Emerging technologies, new features of human-computer interaction, and unique social and human needs have created a favorable opportunity for the further development of Human Factors and related disciplines in China. This paper first discusses and analyzes some representative new technologies and new approaches, including neuroergonomics, cognitive engineering, joint cognitive systems, and sociotechnical systems, that have expanded the depth and breadth of Human Factors and related fields of study. The paper then discusses the challenges and strategies in the applications of Human Factors and related disciplines. To further develop these academic fields in our country, this paper proposes three actions. The first action to take is to solve the problem of establishing an interdisciplinary research and education system. The second and third actions are to pay attention to innovations in Human Factors theories and take innovative design as the breakthrough point. Intelligent systems, user experience, space and aviation, and health care are the domains with high priority for research and application of Human Factors and related areas of study. At present, four urgent steps are necessary: (a) establish a fully developed higher education system, (b) organize an interdisciplinary research structure, (c) institute professional certification, and (d) develop a system for Human Factors design standards.

Speech production studies have demonstrated cross-linguistic differences in the processing units involved in phonological encoding. It has been widely assumed a critical role of phonemes in spoken production of Indo-European languages. Phonemes are normally conceived of as abstractions of discrete segmental speech sounds which can distinguish the meaning between words. For instance, the word "big" represents a sequence of three phonemes /b/, /i/, /g/. Currently, investigations on the processing units in Chinese spoken production mainly focused on syllables, whereas only few studies concern the role of phonemes. In the present project, we propose to comprehensively tackle the role of phoneme in Chinese speech production, focusing on its psychological reality, potential factors influencing phoneme-based effects, processing mechanism and temporal properties, using both behavioral and electrophysiological techniques. Specifically, we will investigate: 1) whether phonemic processing has "psychological reality" in Chinese speech production, and whether sensitivity to phonemic representations is artificially induced by exposure to English as a second language, experience of Pinyin, or phoneme-based typing input method? 2) how we process phonemes? Specifically, we are interested in whether phoneme-based effects are phoneme-specific and position-specific, how phonemes associate together to form larger units, and the temporal properties of phonemic processing. The findings of the present project will not only improve our understanding of how Chinese speakers produce words in mind/brain, but also provide insights into the construction and development of theoretical and computational models of Chinese speech production. In addition, the findings will provide basis for cross-language comparisons, and the development of scientific teaching approaches of Chinese phonology.

Individuals frequently make decisions for others in management consulting firms, investment agency companies, and daily lives. Therefore, investigating how people make decisions for others has become one of the most important issues of research concern. However, existing research has investigated the psychological mechanisms of people who make decision for others from an intrapersonal perspective with the lack of an interpersonal perspective. Besides, prior research has mainly focused on decision outcomes, but neglected decision feelings. The present research explores (1) the intrapersonal and interpersonal mechanisms of people who make decisions for others; (2) the decision feelings of people who make decisions for others, and the effect of their psychological mechanisms on decision feelings; and (3) the role of individual difference on psychological mechanisms and decision feelings. We aim to establish a model of multi-dimensional psychological mechanisms and psychological feelings for people who make decisions for others.

Prior research has highlighted the obstructive rather than motive role of cross-cultural stressors in expatriate success. The present research attempts to explore the reasons why Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) succeed or fail in international assignments. Based on the stress-motivation-behavior- outcome framework, this research focuses on the antecedents and outcomes of proactive behaviors of expatriates. To be specific, by drawing on self-determination theory and job demand-resource (control) model, our research links challenge-hindrance stressors to proactive behaviors of expatriates. Further, the research examines the motivation mechanisms of how these two different types of stressors influence proactive behaviors, and identifies the boundary conditions of these mechanisms from the perspectives of organization and job resources. In addition, our research also explores the impacts of proactive behaviors on multi-level expatriate outcomes as well as identifies the boundary conditions for such impacts. Our work underscores the strategic value of proactive behaviors in the uncertain and complex cross-cultural context, and entails significant practical implications for MNCs to select, train, motivate, and retain internationalized talents.

Recent advances on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) demonstrated sex differences in the brain function. However, no standard on fMRI signal’s frequency division limited further biologically plausible explanation of these observations. In this work, we proposed a fast-multi-dimensional ensemble empirical mode decomposition to extract their multi-scale features of fMRI signal. We found that: this method can perform adaptive frequency allocation for the resting-state fMRI signal, whereby the built multi-scale function network in the frequency brain of 0.06 ~ 0.10 Hz showed significant sex differences regarding its connectivity; males had strong functional connectivity primarily within the limbic network and ventral attention network whereas females presented their strong functional connectivity mainly related to the visual network, ventral attention network and frontoparietal control network. These findings present a new method for the analysis of functional MRI images and provided brain imaging evidence on sex differences in functional connectomics.

