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The characteristics of visual word encoding in preview and fixation frames during Chinese reading: Evidences from disappearing text LIU Zhifang, ZHANG Zhijun, PAN Yun, TONG Wen, SU Heng 2017, 49 (7):  853-865.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00853 Abstract ( 2033 )    Encoding the visual information of text into a more permanent representation is necessary for text processing and comprehension. It was found that young English readers are able to encode all the visual information of a fixated word within 55 ms, but cannot encode word n+1 within this time in English reading. Evidence has shown that young Chinese adult readers could not only encapsulate a fixated word as soon as young adults English readers, but also encode the text of word n+1 within this time. It has also been found that the process of encoding a fixated word in Chinese reading is more susceptible to the effects of childhood development and age than English; thus, it may be language-related. With two disappearing text experiments, we explore the characteristics of text and visual encoding of words n and n+1 during Chinese reading. By doing so, we want to clarify whether the process of encoding visual information during Chinese reading is word-or character-based. If the encoding process is character-based, the impairment in reading performance from disappearing manipulations should be mediated by the number and locations of disappeared characters. On the contrary, a word-based hypothesis denies these results. The sentences used in both experiments consisted of 7 or 8 two-character words. The first experiment was conducted to explore the visual encoding in preview frames. The experiment was a 4 (disappearing manipulations: no disappearing vs word n+1 disappearing vs character n+1 disappearing vs character n+2 disappearing) ×2 (disappearing onset: 0 ms vs 60 ms) mixed design. After word n was fixated for 0 or 60 ms in each condition, word n+1, the left character of word n+1, and the right character of word n+1 disappeared respectively. An immediate refixation on word n did not result in the reappearance of disappeared text. Reading time was the most important reference in the present study. The results showed that the disruption caused by disappearing manipulations was mediated by the number and locations of disappeared characters; thus, indicating that the encoding process in preview frames is character-based during Chinese reading. The second experiment also had four disappearing manipulations and two disappearing onset times. This experiment was a 4 (disappearing manipulations: no disappearing vs word n disappearing vs fixated character disappearing vs no fixated character disappearing) × 2 (disappearing onset: 0 ms vs 60 ms) mixed design. In the word n disappearing condition, word n disappeared after it was fixated for 0 or 60 ms. In the fixated character disappearing condition, the fixated character disappeared after word n was fixated for 0 or 60 ms. In the no fixated character disappearing condition, the nonfixated character, which also belonged to word n, disappeared after word n was fixated for 0 or 60 ms. An immediate refixation on word n did not result in the reappearance of disappeared text. It was found that all of the disappearing manipulations disrupted reading performance equally when the disappearing onset time was 0 ms, and that not all of them prolonged reading time in the conditions with a 60 ms onset time. These results indicated that the encoding process in fixation frames is word-based during Chinese reading. By integrating the two results mentioned above, it may be concluded that Chinese readers encode the visual information of word n and characters in word n+1 parallel. Further, the encoding process is character-based in preview frames and word-based in fixation frames. Related Articles | Metrics

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Perceptual difference between internet words and real-world words: temporal perception, distance perception, and perceptual scope PENG Ming, JING Wenying, CAI Mengfei, ZHOU Zongkui 2017, 49 (7):  866-874.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00866 Abstract ( 3465 )   PDF (583KB) ( 129 )    According to embodied cognition theory, cognitive activity takes place in the context of a real-world environment, and it inherently involves perception and action, therefore our cognitive process is grounded in our sensorimotor systems. Internet is a virtual environment, in which sensorimotor system is inhibited. Therefore, our cognitive process is different in internet environment compared to real-world environment. In this study, we aimed to compare the cognitive differences between internet environment and real-world environment on temporal perception, distance perception, and perceptual scope. Because internet words and real-world words are used in our life frequently and can be processed proficiently, we use internet words (such as “website”, “WeChat”), and real-world words (such as “school”, “canteen”) to induce the internet environment and real- world environment. In Experiment 1, we compared the temporal perception on internet words and real-world words by using temporal generalization method. A random line