Archive

25 May 2016, Volume 48 Issue 5 Previous Issue    Next Issue

---

For Selected:

Download Citations EndNote Ris BibTeX

Toggle Thumbnails

Select

The perceptual differences between experienced Chinese chess players and novices: Evidence from eye movement WANG Fuxing, HOU Xiujuan, DUAN Zhaohui, LIU Huashan, LI Hui 2016, 48 (5):  457-471.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00457 Abstract ( 1644 )   PDF (1083KB) ( 149 )   Previous chess studies have found that the experienced chess players who are better than novices on memorizing chess board show superior perceptual encoding advantage. However, the Chinese chess have the similar expertise superior advantage? The present research designed three experiments to explore whether Chinese chess experts performed better on perceptual encoding, chess board memory, and detection than novices. Ten Chinese chess players who have already got more than 10-years experiences were regarded as experienced players. Fifteen college students who could understand the basic rules of Chinese chess were recruited as novices. EyeLink 1000 desktop eye tracker with 1000 Hz sample rate was used to record participants’ eye movement. Materials were the real Chinese chess playing-board pictures with 14 pieces on board. Each board had seven red and seven blue pieces. All three experimental materials were assessed by two experienced players on the authenticity and difficulty. In experiment 1, we presented random chess board or real chess board to participants. Each board presented for five seconds. Then, we asked participants to reproduce what they have seen on a real chess board. All the eye fixation data were recorded during the 5s viewing. In experiment 2, we used moving window paradigm to control their visual field size, including one piece size (1.3 degree visual angle), four pieces size (2.9 degree) and 16 pieces size (5.1 degree), to explore whether the experienced players could use the parafovea to process and extract information from chess board. Experiment 3 used flicker paradigm to investigate whether experienced players could notice the change much faster than novices and use their parafovea to fixate the changed pieces before their oral reports. Results of experiment 1 suggested that experienced Chinese chess players could recall much more pieces in the real chess board and random chess board than novices. In addition, experienced players showed wider saccade span and greater pupil size than novices. Consistent with the previous studies, the experienced chess players fixated more between pieces rather than on the pieces, but the novices allocated more attention on the pieces. Experiment 2 showed that, the experienced players can take advantage of parafoveal processing (16 and 4-piece window) to remember more pieces than the fovea condition (one piece window); but the novices did not show this difference. The eye movement data also showed that the experienced players had wider saccade span than novices when pieces in the parafovea (16 pieces window). Results of experiment 3 showed that the experienced players perceived changed pieces faster and their correct rate were higher than novices. For the changed pieces, the eye movement data indicated that experienced chess players could perceive changes quicker than novices with fovea and parafovea. In conclusion, compared to novices, experienced Chinese chess players can remember and reproduce more chess pieces than novices. Second, experienced players allocate more attention on between pieces based on their chess chunks and templates. Third, experienced Chinese chess players have wider visual span, and can use parafovea to encode information from chess board. Finally, Chinese experienced chess players can perceive changed pieces quickly and more accurately, showing superior perceptual advantage. In sum, consistent with the chess studies, Chinese chess did have expertise superior advantage and superior perceptual encoding advantage. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Immediate effect of language switch on non-proficient bilinguals’ cognitive control components LIU Cong, JIAO Lu, SUN Xun, WANG Ruiming 2016, 48 (5):  472-481.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00472 Abstract ( 1297 )   PDF (531KB) ( 191 )   Previous studies have found that lifelong bilingual language experience led to bilingual cognitive control advantage. However, a recent study proposes a new viewpoint that bilingual cognitive control depends on fast language context rather than long-term language experience. Thus, whether the cognitive control components are influenced by language switching context is still an open question. In the current study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the immediate influence of language switch on cognitive control’s different components. Experiment 1 examined whether language switching context had immediate influence on cognitive control and whether the influences are existed on various components of cognitive control. Thirty participants joined in the Experiment 1 that contains three parts: pre-test part, language switching part and post-test part. In the pre-test part, all participants were asked to complete a “faces task”, which was used to test three components of cognitive control capacity (i.e., response inhibition, interference suppression and cognitive flexibility). Then, they performed a language switch task, in which they were required to name some Arabic numbers from 1 to 8 in Chinese or English according to the cues. When the cue was a green square (or red), participants named the Arabic numbers in Chinese (or English) when the cue