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CN 11-1911/B

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    30 September 2009, Volume 41 Issue 09 Previous Issue    Next Issue

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    The Influence of Pinyin Typewriting Experience on Orthographic and Phonological Processing of Chinese Characters
    ZHU Zhao-Xia,LIU Li,DING Guo-Sheng,PENG Dan-Ling
    2009, 41 (09):  785-792. 
    Abstract ( 1831 )  
    Typewriting becomes increasingly common as computers have been widely used in our daily life in the 21 century. For alphabetic languages, such as English, typewriting is similar to traditional handwriting except for small differences in hand movement. However, for Chinese—an ideographic language, typewriting is very dif-ferent from traditional handwriting, and it is a new writing experience for those who use it. Whether and how typewriting experience can influence processing of Chinese characters is an important issue to be investigated. Although there have been many studies which have investigated the influence of language experience on lan-guage processing, there are relatively few studies which have investigated the influence of typewriting experi-ence on language processing. The present study aims to investigate the influence of typewriting experience on Chinese character processing.
    Two groups of subjects were recruited: one group had rich experience of Pinyin typewriting while the other group has no or limited experience of Pinyin typewriting. Those two groups were asked to participate in two experiments designed to investigate the influence of typewriting on orthographic and phonological processing of Chinese characters separately. In experiment 1, a 2 group (rich experience group, poor experience group) × 2 task (consonant searching, vowel searching) factorial design was adopted. Participants were asked to determine whether the pronunciation of presented characters included /b/ in the consonant searching task or /an/ in the vowel searching task. Stimuli were 144 low frequency Chinese characters and half of them were used as fillers. In experiment 2, a similar 2 group (rich experience group, poor experience group) × 2 task (pronounceable radical searching, unpronounceable radical searching) factorial design was adopted. Participants were asked to determine whether the orthography of presented characters included “巾” (a pronounceable radical) in the pro-nounceable radical searching task or “厶”(an unpronounceable radical) in the unpronounceable radical searching task. Stimuli were another 144 low frequency Chinese characters, and half of them were used as filler. The reac-tion times and error rates were recorded and analyzed.
    The results of experiment 1 showed that the reaction time for the rich experience group was significantly shorter than the poor experience group in both the consonant and vowel searching tasks, which suggested that Pinyin typewriting can benefit the phonological processing of Chinese characters. The results are not surprising since Pinyin typewriting primarily uses the phonological cue of Chinese characters. The results of experiment 2 showed that the reaction time for the rich experience group was significantly shorter than the poor experience group in both the pronounceable and unpronounceable radical searching tasks, which suggested that Pinyin typewriting can also benefit the orthographic processing of Chinese characters. This facilitation effect of Pinyin typewriting on orthographical processing may be due to large number of homophones in Chinese characters. When people use Pinyin typewriting, a software program will present all homophones for a typed syllable, re-quiring selection of the correct orthography by choosing the right character from those homophones given. Fur-thermore, we also found that the effect of Pinyin typewriting on the pronounceable radicals was larger than on the unpronounceable radicals. This result may be due to that the pronounceable radicals can provide phonologi-cal cues while unpronounceable radicals do not provide the same cueing effect.
    As a whole, the results of the current two experiments indicated that Pinyin typewriting can facilitate both the orthographic and phonological processing of Chinese characters. In addition, it can equally facilitate both consonant and vowel processing, with the facilitation effect being larger for pronounceable radicals than for unpronounceable radicals.
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    Affordance Information Retrieval in Text Comprehension
    LU Zhong-Yi,CHEN Jian-Qiao,SHAO Yi-Jie
    2009, 41 (09):  793-801. 