square presented 800 ms or 2000 ms, then a word appeared. The word presented 600 ms, 800 ms or 1000ms when square presenting 800 ms; 1600 ms, 2000 ms, or 2400 ms when square presenting 2000 ms. Then the participant was asked to judge whether the time that word presented was the same with the square. In Experiment 2, we used a picture-word version of Stroop task to test the difference of psychological distance between internet words and real-world words. Participants indicated whether the target word appearing within the picture was near or far. In Experiment 3, we used prime paradigm to test whether the internet words priming decreased participants’ perceptual scope compared to real-world words. Participants were judged the letters (“E” or “H”) appeared in different places (center or peripheral) in the screen after priming words presenting 2s. In Experiment 1, we compared the ratio that participants judged the time the word presenting was the same with square between the internet and real-world condition. The results showed that the ratio was higher in the internet condition than real-world condition when the word presented 600 ms, and the ratio was lower in internet condition than real-world condition when the word presented 2400 ms.The results suggested the temporal perception of internet words was longer than real-world words. In Experiment 2, we did not find any significant interaction effect between distance and the word type. Therefore, there was no difference of psychological distance between internet words and real-world words. In Experiment 3, the results showed that there was no difference on reaction time between the letters appeared in center and peripheral screen after the real-world words, but it’s significantly faster when the letters appeared in the center screen than peripheral screen after the internet words. The results suggested that internet words decreased the perceptual scope. In summary, current study showed that participants judged internet words presenting longer than real-world words, the perceptual scope was decreased after internet words presented, and no difference between internet words and real-world words was found on the psychological distance perception. The temporal perception and perceptual scope differed between internet environment and real-world environment. This study suggested that internet environment influenced people’s perception processing compared to real-world environment. Related Articles | Metrics

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Metaphorical representation of moral concepts: Evidence from red/white color, left/right position and upright/skew font YANG Jiping, GUO Xiumei, WANG Xingchao 2017, 49 (7):  875-885.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00875 Abstract ( 3255 )   PDF (482KB) ( 195 )    Individuals comprehend abstractions by representing it with concrete things. Conceptual Metaphor Theory describes embodied effects where sensation influences process of understanding concept. In this framework, the essence of metaphor is that people use specific experiences to construct abstract concepts. Many previous studies found that the abstract concept of “morality” was embodied within black and white color as well as up and down vertical space. However, few studies had focused on examining red and white color, left and right position, and upright and skew font in metaphor of morality. The present study were comprised of three Stroop experiments with undergraduates to test whether metaphoric representation of morality was associated with white and red color, left and right position, and upright and skew font. Three studies used the Stroop paradigm to investigate red and white color, left and right position, and upright and skew font metaphor representation of moral concepts in Chinese culture. Stroop paradigm’s vocabulary categorization task was carried out in E-prime 2.0. Participants were instructed to categorize words according to whether they were moral or immoral in meaning as accurately and quickly as possible. A matching effect appeared between moral/immoral terms with red/white color, and between moral/immoral terms with left/right position, and between moral/immoral terms with upright/skew font. In Experiment 1, different color (red and white) was employed to present morality-related (moral and immoral) words. Repeated measurement ANOVAs was used to analyze the data. Results indicated that, when moral words appeared in red color, and when immoral words appeared in white color, participants’ response times have no significant difference. In other words, participants didn’t show the tendency to associate moral words with white color, and associate immoral words with red color. In Experiment 2, different position (left and right) was designed to present morality-related (moral and immoral) words. Repeated measurement ANOVAs were used to analyze the data. The results of Experiment 2 showed a significant Stroop effect. When moral words were presented on the right position and immoral words presented on the left position, reaction times were significantly reduced. In Experiment 3, different vocabulary font (upright and skew) was designed to show morality-related (moral and immoral) words. Experiment 3 used the same way with experiment 2 to