Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology submitted time 2023-11-15
Abstract： Emotions surface during interaction between individuals. Thus, an accurate recognition of facial expressions is essential in the realm of social interactions. In recent years, numerous studies have revealed that individuals not only depend on facial configuration information for identifying facial expressions but also place considerable emphasis on contextual information extracted from external cues beyond the face. People’s behavior frequently unfolds within intricate social group dynamics, wherein individuals often perceive and interpret the facial expressions of their fellow group members during interaction. However, the impact of group information on facial expression recognition, being an essential social contextual factor, remains somewhat unclear. Hence, three experiments were conducted to investigate the influence exerted by group information on the recognition of facial expressions.
The stimuli used in the study were happy, fearful, and neutral face images selected from the NimStim set, including 15 pictures (seven females) of each of the aforementioned emotions. Group information was manipulated following the presentation of a fixation cross through perceptual cues. Subsequently, during the facial expression recognition phase, participants were instructed to recognize the facial expressions exhibited by target individuals. In the first experiment, participants were instructed to rate the intensity of target facial expressions on a six-emotion scale, and the surrounding facial expressions were always congruent with the target facial expressions. A total of 29 college students (16 females, mean age 20.00 ± 1.80 years) were recruited to participate in this experiment. In Experiments 2 and 3, we manipulated the emotional congruency between the surrounding faces and the target faces during the facial expression recognition phase. Additionally, we controlled for variations in physical characteristics across different experimental conditions. The task requirement of Experiment 2 was the same as those of Experiment 1. However, in Experiment 3, participants were instructed to judge the target facial expressions by pressing corresponding keys on the keyboard as quickly and accurately as possible. A total of 26 college students (14 females, mean age 21.15 ± 1.99 years) participated in Experiment 2, and 32 college students (15 females, mean age 21.20 ± 1.60 years) participated in Experiment 3.
Results revealed the following: (1) Compared with emotion-incongruent conditions, emotional congruency between target faces and surrounding faces resulted in shorter RTs and higher accuracy. (2) Group information regulated the influence of surrounding facial expressions on target facial expression recognition. Specifically, under group conditions, participants tended to recognize target facial expressions according to the emotional state of the surrounding faces. When the target facial expressions in line with the expectations established by the participants that group members have congruent emotional state, the recognition of target facial expressions was faster and more accurate than incongruent conditions. However, under nongroup conditions, participants recognized target facial expressions without reference to the emotional states of the surrounding faces. (3) Participants exhibited a faster and more accurate recognition of happy faces, indicating the recognition advantage effect for happy facial expressions.
Results revealed that group information influenced facial expression recognition, individuals recognized facial expressions based on the social relationship between the interactions, and understanding social interaction plays an important role in the process of emotion perception.
Subjects: Psychology >> Medical Psychology submitted time 2023-11-02
Abstract： Memory is stored in the strength changes of synaptic connections between neurons, and neurotransmitters play a crucial role in regulating synaptic plasticity. Neurons expressing specific types of neurotransmitters can form distinct neurotransmitter systems, including the dopaminergic, noradrenergic, serotonergic, and glutamatergic systems. Studies on the destabilization processes of various types of memories have revealed the important role of acetylcholine in memory destabilization triggered by the retrieval of novel associative information. The resistance of high-intensity fear memories to destabilization and reconsolidation is attributed to the activation of the noradrenergic-locus coeruleus system during the encoding process of such fear memories. Other important neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, glutamate, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), and serotonin, also exert influences on memory plasticity at different stages of memory formation. Neurotransmitters play significant roles in fear memory destabilization and reconsolidation, but these effects are typically not independent; rather, they involve interactions and mutual regulation, such as dopamine-cholinergic interactions and serotonin-glutamate interactions. Furthermore, this summary elaborates on the roles of the aforementioned neurotransmitters in memory reconsolidation and their interactions. The study of neurotransmitters at the molecular level can provide valuable insights for the investigation of interventions targeting fear memory reconsolidation. In the future, research should continue to explore the key factors and methods underlying fear memory destabilization based on the molecular mechanisms of memory destabilization and the role of neurotransmitters, to improve the clinical treatment of PTSD based on the reconsolidation intervene.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2023-09-30
Abstract： There are many factors influencing prosocial behavior, and the research results of "who is more prosocial in high social class or low social class" are different, and the research conclusions are easy to generate group stigma, so further clarifying how social class affects prosocial tendency has become a research hotspot. Previous studies mainly discuss the effect of self-induced social status from the perspective of prosociety. However, by subdividing subjective social class into subjective family class and subjective individual class, the relationship between subjective social class and prosocial tendencies may be better explained. In addition, reciprocity beliefs, as the ideological and cognitive aspect of an individual's internal reciprocity norm, is a remote factor that determines the actual reciprocity behavior, and was also introduced into the prediction mechanism to better explain the relationship between subjective social class and prosocial tendencies.
