating plays a critical role in modulating the emotion regulation process and that working memory updating training can enhance emotion regulation ability. Thus, it is possible to improve depression-prone individuals’ emotion regulation ability through working memory training. In order to examine the effect of working memory training on the emotion regulation ability of depression-prone college students, we used CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale) and BDI-II-C (Beck Depression Inventory II Chinese) evaluation to recruit 40 depression-prone students and 20 healthy students. The depression-prone students were further divided into training and control groups voluntarily. The depression-prone training group completed a 20-day working memory training program. The depression-prone control group and healthy control group did not take part in the training. Participants’ scores for 2-back and 3-back tasks, Emotion Regulation Scale (ERS) scores, subjective emotion ratings for emotion regulation tasks, and HF (High Frequency Power) HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and LF (Low Frequency Power) HRV measurements for five conditions (resting, neutral, attending, relaxed and regulation) during pre-test and post-test phases were collected and analyzed. Statistical methods, including observation and variance analysis, were used to compare collected data from the three groups.We found a significant main effect of condition on subjective emotion ratings. Participants’ subjective emotion scores for the regulation and attending conditions were significantly higher than those for the neutral condition. In addition, the emotion scores for the regulation condition were significantly lower than those for the attending condition. As for the HRV data, during the pre-test phase, the depression-prone training and control groups had no significant difference with respect to HF-HRV, and their HF-HRV was significantly lower than that of the healthy control group. As for the ratio of LF/HF-HRV, a significant condition × group interaction was found. Resting LF/HF-HRV of the healthy control group was significantly higher than that of the depression-prone training and control groups. During the post-test phase, there was a significant increase in HF-HRV for the depression-prone training group. HF-HRV for the depression-prone training group became closer to that of the healthy control group and was marginally significantly higher than that of the depression-prone control group. Moreover, HF-HRV for the depression-prone training group was significantly higher with respect to the regulation condition than the resting condition, while there was no difference for the other two groups. During the post-test phase, the ratio of LF/HF-HRV for the depression-prone training group was significantly higher than for the depression-prone control group, and there was no significant difference between the depression-prone training group and the healthy control group. In conclusion, the HRV data for the depression-prone training group was more similar to that of the healthy control group during the post-test phase than that of the depression-prone control group, which indicated an improvement in emotional regulation ability. For future research, a larger sample size and a more sophisticated experimental paradigm for HRV data collection are needed.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Individuals with test anxiety always treat tests/examinations as a potential threat. This cognitive mode impairs these individuals’ cognition, attention and emotions. A traditional method classifying subjects either as high or low on test anxiety (i.e., HTA or LTA, respectively) relies on questionnaire data. Questionnaire data may be unstable due to the subjective nature of participants’ attitudes, implying a reduced classification accuracy. In search for higher levels of (data) stability and classification accuracy a new classification approach is proposed. This new approach overcomes subjective data’s negative impact on classification accuracy by relying on event-related potential (EPR) data (also referred to as ERPs), objective (multivariate, longitudinal) data which adequately capture participants’ reactions to relevant stimuli (over time). However, as ERP data may still be somewhat unstable due to individual differences between participants, (machine) learning algorithms are adopted as their ‘learning’ feature may increase both the stability of ERP data and classification accuracy. This study recruited 57 HTA participants and 25 LTA participants based on: (a) Test Anxiety Scale (TAS) scores, and (b) (two) specialists’ psychological diagnostic results on a single participant. Reliance on the emotional Stroop (ES) paradigm in combination with ERP technology enabled the assessment of participants’ cognitive mode related to test anxiety. In ES, the information on the ERP components P1, P2, N2, P3 and LPP ERP were selected as input for seven commonly used machine learning algorithms: Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Logistic Regression (LR), K Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). To compare the classification accuracy of these algorithms (using the complete sample of HTA and LTA subjects) important indexes (i.e., accuracy and F1-score) were calculated and compared across these algorithms. The results showed that: (a) the ERPs data collected in ES allow effective differentiation between HTA and LTA (P1: F(1, 80) = 11.68, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.13; P2: F(1, 80) = 14.10, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.15; N2: F(1, 80) = 28.55, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.26; P3: F(1, 80) = 22.41, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.22; LPP: F(1, 80) = 16.92, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.18); (b) classification on the basis of ERP data using machine learning algorithms shows high accuracy and stability, that is the classification accuracy of all seven algorithms is found to be high as evidenced by an accuracy index of 71.8% or higher (CNN: 86.5%, LR: 80.3%, KNN: 71.8%, SVM: 79.0%, RF: 73.1%, ANN: 82.7%, and RNN: 79.2%) and an F1-score of 0.814 or higher (CNN: 0.911, LR: 0.868, KNN: 0.817, SVM: 0.865, RF: 0.814, ANN: 0.882, and RNN: 0.870); (c) CNN outperforms the other six common machine learning algorithms showing both the highest accuracy index and F1-score. Moreover, as over and above this (relative) superiority CNN combines the (technical) property known as ‘shift invariance’ and robustness to noise, the algorithm may be considered ideal for effectively classifying test anxious individuals using ERP data. It is concluded that: (a) as manifested by its ‘discriminatory’ nature and stable classification performance (as evidenced by all machine learning algorithms’ favorable values for all important indices) reliance on the ES paradigm enables machine learning leading up to effective diagnosis of test anxiety; and (b) participants’ classification into HTA and LTA by relying on ERP data which are subsequently analyzed by means of the machine learning algorithm CNN is (most) effective (i.e., as benchmarked against six other commonly used machine learning algorithms). Consequently, using ES in combination with ERP technology and the CNN machine learning algorithm can be conceived as an ideal method for diagnosing test anxiety.