    Abstract ( 991 )  
    As it has developed over recent years, psycholinguistics has become more and more influenced by the em-bodied philosophy, and the proposition symbol system, which was formerly widely accepted, is not now be-lieved to the same extent that it was in the past. Recently, several theorists have proposed a new concept called the perceptual symbol system, which considers cognition an embodied progress, and posits that the way we read and think is very similar to the way we perceive. In 2004, Zwaan proposed a theoretical framework based on the perceptual symbol system called the Immersed Experiencer Frame (IEF). The IEF suggests that the process of text comprehension consists of three processes called activation, construal and integration, and this progression is a process of perceiving the scene that the text describes. This framework is supported by considerable ex-perimental data, and has much to recommend it. However, it has not solved a vital problem; namely, how in the process of construal, the elements are integrated into a complete event. In perceiving the environment, affor-dance is very important. Affordance is the perceived possibility that the environment allows a behavior of a person or an animal to be realized. Though a key concept in perceptual psychology and ecologic psychology, it is seldom mentioned in the field of text comprehension. We hypothesize here that affordance is also an important concept in text comprehension in that it allows us to understand the organization of other information in the construal process.
    We have designed three experiments to investigate the importance of affordance in text comprehension:
    The first experiment was a 4-level one factor design centered around recognition of words involving dif-ferent degrees of affordance. We found that subjects access affordance from texts automatically and that affor-dance can organize other information, especially in the construal progress.
    The second experiment was a two factor design which examined how much time it takes to access affor-dance and attributes. The results showed that subjects can access affordance directly, without the need to access attributes first.
    The third experiment was a 2-level one factor design that assessed the time span required to access affor-dance both under conditions where the attributes were present and those where they were not present. The results showed that subjects access affordance by making inferences from attributes when they are present, and accom-plish this faster than accessing accordance directly.
    All the results imply that affordance is very important in text comprehension: it organizes information, and organizes elements in the construal progress. Affordance is accessible either directly in text comprehension or indirectly through inferences based on attributes presented in the text. Which method is used depends on wheth-er attributes are present or not.
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    The Mechanism of Reverse Word Length Effect of Chinese in Working Memory
    XU Zhan,Li Bi-Qin
    2009, 41 (09):  802-811. 
    Abstract ( 1616 )  
    One theoretically influential and much studied phenomenon related to working memory is the word-length effect: the finding that lists of short words are recalled at substantially higher rates than lists of long words (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975). However, researchers have also found a reverse word-length effect for mixed word lists: isolated long words are recalled better than isolated short words within the same list (Hulme, Neath, Stuart, Shostak, Surprenant, & Brown, 2006). Current theoretical accounts of the word-length effect can be divided into two very different forms of explanation: primarily list-based or item-based. According to list-based explanations, the word-length effect is the product of some overall characteristic of the list. For example, the classic phonological loop hypothesis posits that there is a positive correlation between the rate of subvocal rehearsal and overt pronunciation time (Baddeley, 1986). In contrast, item-based explanations hy-pothesize that short words are inherently easier to recall than long words (Neath & Nairne, 1995). For example, the SIMPLE model assumes that word-length effects are due to item complexity, and this complexity affects the relative discrimination of items in a list. Unfortunately, the reverse word length effect contradicts models that explain the word-length effect in terms of list-based accounts of rehearsal speed or as item-based effects. Modi-fications to current models or new explanations should be generated. In the present study, three experiments were conducted not only to integrate list-based and item-based explanations to account for the reverse word-length effect but also to propose new ideas for the mechanism.
    The study compared serial recall of word lists with varying lengths. Materials included three types of words: two-character, three-character and four-character Chinese words. The words were combined into four sets of word list, each of which consisted of five words: a pure short word list, a pure long word list, a mixed list con-taining four long words (background) and one short word (isolated word), and a mixed list containing four short words (background) and one long word (isolated word).