Study 1 recruited college students through an online platform with 598 valid participants, and used the MacArthur Scale of Subjective, the Prosocial Tendencies Measures, the Personal Norms of Reciprocity Scale, and the Personal Relative Deprivation Scale to measure individuals' subjective family class, subjective individual class, prosocial tendency, reciprocity belief, and individual relative deprivation. SPSS process was used to conduct chain multiple mediation tests and moderating effect tests. Results found that subjective family class can positively predict subjective individual class and prosocial tendency, and subjective individual class can negatively predict balanced reciprocity belief. Balanced reciprocity belief positively predicted prosocial tendency, in which balanced reciprocity belief played an intermediary role between subjective family class and prosocial tendency, subjective individual class and balanced reciprocity belief had a masking effect between them, and individual relative deprivation played an enhanced moderating role between reciprocal belief and prosocial tendency; In study 2, CGSS2021 data was used to further verify the results of study 1 by selecting variables related items, 2312 valid data were obtained after deleting missing data, and the same model test was conducted by SPSS process. Results found that both subjective family class and subjective individual class can positively predict prosocial tendency, subjective family class can still positively predict subjective individual class, subjective individual class negatively predicted negative reciprocity belief, negative reciprocity belief negatively predicted prosocial tendency, and subjective individual class played a mediating role between subjective family class and prosocial tendency.Subjective individual class and negative reciprocity belief played an intermediary role between them, and there were boundary conditions on the direct effect of individual relative deprivation. Combining the results of the two studies, it can be stably found that subjective family class can positively predict prosocial tendencies, which provided new evidence for "higher subjective social class has higher prosocial tendencies".Subjective family class is the antecedent influencing factor of subjective individual class, which can predict reciprocity belief and then prosocial tendency through the latter. Subjective individual class and reciprocity belief are important mechanisms for subjective family class to predict prosocial tendency, but different reciprocity beliefs play different roles in predicting prosocial tendency.
Whether it is the relationship between subjective family class and subjective individual class, the different predictive effects of different reciprocity beliefs on prosocial tendency, or the chain mediating effects of subjective individual class and reciprocity beliefs on subjective family class and prosocial tendency. These stable findings can help to understand subjective social class and its prediction mechanism for prosocial tendency, provide a new perspective for understanding the relationship between subjective social class and prosocial tendency, and show that social cognitive theory and social exchange theory are not incompatible in explaining prosocial tendency, and can better understand individual prosocial tendency by combining them.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Psychological Measurement Subjects: Psychology >> Statistics in Psychology submitted time 2023-05-11
Abstract： Cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) are psychometric models which have received increasing attention within the field of psychological, educational, social, biological, and many other disciplines. It has been argued that an inappropriate convergence criterion for MLE-EM (maximum likelihood estimation using the expectation maximization) algorithm could result in unpredictably distorted model parameter estimates, and thus may yield unstable and misleading conclusions drawn from the fitted CDMs. Although several convergence criteria have been developed, it remains an unexplored question, how to specify the appropriate convergence criterion for the fitted CDMs.
A comprehensive method for assessing convergence is proposed in this study. To minimize the impact by the model parameter estimation framework, a new framework adopting the multiple starting values strategy mCDM is introduced. To examine the performance of the convergence criterion for MLE-EM in CDMs, a simulation study under various conditions was conducted. Five convergence assessment methods were examined: the maximum absolute change in model parameters, the maximum absolute change in item endorsement probabilities and structural parameters, the absolute change in log-likelihood, the relative log-likelihood, and the comprehensive method. The data generating models were the saturated CDM and the hierarchical CDM. The number of items was set to J = 16 and 32. Three levels of sample sizes were considered: 500, 1000, and 4000. Three convergence tolerance value conditions were: 10-4 , 10-6 , and 10-8 . The simulated response data were fitted by the saturated CDM using the mCDM and the R package GDINA. And the maximum number of iterations was set to 50000.
Simulation results suggest that:
(1) The saturated CDM converged under all conditions. However, the actual number of iterations exceeded 30000 under some conditions, which implies that when predefined maximum iteration number is less than 30000, the MLE-EM algorithm might mistakenly stop.
(2) The model parameter estimation framework affected the performance of the convergence criteria. The performance of the convergence criteria under the mCDM framework was comparable or superior to that of the GDINA framework.