was a red square. Finally, participants took part in the “faces task” again in the post-test part. Results showed that language switching context could influence bilinguals’ different components of cognitive control. Specifically, it can facilitate response inhibition and disturb interference suppression, while cannot affect cognitive flexibility. Therefore, response inhibition, interference suppression, and cognitive flexibility were distinct cognitive control components, which had different neural basis. Experiment 2 was conducted to test two questions. First, we intended to replicate the immediate effect that was observed in Experiment 1. Second, we aimed to explore the causes of the immediate effect. A between-subject design was used in Experiment 2. Ninety-three participants were divided into three groups. Each group performed different language naming tasks. One group named the Arabic numbers in Chinese, while the second group in English. The third group performed language switching task that is the same as Experiment 1. Then, all groups joined in the “faces task.” The results were consistent with Experiment 1, which may suggest that our results are robust. In addition, the results showed that non-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals need more response inhibition because they preferred to use English in language switching. Thus their response inhibition capacity improved by exercises. However, this effect may hinder bilinguals’ interference suppression, while we did not find such effect on cognitive flexibility. Taken together, results from these two experiments suggested that language switching context had immediate influences on non-proficient bilinguals’ cognitive control ability. Specifically, it could facilitate response inhibition and disturb interference suppression, while no such effect was found on cognitive flexibility. Besides, the results showed that response inhibition, interference suppression, and cognitive flexibility had independent mechanisms. Furthermore, the current study illustrated that the bilingual cognitive control advantages were the results of long-term bilingual language use, which revealed the internal mechanisms of the bilingual advantage. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The male advantage in regulating negative emotion by expressive suppression: An event-related potential study CAI Ayan, YANG Jiemin, XU Shuang, YUAN Jiajin 2016, 48 (5):  482-494.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00482 Abstract ( 2379 )   PDF (635KB) ( 860 )   Life experiences and empirical studies both indicate that males are less emotionally expressive and also more often copies stress with suppression than females. Thus, males may outperform females in regulating unplesant emotions by expressive suppression. However, though there are aboundant observational researches showing more frequent suppression of emotional expressions in men than in women, there is no direct evidence showing that males are better than females in dampenin negative emotions by expressive suppression. On the other hand, no consistent sex differences were found regarding the emotion regulation by reappraisal. Therefore, we hypothesized that males may be better than females in regulating negative emotion by expressive suppression, but not by reappraisal. The current study experimentally investigated the sex differences in suppression and cognitive reappraisal. In our study, 35 participants 17 males, 18 females) performed a picture viewing task. The experiment included 4blocks which consisted of 2 viewing blocks and 2 regulating blocks. In attending blocks, participants just attended to neutral or negative pictures; whereas, in regulating blocks, participants were instructed to intentionally suppress the expression of emotional responses to pictures of cognitively reappraise pictures (e.g. think of pictures objectively). Event-Related brain Potentials (ERP) were recorded for the presentation of pictures. An the end of each block, subjects were required to rate their mood state and the success of attending to, suppressing, or reappraising the pictures by a self-report scale. Between blocks, two minutes of rest were taken for subjects to recover mood to the baseline level and to avoid fatigue. Behavioral results showed that both sexes did not differ in reports of emotional experiences after regulating unpleasant emotions using suppression or reappraisal. In electrophysiological results, Late Positive Potential (LPP), a posterior-parietal positive slow ERP, showed significantly more pronounced amplitudes during attending to negative relative to neutral pictures. More importantly, we observed interaction effects of regulating strategies and sex in the amplitudes of middle (2000~3000 ms) and late (3000~4000 ms) LPP windows. Males were associated with significantly smaller LPP amplitudes during expressive suppression relative to attending conditions in the 2000~4000 ms time window, whereas this emotion regulation effect was absent in females. By contrast, LPP amplitudes were similar for reappraisal and attending conditions in all time windows, irrespective of sex. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Comparison of motor execution and motor imagery brain activation patterns: A fNIRS Study BAI Xuejun, ZHANG Qihan, ZHANG Peng, ZHOU Song, LIU Ying, SONG Xing, PENG Guohui 2016, 48 (5):  495-508.