    Fifty-eight undergraduates (28 males, 30 females) participated in the study. Experiment 1 found a word length effect in pure lists and serial position effect in all lists. Furthermore, short background words were still better recalled than the long background words and a reverse word length effect was observed in isolated words: Isolated long words were recalled better than isolated short words, and the isolated words were recalled more accurately than background words. Experiment 2 reduced the length difference of total pronunciation time for the two types of mixed lists. The reverse word length effect was eliminated and the rate of recall was still higher for isolated words than background words. These findings indicated that total pronunciation time had a role in recall performance. Experiment 3 used a technique of output delay. After the final item disappeared, a white crossband lasting 2 seconds was presented in the same location of a computer screen. An attenuated reverse word length effect was observed. However, there were no significant differences in recall performance for iso-lated, pure, or background words. These findings indicated that aside from phonological encoding, visual en-coding, contributed to the memory process.
    Taken together, the findings showed that the reverse word-length effect could be explained only if list-based and item-based theories were integrated. Furthermore, results implicated a hypothesis of competi-tive-complementary parallel processing (CCPP) in relation to immediate serial order recall. That is, working memory may involve multiple, parallel, and different encodings that are both competitive and complementary in memory processing.
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    Short-term Memory of Duration: Subjective Shortening or Lengthening
    JIA Li-Na,ZHANG Zhi-Jie,WANG Li-Li
    2009, 41 (09):  812-821. 
    Abstract ( 1161 )  
    Although many studies revealed a subjective shortening in the human’s short-term memory of time, the conclusions remain ambiguous. The present study aimed to explore whether when the different duration (sub- and supra- second intervals) is retained in short-term memory, the duration becomes subjective shortening or lengthening as retention interval increased.
    Based on the method of Wearden and Ferrara, Two experiments ( Experiment 1, 2) were used to investigate the retention effect of temporal intervals from 350ms to 650ms and from 1000ms to 2000ms respectively, and each experiment included two sub-experiments which separately examined the duration retention of the auditory presentation (Experiment 1a, 2a) and that of the visual presentation (Experiment 1b, 2b). 2(stimulus type: filled duration and unfilled duration) ×4 (delay time: 1s, 4s, 8s and 12s) ×3 (trial type: short trial, equal trial and long trial) within-subject factorial design was taken separately for every sub-experiment (Experiment 1a, 2a, 1b and 2b). All participants were required to respond by pressing one of the three keys after judging whether the com-parison was longer, shorter, or of the same duration as the standard duration.
    The results of the two experiments showed that, the short-term retention of durations from 350ms to 650ms (Experiment 1) indicated subjective shortening both in auditory (Experiment 1a) and visual conditions (Experi-ment 1b), whereas the short-term retention of durations from 1000ms to 2000ms (Experiment 2) showed subjec-tive lengthening both in auditory (Experiment 2a) and visual conditions (Experiment 2b), and there was neither effect of modality nor the effect of stimulus type that influenced the retention effect.
    Conclusions were drawn from this study. For Experiment 1 (several hundred milliseconds), the shortening trend resulted from the interaction of shrink of the positive time order error (TOE) and the effect of subjective shortening. By contrast, for Experiment 2 (the retention of durations above 1s), the lengthening trend resulted from the interaction of shrink of the negative TOE effect and the effect of subjective lengthening. According to these results, the present study compensated and perfected the relative duration hypothesis and the partial proc-essing feature of the scalar timing model. However, apart from duration length and stimulus type, other factors such as experimental methods are likely to affect time duration retention as well, and whether these factors are independent or interacted needs to be investigated in future research.
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    Can Negative Stimuli Always Have the Processing Superiority?
    HUANG Yu-Xia,LUO Yue-Jia
    2009, 41 (09):  822-831. 
    Abstract ( 1929 )  
    It is widely reported that emotional negative stimuli are processed preferentially relative to positive and neutral stimuli. But there are also many other studies that do not find the processing differences between nega-tive and positive stimuli. This divergence might result from the different attention levels among studies. Some researchers suggest that when attention resources are extremely scarce, organisms can not respond discrimi-nately to negative and positive information. Thus, one may ask whether negative stimuli must be treated prefer-entially if plenty of attention is available.