process data. It showed that, response times were longer when immoral words appeared in upright font than when immoral words appeared in skew font; and responses times were longer when moral words appeared in skew font than when moral words appeared in upright font. Altogether, results suggest the psychological reality of “Morality is right, and immorality is left; Morality is upright, and immorality is skew” in Chinese cultural background. The mental representation of morality is associated with left and right position and upright and skew font in Chinese culture. Chinese participants tend to associate moral words with the right position and the upright font, and associate immoral words with the left position and the skew font. Different cultural backgrounds and specific sensory perception create ecological environments in which morality with left/right location or upright/skew font is correlated. Based on this, we argue that Chinese people have implicitly developed the mental association between left/right position and moral concepts as well as upright/skew font cues and moral concepts. Related Articles | Metrics

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The establishment of ecological microexpressions recognition test (EMERT): An improvement on JACBART microexpressions recognition test ZHANG Jianxin, LU Li, YIN Ming, ZHU Chuanlin, HUANG Chunlu, LIU Dianzhi 2017, 49 (7):  886-896.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00886 Abstract ( 1636 )   PDF (1422KB) ( 449 )    Matsumoto et al. (2000) developed classical JACBART microexpressions recognition test, but it only measured microexpressions recognition between neutral expression backgrounds, which was just a special case of microexpressions in various backgrounds, so its ecological validity was not high. Zhang et al. (2014) only used sadness, neutral and pleasant expressions as backgrounds, and did not establish a standard test. Therefore this study for the first time set up a standard recognition test of ecological microexpressions with seven basic expressions as backgrounds and six basic expressions as microexpressions. Experiment adopted a 7 (backgrounds) × 6 (microexpressions/expressions) × 2 (the first and second tests) within subjects design. We chose sadness, fear, anger, disgust, neutral, surprise, and happiness expressions as backgrounds, and in one trail, ahead and back backgrounds were the same expression, whose time was 800 ms. We chose sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise, and happiness as microexpressions between ahead and back backgrounds, whose time was 133 ms. The participants should identify microexpressions as accurately as possible in each trial. For retest reliability, every participant needed to do two same tests, whose interval was 1 week. Before the first test, participants filled the openness inventory of big five personality scale, and before the second test they filled the depression inventory. The results showed that: (1) We used the accuracy of microexpression/expressions recognition in the first experiment as the dependent variable and did a 7 (backgrounds) × 6 (microexpressions/expressions) analysis of variance. Backgrounds and microexpressions/expressions were within-subject independent variables. Sphericity test of backgrounds showed p > 0.05; the main effect of backgrounds was significant, F (6,59) = 25.89, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.238, which indicated that background expressions affected microexpressions / expressions. Sphericity test of microexpressions/expression showed p < 0.05, then we did Greenhouse correction and found the main effect of microexpressions/expressions was significant, F (4.13, 84) = 4.13, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.696, which showed that microexpressions/expressions recognitions were different. Sphericity test of backgrounds ×microexpressions/expressions showed p < 0.05, then we did Greenhouse correction and found backgrounds and microexpressions/expressions had significant interaction effect, F (18.72, 84) = 18.72, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.172, which showed that the same microexpressions/expressions recognitions under different backgrounds were different, and different microexpressions/expressions recognitions under the same background were also different. (2) We did correlation analysis between two experiments and found that except two surprise microexpressions under disgust background were not related, p > 0.05, other microexpressions/expressions recognitions were significantly correlated, indicating the ecological microexpressions recognition test had nice retest reliability. We did paired sample t test between two experiments, and found that all sadness, disgust under neutral, disgust under surprise, fear under sadness, anger under surprise, happiness under surprise in the second experiment were significantly higher than in first, which showed there were training effects. (3) Correlation analysis found that ecological microexpressions recognitions significantly correlated with classic microexpressions recognitions (microexpressions recognitions between neutral backgrounds), proving that the test had good criterion validity. Fear, sadness, disgust, and anger microexpressions recognitions