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00495 Abstract ( 1129 )   PDF (1598KB) ( 283 )   It is widely believed that activity in the primary motor cortex relates only to motor execution. However, the extent to which similar activity occurs when imagining motor movements remains to be determined and, while some researchers report activity in the primary motor cortex during both motor execution and motor imagery tasks (e.g.Solodkin et al., 2004; Sharma et al., 2008), others report no effects of motor imagery (e.g., Binkofski et al., 2000; Hanakawa et al., 2003; Hétu et al., 2013). It is still unknown whether brain activation patterns of motor execution and motor imagery are similar, and whether both tasks activate the primary motor cortex. In addition, it is also unclear about the effect of imagination intensity on the primary motor cortex (this effect has been well established in motor execution tasks). Accordingly, the present research investigated the relationship between the intensity of real and imagined exercise on cortical activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), especially in the primary motor cortex. A preliminary assessment used 10 participants (5 male, 5 female), who did not take part in the main experiment, to establish an appropriate level of exercise intensity. For the main experiment, 30 participants (15 male, 15 female) with high imagination ability were selected using the Motor Imagery Questionnaire (Revised). These participants performed a motor execution task in which they actually lifted dumbbells under two levels of exercise intensity (males, 4 pounds and 8 pounds; females, 2 pounds and 4 pounds) and an imagery version of this task in which they imagined lifting dumbbells of these weights. The fNIRS was used to measure cortical changes in oxygen level during the performance of the two tasks. Finally, on completion of the imagery task, the “motor imagery self-assessment questionnaire” was administered to assess the quality of the participants’ imagination. All participants reported that they could imagine dumbbell movement under different levels of exercise intensity. The fNIRS showed that although both motor imagery and motor execution produced increases in cortical oxygen levels, this was greater, and lateralized to the left hemisphere, during motor execution. In addition, effects of exercise intensity were observed during motor execution but not during motor imagery, such that oxygen levels were higher with increased exercise intensity. The indication from the present findings is that both motor execution and motor imagery activate the primary motor cortex. This challenges the conventional view that activity in the primary motor cortex relates only to motor execution and shows that this activity is also connected with motor imagery, plan, and control. The present findings therefore provide an important theoretical basis for the use of motor imagery therapy in the field of neural prosthetics. However, the present findings also reveal important differences in the effects of motor execution and motor imagery, and in particular that effects of exercise intensity on cortical activation may be observed only during motor execution and not motor imagery. However, further research will be required to more fully understand the nature of these differences in cortical activation. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The effects of TrkB inhibition in the mPFC on cognitive function and BDNF expression in the hippocampus of rats WANG Qiong; WANG Weiwen; LI Man; DU Wei; SHAO Feng 2016, 48 (5):  509-517.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00509 Abstract ( 794 )   Brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a member of the neurotrophin family of growth factors and is critically involved in many cognitive functions such as learning and memory. TrkB, the specific receptor of BDNF, can bind with its ligand and regulate various neural-biochemical functions. The hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are crucial brain areas involved in regulating memory and learning; BDNF in the hippocampus and mPFC plays an important role in these cognitive functions. Previous studies have focused on the effects of BDNF in the hippocampus and mPFC on cognitive function, however details of the interaction and co-regulation between these two areas are still unclear. In this study, male rats were obtained on postnatal day (PND) 35 and cannulas were implanted bilaterally in mPFC. One week post surgery, rats were given chronic bilateral micro-injections of ANA-12, a specific TrkB receptor antagonist, into the mPFC for seven days. Then, rats' behaviors in the open field test, and spatial learning and reversal learning in the Morris water maze (MWM) were observed through early adulthood (PND 56). After the behavioral tests, rats were sacrificed and samples of hippocampal tissue were obtained for BDNF measurement using the western blot technique. The results of the present study show that chronic blocking of TrkB in the mPFC significantly reduces the escape latency and distance traveled in the reversal learning stage of the MWM, suggesting enhanced reversal learning in early adult rats. The distance traveled and time spent in the central area of the open field, as well as the escape latency and distance traveled in the spatial learning stage of the MWM were not affected by blocking TrkB in the mPFC. The results of the western blot show that the expression of BDNF in the hippocampus was not affected by blocking mPFC TrkB. These results suggest that BDNF in the mPFC plays an important role in regulating reversal learning in young adult rats, but the influence of mPFC-BDNF on the spatial learning of rats is relatively limited. In addition, the expression of BDNF in the hippocampus seems to not be directly regulated by chronic blocking of BDNF in the mPFC. The results of the present study demonstrate that inhibition of TrkB in the mPFC improves early adult rats' reversal learning in the MWM without changing the spatial learning, nor does this specific blokade affect BDNF expression in the hippocampus. These results underscore the need for further exploration of the role of the hippocampus and mPFC in regulating cognitive functions such as learning and memory, and the relationships between these two important brain areas. Furthermore, the results provide a tentative theoretical basis for studying changes in cognitive function related to mental disease and the underlying neurobiological mechanisms. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Multiple attachment relationships and the impacts on children’s socio-emotional development under the background of grandmother co-parenting XING Shufen, LIANG Xi, YUE Jianhong, WANG Zhengyan 2016, 48 (5):  518-528.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00518 Abstract ( 4709 )   PDF (723KB) ( 550 )   In China, grandparent caring is a very common phenomenon. The quality of the mother-child and grandmother- child attachment relationships has a great impact on the children’s socio-emotional development. Up to now, however, the concurrent relation between children’s socio-emotional competence and the quality of their attachment to the mothers and grandmothers has not been explored. This study separately assessed the quality of children’s attachment to mothers and grandmothers, thus we could examine the quality and concordance of the mother-child and grandmother-child attachment, and could also explore their relative predictive power and joint effects on children’s socio-emotional competence. Participants were recruited from Beijing’s major communities and websites. 72 mothers, grandmothers, and their children (including 38 boys) participated in our project. All the children were the first fetus and in good health. They were taken care of by grandmothers when their mothers were at work. The time of the grandmother caregiving was not less than 10 hours per week. Using Attachment Q-Sort, 72 children’s (M = 17.51 months) attachment security of mother-child and grandmother-child was examined in two successive sessions, and children’s socio-emotional development was simultaneously measured by Infant- toddler social and emotional assessment (containing four domains: Externalizing, Internalizing, Dysregulation and Competence). The results showed that: (1) In the background of grandmother co-parenting, most of the children could form secure attachment relationships with mothers and grandmothers. The security level of the mother-child attachment was higher than that of the grandmother-child attachment. (2) There was a moderate correlation between the mother-child attachment and the grandmother-child attachment. 36 percent of the children’s mother-child attachment security was dis-concordant with the grandmother-child attachment security. (3) Regression analysis showed that compared with the grandmother-child attachment security, the quality of the mother-child attachment had greater relative predictive power on children’s socio-emotional development, supporting the hierarchical organization hypothesis. (4) With two secure attachment relationships, the children’s scores of Externalizing domain and Internalizing domain were significantly lower than those of the other three groups of children. The quality of the mother-child and grandmother-child attachment relationships could not compensate for each other. The mother-child attachment and the grandmother-child attachment had an interactive effect on children’s Dysregulation domain. We firstly examined the effects of the mother-child and grandmother-child attachment for children’s outcomes in the multiple attachments framework, so this study has certain exploration and pioneering. Up to now, studies exploring the effect of the mother-child and father-child attachment on children’s development have found that a secure attachment with at least one parent was a key factor that offset risks for children’s development. But we found that the mother-child and grandmother-child attachment relationships of the present study could not buffer or compensate each other. This shows the effects of the father caregiving and the grandmother caregiving for the children’s development, and they are perhaps essentially different. Therefore the impact of mother and father on children’s development could not be replaced with the grandmother. The influence of the grandmother on the children’s development may be regarded as “icing on the cake”, while the father can play a buffer role or compensate for the children’s disadvantages. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The academic shame of middle school students: Measurement, physical arousal, and its relation with students’ academic achievement MA Huixia; XUE Yang; LIU Jing 2016, 48 (5):  529-539.