    The current study manipulated attention by a cue-target paradigm. In the valid cueing condition, subjects could obtain sufficient attention resources, while in the invalid cueing condition, resources were relatively insufficient. It was noteworthy that both attention levels in the current experiment were far greater than the attention scarceness that was mentioned before. Positive, neutral and negative pictures from the International Affective Picture System and the Chinese Affective Picture System were transformed into upper and lower adjacent patchworks of a normal scene and its inverted copy. Seventeen undergraduate students participated in the study. They were instructed to pay attention to the structure of the patchworks and to judge whether the normal scene was located in the upper or lower part of the whole patchwork. This implicit task was used to avoid the task relevance effect.
    The behavioral data showed that the response accuracy in the valid cueing condition was significantly higher than that in the invalid cueing condition. Amplitudes of P1, N1, P2 and N2 components were also modu-lated by attention level. Significant interactions between emotion and attention were found in LPC difference waves. In the sufficient attention condition, there was no obvious difference between ‘positive minus neutral’ and ‘negative minus neutral’. In contrast, the LPC amplitude of ‘negative minus neutral’ was significantly larger than that of ‘positive minus neutral’ when the attention resource was relatively inadequate.
    This study suggests that when enough attention resources are available, positive information can be proc-essed in the same way as negative information, i.e., negativity bias does not necessarily show up in circum-stances of sufficient attention. The processing superiority of negative events is more likely to take effect in situations where attention resources are not adequate. The phenomenon that emotional processing is modulated by attention is a manifestation of adaptation to environments. More work, such as manipulating attention sys-tematically to observe the influence on emotional processing, is needed to explore this issue further.
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    Perinatal Exposure to Bisphenol A Affects Sexual Differentiation of Behaviors in Offspring Mice
    ZHANG Jing,XU Xiao-Hong,WANG Ya-Min,LUO Qing-Qing,YE Yin-Ping
    2009, 41 (09):  832-841. 
    Abstract ( 1464 )  
    Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the well-known environmental endocrine disrupters with mixed estrogen ago-nist/antagonist properties. Although many studies have focused on the toxicity to the reproductive system and development, less on the central nervous system. Published results have demonstrated that perinatal exposure to low doses of BPA (below the human tolerable daily intake level, <0.05 mg/kg/day) does not affect reproductive system, but affects sexual behavior, social behavior, and other neurobehaviors. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether perinatal maternal exposure to BPA affects sexual differentiation of behaviors in offspring mice.
    After acclimatization for one week, adult female ICR mice were placed with males (two females:one male) and vaginal smears were examined daily. A sperm-positive smear determined gestational day (GD) 0. After de-tection, pregnant dams were orally exposed to BPA dissolved in peanut oil (50, 5, 0.5 or 0.05 mg/kg/day) or only peanut oil as a vehicle control from gestational day(GD) 7 through postnatal day (PND) 21. At PND 21 and PND 56 of age, open field, elevated plus-maze, Morris water maze, and step down were respectively used to test spontaneous activity and exploratory behavior, anxiety, spatial learning and memory, and passive avoidance memory in offspring mice.
    The results showed that perinatal exposure to BPA significantly inhibited the growth of body weight of male and female offspring (p <0.001). The results from open field showed that BPA decreased the spontaneous activity of male offspring on PND21 and PND 56 and female offspring on PND 21(p <0.05 or p <0.01), in-creased grooming and rearing in male but decreased grooming and rearing in female offspring on PND 21(p <0.05 or p <0.01). The results from elevated plus-maze displayed that, after perinatal exposure to BPA, the fre-quency of open arms entrance and stayed time in the open arms were dose-independently increased, but stayed time in the closed arm was dose-independently decreased in the PND 21 male and female and the PND 56 fe-male offspring(p <0.05 or p <0.01); however, the influence of BPA on the behaviors of male and female off-spring on PND 56 was different, with increased entrance of the open arms and decreased entrance of the closed arm in female, and decreased entrance of the open arm and increased entrance of the closed arm in male off-spring. The results of Morris water maze test showed that BPA dose-dependently increased the distances to find the platform in the water maze of PND 21 and PND56 male, especially under the dose of 5~50 mg/kg/day(p <0.05 or p <0.01), but no significant influence was found in the female mice. In addition, in the step down test, 5~50 mg/kg/day BPA increased the frequency of error and reduced the latency of stepping down from the plat-form in PND 21 male; and 50 mg/kg/day BPA increased the frequency of error and reduced the latency of step-ping down from the platform in PND 56 male and female offspring.