(3) Regarding the convergence tolerance values considered in this study, 10-8 consistently had the best performance in providing the maximum value of the log-likelihood and 10-4 had the worst as suggested by the higher log-likelihood value. Compared to all other convergence assessment methods, the comprehensive method in general had the best performance, especially under the mCDM framework. The performance of the maximum absolute change in model parameters was similar to the comprehensive method, however, its good performance was not guaranteed. On the contrary, the relative log-likelihood had the worst performance under the mCDM or GDINA framework.
The simulation results showed that, the most appropriate convergence criterion for MLE-EM in CDMs was the comprehensive method with tolerance 10-8 under the mCDM framework. Results from the real data analysis also demonstrated the good performance of the proposed comprehensive method and mCDM framework.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-04-12
Pang, Chao
Chen, Yanzhang
Wang, Li
Yang, Xiduan
He, Ya
Li, Zhiying
Ouyang, Xiaoyu
Fu, Shimin
Nan, Weizhi
Abstract： Visual working memory (VWM) and selective attention are two essential topics of investigation in the field of cognitive psychology. Previous studies have suggested that object-based attention selection modes may be present during the VWM encoding stage, and feature-based attention selection modes may be present during the maintenance stage. Nonetheless,these conclusions are based on different research paradigms, object feature dimensions, and response indicators, so it is prudent to exercise caution when inferring the existence of distinct attention selection modes during different stages of VWM processing. The aim of the present study is to evaluate this hypothesis and provide empirical support. In Experiment 1a, 30 college students were recruited to complete a change-detection task. Participants were instructed to memorize the features of the objects presented in the memory display by means of a pre-cue or retro-cue presented prior to or following the memory display. Specifically, in pre-cue trials, participants were asked to memorize only the cueing task-relevant feature while ignoring the task-irrelevant feature. In retro-cue trials, participants needed to memorize the entire object so that they could select the task-relevant feature according to the retro-cue. The present study examined the “irrelevant-change distracting effect” by comparing memory performance between the condition of task-irrelevant feature changes and no-changes on the memory probe test display. Experiment 1b had a similar procedure, except that the cue types were block designs. Based on the design of Experiment 1b, Experiments 2 and 3 increased the number of memory items to test whether the memory load would modulate the attention selection modes. Twenty-eight participants were recruited for Experiment 1b, Experiment 2, and Experiment 3. All experiments were 2 (cue types: pre-cue, retro-cue) × 2 (task-irrelevant feature change types: change, no-change) within-subjects designs, participants’ response times (RTs) and correct rates were recorded, and the sensitivity and criteria of the participants were calculated by signal detection theory (SDT). The results of the three experiments showed that the change in task-irrelevant features had an impact on task performance in the pre-cue trials, with longer RTs and lower criteria in the task-irrelevant feature change condition than in the no-change condition. This distracting effect was not modulated by the memory load. This suggests the existence of robust object-based attentional selection during the encoding stage in VWM. In contrast, in the retro-cue trials, the distracting effect was present only in the low memory load condition (Experiment 1a/1b) and disappeared when the memory load increased (Experiment 2/3). This suggests that during the maintenance stage, task-irrelevant features are processed only under low memory load conditions, and insufficient resources lead to their inability to be processed as the demand for attentional resources for task-relevant features increases.In summary, the present study provides further evidence for the hypothesis that different modes of attentional selection exist in the encoding and maintenance stages of VWM, specifically that the attention selection mode during the VWM encoding stage is object-based, while the attention selection mode during the maintenance stage is feature-based and regulated by memory load. This study has important implications for resolving the controversy surrounding the attention selection mode of multifeature objects in VWM.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The resilience refers to the effective adaptation of individuals to stress circumstances. Of note, two different Chinese terms were used in this review to distinguish “resilience” in between humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and other brain areas involved in reward circuits mediate resilience. In addition, the adaptive brain mechanisms may differ in susceptible individuals compared to resilient ones. In combination with the ethical and experimental findings in humans, the results from animal research toward understanding the mechanism of resilience will provide important reference and neural basis to improve human resilience.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The memory reconsolidation theory holds that consolidated memories can be reactivated into an unstable state again, which is called the reconsolidation process. During this period, the activated memories are susceptive to new information and therefore, the interruption of it can update or eliminate original memories. Behavioral or pharmacological interventions after memory reactivation are proved to be an effective way to extinguish fear memories and prevent relapse. The behavioral intervention, which is the so-called retrieval-extinction paradigm can eliminate conditioned fear through applying extinction training during the reconsolidation time window. The neural mechanisms of this effect, however, are still largely unknown. Based on reviewing present studies in animals and humans, we concluded the critical brain areas which were proved to be playing an important part in retrieval extinction process and their effect mechanisms, including hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Furthermore, we summarized the controversial points in theories and manipulations in order to provide insights for future explorations.