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00529 Abstract ( 2350 )   Academic shame refers to student’s achievement shame experienced under school or university circumstances. The purposes of this study are (1) to develop a questionnaire of academic shame of middle school students; (2) to analyze the physiological response of the academic shame caused by imagination; (3) to explore the relation between academic shame and academic achievement. Shame affects human behavior negatively and positively as well. Researches related to academic shame are scarce, especially the measurement of academic shame, physical arousal and the relation between the academic shame and achievement, which we attempt to explore in this thesis with 3 specific studies successively. In study 1, by using semi-open questionnaires, we investigated 191 middle students about their experiences of shame and the situations that caused their shame. According to the result of this questionnaire, a 26-item preliminary academic shame questionnaire were developed. We then analyzed the preliminary academic shame questionnaire with the methodology of exploratory factor analysis by using SPSS 16.0 and confirmatory factor analysis by using Amos 7.0. Based on the result of the analysis and later adjustments, the formal 17-item questionnaire of middle school students’ academic shame were finally developed. Next, we randomly selected 328 middle school students to complete the formal questionnaire, and after 3 weeks, we asked 84 of them to do it again for us to calculate the test-retest reliability. On the other hand, we measured another 182 students with the academic shame questionnaire and the Academic Emotions Questionnaire to test the criterion validity. By doing these, the Academic Shame Questionnaire for Middle School Students (ASQ-MSS) were developed. The ASQ-MSS includes 4 factors: inconsistence with self-expectation, unfair suffering in class, getting others’ attention, and poor academic performance. The Cronbach’s α coefficient of the questionnaire is 0.867, and the 4 sub-scales are 0.744, 0.738, 0.699, and 0.698. The retest reliability of the questionnaire is 0.731, and the 4 sub-scales are 0.831, 0.79, 0.764, and 0.68. In study 2, we randomly selected 292 middle school students to complete the ASQ-MSS, and then selected 34 of them whose scores are at the high end (> 66) as the high score group, and 30 whose scores are at the low end (< 49) as the low score group. After Randomly allocating the selected 64 students into the experiment group and the control group by the method of ABBA, we played the audio of academic shame scene to the experiment group and meanwhile played the audio of academic pride scene to the control group. During this process, we recorded and collected their spontaneous physiological responses by using a 16-channel physiology recording system. In the end, we found increasing trends of students’ skin conductance responses, finger temperatures and finger pulse rates, and a decreasing trend of their oxygen saturation, which demonstrated our assumption that imagination can arouse participants’ academic shame and academic pride. The results of this experiment also indicated that high score group has stronger responses than low score group, and the shame group has the similar physiological responses with the pride group. In study 3, 347 middle school students were randomly selected to complete the ASQ-MSS, and then 20 percent of these students whose scores are at the high end and the low end of the result were picked out to compose the two groups. We gathered each of these selected students’ grades of Chinese, Mathematical and English in two successive monthly examinations from their teachers. The results of comparing 2 groups’ grades indicated that the group with higher ASQ-MSS scores also has higher scores in their academic achievements. To explore the relation between academic shame and academic achievement, we classified the achievement grades into 6 levels. In conclusion, students with grades around 60 score level and 90 score level experience high academic shame. By this study, we developed Academic Shame Questionnaire for Middle School Students, a tool that has been proved having good reliability and validity. We also found that both academic shame and academic pride have obvious physiological responses. In addition, the pattern of the relation between academic shame and academic achievement is complex. On the basis of this thesis, future academic shame research should focus on the positive effect of academic shame on students’ behaviors and their academic achievements. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Cueing effect in multimedia learning: A meta-analysis XIE Heping; WANG Fuxing; ZHOU Zongkui; WU Peng 2016, 48 (5):  540-555.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00540 Abstract ( 1424 )   Cueing is an important instructional design technique to improve learning performance in multimedia learning. Recently, researchers focus on whether cueing could guide learners’ attention or facilitate learning outcomes. However, there is still no consistent conclusion about cueing effect of guiding attention, organization and integration in multimedia learning. In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the effects of cueing on learning performance (e.g. retention and transfer test), attention guiding (e.g. fixation time and fixation count of cued areas), and moderating factors (e.g. physical and spatial-temporal cues, declarative and procedural knowledge, dynamic and static presentation, and subjects of learning materials). We used key words (e.g. cue, cueing, signaling, attention guidance, multimedia learning, animation, eye tracking, eye movement) to search literatures in database and got 43 related empirical studies. Forty-four independent effect sizes (3910 participants) were included in retention tests-related meta-analysis while 41 independent effect sizes (3906 participants) were included in transfer tests-related meta-analysis. Fourteen independent effect sizes (938 participants) were included in fixation-time-related meta-analysis while eleven independent effect sizes (816 participants) were included in fixation-count-related meta-analysis to test the attention-guiding effect of cueing. According to the characteristics of studies about cueing effect, we reasonably chose random-effects model as meta-analysis