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Influence of Culture and Circumstance on Kinship Words’ Conceptual Structure Zhang Jijia;Wang Juan;Xiao Erping;He Xiumei 2013, 45 (8):  825-839.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00825 Abstract ( 1119 )   PDF (590KB) ( 2876 )   Kinship words are important and intricate social concepts which convey abundant information of heredity, marriage, society and culture. Kinship system plays an important part in human culture which also inversely affects people’s cognition for kinship. Few researches focused on the problems such as mechanism of microcosmic circumstance’s influence on kinship’s cognition and the mechanism of interaction between macro-environment and micro-environment. The Moso is a matriarchal ethnic group living in the border of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces and famous for “A zhu marriage” and “Matriarchal society family”.The Han nationality’s kinship system is distinct from The Moso. The present study intends to compare the conceptual structure of kinship words of the Moso and the Han nationality under different circumstance. Natural classifying and multi-dimensional scale were used to explore the Moso and the Han nationality’s conceptual structure of kinship words under “Manyue Wine (a reception for a baby's completion of its first month of life)”, “Marriage” and “Condolence” circumstance. The subjects were 225 Moso students and 242 Han students both from Yunnan’ Ninglang district. Before classifying, different instructions were read to lead the subjects to imagine the circumstance. Results showed that: Under the “The Manyue wine” circumstance, Moso’s conceptual structure of kinship words were grouped into two dimensions: (1) grade in the family hierarchy; (2) level of intimacy among the relatives. Han nationality’s conceptual structure of kinship words were also grouped into two dimensions: (1) the nature of kinship; (2) level of intimacy among the relatives. Under the “Marriage” circumstance; Moso’s conceptual structure of kinship words were grouped into two dimensions: (1) grade in the family hierarchy; (2) level of intimacy among the relatives. Han nationality’s conceptual structure were also grouped into two dimensions: (1) grade in the family hierarchy; (2) gender. Under the “Condolence” circumstance, Moso’s conceptual structure of kinship words were grouped into two dimensions: (1) grade in the family hierarchy; (2) level of intimacy among the relatives. Han nationality’s conceptual structure of kinship words were also grouped into two dimensions: (1) level of intimacy among the relatives; (2) grade in the family hierarchy. The importance ranking of kinship has significant correlation among 3 kinds of situations. Results showed that the structures of kinship words between Moso and Han reflect the characteristics of Moso culture and Han culture, showing culture’s shape to social cognition with intrinsic difference. Compared to the Han nationality, the most distinct characteristics of Moso’s kinship words classifying was followed with four aspects: (1) Ｍother’s brother was classified into the same group with immediate elders under “Manyue Wine” and “Marriage” circumstance. (2) Sister’s son was alone under “Condolence” circumstance. (3) Grandchildren relatives weren’t revealed special intimacy under the “Marriage” and “Condolence” circumstance. (4) There is no “in laws/ not in laws” dimension, and also there was no “Marriage” group in the kinship words classification.Similarities and difference exist in kinship classifying between the Moso and Han no matter circumstance’s guidance, reflecting situation’s influence on kinship words’ cognition. The Moso’s “zou-fang” system and Han nationality’s condolence system can reflect the macroscopic feature of Moso culture and Han culture. The divergence of classification under microcosmic circumstance also reflects the role of work memory. All results indicated that: (1) Under different situations, the classifying result between Moso and Han has not only similarity but also divergence; (2) The importance ranking of kinship has significant correlation under these kinds of situations; (3) Culture and situation affect relatives’ conceptual structure. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of the Leader’s Creativity on the Employees’ Creativity QIAO Jiajia;MO Lei;WANG Yuhan;TIAN Yijia;ZHANG Ting;WU Xiaowen 2013, 45 (8):  840-848.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00840 Abstract ( 796 )   PDF (265KB) ( 1649 )   In narratives, authors craft their stories by using the mysteries to attract people who read them. In fact, the information authors choose not to relate is precisely what impels readers to continue reading. Previous researchers defined a type of character appeared in the text comprehension without any connection to the rest of the story as mystery character. The Construction-Integration Model (Kintsch, 1988) specifies how a text moves from short-term memory to long-term memory in cycles. In each cycle, propositions from the text enter short-term memory, which are connected to each other by argument overlap, and then the resulting representation is copied into long-term memory. Nevertheless, some propositions that cannot be connected to any of the propositions from the rest of text or the long-term memory are held over to the next cycle in short-term memory. As a result, the propositions, such as mystery characters, remain more available through subsequent text than characters who are not mysterious. Moreover, recycling mystery characters in short-term memory left diminished resources for the processing of subsequent propositions, which resulted in the weaker encoding of the following propositions. Some researchers had provided evidences that a mystery