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： A consolidated memory trace can go back to an unstable state after reactivation and become susceptible to modulation, as long as it conforms to specific conditions. Memory reactivation serves as opening a short time window for the labile trace of memory be modified before coming into a new round of consolidation which is called the reconsolidation. It provides a transient opportunity to strengthen memories or disrupt undesired and maladaptive memories, so as to open avenues for developing a revolutionary treatment for emotional memory disorders. Behavioral intervention, however, is of especial significance in human studies as well as the clinical translation practice; and has been demonstrated as an effective way to interfere with destabilized memories. However, even in simple laboratory models, the conditions for inducing memory reconsolidation are complex, which highlights difficulties and challenges for clinical translation. We reviewed the main evidence and advances in the behavioral interference of memory reconsolidation, both in the laboratory and clinical practice. Future research can find its way to set up a more ecological experimental model to simulate the actual trauma and to build an optimal procedure to trigger and intervene memory reconsolidation. Additionally, the cooperation of studies of the neurophysiological, cellular and molecular levels is needed to deepen our understanding of the internal mechanism underlying the paradigm.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： It is generally considered that the human brain will generate distinct neural representations corresponding to different mental processes. Exploring the differences of neural representations under various mental activities is one of the core issues in cognitive neuroscience. During recent decades, researchers have used different neuroimaging techniques to record brain activities involved in complex cognitive processes from the perspective of temporal or spatial measurement. Among these techniques, the non-invasive EEG/MEG with temporal resolution of millisecond has become a popular one to study the time courses of various cognitive activities. Due to the characteristics of EEG/MEG data (e.g., low S/N), in order to obtain relatively reliable results, traditional EEG/MEG studies mainly focused on the neural responses after group averaging, paying less attention to individual differences. Such method assumes that, for each subject, the amplitudes and directions of ERPs/ERMFs and their topographic maps in a specific time window of interest exhibit a consistent pattern under an experimental condition. In the case of poor consistency, the neural responses across subjects may cancel each other to a great extent after group averaging, which makes it difficult to get a reasonable interpretation. In recent years, researchers have introduced two techniques commonly used in fMRI studies, classification algorithms in machine learning (i.e., classification-based decoding) and representation similarity analysis, into the EEG/MEG data analysis. These two new techniques can overcome the shortcomings of traditional EEG/MEG data analysis based on averaging of voltage/magnetic flux density waveforms by taking individual differences into account, which could be used to reveal the coding of neural representation at individual level and provide a new idea to explore how the brain encodes specific neural representations dynamically. In the study of ERPs/ERMFs, classification-based decoding and representation similarity analysis can be used to explore not only the neural mechanisms that show consistent patterns along time among individuals, but also those that are significantly different across individuals but keep stable for a given individual. Thus, these two techniques are able to reveal specific neural representation patterns and even identify "brain fingerprints" at individual levels. Based on different methodological theories, these two techniques provide novel ways for EEG/MEG studies to compare representational differences of cognitive processes across time windows, tasks, modalities, and groups. Firstly, we systematically introduced the principles and operational processes of classification-based decoding and representation similarity analysis, together with a comparison with those traditional analysis methods of EEG/MEG. Then, the EEG/MEG studies to date using these two techniques are reviewed. Finally, some possible future research directions with regard to these two techniques are proposed.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Social learning refers to the belief updates of others’ personal attributes and intentions as well as social norms under various circumstances during social interactions, which helps to optimize social decision-making and maintain positive social interactions. Due to its critical role in human decisions and social interactions, the past years have witnessed a growing body of studies that examine computational and neural basis of social learning combining computational models and human brain imaging techniques. The current literature indicates that human social learning can be well captured by reinforcement learning model and Bayesian model. In the framework of reinforcement learning models, an active agent adaptively adjusts his behaviors according to the feedback in social interactions to achieve a certain goal, with positive feedback will increasing the possibility of the previous behavior and negative feedback weakening it. Accordingly, social learning mainly engages the computation of subjective expectation and prediction error. Consistent with the findings in nonsocial learning, these computations involve