Subjects: Psychology >> Personality Psychology submitted time 2023-01-06
Abstract：
HPA axis (Hypothalamic - Pituitary - Adrenal, HPA) dysfunction determines the formation or deterioration of stress-related emotional disorders. In order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the pathological mechanisms of PMS, we relied on two types of the activity patterns of HPA axis, namely activity patterns at the baseline level and activity patterns after experimental manipulations on stress levels. The current meta-analysis study included 32 studies (total sample size N = 1280) from 1990 to 2021. We found that the cortisol of PMS individuals in the luteal phase was significantly lower than that of the controls at the baseline level. This effect was moderated by the time of cortisol measurement. At follicular stage, there was no significant difference in cortisol content between PMS women and controls. Similarly, in the experimental studies manipulating stress levels, the cortisol content of PMS women in the luteal phase was significantly lower than that of the controls, but the two groups did not differ in the cortisol content of the follicular phase. The findings suggested that the persistent changes of the HPA axis and blunted reactivity of HPA axis to pressure might be pathological mechanisms of PMS. Future research should focus on stress regulation strategies to improve PMS.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-01-10
Abstract： Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) refers to a series of physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms that occur periodically in women during the late luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. It peaks within a week before menses and improves or disappears after the onset of menses. PMS occurs in 30%~40% of females at reproductive-age and can have deleterious effects on the social functioning and interpersonal relationships for those with PMS during the late luteal phase. Therefore, the potential causes and mechanisms of PMS have attracted researchers' attention. Affect balance is an important basis for maintaining mental health and the imbalance of positive and negative affect might be one of the causes of PMS. However, previous studies on the mechanism of PMS mostly focused on the increase of negative affect. Only limited studies explored the decrease of positive affect. Built upon the strong link between positive emotions and reward processing, the present study aims to explore the causes of positive emotional deficiencies tied to the dysfunctional reward processing during PMS. Despite the lack of consensus on the diagnostic criteria of PMS, one of the most widely used diagnostic criteria for PMS are from John Bancroft’s recommendations, which have been translated into the PMS Scale in Chinese. Of the 259 women who were asked to self-assess using this scale, 45 right-handed females (23 with PMS and 22 without PMS) with regular menstrual cycle voluntarily participated in this study. After completing a series of questionnaires, a simple gambling task was used to elicit reward positivity (RewP, 250~350ms), an event-related potential (ERP) component elicited by feedback indicating gain versus loss. All participants completed this task twice, once in the late luteal and the other in the early follicular phase, respectively. In addition to ERP analysis, we also conducted time-frequency analysis to examine the neural oscillations underlying the reward processing. Questionnaire results showed that women with PMS reported lower levels of happiness and calmness than healthy women, and their affect balance was also lower than that of healthy women, independent of menstrual cycle. Electrophysiological results suggested that in the late luteal phase, compared with healthy women, women with PMS were characterized by reduced RewP responses towards monetary gains, but not towards monetary losses. Further correlational analysis showed that the amplitude of RewP to gain feedback and difference wave amplitude in women with PMS was related to the affect balance in the late luteal phase. Time-frequency analysis showed that the theta-band (4~7 Hz, 250~4000 ms) power to gain feedback in PMS group was lower than that of healthy group in the late luteal phase. Taken together, the amplitude of RewP and the theta-band power are related to reward processing. Results showed that in the late luteal phase, the amplitude of RewP and the theta-band power in women with PMS were lower than that in healthy women, and the amplitude of RewP and the theta-band power were related to affect balance for women with PMS. These results suggest that the altered neurophysiological response in reward processing of women with PMS may be one of the causes of their low positive affect and affect imbalance in the late luteal phase. Our findings provide a basis for PMS intervention from the perspective of increasing positive affect, which supplements and enriches previous interventions mostly based on reducing negative affect.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2019-08-21
Abstract： According to attentional control theory, anxiety could impair the inhibitory control. Although this hypothesis has been supported by numerous behavioral and neurophysiological evidences, there is considerable controversy on whether the high anxiety individual increases or decreases the top-down attentional resources in order to accomplish the inhibitory control task. This problem may be caused by a variety of factors. The theoretical interpretation itself has obvious deficiencies. Moreover, multiple extraneous variables results in lower reliability and validity of the empirical research results. To resolve this controversy, future research should try to explore the relationship between anxiety level, attentional control level and inhibitory control.
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