character introduced without information linking him or her to the story affected readers’ narrative processing. The systematic analysis of previous theories and evidences about the topic that how mystery characters affected readers’ text comprehension raised another important question that with new information entering into our brain, whether the mystery characters still held available in short-term memory, or it had been pushed into long-term memory with susceptibility. This research was intended to throw light on the question mentioned above. We conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed in a new condition to explore whether a mystery character still remained more available in short-term memory through subsequent text than character who was not mysterious. Experiment 2, including two sub-experiments, was further to explore when the sentence which contained mystery character was pushed into long-term memory, the mystery character with susceptibility was in short-term memory or in long-term memory. All materials were presented on a monitor controlled by computer. Participants were instructed to read each story line by line at a regular reading pace, pressing the space bar to advance to next line. And everyone should read story carefully so that they would be able to judge whether the probe word appeared in the text. The results showed that, in the new condition, the mystery character still remained available in short-term memory, at the expense of processing for subsequent information. And when the sentence consisted of mystery character was entered into long-term memory, the mystery character was also encoded into it with susceptibility and was easy to be activated by relevant information. In conclusion, the present research indicates that when readers are presented with a mystery character in text comprehension, there is an impact on their narrative processing, which also verifies the mystery characters can be explained by the bi-processing theory of text comprehension about focus-based processing. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Advantage Effect of Retrieval Practice on Memory Retention and Transfer: Based on Explanation of Cognitive Load Theory ZHOU Aibao;MA Xiaofeng;Li Jing;CUI Dan 2013, 45 (8):  849-859.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00849 Abstract ( 1628 )   PDF (457KB) ( 3229 )   A wealth of researches has indicated that retrieval practice can be used as an effective means to improve memory. Recently the effects of retrieval practice have captured the attention of contemporary researchers who are interested in educational applications of retrieval practice. Some researchers have examined the effectiveness of retrieval practice relative to elaborative studying with concept mapping, and found that practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping which has received comment and query by researchers advocating constructivism who thought, compared with practice retrieval, concept mapping is too complex to master. In view of these criticism, the current research examined the effectiveness of retrieval practice and concept mapping from the perspective of cognitive load, it is hypothesized that the intrinsic load of study task which depends on learners’ prior knowledge level has different influence on retrieval practice and concept mapping, and the concept mapping strategy is more complex than retrieval practice, so it could produce more extraneous load on learner and influence the effectiveness. Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. In experiment 1, 120 college students were engaged in a 2 (prior knowledge level: high vs. low) × 3 (study strategy type: retrieval practice vs. concept mapping and repeated study) between-subjects design of experiment, which was aimed to study the different influence of prior knowledge level on the effectiveness of three types of strategies. In experiment 2, 43 college students participated in a within-subjects design of experiment, each student completed a partial concept mapping of one science text and practiced retrieval of a second text which was designed to study the influence of strategy’s complexity on strategy’s effectiveness. The results indicated that on correct rate of memory retention and transfer, the main effect of prior knowledge level wasn't significant, but there was an interaction between learning strategies and prior knowledge level: under the condition of retrieval practice strategy, there is no significant difference on the correct rate of retention and transfer between participates with high prior knowledge and participates with low prior knowledge; as the concept mapping strategy concerned, the participates with high prior knowledge were significantly higher than participates with low prior knowledge on the correct rate of retention and transfer. In addition, the complexity of the strategy would increase learners' extraneous load, but it didn't have decisive influence on the effectiveness of the strategy. In terms of result, it was concluded that the reason why retrieval practice could produce more memory retention and transfer than concept mapping is not because of that its strategy is easier to be master, it is that the concept mapping strategy was very dependent on learner's prior knowledge level. Relatively, retrieval practice is not dependent on learner's prior knowledge level. The results have some important implications. Firstly, retrieval practice is an effective tool to promote retention and transfer, it indeed can enhance subsequent recall more than concept mapping. Thus, educators should pay more attention to the effectiveness of retrieval practice rather than view it as an assessment device to measure what a student knows. Secondly, the findings support the theory that retrieval practice enhances learning by retrieval-specific mechanisms rather than by elaborative study processes. Related Articles | Metrics