had significant background main effect, and paired comparison showed there were a wide range of differences among microexpressions recognitions under different backgrounds and also between ecological microexpressions recognitions and common expressions recognitions. Surprise and happy microexpressions recognitions had no significant background main effect, and paired comparison found that there was no difference among them, but there were quite a few differences between them and common expressions recognitions. Those showed that ecological microexpressions were different from common expressions or classic microexpressions, so the test had good ecological validity. This study for the first time used standard deviation of the same microexpressions recognitions under different backgrounds to define fluctuations of ecological microexpressions recognitions and found that they existed, which meaned all standard deviations were significantly greater than zero, and which also showed the test had good ecological validity. Conclusions: (1) This study created a standard ecological microexpressions recognition test, including six basic microexpressions under backgrounds of all seven basic expressions. The result found that the test had good retest reliability, criterion validity and ecological validity, which means it can measure ecological microexpressions recognition stably and effectively. (2) The reliability and validity tests revealed a lot of characteristics of ecological microexpressions recognition. There was training effect in some ecological microexpressions recognitions. Ecological microexpressions recognitions were generally associated with classic micro expression and ordinary expression. The background main effects of fear, sadness, disgust, and anger microexpressions were remarkable except surprise and happy microexpressions. But there were a wide range of significant differences between surprise/happy microexpressions and regular expressions. Background expressions affected ecological microexpressions recognitions. Ecological microexpressions recognitions had stable fluctuation. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of interference on retrieval process in implicit memory LIN Wuji, MENG Yingfang, LIN Jingyuan 2017, 49 (7):  897-908.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00897 Abstract ( 4134 )   PDF (744KB) ( 184 )    A wide range of studies have shown that executing the other secondary task during encoding has little influence on implicit memory (repetition priming). Somewhat surprisingly, relatively few studies discussed the effects of interference on implicit memory during retrieval, which was confirmed as a process distinct from encoding, but also important in memory. Furthermore, an open question remains as to whether the retrieval interference could affect implicit memory? The effect of interference during retrieval was assessed by comparing a divide-attention (DA) condition, on which participants carried out a memory task (lexical decision) and an interference task (even-odd decision) simultaneously or successively, with a full-attention (FA) condition, on which participants performed only the memory task or interference task. Each experiment consisted of five parts: a study phase, a distraction phase, twice FA interference phases, and a retrieval phase, which included above two types attention conditions. Thirty-five undergraduate students participated in Experiment 1, which investigated whether synchronous interference task during retrieval could affect implicit memory. Experiment 2 further examined whether asynchronous interference could also change the priming of implicit retrieval. Thirty participants took part in Experiment 3, which was designed to examine whether such interference could affect explicit memory retrieval. Therefore, it replaced the lexical decision with recognition task based on Experiment 1. Participants were instructed to make response to corresponding items by pressing keyboard, and were told that the memory and interference task were equally important. They were asked to perform both tasks as quickly and accurately as possible. The Reaction Time (RT) and Accuracy data in retrieval phase were recorded, in order to assess priming effects, the effect of interference and interference task costs. The results showed that, first, the repetition priming results (the facilitation or bias in processing of studied items) were quite consistent across Experiment 1 and 2 both on RT and Accuracy. It reflected that priming would be impacted by interference task, whatever the distraction and memory stimulus presented synchronously or asynchronously. Second, In Experiment 3, there was non-significant difference across attention conditions in recognition Accuracy. Third, we followed Lozito and Mulligan’s (2010) method for examining interference task costs. They proposed two measures to obtain distracting task costs for verifying the effects of interference. One of them would work out global costs, which was assessed by comparing performance on the interference task when performed under DA to FA. We found global costs occurred among three experiments, indicating that attention resource competition happened across dual tasks. But significant specific costs, which comparing performance on interference among DA, was only found in Experiment 3, indicating that explicit retrieval would break secondary task performance, whereas, implicit retrieval seemingly has little impact on interference task, but easily influenced by interference task. In conclusion, results from the current study revealed that implicit memory priming could not be regarded as an automatic form of retrieval with ease. And it's necessary for memory retrieval to catch enough cognitive resources. If limited resource was occupied by the other task, implicit retrieval processing would be impacted. Related Articles | Metrics