    These results suggest that perinatal maternal exposure to BPA affects sexual differentiation of behaviors during the puberty and adulthood of offspring mice. The spontaneous activity and exploratory behavior, spatial learning and memory, and passive avoidance memory in male offspring are more sensitive, while anxiety in fe-male offspring is more sensitive to perinatal exposure to BPA.
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    Preliminary Study on Self-modesty: One Significant Behavioral Style of Chinese
    HU Jin-Sheng,HUANG Xi-Ting2
    2009, 41 (09):  842-852. 
    Abstract ( 1528 )  

    The purpose of this study is to examine the connotation, classification and function of self-modesty com-prehensively from cultural and historical perspective.
    In Study 1, through the retrieval of ancient Chinese books, 889 articles describing self-modesty had been collected, with 109 (12%) of them on its connotative, 112 (13%) on classification and 616 (69%) on function. The content analysis of these ancient books showed that self-modesty, divided into “real” and “false”, referred to an attitude or behavior with which one hid or evaded his or her own advantage or success. Its functions included harmoniousness, aggressiveness, defensiveness, courtesy, and morality, accounting for 4.7%, 4.1%, 40%, 5.3%, and 12%, respectively, of the ancient books.
    In Study 2, the open investigation was carried out among 217 university students and the general public. The results showed that modern people held almost the same views as those in ancient times on the connotation of self-modesty, as 84% believed that self-modesty was still of a considerable realistic significance. However, they differed in terms of the identity content and emphasis of self-modesty’s function, which could be caused by the differences in expressions, the nature of language materials, and the manoeuvrability of classification.
    In Study 3, a self-prepared survey was conducted on identity commitment among 486 university students. The results indicated that university students laid enormous emphasis on the functions of self-modesty including defensiveness, ego integrity, and image promotion.
    Different from the concepts of “negative illusion” and “below-average effect” in western theories, self- modesty is the embodiment of Chinese dialectical thinking and their pursuit of society-oriented self- actualiza-tion. Its functions can be summed up in two macro dimensions–“instrumental” and “transcendence”. Therefore, more priority in future studies should be given to the contextual situation and socialization of self- modesty.

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    The Construct of Employee’s Work Ethic in China
    WANG Ming-Hui,GUO Ling-Ling,ZHAO Guo-Xiang,LING Wen-Quan
    2009, 41 (09):  853-862. 
    Abstract ( 1523 )  
    With the gradual formation of the global economic integration, more and more enterprises are facing the dilem-mas to balance the economic benefits and social benefits, or the pursuit of corporate profits and complying with mor-als and ethics. Ethical issues in organizations have been regarded as one of the core elements which can obtain com-petitive edges. Consequently, issue of business ethic have emerged under such circumstances and received more and more attention in the global literature. Business ethic is composed of two aspects: organizational ethic and work ethic. Organizational ethic refers to the rules of conduct and the ethical norms which should be followed when organiza-tions engaged in commercial activities and dealt with the relationship between inside and outside organizations. Work ethic, as an aspect of organizational ethic, is a series of ethic norms which the employees comply with when they perform their job, interact with others and treat environment in the workplace. Since Weber proposed that the Protes-tant work ethic was the origin of the Spirit of Capitalism, the study on the work ethic of employees has yielded some achievement in the field of the western organizational behavior. Moreover, it has become one of the critical issues in the fields of organizational behavior and human resource management. However, limited data are available in China regarding the importance of work ethic in human resource management and organizational behavior. Therefore, the current study was designed to development a measure of work ethic among Chinese employees (eg., The Work Ethic Questionnaire) to test and cross-validate the construct of the work ethic.