brain regions associated with reward and punishment processing (e.g., the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Notably, in social situations, brain regions associated with social cognition (e.g., the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the temporal-parietal junctions) are also involved due to the inference of the traits and intentions of others. Although reinforcement learning models provide powerful explanations for social learning processes, they did not account for the representation of social uncertainty. Instead, the Bayesian models assume that the social learning process follows the Bayesian information updating, and the perceived uncertainty is represented in the posterior distribution of psychological variables. Therefore, the Bayesian models can depict the representation of uncertainty. People represent their prior beliefs about others and calculate the deviation between actual feedback and prior beliefs, which is similar to the representation of subjective expectations and expected errors respectively in reinforcement learning style. In addition, representation of uncertainty and information integration are involved, engaging brain regions associated with reward and punishment processing, social cognition, and cognitive control (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex). However, it should be noted that there is no one-to-one mapping between computational processes and brain regions, rather, it is in a many-to-many-pattern, that is, a single cognitive process involves multiple brain regions, and a specific brain region can be involved in multiple calculations. Therefore, multivoxel pattern analysis and brain network analysis should be utilized in future studies to reveal how different computational processes are implemented in large-scale networks according to systems neuroscience. Moreover, future studies should try to increase the ecological validity by creating real social interactions between people and by leveraging novel neuroimaging approaches (e.g. hyperscanning techniques). Finally, more efforts are needed to unravel the neural and computational signatures of implicit social learning.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Auditory language comprehension plays an important role in interpersonal communication in daily life, however, we still do not fully understand its underlying neural mechanisms. Electrical brain stimulation (EBS) is an experimental technique with a very long history but has only recently been widely used on human subjects. By performing electrical stimulation, analyzing the induced transient behavioral functional changes and recording the neural activity, it is possible to directly reveal the functional roles within brain regions and the effective connections between brain areas during auditory language processing. Electrical brain stimulation offers a very high spatial and temporal resolution and employs recording electrodes that can reach deep into subcortical areas. Given these unique advantages, electrical brain stimulation has received increasing research interest in recent years. Auditory language processing is a fairly complex process and involves a wide range of brain areas. In general, the process of auditory language processing in the brain is as follows: incoming speech from the external environment enters the thalamus, which then passes to the auditory cortex (AC) for primary processing of acoustic-phonological information, followed by more advanced language processing in the temporal and frontal language areas. In addition, frontal language areas may also generate speech-related predictions that feedback to temporal language areas to facilitate auditory language processing. Electrical brain stimulation allows relatively flexible cortical or subcortical stimulation in subjects who were performing an auditory language task. By comparing the differences in task performance before and after electrical stimulation, the relationship between stimulated brain areas and cognitive function could be analyzed and thus the distribution of functionally relevant areas could be mapped. Besides, electrical brain stimulation, as a means to reflect effective connections between brain areas, can also reveal the functional connections during auditory language processing. Therefore, this paper, from the perspective of auditory language processing, is divided into three parts: thalamus and auditory cortex, auditory language processing within auditory cortex, and higher language cortex and auditory cortex. By reviewing the available studies on electrical brain stimulation during auditory language processing, the functional characteristics of the brain areas involved in auditory language processing and the information transfer mechanisms between different brain areas are summarized, providing a new perspective for further exploring the mechanisms of auditory language processing and the application of electrical brain stimulation techniques in the study of brain function. Electrical brain stimulation has broad application prospects in auditory language research, and the increased application of this technique will also bring more causal evidence on the brain function and connectivity, providing the possibility of further understanding the neural mechanisms of auditory language processing.