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The effect of executive function on verbal insight problem solving: Behavioral and ERPs studies XING Qiang, SUN Hailong, ZHAN Danling, HU Jing, LIU Kai 2017, 49 (7):  909-919.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00909 Abstract ( 1707 )   PDF (602KB) ( 134 )    The insight problem solving has been proposed to involve different phases: First, there is an initial structuring phase in which the problem’s starting conditions, goal and possible actions, as given in the problem statement, are represented internally. A second general stage involves searches within the problem space, which may take the form of means-ends analysis or forward search. However, the initial structuring phase is misleading and solution cannot be reached without re-structuring of the problem representation. Thus, with insight tasks, re-structuring of the problem representation is necessary for the problem to be solved. However, the debate of the psychological mechanism focused on the representation restructuring process, and there are two interpretations: consciousness processing and unconscious processing. We conducted three studies to explore the psychological mechanism of the insight problem solving. Study 1 showed there is a significant positive correlation between the executive functions and the insight problem solving, and updating of working memory representations can predict individual insight scores. Study 2 investigated verbal insight problems, using behaviors and ERPs to explore the effect of executive functions on insight problems. The results showed that the insight, compared with no-insight impasses, elicited a more positive potential P2 and in the time windows 620~800 ms (P3). P2 may reflect that people perceive intuitively mental impasses at the perceptual stage, whereas the P3 is associated with the process of constraint relaxation characterized by the alternation between the old and new ways of thinking. These results suggest that executive function influences searching within the problem space, but not the re-structuring of the problem representation. Related Articles | Metrics

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ffects of visual anticipation and focus of attention on the anticipatory and compensatory postural adjustments of the lumbar postural muscle and upper limb focal muscle WANG Jian, YUAN Liwei, ZHANG Zhi, WANG Shizhong 2017, 49 (7):  920-927.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00920 Abstract ( 1242 )    Body posture can be controlled by the central nervous system (CNS) in three ways: the feed-forward control (FFC), the feed-back control (FBC), and the voluntary control (VC). These neural control strategies not only enable rapid postural muscle responses but also stabilize the center of body gravity. While many studies indicated that visual anticipation (VA) and focus of attention (FOA) can affect the commands from the CNS, the effect of VA/FOA on posture control is not clear. The present study employed the classic ball hitting test (BHT) to simultaneously examine the effect of the VA/FOA-caused pre-activations in the lumbar postural muscle and upper motor muscle. 24 college students (10 males, 14 females) participated in the present study. The BHTs were conducted using a 2 by 2 within-subject design. That is, the participants either anticipated (with eyes open) or not anticipated (with eyes closed) the hitting ball, and they either focused on stabilizing the center of body mass (COM) or focused on the holding pan. A ball of 1.5 kg was used as a load to trigger a perturbation. To study the effects of external perturbation on APAs and CPAs, homemade ball-hitting platform and surface EMG equipment were used to study the response latency and response intensity of the target muscles. Electric activities from the lumbar multifidus muscle (LM) and from the biceps brachiimuscle (BB) were collected. The response latency, response intensity of the APAs and CPAs of the target muscles were used to evaluate the effects on the postural and focal muscles. The results showed (1) VA significantly affected the APAs’ latency of the LM, and also affected the APAs’ latency, APAs’ AEMG, and CPAs’ AEMG of the BB; (2) FOA significantly affected the CPAs’ latency of the LM, and the APAs’ latency of the BB; (3) Interactions between VA/FOA and APAs’ latency and APAs’ AEMG of BB were significant. These results showed that CNS may use different postural strategies to control postural and motor muscles. That is, VA and FOA may only affect temporal characteristics of the postural muscle, but they can affect both temporal and intensity parameters of the motor muscle. The CNS postural-control system is controlled by both the postural and motor muscles under external perturbation. These findings shed light on the mechanism of the CNS posture-control system. Related Articles | Metrics