    The methods used in this study involved literature review, interview, pilot-testing and survey. Based on the literature review, interview and pilot-testing, items for the Work Ethic Questionnaire were developed. The sur-vey data were from 955 employees of 21 different enterprises and from various districts in China, 508 under-graduates of six universities and 461 soldiers from two military units. The survey data were mainly analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and cross-validation test.
    The result showed that work ethic of Chinese employees was a multi-dimension construct which included occu-pational integrity, work meaning, diligence, enterprising and interpersonal harmony. The Work Ethic Questionnaire had high validity and reliability. That’s to say, a five-dimension model could reflect the Chinese employees’ work ethic construct, which was different from the results of those researches in the West. At the same time, the five-dimension model was tested by using the cross-validation among college student sample and soldier sample and showed similar goodness-of-fit. The construct, content, and connotation of work ethic dimension and their differences compared to western results were discussed. Finally, further research needs were discussed. These needs include the examination of the impact of the work ethic, and the exploration of the factors that may influence work ethic.
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    Structure and Measurement of Work-Family Support and Its Moderation Effect
    LI Yong-Xin,ZHAO Na
    2009, 41 (09):  863-874. 
    Abstract ( 1254 )  
    Research of work-family relationship has gone through a process of three phases: from work-family con-flict to work-family balance and then to work-family facilitation. Most of the researchers considered that work-family conflict could be distinguished as work→family conflict and family→work conflict. Likewise, work-family facilitation could also be distinguished as work→family facilitation and family→work facilitation. Although work-family support was one form of work-family facilitation, it is not clear whether the same scheme is applicable to work-family support. Therefore, the present study proposed that there was a similar situation for work-family support, that is, work-family support could be distinguished as work→family support and fam-ily→work support. To verify this proposition, the present study firstly focused on developing a scale of work-family support based on the view of work→family support and family→work support. Then, we used this scale to explore the moderation effect of work-family support in the relationship between work-family conflict and turnover intention.
    To develop the Work-family Support Scale, we conducted both quantitative survey assessment and in-depth individual interview. EFA and CFA were conducted to examine the factorial structure of the scale. Results showed that Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the entire scale was 0.82. The scale consisted of four factors: or-ganizational support, leadership support, emotion support and instrumental support. The Cronbach’s alpha coef-ficients for the four factors were 0.75, 0.78, 0.79, and 0.70, respectively. The scale showed adequate psychomet-ric properties in terms of both reliability and validity.
    Unconstrained model method was used to examine the moderation effect of work-family support between work-family conflict and turnover intention. Results showed that the main effect of work-family support and work-family conflict were -0.34 and 0.35 respectively and the moderation effect was 0.15. As a moderator, work-family support weakened the positive relationship between work-family conflict and turnover intention.
    The contributions of this study include: (1) enrich the theory of work-family support by dividing work-family support into the support of work→family and the support of family→work; (2) develop the Work-Family Support Scale; and (3) confirm the moderation effect of work-family support between work-family conflict and turnover intention.
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    Psychological Capital: Chinese Indigenous Scale’s Development and Its Validity Comparison with the Western Scale
    KE Jiang-Lin,SUN Jian-Min,LI Yong-Rui
    2009, 41 (09):  875-888. 