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The high prevalence of loneliness and various accompanying adverse consequences (e.g., depression, higher blood pressure, insomnia, immune stress responses and worse cognition) are becoming serious public concerns. To provide insights on prevention and intervention programs, this study examines the properties and development of loneliness behaviors in elderly people. Taking a longitudinal perspective enables researchers to understand who is expected to transition to a higher risk status in the future, which will help to predict symptoms so that tailored interventions can be designed to protect the elderly from loneliness.Two-wave longitudinal data over 4 years were derived from the American Health and Retirement Study (HRS). A total of 3238 women and 2205 men in their 50s were recruited. Latent class and latent transition models were used to identify meaningful subgroups of the elderly with different symptoms (i.e., lack of companionship, being left out, isolation from others, lack of belonging, and withdrawn from society) to describe transitions between those classes over the study period and to examine the effects of covariates on the latent transition model. Six covariates, including gender, marital status, attitudes toward aging, life orientation, social support and daily activities, were examined as potential predictors of loneliness.Four loneliness subgroups were identified: Mild Loneliness (Class 1), Social Loneliness (Class 2), Emotional Loneliness (Class 3), and Severe Loneliness (Class 4). Mild Loneliness status was the most prevalent, barely showing any lonely behavior, while relatively serious loneliness occurred in Social Loneliness, Emotional Loneliness and Severe Loneliness. Specifically, individuals in Social Loneliness lacked social intercourse relation, individuals in Emotional Loneliness lacked a close relationship, and individuals in Severe Loneliness had a high probability of exhibiting all the above mentioned symptoms. Elderly people in Mild Loneliness and Severe Loneliness were highly stable, while Social Loneliness and Emotional Loneliness tended to change to other statuses rather than remaining in the original status. Particularly, the participants in Social Loneliness demonstrated a prominent trend to transition to a less problematic status (Social Loneliness to Mild Loneliness), and the participants in Emotional Loneliness tended to change to a more problematic status (Emotional Loneliness to Severe Loneliness). All participants in the four subgroups showed a strong willingness to communicate with others. Results of multinomial logistic regression revealed that elderly males were more likely to be in the Emotional Loneliness group. In addition, more social support as well as a positive attitude toward aging and optimistic life orientation were more likely to keep elderly people from entering more severe loneliness statuses, indicating an ameliorated trend of loneliness that was expected. This study demonstrated a transition pattern in elderly people loneliness with an individual-centered approach. Differential treatment effects were found across baseline loneliness classes, suggesting the benefits of tailoring intervention programs to yield good outcomes in elderly people.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Negation is an important language expression that can be used to euphemistically express a speaker's opinions and wishes. Due to the restriction of realistic situational factors, when an individual uses negative statements to describe behaviors that are inconsistent with experience or expectation, that is called negation bias. China has a high power distance culture between individuals, and people in China pay more respect to authority. The power difference makes individual expression different. High-power individuals show low empathy due to having control of more resources and having less dependence on others, and they tend to express themselves directly in communication. Individuals in low-power positions have needs, and they deal with the difference in power when meeting high-power individuals by using euphemisms of negative expression to maintain communication. Differences in negation used in various power relations are untested, and this study aims to explore these differences through experimental design.In this study, three experiments were used to explore the influence of different power relations on negative negation bias. Experiment 1 used the fixed reaction paradigm: 3 (power relations: high vs low/ low vs high/ no difference) ×2 (words type: affirmative/negative) within subject design, and it investigate subjects’ choice of affirmative and negative sentences. Experiment 2 used the subjective evaluation: 3 (power relations: high vs low/ low vs high/ no difference) ×2 (words type: affirmative/negative) within subject design, and it investigated the degree of suitability for negation in different power relations. In experiment 3, the free reaction paradigm was adopted, calculating the frequency of negation to investigate the influence of different power relations on negative biasResults show that: (1) Power relationships will influence the use of negation sentences. When low-power individuals evaluate high-power individuals, subjects tend to use negation and believe that this form of expression is more suitable, causing negation bias to appear; negation bias does not appear in conditions when high-power individuals evaluate low-power individuals or when no power difference exists. (2) When no power difference exists, social distance will influence the use of negation sentences; the greater the social distance, the more frequently negative sentences are used.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Under the framework of Reconsolidation Interference of conditioned fear memory, Prediction Error (PE) has been demonstrated as a necessary condition of memory destabilization. However, the role of PE in destabilizing fear memories of different strengths is unclear. The degree of PE that is needed to effectively reactivate fear memories may be dependent on the strength of memory. It is unknown whether the PE used to reactivate weak memories is also effective in destabilizing stronger memories. Memory strength was proved to be an important boundary condition of memory reconsolidation; however, explorations of solutions to overcome the boundary are rare. Among factors that are possible to help to overcome the boundary condition, the effects of stress hormones are worth exploring. However, the manipulation of memory strength in human laboratory studies has not been well developed. Thus, the present study has three main aims: (1) to test the effect of fear memory strength in a human laboratory setting based on previous results in animal studies; (2) to examine the effect of PE during reactivation on destabilizing different strength memories and (3) to test the possible influence of post-reactivation