model. CMA2.0 was used to test the independent effect sizes. Finally, the impact of publication bias was tested to guarantee a more convincing conclusion. The results showed that cueing could significantly improve learning outcomes of retention test (g = 0.53, 95% CI = [0.36, 0.69]) as well as transfer test (g = 0.36, 95% CI = [0.23, 0.49]). At the same time, learners’ fixation time (g = 0.50, 95% CI = [0.30, 0.71]) and fixation count (g = 0.70, 95% CI = [0.43, 0.97]) of cueing areas attracted much more attention than uncued areas. This result supported the attention guiding hypothesis of cueing in multimedia learning. Moderator analyses indicated that cueing effect in learning outcomes was mainly moderated by types of cueing, dynamism of materials, subjects of materials and types of knowledge. Specifically, cueing resulted in higher retention and transfer scores in conditions of static materials and declarative knowledge rather than dynamic materials and procedural knowledge. Compared with the materials in liberal arts, cueing effect in retention test was weaker than that in science or engineering. In addition, spatial-temporal cues performed much better than physical cues in transfer test. However, in regard to attention-guiding, cueing effect was mainly moderated by cueing types itself. Fixation time was longer and fixation count was more in the condition of physical cues than spatial-temporal cues. The observed strong cueing effect suggested that presenting cues rationally can indeed improve learners’ memorization and comprehension of knowledge as well as distribution of attention. Physical and spatial-temporal cues, declarative and procedural knowledge, dynamic and static presentation, and subjects of learning materials may act as important moderate variables in cueing effect in multimedia learning. The meta-analysis of moderator factors supported the boundary hypothesis of multimedia learning principles (Mayer, 2010). Limitations and future research were also discussed in this study. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

Balance of team diversity’ effects on team creativity NI Xudong; XIANG Xiaoxia; YAO Chunxu 2016, 48 (5):  556-565.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00556 Abstract ( 995 )   The increasing use of team as a basic operation unit of organizations makes team creativity a popular research topic. Team diversity is one of the most important factors of team creativity. the extant understanding of team diversity is focused on absolute distribution of diversity, while comparative distribution of diversity has rarely been studied. This paper proposes a new concept – the balance of team diversity, which is the comparative distribution of the team members' diverse characters. This concept helps to reveal the comparative strength of team diversity which is ignored by previous studies, and thus contributes to the research of relationship between team diversity and team creativity. This paper studies the effect of the balance of knowledge diversity and gender diversity on team creativity. We propose that the balance of team knowledge and gender diversity would positively affect team information elaboration and team creativity. Furthermore, team information elaboration mediates the relationship between the balance of team diversity and team creativity. We collected data from 80 teams, 451 students in Zhe Jiang Sci-Tech University via lab experiments. The task is designing the advertising video for Chinese government on World Expo. The experiment lasted one hour. Each team needs to put forward a video plan (between 200～500 words). Each team was made up of 4～7 persons and most of teams were made up of 6 persons. We designed a formula to calculate balance of team diversity. Team creativity was graded by three independent experts with scope from 1 to 10 (1 stands for least creative and 10 stands for most creative).Team information elaboration was measured with a scale of 4 questions developed by Kearney, Gebert and Voelpel (2009). The main results are summarized as follows: a) Balance of team knowledge diversity was positively related to team creativity, while the relationship between balance of team gender diversity and team creativity was not significant. b) Balance of team knowledge diversity was positively related to team information elaboration. c) Team information elaboration was a mediator of the relationship between balance of team knowledge diversity and team creativity. The theoretical implications are as follows: Firstly, we developed a new dimension of team composition -- balance of team diversity. It highlights comparative structural character of diverse team which is ignored by previous studies. Secondly, we found that team information elaboration is key mediating process between the balance of team diversity and team creativity. This paper also provided some theoretical guidance for managers to design a cross-function team or project team. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