Working memory training can effectively improve individual’s cognitive performance. In last decades, accumulating studies examined the transfer effects of working memory training on the mathematical abilities. However, findings from these studies render inconsistent depending on the measure of mathematical abilities, types of working memory training, and participants. In this meta-analysis, we thus reviewed two types of trainings strategies-uni-dimensional and multi-dimensional trainings - and their effects on the enhancement of mathematical skills, including number sense, arithmetic and mathematics reasoning. Results showed that working memory training significantly improved number sense with a medium effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.51), rather than arithmetic (Cohen’s d = 0.04) and mathematics reasoning (Cohen’s d = -0.06). Furthermore, the types of working memory training significantly moderated the transfer effects of working memory training on mathematical performance.

Autobiographical Memory is the memory of personal experiences. Attachment theory provides an important framework for understanding autobiographical memory. Based on the differences in individual attachment styles and the Self-Memory System of Conway and Pearce’s, this article concludes that attachment system plays the role of target director, defensive exclusion and emotion regulation in autobiographical memory retrieval. Studies have found that secure individuals have advantages over insecure ones in the quantity, specificity, accuracy, accessibility, emotional intensity and arousal of memory retrieval. Future research can be carried out on the effects of attachment activation, the differences in specific components of memory retrieval between anxious and avoidant attachment styles, the relationship between attachment and retrieval of involuntary autobiographical memory.

Aftereffects of completed intentions refer to participants continue retrieving intentions interfering with current cognitive tasks, after their failures in deactivating completed or cancelled intentions. Recent studies investigated the related factors and cognitive mechanisms in prospective memory task paradigm. Spontaneous retrieval and preparatory monitoring retrieval diverge in whether the retrieval process depends on attentional resources. Brain imaging research also showed that there are two neural pathways for intention retrieval. Further studies are necessary to explore effective approaches to reduce commission errors, and develop a new paradigm including three aspects of aftereffects of completed intentions, which are failures in intentional forgetting, retrieval of completed intentions and failures in inhibition.

The contents of visual working memory (VWM) have been repeatedly found to be linked with attention allocation during visual searching. While the target representation in working memory (target template) was found to affect memory-driven attentional capture in a top-down manner, non-target representation in working memory (non-target template) can also affect attentional selection. The present article reviews existing literature on the modulation of attentional selection by non-target template stored in visual working memory. It is concluded that non-target presentations can not only automatically bias attention to information that matches the non-target template, but also benefit visual search performance by strategically suppressing items that matches the non-target template. The suppression functions of non-target template were affected by several factors including experiment paradigm, task difficulty, characteristics of stimuli and level of cognitive control. Future research should be aimed towards further investigation of its properties and promote both basic and applied research.

A social scene plays a crucial part in the real physical world that people live in. In social scene perception studies, recognition of actions and associated intentions can be influenced not only by the background information of the scene, but can also be related to the object of an action. Therefore, researchers could follow the relationships between the background and an object, or among various objects for analyzing the mechanism of action recognition. However, to detect and recognize an action and its associated intention, researchers could also employ semantics restriction and physical baffle of scene, and incorporate the principle of rational action for studying the biological signs following an action. In the field of machine vision, new research is emerging on models of computer recognition that are based on human-object interaction. In the future, researchers can consider the development of action and intention identification capacity, and can study the differences among individuals of various cultures for improving the studies conducted in this field of research.

Task switching is often used for studying executive functions. Task switching is usually associated with switch costs: longer reaction times and higher error rates on task-switch trials compared to task-repeat trials. Switch costs are attributed to task-set reconfiguration (reconfiguration view), or interference between different tasks (interference view). Compared with task cuing paradigm, the voluntary task switching paradigm is considered to be more ecologically valid. With this new paradigm, researchers could achieve not only traditional indicators like switch costs, but also new measures such as proportions of task selection and task switching rates. Studies of voluntary task switching are in favor of reconfiguration view. However, some recent reports found that interference may also play a role in voluntary task switching. In the future, modifications of the experimental paradigm should be made for a possible theoretical integration.

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (TES) is a non-invasive method of brain stimulation, which delivers a specific low intensity current on the scalp to modulate the activity of cortical cortex. TES is usually divided into three main types: transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), and transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS). In the current paper, we summarized the modulating effects of TES on visual phosphene threshold, visual field, contrast sensitivity, motion perception, and perceptual learning. The modulation effect varies with the type of visual functions, TES parameters, and stimulating patterns.

External feedback plays a vital role in ongoing outcome monitoring and future behavioral adjustments. Previous event-related potentials (ERPs) studies have consistently associated the feedback- related negativity (FRN) component with feedback processing after decision making. Until now, several theoretical interpretations of FRN were proposed and continuously updated in the last decade, including the classical reinforcement learning theory, affective-motivational hypothesis, reward positivity (RewP) theory, Predicted response-outcome model (PRO model) and Positive affective model. Whereas different models emphasized on different aspects, no unified theory has yet been proposed to integrate all of the existing experimental evidences. Based on these literature reviews, we argued that big-sample data, multiple and complementary technologies are highly necessary in future FRN studies. Moreover, we proposed that FRN should be considered as an electrophysiological index of reward system to investigate human behaviors in complex social interaction contexts.