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Contrasting Effects of Dual-task Paradigm and of Timing Interruption Paradigm in Interval Timing of the Context of Culti-modal Processing YIN Huazhan;LI Dan;YUAN Xiangyong;HUANG Xiting 2013, 45 (8):  860-873.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00860 Abstract ( 908 )   PDF (544KB) ( 1601 )   Distribution of attention in time information processing is one of the hot areas of research science, and the dual-task paradigm is one of the most common ways to study distribution of attention. It requires an individual to perform two tasks simultaneously, the less the attention allocated to a temporal interval, the shorter it is judged(Brown, 1997). The attention sharing effect is discussed within the framework of the scalar expectancy model of timing. In such paradigm the parallel processing itself may interfere with time perception and lead to unexpected deviations. In order to avoid such interference, the timing interruption paradigm would be a better solution as it uses a blank interruption instead. The researchers consistently found a similar position and interruption effect in both paradigms (Casini & Macar, 1997; Cortin, & Remblai,, 2006; Remblai, & Cortin,, 2003). Furthermore, the results showed both the discontinuity and interference of current information processing were belong to interruption effect, but to varying extents (Cortin, & Masse, 2000; Macar, 2002). However, though the position and interruption effect were similar in the two paradigms, they have not been explored in a same stimuli series. As we know, information exchange with the outside world is not dependent on single sensory channel, but rather the interaction of cross-modal information processing. It would be valuable to explore the position and interruption effect in the context ofcross-modal processing. It would not only help to uncover the cognitive mechanism of time processing, but also have important practical values as it is more similar with daily life. Therefore, the present study was designed to investigate the position and interruption effect in the two paradigms in the cross-modal conditions. To this end, the study consisted of two experiments. In experiment 1, 2500 ms and 4500 ms were set for the target time intervals, using the same stimulus sequence (visual presentation, with aural interruption), participants were allocated to control, break and interference condition respectively. In experiment 2,the target intervals were set to 1500 ms and 2500 ms. Results of experiment 1 showed that the interruption effect is more significant in break condition regardless of target time intervals. Furthermore, under the 2500ms, position effect were found in all three conditions, whereas under the 4500ms condition, the position effect only existed in the break condition. Experiment 2 found that there was position effect consistently, regardless of the interpolation conditions or target time intervals. Besides, the interrupt effect was more significant in the break condition. Such results imply that whether the position effect is the same in the two paradigms depends on the length ofthe target intervals to some extent. Besides, in the timing interruption paradigm, the break effect on timing is more significant than the interference effect in dual-task paradigm. Related Articles | Metrics

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Real or Hypothetical Monetary Rewards Modulates Risk Taking Behavior XU Sihua;FANG Zhuo;RAO Hengyi 2013, 45 (8):  874-886.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00874 Abstract ( 2835 )   PDF (410KB) ( 6975 )   Understanding human risk taking and decision making behavior poses a major challenge for psychological and economical research during the last decades. Although real or hypothetical monetary rewards are commonly used as reinforcers in previous studies, it remains controversial whether real and hypothetical rewards have the same effects to motivate risk taking and decision making behavior. The recently developed balloon analogue risk task (BART) is a laboratory-based risk taking paradigm and offers an ecologically valid model for objective measurement of risk taking propensity and behavior. In the present study, the authors used the BART paradigm in two experiments to compare the effects of real and hypothetical monetary rewards on risk taking behavior. We predicted that compared with hypothetical monetary reward, real monetary rewards will show stronger impacts on the risk taking behavior during the BART task. In Experiment 1, forty-four healthy young adults completed both real money and hypothetical monetary versions of the BART task, in which they were required to sequentially inflate a virtual balloon that can either grow larger or explode. The order of two tasks was counter-balanced between subjects. Paired t-tests and one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were conducted to compare the effects of real and hypothetical monetary rewards on the BART risk taking behavior, including the mean adjusted number of balloon inflations, the number of balloon explosions, and the number of balloon inflations after positive or negative feedbacks. Experiment 2 added a variable of reward magnitude and used a 2 (authenticity: real, hypothetical) × 2 (magnitude: small, large) factorial design. Thirty healthy young adults completed the experiment 2. The results from Experiment 1 showed that during the real monetary reward BART condition, subjects stopped inflating balloons earlier and were more risk averse for the current balloon trial if they lost the last balloon (i.e., the balloon exploded). This result suggests a significant