Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2024-04-21
ZENG Zihao
LIU Shuangjin
YANG Qin
WANG Hongcai
LIU Chengzhen
ZHAO Qian
MENG Li
HE Zhen
LIU Xiuru
HUANG Ning
HU Yiqiu
Abstract： Adolescence has been conceptualized as a second ’sensitive period,’ marked by neuroendocrine developmental changes that heighten sensitivity to the environment. Faced with an increase in stressful life events, particularly those involving interpersonal relationships, there is a continuous rise in the incidence of internalizing and externalizing issues during adolescence, which negatively impacts personality development, academic performance, and physical health. Prior research consistently supports that positive and healthy interpersonal relationships significantly enhance adolescents’ social adaptability and levels of well-being. Conversely, negative interpersonal relationships, especially those characterized by danger and hostility, lead individuals to develop negative cognitive patterns and self-assessments, thereby increasing the risk of psychological crises. Additionally, certain genetic traits also influence the adolescent social adjustment. Although the risk of social adjustment is influenced by multiple factors, the potential for interactions between genetics and the environment remains promising, garnering attention from researchers in psychology, psychiatry, and epigenetics. Given this backdrop, this study aims to explore the moderating role of genetic risk in different forms of environmental stress and adolescent social adjustment (including depressive symptoms, prosocial behavior, and self-injure) through the assessment of multilocus genetic variations and the measurement of a critical environmental risk factor, namely, parent-child relationship.
Using questionnaires and DNA typing techniques, 700 adolescents (14.15 ± 0.63 years old) were selected from a junior high school in Hunan Province by whole group sampling. After obtaining informed consent from the school, parent and participants, they completed Parent-child Intimacy Questionnaire, Childhood trauma scale, Short Form of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale Prosocial Tendencies Measures and Deliberate Self-Harm Inventory. The genetic samples were sent to a professional biotechnology company for DNA extraction and typing. In study 2: The participants recruited in Study 1 via an experimental flyer. They completed emotional Stroop task and dictator games.
The results indicate the following: 1) HPA axis MGPS was only associated with mother-child relationship, and there were significant bidirectional correlations between parent-child relationships, Childhood trauma, depressive symptoms, prosocial behavior, and self-injure. 2) Utilizing the multilocus genetic profile score (MGPS) approach, in the context of the depression equation, whether in the father-child relationship model or the mother-child relationship model, the interaction effect between parent-child relationships and Childhood trauma strengthens as the HPA axis system’s MGPS increases. 3) The interaction effect of G×E×E was found to impact adolescent prosocial behavior only in the mother-child relationship model. Furthermore, this interaction becomes significant when the standard deviation of the MGPS exceeds -0.14. 4) No G × E × E triadic interaction was detected in the parent-student relationship model. Subsequent binary interaction test between Childhood trauma and MGPS revealed that as MGPS increased, the impact of Childhood trauma on adolescents self-injure increased. 5) Results from three sensitivity analyses also demonstrate that multigene hereditary research exhibits greater efficacy and stability. 6) Supplementary evidence indicates the presence of the main effect of parent-child relationships in accuracy and response time for emotional words. Additionally, the interaction effect of G×E×E was identified in the mother-child relationship model.