Ingestion of spicy food causes a burning sensation, which is innately aversive, but has been considered a hedonistic behavior. The pleasure of eating spicy food may derive, merely, from the exposure effect, and it could be considered as “benign masochism”, due to the perception of taking a “minimal risk”. Post-intake effect, social pressure, and genetic factors could also lead to the consumption of spicy foods. The spicy taste has been related to multiple personality traits, and to psychological states, including sensation seeking; risk taking; and sensitivity to reward, aggression, and anger, and could thus produce relevant consequential behaviors. The burning sensation is caused by the activation of the capsaicin receptor (transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 [TrpV1]), which functions both as a thermoreceptor and as a nociceptor. Concerning the brain processing of spicy taste, the anterior short gyrus (ASG) causes an increase in body temperature through the hypothalamus. Moreover, the neural coordination between the middle and posterior short gyri, and the ASG may also be implicated in autonomic responses, as in body temperature increase. According to the embodied metaphor theory, the psychological effects of spicy taste might be represented in the body, since there are shared physiological sensations, such as heat. Future studies should explore the motives leading to spicy food consumption, with regards to gender and cultural differences. Meanwhile, the embodied metaphor mechanism of the effects of spicy taste and the brain mechanisms, induced by eating spicy food, should be further examined. Furthermore, psychology research on spicy food intake could have applications in marketing, especially in sensory marketing, and in the promotion of diet cultures that incorporate spicy tastes.

Executive function is the self-regulation of complex cognitive activities and a clear goal-oriented process, playing an important role in mathematics learning in early childhood. Executive function offers an important cognitive processing mechanism for the childhood mathematics learning. There is a mutual prediction relationship between executive function and mathematics learning. Executive function can be used to estimate mathematics achievement, and vice versa. Therefore, high quality mathematics education in early childhood may contribute to both developing children’s executive function and mathematical ability. Further research can help for clarifying the definition of executive function and unifying measurement tools. More reliable evidences are needed to prove the causal relationship between early childhood mathematics ability and executive function and further explore their relationships with languages.

With the explosive growth of the aging population, researchers are paying more and more attention to stereotype threat among older adults. Unlike the race/ethnicity and gender stereotype threats, aging stereotype threat is characterized by its accumulativeness, intercommunity, and continuity. Existing research on aging stereotype threat has been primarily focused on cognitive aging, in particular, memory aging, and the impact of aging stereotype threat on older drivers and workers. Five intervening factors are shown to be effective in mitigating the adverse effects of aging stereotype threat: cognitive modification, group identification, intergenerational contact, self-actualization and individualization, and influence of mass media. Laboratory studies of aging stereotype threat use both explicit and implicit manipulation methods. Future research can benefit from extending to broader research areas, refining differences between age groups, comparing the overall effect size and gender difference, emphasizing on positive effects, and drawing upon indigenous studies and cross-cultural comparisons.

Economists believe that individuals are absolutely rational when making decisions, that is, individuals’ preference remains consistent no matter how a specific entity is represented. Moreover, individuals tend to choose the most profitable option to maximize their utility. However, findings in the domain of consumer behavior reveal that the representation of numbers can trigger individuals’ irrationality and thereby affect their subsequent consumption decision and judgment. Individuals exhibit cognitive biases facing numerical representations in general and quantitative expressions in particular. Moreover, when numerosity effect is activated, individuals are more likely to trade off the utility maximization principle and make an irrational consumption decision. The current research therefore reviews how and why these numerosity effects bias consumers’ cognition, judgment, metaphorical association, information processing, and goal pursuit. Directions for future research in numerosity effect are also discussed.

The near-miss effect refers to a phenomenon that near-miss losses can elicit individuals’ higher physiological arousal and stronger gambling motivation than full-miss losses and winnings, which could lead to gambling persistence of gamblers. Researches on the near-miss effect have important theoretical value for understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms of dynamic outcome evaluation in decision-making processes and shedding light on the mechanisms of pathological gambling. Studies have found convergent evidence that near-miss losses have motivationally enhancing properties. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms of the near-miss effect are still under debate. In addition, the role that the near-miss effect played in pathological gambling is still unclear. At present, there are three main theoretical explanations for the near-miss effect: the cognitive misrepresentation hypothesis, the illusion of control theory, and the frustration hypothesis. The neural correlates of the near-miss effect mainly involve the insula and ventral striatum. Future researches should further explore the theoretical models of the near-miss effect, improve the experimental paradigm, various research methods, and examine the effect in pathological populations.

Socioeconomic disparities in health are the realities individuals have to deal with throughout the life span, and are issues all the nations need to face worldwide. Theories and empirical work have attempted to understand socioeconomic disparities in health from life-span perspective. In studies from life-span perspective, socioeconomic disparities in health have its unique definitions and assessment tools. Key theories include cumulative (dis) advantage hypothesis, cumulative inequality model, and cultural cycle model of social classes. Researchers have examined socioeconomic disparities in health in childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and old age. Future directions of research from life-span perspective should focus on the interaction between socioeconomic status in childhood and adulthood, the distinction of long-term and temporary socioeconomic status, and the potential of psychosocial interventions for health equality across disciplines. Research on socioeconomic disparities in health from life-span perspective may deepen the understanding for the developmental roots of socioeconomic disparities in health and should serve as an important theoretical basis for promoting health and implementing clinical practical work on health equality.