When leader-member exchange increases emotional exhaustion? The role of belief in reciprocity and power distance orientation LU Xinxin; SUN Jiaqing 2016, 48 (5):  566-577.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00566 Abstract ( 1435 )   As a type of social support and job resources, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) has been demonstrated to be effective in alleviating emotional exhaustion. However, some studies suggested that LMX was curvilinear related to job strain and job stress, shedding light on the dark side of LMX. Jiang et al. (2014) argued that too much or too little LMX was detrimental to job burnout. The potential negative impact of LMX on emotional exhaustion lies in the expected reciprocation from employees that may cause continual resource loss. Thus, the followers’ reciprocation in LMX will undermine its favorable effect on burnout and would even turn to negative effect on emotional exhaustion. Our purpose in the present study is to verify the reciprocation in LMX, examine its potential detrimental effect on emotional exhaustion, and identify the relevant boundary conditions. Social exchange theory and role theory are two main theoretical underpinnings in LMX literature. Social exchange theory maintains that the norm of reciprocity lies at the heart of social exchange and is critical to predict individual response. According to the theory, actors in LMX are expected to reciprocate favors from the other party to sustain social exchange relationship. Role theory holds that leader-member exchange develops after a series of role making, role taking, and role internalization. It asserts that role definitions profoundly shaped individuals’ decisions and actions in LMX. Drawing from the two theories, the subordinates’ reciprocation in LMX is essentially repayment based on the norm of reciprocity and simultaneously embedded in supervisor-subordinate relationship. Thus, both the norm of reciprocity and role definitions in supervisor- subordinate relationship will play a role in the reciprocation. To the best of our knowledge, there is a paucity of empirical studies having validated the norm of reciprocity, though widely recognized as the core tenet of social exchange theory. In our study, to capture the role of the norm of reciprocity in subordinates’ reciprocation in LMX, we intend to conceptualize it as individual belief and examine its moderation on LMX-burnout relationship. On the other hand, as a vertical dyadic linkage, LMX is characterized by power asymmetry that distinguishes it from other interpersonal interactions. Hence, power distance, depicting individual acceptance of power differential between hierarchies, will prescribe individual role definitions in hierarchical relationships like LMX. Then, power distance orientation will further constrain the extent to which the subordinates apply personalized norm of reciprocity in LMX. In summary, the present research attempts to explore whether and why individual belief in reciprocity and power distance orientation separately and jointly moderate the relationship between LMX and emotional exhaustion. The survey was administered in a training program with full-employed participants from a variety of occupations, including teachers and service employees. We collected the data at two time spots with a temporal interval of 8 weeks and the final sample was composed of 172 matched employees. Hierarchical regressions were conducted to test the two- and three-way interaction hypotheses. The results revealed that LMX at Time 1 was significantly and negatively related to emotional exhaustion at Time 2. Neither belief in reciprocity nor power distance orientation alone significantly moderated the relationship between LMX and emotional exhaustion. However, the interaction of belief in reciprocity and power distance orientation significantly moderated the LMX-emotional exhaustion link. In other words, the significant three-way interaction effect of LMX, belief in reciprocity, and power distance orientation on emotional exhaustion was supported. With the time-lagged data, our research suggested that in general, LMX did alleviate emotional exhaustion but the followers’ reciprocation might undermine the favorable effect. The significant three-way interaction indicated that the norm of reciprocity and power asymmetry of supervisor-subordinate relationship altogether accounted for subordinates’ reciprocation in LMX. Specifically, for those with high belief in reciprocity and simultaneously low power distance orientation, the LMX-emotional exhaustion relation turned significantly positive. On the contrary, high power distance buffered the detrimental effect of high belief in reciprocity in the LMX-emotional exhaustion relation. The findings are ascribed to the fact that people with low power distance orientation tend to view LMX as interpersonal interaction and apply norm of reciprocity in LMX. In this sense, our research suggested that the norm of reciprocity and role definitions jointly accounted for subordinates’ reciprocation in LMX and highlighted the potential conditions of the norm of reciprocity. The research finding implied that to avoid getting emotionally exhausted from LMX, employees should be aware of power and resource asymmetry inherent in supervisor-subordinate relationship and refrain from repaying overly in LMX. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

The impact of interpersonal relationship on social responsibility HUANG SiLin; HAN MingYue; ZHANG Mei 2016, 48 (5):  578-587.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00578 Abstract ( 4008 )   Social responsibility predicts job performance, academic achievement, personality, coping with frustration, self-acceptance and altruism. Previous studies mainly focused on social responsibility’s concept, psychological structure, influencing factors, and instruction. Findings from recent correlational studies suggest that interpersonal relationship influences social responsibility. This study examined the causal relationship between the two variables. Furthermore, prior results postulate that empathy may play an important mediating role in this causal mechanism. Therefore, the present study was designed to test the causal impact of interpersonal relationship on social responsibility and the mediating function of empathy in the association between the two variables. Three studies were conducted. Study 1 was a survey study testing the relationship between interpersonal relationship and social responsibility, and whether empathy played a mediating role, among 335 undergraduates. Study 2 tested the effect of the utility of relationship on social responsibility. 