    Abstract ( 2367 )  
    Originated from positive psychology, psychological capital is regarded by some researchers and practitio-ners in the field of human resource management as one of the individual competitive advantage sources beyond human capital and social capital. As defined by Fred Luthans, a pioneer scholar in this research area, psycho-logical capital is the positively-oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in the workplace. Generally, this construct consists of four dimensions, self-efficacy/confidence, hope, optimism, and resiliency. Some empirical research indicated that employee’s psychological capital has positive impacts on good work attitudes, behaviors and performance. It would be worthwhile to examine the external validity of psychological capital in a transition society such as China considering the cultural differences, which is the core root of psychological capital. Al-though there are already a few empirical studies about psychological capital in China, those are mostly replica-tions of western studies. We need more indigenous studies to demonstrate the potential differences in psycho-logical capital between different cultures.
    The main purpose of this study is to develop a scale of indigenous psychological capital construct in the context of Chinese culture. Several methods were taken to collect the measurement items of indigenous psy-chological capital scale, including depth interview, literature review, successful person’s biography material, and unstructured questionnaire survey. After that, we used item analysis, reliability analysis, factor analysis, correla-tion analysis and regression analysis to test the liability and validity of the developed scale.
    The results indicated that indigenous psychological capital construct has two high-order factors, task-oriented psychological capital and guanxi-oriented psychological capital. Each dimension has four sub-dimensions respectively. Task-oriented psychological capital includes self-confidence and courage, opti-mism and hope, spirit of enterprise and diligence, resiliency and perseverance. Guanxi-oriented psychological capital consists of toleration and forgiveness, respecting and courtesy, modesty and prudence, thanksgiving and dedication. To a great extent, task-oriented psychological capital is similar to the structure of western psycho-logical capital, but guanxi-oriented psychological capital is very special for its characteristics with Chinese cul-ture. Indigenous scale of psychological capital has good criterion-related validity. Both task-oriented psycho-logical capital and guanxi-oriented psychological capital are significantly related with task performance, con-textual performance, job satisfaction, job involvement and organization commitment, meanwhile guanxi- ori-ented psychological capital is related with traditional values and dependent self. Regression analysis indicated that indigenous psychological capital can explain more variances of employee’s task performance and contextual performance than western psychological capital.
    The authors suggest that the cultural differences between the Chinese and western should be considered when building the indigenous psychological capital theory and Chinese organizations should pay attention to developing and managing employee’s psychological capital.
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    Estimating the Variability of Estimated Variance Components for Generalizability Theory
    LI Guang-Ming,ZHANG Min-Qiang
    2009, 41 (09):  889-901. 
    Abstract ( 1255 )  
    Generalizability theory is widely applied in psychological and educational measurement.The variability of estimated variance component, which is constrained by sampling, is the “Achilles heel” of generalizability the-ory. Therefore, estimating the variability of estimated variance components needs to be further explored. In pre-vious literature, some problems remain to be settled: first, the previous studies failed to compare the variability of estimated variance components among different methods simultaneously: traditional, bootstrap, jackknife and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC); second, some studies only focused on such variability of estimated vari-ance components as the standard error, while neglected other variability such as confidence interval; last but not least, MCMC method which can be used in generalizability theory hasn’t gained sufficient exploration.
    There are different methods to estimate the variability of variance components: standard error and confi-dence interval, including traditional, bootstrap, jackknife and MCMC. Based on these four methods, the study adopts Monte Carlo data simulation technique to compare the variability of estimated variance components for normal distribution data. For traditional method, ANOVA is used to estimate the variance components and their standard errors. Satterthwaite and TBGJL are used to estimate the confidence intervals. For bootstrap method, twelve bootstrap strategies are adopted, but only three strategies are considered in jackknife method and only two strategies, i.e., informative and non-informative priors, for MCMC method. Some criteria are set to compare the four methods. The bias is cared about when variance components and their standard errors are estimated. The smaller the absolute bias is, the more reliable the result is. The criterion of confidence intervals is “80% interval coverage”. If the “80% interval coverage” is more closed to 0.80, the confidence interval is more reliable.
