This study aims to investigate the mechanisms by which chronic and acute time pressure influence individuals' selective attention (including object-based and space-based attention) and to examine the potential role of attentional scope. In Experiment 1a, the Time Affluence subscale of the Material-Time Affluence Perception Questionnaire was used to assess individuals' chronic time pressure, and the two-rectangle paradigm was employed to measure selective attention. The results revealed no significant effect of chronic time pressure on either object-based or space-based attention. In Experiment 1b, acute time pressure was manipulated by introducing time limits and behavioral feedback within the two-rectangle paradigm. The results showed that acute time pressure significantly weakened the object-based advantage effect but had no impact on space-based attention. Building on this, Experiment 2 added a measure of attentional scope to the paradigm used in Experiment 1b. The results were consistent with a full mediation model of attentional scope. In summary, this study systematically reveals that the mechanism by which acute time pressure (but not chronic time pressure) specifically impairs object-based attention lies in the narrowing of attentional scope.

Can a purely conditioned placebo effect regulate emotion in the absence of an explicit regulatory goal, and does the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) play a causal role in that process? To address these questions, we applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the right DLPFC before conditioning and measured both subjective negative-emotion ratings and pupil diameter during conditioning and during the post-conditioning test 24 h later. During conditioning, participants in the DLPFC group showed greater pupil dilation to low-intensity cues than those in the control group, suggesting greater allocation of cognitive resources to those cues. They also reported lower negative-emotion ratings and showed smaller pupil responses to pictures following low- intensity cues, indicating more positive cue-outcome representations. At the post-conditioning test phase, both groups showed reliable placebo effects, but the effect was stronger in the DLPFC group, which again showed lower negative-emotion ratings and smaller pupil responses following low- intensity cues. Mediation analyses further showed that DLPFC activation strengthened the placebo effect indirectly by increasing resource allocation to low-intensity cues during conditioning and by widening the representational gap between high-and low-intensity cue-emotion associations. Together, these findings provide causal evidence that the DLPFC contributes to the formation of conditioned placebo effects and support the view that conditioning-based placebo can serve as an implicit form of emotion regulation.

Impaired inhibitory control has been recognized as one of the key factors contributing to the progression of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, it remains unclear whether this impairment is specific to emotional contexts or reflects a domain-general deficit. The present study employed an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis to quantitatively synthesize task-based functional neuroimaging studies and compare neural activation patterns associated with emotional and non-emotional inhibitory control between patients with MDD and healthy controls (HC). Following a systematic literature search and screening process, 19 studies comprising 133 eligible activation foci were included in the analysis. The results revealed that: (1) during emotional inhibitory control tasks, patients with MDD exhibited compensatory hyperactivation in the right middle frontal gyrus, accompanied by reduced convergent activation in the left middle frontal gyrus and right inferior frontal gyrus; and (2) during non-emotional inhibitory control tasks, no brain regions showed consistent between-group differences across studies. These findings suggest that inhibitory control deficits in MDD may be emotion-specific rather than domain-general, with dysfunction primarily involving prefrontal cortical regions. The present findings provide new insights into the role of inhibitory control in the development and maintenance of depression and may inform the development of targeted interventions aimed at improving inhibitory control.

Although a growing body of research shows that children can infer others’ ability and effort, prior studies have typically relied on single-outcome scenarios, leaving open the question of whether these inferences are sensitive to changes in outcome information. The present study examined whether 4- to 7-year-old children’s and adults’ judgments of ability and effort are influenced by outcome cues, and whether they prefer smart or hardworking individuals. We employed a two-task paradigm in which participants were shown two characters completing two rounds of exams. In the first exam, both characters achieved identical outcomes, but one completed faster than the other. Participants inferred which character was smarter and more hardworking, and evaluated the two characters. In the second exam, the outcome was manipulated such that the character previously judged as smarter (or more hardworking) performed worse than the other character. Participants were then asked to make the same inferences and evaluations again. Three main findings emerged. First, children as young as 4 years inferred that the character who finished the task faster as smarter, whereas inferences about effort showed developmental changes: 4-year-olds were unable to identify the hard-working character, but beginning around age 5.5 years, children inferred the character who took longer time as more hardworking. Second, children’s inferences of smartness were sensitive to outcome information, whereas their inferences about effort were less likely to change in response to outcome information. Third, older children increasingly favoring the hardworking character in their evaluations. These findings advance our understanding of achievement-related cognition and highlight developmental changes in children’s reasoning about ability and effort.

Primary and secondary school students may engage in indirect third-party behaviors to maintain anti-bullying group norms. Using economic game paradigms and hypothetical scenario paradigms, the present study investigated third-party punishment, compensation, and reward with potential bullying-prevention and intervention functions among 1011 primary, junior high, and senior high school students, as well as gender and school-stage differences in these behaviors. The results showed that, in hypothetical bullying contexts, primary and secondary school students were willing to implement third-party punishment toward bullies, third-party compensation toward victims (except for social third-party compensation in dyadic contexts), and third-party reward toward defenders. Compared with bullying contexts without a defender, students in bullying contexts with a defender implemented significantly stronger economic third-party punishment toward bullies. Boys showed significantly higher levels of economic third-party punishment and compensation than girls, and senior high school students showed significantly higher levels of social third-party punishment than junior high school and primary school students. These findings confirm that primary and secondary school students display an intragroup interaction pattern characterized by “punishing bullies, compensating victims, and rewarding defenders” in hypothetical bullying contexts, providing a directional basis for subsequent exploration of non-confrontational anti-bullying behaviors and the development of intervention programs.

Generalizability theory (GT), a modern psychometric framework, has been widely applied in practice. This study evaluated and compared the estimation accuracy of three sampling algorithms of MCMC method across two common GT research designs: the one-faceted crossed design (p×i) and the two-faceted crossed design (p×i×h). Using simulation methodologies, we manipulated three independent variables: (1) sampling algorithms (M-H, Gibbs, and HMC), (2) prior distributions (informative, non-informative, and empirical), and (3) missing data ratios (0%, 5%, and 10%). The dependent variables were the estimated variance components, Bias, and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). The research results indicated that: (1) low ratios of missing data (up to 10%) yielded negligible effects across all three algorithms, demonstrating the robust handling of missingness inherent to MCMC; (2) across all conditions, informative and empirical priors yielded higher estimation accuracy than non-informative priors; (3) HMC algorithm uniquely exhibited “cross-design” stability, maintaining high accuracy across both the p×i and the p×i×h, whereas M-H algorithm and Gibbs sampling demonstrated structural limitations and lower accuracy; and (4) for M-H algorithm and Gibbs sampling to achieve acceptable accuracy in higher-dimensional spaces, a minimum of four levels for the h facet (h≥4) was required. Consequently, we highly recommend that future GT researchers utilizing Bayesian MCMC frameworks adopt the HMC algorithm.