234 undergraduates were randomly assigned to three groups: high utility, low utility and control group. Based on the result of Study 2, Study 3 further manipulated the intimacy of relationship in which participants were asked to imagine a close friend or a classmate who was newly introduced, and examined the effect of utility and intimacy of relationship on social responsibility simultaneously. 192 undergraduates were randomly assigned to four groups classified by the utility (high vs. low) and intimacy (high vs. low) of relationship. The results showed that: (1) Interpersonal relationship correlated positively with social responsibility, and empathy acted as a partial mediating variable. (2) The manipulation of utility of relationship significantly impacted social responsibility. The high utility group showed significantly a higher level of social responsibility than did the low utility and the control group, and the low utility group showed an even lower level of social responsibility than did the control group. (3) The manipulation of intimacy of relationship also impacted social responsibility. In contrast to the low intimacy group, the high intimacy group showed significantly superior level of social responsibility. More importantly, the interaction between utility and intimacy of relationship was significant. Specifically, for the low intimacy group, those with high utility exhibited a significant higher level of social responsibility than did those with low utility. However, in the high intimacy group, no difference in social responsibility was found between the two levels of utility. In conclusion, the present study for the first time confirmed the causal impact of interpersonal relationship on social responsibility and the partial mediating role of empathy. The present results are consistent with the “pattern of difference sequence” account of social responsibility in China. Related Articles | Metrics

Select

An improved method for differential item functioning detection in cognitive diagnosis models: An application of Wald statistic based on observed information matrix LIU Yanlou; XIN Tao; LI Lingqing; TIAN Wei; LIU Xiaoxiao 2016, 48 (5):  588-598.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00588 Abstract ( 863 )   In cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs), differential item functioning (DIF) refers to the probabilities of success of an item being different for examinees with the same attribute mastery pattern in the groups. The detection of DIF is an important step to ensure the fairness and validity of results from CDMs for all groups. Hou et al. (2014) proposed that the Wald statistic can be used to detect DIF in CDMs. Unfortunately, their results revealed that the Wald statistic based on the information matrix estimation method developed by de la Torre (2009, 2011) yielded inflated Type I error rates. However, Li and Wang (2015) found that the Type I error rates of the Wald statistic in which MCMC algorithms were implemented were slightly inflated in their study under the same conditions. In this study, we proposed an improved Wald statistic based on the observed information matrix for DIF assessment. As a general demonstration, we took the log-linear cognitive diagnosis model (LCDM; Henson et al., 2009) as an example. In this simulation study, in order to compare the results with previous studies (e.g., Hou et al.,2014; Li & Wang, 2015), we followed the simulation design used by Hou et al. (2014), except that we implemented the observed or cross-product (XPD) information matrix in the Wald statistic computation. Parameters set in the studies were: the test length at 30, the number of attributes at 5, and the maximum number of required attributes for an item at 3. Binary item response data were generated from the DINA model. Three sets of true item parameter values were considered for the reference group. Two DIF sizes: .05 and .10, and two types of DIF: uniform and nonuniform, were manipulated. Two sample sizes were considered, 500 and 1,000. Each condition was replicated 1000 times, and the estimation code was written in R (R Core Team, 2015). The simulation results showed that: (1) for the relatively discriminating items, Wald statistic had accurate Type I error control when the observed information matrix was used in its computation. However, when the slip and guessing parameters were large , the Type I error control was slightly conservative. (2) When the XPD information matrix was used for the computation of the Wald statistic, the Type I error control was conservative; that is, the performance of the observed information matrix was better than the XPD information matrix. (3) The number of attributes required for success on the item did not have a notable impact on the Type I error control of Wald statistic, irrespective of whether the observed or the XPD information matrix was used for the statistic. (4) The power rates of Wald statistic for detecting DIF increased as the sample size increased. We conclude that our improved Wald statistic provided follows asymptotically a chi-square distribution with degrees of freedom equal to 2, for DINA model. The improved Wald statistic is a useful and powerful tool for DIF detection in CDMs. Related Articles | Metrics