    The simulation is implemented in R statistical programming environment. To link R program with Win-BUGS, R2WinBUGS and Coda package are adopted. And the simulation results are as follows. First, it is more accurate to use traditional, jackknife, adjusted bootstrap and MCMC method with informative priors to estimate variance components. But unadjusted bootstrap and MCMC method with non-informative priors are not ade-quate. Second, traditional and MCMC method with informative priors are accurate to estimate standard errors of three variance components, while jackknife method is not. Bootstrap method needs to adopt a “di-vide-and-conquer” strategy to obtain good estimated standard errors: the most accurate estimation of standard error for person is consistently provided by adjusted boot-p or boot-ir; adjusted boot-pi is the clear winner in estimating standard error for item; adjusted boot-ir, boot-pir or boot-pr give good estimate of standard error for person and item. Finally, using traditional and MCMC method to estimate confidence intervals is suitable be-cause their respective interval coverages are close to 0.80. But jackknife method is not accurate in estimating confidence intervals. There is no great difference between Bootstrap-PC and Bootstrap-BCa method that are used to estimate confidence intervals of three variance components. Bootstrap method should apply the “di-vide-and-conquer” strategy to get desirable estimated confidence intervals as following: adjusted boot-p for person; adjusted boot-pi for item; adjusted boot-ir, boot-pr or boot-p for person and item.
    This study shows that jackknife method is not accurate to estimate the variability of estimated variance components. If the “divide-and-conquer” strategy is not used in bootstrap method, it is advisable to use tradi-tional method or MCMC method with informative priors.
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    Jing Qicheng’s Thoughts and Practice of International Psychology
    YANG Wen-Deng,YE Hao-Sheng
    2009, 41 (09):  902-910. 
    Abstract ( 1928 )  
    Jing Qicheng is a well-known psychologist in contemporary China, and also the representative of Chinese psy-chologists in international world after the open and reform policy was carried out in China. He is both a remarkable experimental psychologist and a theoretical psychologist who has a very solid foundation. The paper doesn’t mention the contributions he made in cognitive and developmental psychology, it just analyzes his international psychological thoughts and practices theoretically to search for his basic attitude and values in psychology.
    Having got the developmental clues of psychology macroscopically, Jing divides the present Psychology into “two groups of Psychology”. One is the “mechanical group”, in which human beings are the passive me-chanics; another is the “Humanistic Psychology Group”, which emphasizes men’s active function. Considering the physiological function of Psychology to be its main research objective, the mechanical group follows the behaviorists’ route and accepts the experimental method as its main research approach, which origins from the old philosophy of associationism. “Humanistic Psychology Group” includes psychologists from the social, clinical, and consulting fields. Their work is connected with the nature of human beings. They construct their theories by means of researching, observing, and experimenting, but their opinions differ from each other, thus it is a loose group with a lot of members. Knowing the present situation of modern psychology, he analyzed the developmental trend of Psychology, and believed that future of Psychology will be a kind of international psy-chology. He holds the opinion that consciousness and behavior are to be mingled and converged into a real in-ternational psychology regardless of the school, nation, culture and history. In his opinion, the cultural charac-teristics of psychology do exist, but the international features play a more important part. Experimental, theo-retical and practical psychologies are all the necessities of psychology and members of the big psychology fam-ily. Among psychology and other disciplines, among the internal members of psychology, and among the psy-chologies of different nations, active exchanges are beneficial to all aspects.
    To realize his academic dream as early as possible, Jing Qicheng had tried his best to pursue it all his life. Jing not only introduced the outside psychology into China and spread the Chinese psychology to the interna-tional world, but also actively participated in the international psychological organizations. He was a leader of the International Union of Psychological Science, organized and hosted the 28th International Congress of Psy-chology. All his life, Jing had made great contributions in highlighting the international aspect of Psychology, promoting the exchange of international Psychology, and pushing the Chinese psychology into the world stage.
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