exogenous stress to the retrieval-extinction of fear memories. These results indicate that PE used to destabilize weak memories is insufficient to destabilize strong memories; and that post-reactivation acute stress cannot nullify this deficit which is due to boundary conditions (e.g., strength). We discuss possible interpretations of these results and the implications for the translation of retrieval-extinction to clinical practice. The three days retrieval-extinction paradigm was adopted in the present study. We manipulated memory strength through two kinds of acquisition procedures on the first day, which varied the predictability of the unconditioned stimulus (US) occurrence after the conditioned stimulus (CS). Twenty-four hours later, a reminder containing a single PE was used to reactivate memories, which was followed by a stress task (Social Evaluate Cold Pressor test, SECPT) or not before extinction. After 24 hours, a test of spontaneous recovery and reinstatement was utilized to measure the return of fear in each condition. All participants were divided into three conditions: CS-Predictable US_no Stress Group, CS-Unpredictable US_no Stress Group and the CS-Unpredictable US_Stress Group. Skin conductance response (SCR) and fear-potentiated startle response (FPS) were used as measurements of conditioned fear. The results showed that there was a relatively stronger increase in fear response (SCR) from Day 1 to Day 2 in the CS-Unpredictable US condition than the CS-Predictable US condition, which may suggest a difference in memory strength between conditions. And for the weak fear memory (CS-predictable US), the reactivation that involved a single PE and was followed by extinction training prevented the spontaneous recovery, especially on the SCR measurement. On the other hand, in the enhanced memory condition (CS-unpredictable US), the extinguished memory returned in the memory test on the third day, which suggests a failure of memory destabilization. Furthermore, when the post-reactivation acute stress task was adopted in the enhanced memory condition, the return of fear further increased, compared with the no stress manipulation conditions.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： For nearly half a century, the memory reconsolidation theory, which believes that even memories that have been consolidated would be reactivated during the retrieval process and temporarily return to an unstable state, has been continuously developed. Based on this understanding, the researchers proposed the retrieval-extinction paradigm. That is, after successfully learning the pairing rule between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US), the original memory was un-stabilized by presenting a single CS, and then traditional extinction training was performed. This paradigm has been proven in some studies to weaken the expression of non-adaptive fear memory effectively. However, other studies have reached different results, indicating that this paradigm failed to suppress the fear recovery. Current research mainly focused on the boundary conditions of memory conditions and retrieval conditions to explain the difference between studies, such as prediction error, acquisition time, the intensity of acquisition, and individual differences. Gender difference, as an essential variable of individual differences, is an influential factor in the study of boundary conditions. In the standard extinction paradigm, research has concluded that women easily acquire fear memory but that such fear memory is more difficult to extinct than that in men. However, it is relatively rare to explore gender differences in the research of the retrieval-extinction paradigm. Therefore, this study considered gender as a variable, using geometric figures as CS, wrist electric shock as the US, and skin conductance response as an indicator of fear response, to explore whether there is a gender difference in the fear extinction effect. The results showed no gender difference in the spontaneous fear recovery of the retrieval-extinction paradigm because all subjects successfully suppressed the spontaneous fear recovery. Nevertheless, there was a significant gender difference in the reinstatement test, in which men showed increased skin conductance responses (SCR), whereas women did not show any increased SCR. Besides, there were gender differences in the spontaneous fear recovery and reinstatement test of the standard extinction paradigm. After training by this paradigm, women showed increased SCR in spontaneously fear recovery and a tendency to fear generalization. In contrast, men showed suppressed spontaneous fear recovery but showed increased SCR in the reinstatement test. Our study proved a gender difference in the extinction effect of the retrieval-extinction paradigm (women showed the best extinction effect) and verified that the extinction effect of the retrieval-extinction paradigm was better than that of the standard extinction paradigm. From the results, we could demonstrate that the retrieval-extinction paradigm is an effective intervention method, especially for women. It will be beneficial to further verify evidence about the effectiveness of the retrieval-extinction paradigm and clarify its object and scope in clinical applications. Our study suggests that the retrieval-extinction paradigm in clinical transformation needs to provide more personalized treatment plans for male and female patients, thus improving clinical applicability and treatment effectiveness.
Subjects: Psychology >> Statistics in Psychology submitted time 2022-08-08
Abstract：基于交叉滞后结构的追踪模型对于揭示变量间纵向关系具有重要作用，也为因果关系的验证奠定了基础。交叉滞后面板模型在一定条件下可转换为其他形式的模型，如何选择适当的模型是重要的议题。本文对各模型进行概述，并从模型结构、预设轨迹、时间点要求等方面进行比较，最后通过一个实例说明如何选择适当的模型。结果表明，不同模型在变量关系的判断上可能给出很不同的结果，实际运用中应当有模型选择和模型比较的意识。
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2022-07-10
Abstract：探究不同心智活动下的神经表征差异，是认知神经科学关注的核心问题之一。早期的脑电/脑磁分析方法主要关注组平均后的神经响应水平，这要求在关注的时间进程上，各个被试在相同刺激条件下事件相关电位/事件相关磁场的振幅大小和方向、以及地形图分布和极性均要有较高的一致性。近些年来，研究者们将功能性磁共振成像研究中常用到的两种技术机器学习中的分类算法(即基于分类的解码)和表征相似性分析引入到了脑电/脑磁数据分析中。这两种新技术可以克服传统脑电/脑磁数据基于具体电压/磁感应强度波形平均分析的缺点，具有在个体水平上探究神经表征编码的特点，为人们探究大脑在不同时间进程上如何对特定的神经表征信息进行动态编码提供了新的思路。两种技术基于不同的方法学原理来抽提个体间一致的脑认知加工机制，还为脑电/脑磁研究开展跨时域、跨任务、跨模态、跨群体比较不同认知过程中的表征差异提供了更多新颖的途径。我们首先通过与传统的脑电/脑磁分析方法进行比较，系统性介绍了基于分类的解码和表征相似性分析的原理和操作流程，之后对两种方法的应用场景进行了梳理，并在最后对未来可供研究的方向提出了我们的见解。