learning effect from the negative feedback of real monetary reward. However, no such effect was observed for the BART condition with the hypothetical monetary reward. The results from Experiment 2 replicated the findings from Experiment 1 and revealed significant main effects of both reward authenticity and magnitude on risk taking propensity and behavior. Specifically, subjects were more risk averse during the BART condition with large real monetary reward compared with small real monetary reward. However, no differences were found between large and small hypothetical rewards. In addition, subjects were more risk averse for large real monetary reward comparing with hypothetical monetary reward, while no differences were found between small real and hypothetical monetary rewards. Finally, the effect of reward magnitude on risk taking was significant only in subjects with low sensation-seeking scores, whereas subjects with high sensation-seeking scores were insensitive to variation in reward magnitude. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that real and hypothetical monetary rewards modulate risk taking behavior during the BART task in a different way. The findings could be explained by the regret theory and/or the equate-to-differentiate model of risky decision making. Our results suggest that real and hypothetical monetary rewards may have different external validity, which will inform the utility of real and hypothetical rewards in future studies. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Positive Following Bias of Information Source and Its Impact on Decision-maker’s Prediction Performance LIU Xingyi;XU Xiaohong;ZHANG Qin;ZHANG Guangxia;JI Jialin;DONG Fangni;YANG Yanling 2013, 45 (8):  887-898.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00909 Abstract ( 761 )   PDF (479KB) ( 1571 )   In a statistical sense, individuals might make perfectly correct judgments by using information sources that always offer the wrong predictions, by simply doing the opposite of what the source recommends. Yet despite the statistical feasibility of this option, consumers do not seem to routinely follow information sources that are consistently wrong. Drawing on existing decision making research, especially that related to the status quo effect and positive confirmation bias (PCB), we argue that consumers start with a desire to test the “rightness” instead of the “wrongness” of an information source, which makes them more sensitive to accurate predictions than to errors. Overlooking errors has little influence on information sources with a high forecasting accuracy but could lead to systematically poor predictions about information sources with low forecasting accuracy. However, as consumers gradually disconfirm the default hypothesis with repeated feedback information, they likely assign more weight to the disconfirming information, which lessens bias in their memory and recall of incorrect predictions. If they have access to a high accuracy information source though, learning cannot reduce their bias, because the correct forecasts only strengthen consumers’ beliefs about their default hypothesis. Therefore, we also propose that a longer learning period improves the forecast performance of consumers exposed to a low accuracy information source condition but not those exposed to a high accuracy information source. We also argue that individuals are more likely to develop PCB when following a more normative information source, thus informativeness bias might be heightened. Three studies show that decision makers tend to follow information sources with high accuracy rates, even though an information source with low accuracy offers the same level of informativeness for decision making. This positive following bias can lead people to underestimate the value of information from low accuracy information sources. Learning can reduce this positive following bias phenomenon. Furthermore, the positive following bias is more likely to occur for a more normative information source. An alternative explanation for the positive following bias explanation might be variance in information could influence consumers’ assessments of its value, such that consumers infer that a low accuracy rate implies greater variance or less reliability. In turn, they may decide that incorrect predictions are abnormal and not informative. Therefore, as a comprehensive test of the informativeness bias explanation, we also rule out the influence of the information variance factor by introducing a zero variance s, that is, when a person consistently makes wrong predictions. Our findings also contribute to judgment and choice research. First, to the best of our knowledge, no other research has addressed biased acquisitions and the use of high error rate information, despite recognition of the value of this type of information in prior theoretical analyses. We test for the existence of an informativeness bias in binary choices situations and examine potential moderators of this effect. Second, we extend PCB research by examining its role as an antecedent of an informativeness bias. Third, we find that learning, previous experience, and information source normativeness have not only direct effects for reducing informativeness bias but also help clarify research on the regulation of PCB. Related Articles | Metrics