In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the HPA axis multilocus genetic profile score moderates the adolescent stress sensitivity. Specifically, the HPA axis MGPS moderates the interaction between Childhood trauma and parent-child relationships, affecting adolescent social adjustment. Moreover, individuals with high genetic sensitivity exhibit a pattern consistent with the differential susceptibility model, wherein they display lower levels of depressive symptoms, self-injure, and higher prosocial behavior in positive environments, while the reverse holds true in adverse environments.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-04-01
Abstract：
The relationship between children's fine motor skills and mathematical ability is divergent in established studies, and to clarify the overall strength of association between them and their influencing factors, meta-analysis was used to integrate and analyze relevant studies at home and abroad. Through literature search and screening, a total of 34 papers with 42 effect sizes and a total sample size of 78,527 individuals were included. Publication bias tests showed that there was no publication bias in the literature included in the meta-analysis for this study; heterogeneity tests revealed that the random effects model was selected as more appropriate. The results indicated that fine motor skills were moderately positively correlated with mathematical ability (r = 0.27, 95%CI = [0.23,0.32]); the relationship was moderated by cultural background and fine motor skills measurement instruments, but not by children's age and gender. The results suggest that educators should pay attention to the development of basic motor skills of early children, take effective training methods of fine motor skills, improve children's fine motor skills, and promote the development of their mathematical ability.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The human voice is the most familiar and important sound in the human auditory environment, conveying large amounts of socially relevant information. Similar to face processing, there is also a functional specialization in brain for voice processing. Neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have demonstrated that the temporal voice areas (TVAs) showed specific response to human voices. In addition, researchers have also observed the homologues of TVAs in non-human brain. Human voices can convey speech, affective and identity information, which are extracted and further processed in three interacting but partially dissociated neural pathways. To explicate these three functional pathways, researchers have proposed three corresponding models including the dual-stream model of speech processing, multi-stage model of vocal emotional processing and integrative model of voice-identity processing. In the future, researchers should further investigate whether voice-selective activity can be explained by the selective processing of specific acoustic features of voice and focus on neural mechanisms of voice processing in special populations (e.g. schizophrenia and autism).
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Time is not only the object of human information processing, but also the factors that affect the processing of non-temporal information. The duration between tens of milliseconds and seconds is closely related to human life, for example, subjective timing, performance and speech activities. In this time range, 20~60 ms, 1/3~1 s and 2~3 s are the important time parameters concerned by researchers. It can be seen from the previous literature that whether these parameters really exist is still one of the major disagreements in the academic circle. Firstly, this paper introduces the important time parameters from the two perspectives of temporal information processing and temporal processing of information, Then, the evidence of 1/3~1 s and 2~3 s boundaries from the perspective of “temporal information processing” is reviewed in the fields of behavior, brain injury, pharmacology, EEG, brain imaging, trans cranial magnetic stimulation and trans cranial direct current stimulation, Then, from the perspectives of Montessori synchronization, subjective rhythmic, speech act, reversals of perception, inhibition of return and mismatch negativity, the paper reviews the evidence of 20~60 ms and 2~3 s time windows from the perspective of “temporal processing of information”. On the one hand, future research should build a theoretical hypothesis based on the stronger explanatory power of the demarcation region and time window, on the other hand, it should clarify the relationship and difference between the demarcation region and time window.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Empathy to others' pain is key to human social interaction and development. Previous studies suggest that pain empathy is influenced by numerous factors, including different characteristics of the observed target and the observer. Moreover, the relationship between an observer and the target also plays an important role. Self-construal, a personality trait, reflects the extent to which people consider themselves as connected to or separated from others. Recently, researchers have found temporal self-construal priming could modulate empathic neural responses to pain and change racial in-group bias measured in the neural response to pain. Unlike temporary, situational self-construal, the dispositional self-construal is a stable trait, the formation of which is influenced by long-term cultural experience. Previous ERP studies have found dispositional self-construal to modulate self-relevant processing more rapidly than temporal self-construal. Thus, the present study explores whether dispositional self-construal is related to empathic neural responses to others' pain and whether in-group bias mediates such modulation. It has been shown that the temporal processing of empathy for pain consists of an early emotional sharing stage and a late cognitive evaluation stage. Accordingly, we assumed dispositional self-construal would correlate with either automatic emotional sharing or top-down controlled processes