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2022-06-13
Abstract：
Selective attention modulates multiple stages of visual processing, and nearly all the attentional modulations are affected by normal aging. Studies about the influence of aging on early stages of attentional processing can greatly help to understand the mechanism of cognitive aging. This paper systematically reviews the ERP (event-related potential) studies investigating the aging effect on both pre-stimulus anticipatory attention and sensory stages of attentional processing (less than 200ms post-stimulus). Current evidence shows that: (1) early attentional effects reflected by many ERP components (e.g., ADAN and EDAN reflecting anticipatory attention, N1 reflecting early spatial attention, SP and SN reflecting early feature attention) are delayed in older adults compared to young adults; (2) the amplitudes of early attentional effects showed diverse age-related patterns in different ERP components: while some components (e.g., ADAN, EDAN, and P1 reflecting early spatial attention) appear to be resistant to aging, some other components (e.g., alpha power lateralization reflecting anticipatory attention, N1 reflecting early spatial attention, and SN reflecting early feature attention) seem to be influenced easily by aging, albeit some inconsistent results; (3) while target facilitation reflected by some ERP components (e.g., SP reflecting early feature attention, P1 and N1 reflecting early object attention) is retained in healthy older adults, there is an age-related decline in distractor suppression. Regarding to the diverse and inconsistent findings about how normal aging affects early attentional effects in ERP amplitudes, it might be due to task demands, different attentional processes (distractor suppression vs. target facilitation) engaged in different studies, and/or individual differences in older adults across studies. Future research should control these confounding factors to obtain stable and comparable results, and manipulate these factors to explore their specific effects on early stages of attention to further understand the aging mechanism.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Psychological Measurement submitted time 2022-02-16
Abstract：
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Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2021-09-07
Abstract： Facial expressions are an important medium for understanding the emotional feelings of others. However, individual factors such as gender, age, and personality traits can influence the perception of facial expressions. For instance, individuals with elevated level of trait anxiety, which is measure of frequency and intensity of occurrence of anxiety related symptoms, show attentional bias towards emotional stimuli, that is, higher attention to emotional information such as facial expressions. These studies mostly focused on attentional processing stage, and it remains unclear whether trait anxiety affects the pre-attentive processing stage of facial expression perception. Pre-attentive processing is an automatic evaluation of whether attention is needed for the stimulus, thereby filtering out irrelevant information to conserve cognitive resources and improve the efficiency of information processing. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the pre-attentive processing of facial expressions and the bias to emotional stimuli of trait anxious individuals to emotional stimuli during the pre-attentive processing stage. According to the scores of Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety inventory (STAI), 20 participants who scored in the top 27% were assigned to the high trait anxiety group (13 women; mean age=19.02 ± 0.63 years) and 20 participants who scored in the bottom 27% were assigned to the low trait anxiety group (11 women; mean age=19.63 ± 0.88 years). The stimuli used in the experiment were happy, sad and neutral face pictures selected from the Chinese Facial Affective Picture System (CAFPS; Gong et al., 2011) including 10 pictures (5 females and 5 males) of each kind of emotion. The deviant-standard-reverse oddball paradigm included 4 types of facial expression sequences: neutral standard stimuli/happy deviant stimuli, happy standard stimuli/neutral deviant stimuli; neutral standard stimuli/sad deviant stimuli, and sad standard stimuli/neutral deviant stimuli. The standard stimuli mean that this type of stimuli were appeared about 80% of the time in the sequence, and the deviant stimuli were about 20%. Participants were instructed to detect unpredictable changes in the size of fixation cross in the center of visual field and press a corresponding button as fast and as accurate as possible, and ignored facial expressions. The results revealed that, the amplitudes of N170 elicited by deviant faces were significantly larger than standard faces. Importantly, in the early EMMN, the mean amplitude elicited by sad facial expressions was significantly larger than happy facial expressions in low trait anxiety group, but there was no significant difference between happy and sad facial expressions in high trait anxiety group. Moreover, the early EMMN amplitude of happy faces was significantly larger in the high trait anxiety group than in the low trait anxiety group. These results suggest that the high trait anxiety group has similar amplification of EMMN amplitude for both happy and sad expressions. Our results show that there is a difference between high and low trait anxiety in the pre-attentive processing of facial expression. This suggests that personality traits are important factors influencing the pre-attentive processing of facial expressions, and high trait anxiety individuals may have difficulty in effectively distinguishing between happy and sad emotional faces during the pre-attentive processing stage and have similar processing patterns for them.
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