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Collective Action Participation: Effects of Multiple Social Identities on Group-Based Emotions and Efficacy Paths XUE Ting;CHEN Hao;YUE Guoan;YAO Qi 2013, 45 (8):  899-920.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00887 Abstract ( 2947 )   PDF (744KB) ( 7291 )   Social identity, group-based emotions and efficacy are three major social psychological factors that affect people’s participation in a collective action. Previous researches, focusing largely on the disadvantaged groups, examined a single factor at a time and/or explored the relationships among these factors in the offline collective action. Recent studies, however, extended levels and types of factor in their models and attended to the online collective action. The current study attempted to integrate the above three major factors by exploring the moderating effects of multiple social identities in the relationships among group-based emotions, efficacy and participation of different kinds of collective action. Three studies were conducted using different methods. In Study 1, 240 undergraduate students from a university in Tianjin City took part in a questionnaire survey on the Diaoyu Island Event. Study 2 was a questionnaire survey on the Libya Event. and 480 undergraduate students from 6 different universities in Tianjin City were recruited to complete it. Both surveys included demographics in the first part, followed by a questionnaire on different social identities, group-based emotions and efficacies. Study 3 was an experiment 135 female undergraduates were randomly assigned to three different conditions, female identity primed group, school identity primed group and the control group. Participants then completed a questionnaire on their attitudes toward potential gender discriminations faced by job applicants. Data was collected and analyzed using SPSS 13.0 and Lisrel 8.70. Results indicated that group anger had a significant positive effect on offline collective action participation; and efficacy had a significant positive effect on both offline and online collective action participation. The above effects were further moderated by different social identities. Specifically, identification with a large social category of event affected behavior tendency by moderating emotional path (and rational path some times), and identification with the organization of collective action affected behavior tendency by moderating rational path only. Findings suggested that people were rather rational in their participants of the online collective actions. Related Articles | Metrics

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Applying IRT_ΔB Procedure and Adapted LR Procedure to Detect DIF in Tests with Matrix Sampling ZHANG Xun;LI Lingyan;LIU Hongyun;SUN Yan 2013, 45 (8):  921-934.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2013.00921 Abstract ( 625 )   PDF (544KB) ( 960 )   Matrix sampling is a useful technique widely used in large-scale educational assessments. In an assessment with matrix sampling design, each examinee takes one of the multiple booklets with partial items. A critical problem of detecting differential item functioning (DIF) in such scenario has gained a lot of attention in recent years, which is, it is not appropriate to take the observed total score obtained from individual booklet as the matching variable in detecting the DIF. Therefore, the traditional detecting methods, such as Mantel-Haenszel (MH), SIBTEST, as well as Logistic Regression (LR) are not suitable. IRT_Δb might be an alternative due to its abilities to provide valid matching variable. However, the DIF classification criterion of IRT_Δb was not well established yet. Thus, the purpose of this study were: 1) to investigate the efficiency and robustness of using ability parameters obtained from Item Response Theory (IRT) model as the matching variable, comparing with the way using traditional observed raw total scores ; 2) to further identify what factors will influence the abilities in detecting DIF of two methods; 3) to propose a DIF classification criteria for IRT_Δb. Simulated and empirical data were both employed in this study to explore the robustness and the efficiency of the two prevailing DIF detecting methods, which were the IRT_Δb method and the adapted LR method with the estimation of group-level ability based on IRT model as the matching variable. In the Monte Carlo study, a matrix sampling test was generated, and various experimental conditions were simulated as follows: 1) different proportions of DIF items; 2) different actual examinee ability distributions; 3) different sample sizes; 4) different size of DIF. Two DIF detection methods were then applied and results were compared. In addition, power functions were established in order to derive DIF classification rule for IRT_Δb based on current rules for LR. In the empirical study, through conducting a DIF analysis for American and Korean mathematics tests from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003, the consistency of the classification rules between IRT_Δb and LR were further examined. The results indicated that in the matrix sampling design, both IRT_Δb method and adjusted LR method were sensitive to the diverse DIF magnitude. It was also found that the power, type I error, and the final classification of both methods were also influenced by the sample size, percentage of items with DIF, and ability differences between the focused group and the reference group. In conclusion, it was found that both the IRT_Δb method and adjusted LR method can be used to detect DIF in matrix sampling tests. A classification rule for IRT_Δb was proposed, which are: 0.85 between negligible DIF(A) and intermediate DIF(B), 1.23 between intermediate DIF(B) and large DIF(C). Meanwhile, it was suggested that researchers would take this rule as a tentative principle since the ΔR2 was limited between a narrow interval and the classification rule of LR was very flexible compared to classification rule of MH. Further studies could be conducted to take MH, IRT_Δb as well as LR into consideration simultaneously to give more comparable and consistent classification rules for different methods. Related Articles | Metrics