of empathy for pain. In sum, the present study demonstrated a significant ingroup bias in the early N2 stage, but not in the late P3 stage. Moreover, dispositional self-construal correlated with both ingroup and outgroup empathy for pain, and high interdependence was associated with enhanced P3 response to other's pain regardless of group membership. Twenty-seven Chinese participants took part in the present study. Before the formal experiment, participants were informed that the models in the pictures were selected from their fellow-townsman WeChat groups (ingroup) and other WeChat groups (outgroup). Next, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) while participants took part in a word-priming paradigm, in which a word cue (“ingroup” or “outgroup”) was presented for 500 ms, indicating the identity of the model, followed by a picture of the model's face touched either by painful or non-painful stimulation. Participants were instructed to judge whether the model in the picture was feeling pain by pressing a button using the left or right index fingers. After the EEG recording, participants rated the intensity of pain supposedly felt by the model as well as the degree of unpleasantness they felt when they saw each picture. Participants also completed the 24-item SCS on a seven-point scale to evaluate their interdependence and independence of self-construal. The ERP results showed a significant ingroup bias in the early N2 component. Painful stimuli elicited a greater negative shift relative to non-painful stimuli in response to ingroup faces. No such effect was observed on outgroup faces. The N2 component has previously been associated with automatic emotion sharing. A long latency empathic response was also observed at P3 over parietal electrodes. Painful stimuli elicited larger P3 amplitudes than the non-painful stimuli in both ingroup and outgroup face conditions. The P3 component is related to the cognitively controlled process of pain empathy. Importantly, correlation analysis revealed significant relationships between dispositional self-construal score (interdependence minus independence scores) and the amplitude difference (painful minus no-painful stimulus conditions) of P3 in both ingroup and outgroup face conditions. Furthermore, correlation coefficients were similar between ingroup and outgroup face conditions. In addition, we observed a positive relationship between the level of the interdependent self-construal and subjective rating of perceived pain and self-unpleasantness.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Because of their high incidence as well as high risk, adolescent psychological problems have been a constant pressing topic of governmental, psychological, sociological, and medical interest for research. Adolescent depression, self-injury, and suicidal ideation not only have serious impacts on an individual social functioning, the burden of disease and economic pressures caused by self-harming incidents also make it vital to explore the factors affecting these behaviors and their developmental mechanisms. Ecosystem theory emphasizes the role and significance of the environment in the process of individual development, believing that individual development is the result of one’s interactions with the surrounding environment. As the innermost structure in the ecosystem, family is the environment that is most relevant for individuals, having the greatest influence. In this study, two important components of the parent-child subsystem parent-child relationship (child) and educational involvement (parent) were introduced to explore their combined effects on adolescent depression, self-injury, and suicidal ideation from a binary perspective. The roles of frustration and sense of meaning in life were also investigated from an integrated motivational-volitional model perspective. The current study built a moderated mediation model exploring the combined effects of the parent-child relationship on adolescent depression, self-injury, and suicidal ideation. A total of 930 middle school students (501 boys, 429 girls; average age = 15.24 ± 1.66 years) and their parents participated in this investigation. After given their informed consent, both parents and students completed the Short Form of Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, the Deliberate Self-Harm Inventory, the Four-item Depressive Symptom Index ? Suicidality Subscale, the Parent-Child Intimacy Questionnaire, Parental Involvement in Primary School Children Education, the Defeat Scale, and the Chinese Meaning in Life Questionnaire. SPSS 26.0, AMOS 23.0, and Mplus 7.0 were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that: (1) Compared to individuals with a low parent-child relationship and low educational involvement, adolescents with a high parent-child relationship and high educational involvement had lower levels of defeat. Compared to adolescents with a low parent-child relationship and high educational involvement, individuals with a high parent-child relationship and low educational involvement showed lower levels of defeat; (2) Defeat partially mediated the relationship between the parent-child relationship and educational involvement and adolescent depression, self-injury, and suicidal ideation; (3) The second half of the mediation model was moderated by meaning in life, that is, with the increase of meaning in life, the effect of defeat on depression, self-injury, and suicidal ideation gradually decreased. Based on ecosystem theory and integrated motivational-volitional model, and using innovative polynomial regression and response surface analysis, the current study investigated the influence of the parent-child relationship and parents' educational involvement on adolescent depression, self-injury, and suicidal ideation, as well as the mediating and moderating effects of defeat and meaning in life. The results providing additional evidence for the relevant developmental theories of depression, self-injury, and suicidal ideation. This study also offers more insight into potential psychological crisis behavioral interventions.
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