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Daily emotional characteristics in individuals with different resilience levels: Supplementary evidence from experience-sampling method (ESM) LYU Mengsi, XI Juzhe, LUO Yirui 2017, 49 (7):  928-940.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00928 Abstract ( 3417 )    The investigation of the cognitive and emotional characteristic of resilient individuals has significant implications for understanding the development and mechanisms of resilience. As a new perspective on emotion functioning, emotional complexity has important implications for physical and psychological health. Nevertheless, the relationship between emotional complexity and resilience has been rarely investigated especially in Chinese cultural settings. In this study, we aimed to explore the differences in daily positive and negative emotion states, emotional complexity, and emotion regulation strategies between three groups of college students with high-, intermediate-, and low-resilience levels. With a sample of 252 participants from six universities in Shanghai, we firstly conducted screening and grouping processes according to two vital standards of resilience, i.e., severity of stress/adversity that they faced and positive outcome of psychosocial adaptation that they developed. Thereafter, we carried out a 15-day follow-up study using the Experience-Sampling Method (ESM) to investigate grouped participants’ daily emotional states and their emotional complexity. Furthermore, we administered a questionnaire to investigate the participants’ emotion regulation strategies. The statistical software SPSS 19.0 was adopted to conduct the paired sample t-test and the analysis of variance (ANOVA) to analyze the data. Results indicated that the most frequently experienced daily emotions in the participants were active, energetic, nervous, and trembling with fear. Additionally, antecedent-focused regulation was used more frequently to regulate negative emotions (t (99) = 18.06, p < 0.001), and mainly for down-regulation (t (99) = 9.55, p < 0.001). Up-regulation strategies were used more frequently in positive emotion regulation (t (99) = 3.96, p < 0.001). There were significant differences in daily emotional states between high-, intermediate-, and low-resilient participants Specifically, the high-resilient group experienced positive emotions more frequently and more intensively (F (2,97) = 7.50, p < 0.01; F (2,97) = 6.22, p < 0.01). An index of positive emotional experience was computed by subtracting negative emotions from positive ones, showing that high-resilient participants had more positive emotional experiences than those with low resilience. Participants with high resilience reported the highest positive emotional granularity scores among the three groups (F (2, 97) = 4.26, p < 0.05). A similar discrepancy was not found in negative emotional granularity, emotional range and mixed emotions. There were also differences in emotion regulation strategies between different resilient groups. High-resilient individuals released and expressed positive emotions more frequently (F (2, 97) = 3.55, p < 0.05), and rarely use suppression strategies (F (2, 97) = 3.69, p < 0.05). In contrast, the low-resilient individuals was more likely to use cognitive up-regulation strategies to regulate negative emotions (F (2, 97) = 6.41, p < 0.01). In conclusion, positive emotion is the building block of resilience, and the awareness, differentiation and regulation of positive emotion has significant implications for adaptation, growth and thriving. Different types of emotion regulation strategies have differential impacts on physical and mental health. It is implied that a guided exercise on emotion regulation and emotion awareness will promote individual resilience. Related Articles | Metrics

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Upward social comparison on SNS and depression: A moderated mediation model and gender difference LIAN Shuailei, SUN Xiaojun, NIU Gengfeng, ZHOU Zongkui 2017, 49 (7):  941-952.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00941 Abstract ( 5084 )    Scholars have started investigating the link between social network site (SNS) use and depression among adolescents, but findings remain inconsistent. In order to find out the reasons, researchers conduct lots of studies, trying to give an interpretation for the relationship and its complex mechanisms from a different perspective. Among many factors influencing adolescents’ depression, the role of upward social comparison on SNS has increasingly received attention of both practitioners and researchers over the past few years. There is substantial literature documenting that upward social comparison on SNS has an important influence on adolescents’ depression, but little is known about the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this relation. Therefore, based on the social comparison theory of envy and the response styles theory of rumination, the present study constructed a moderated mediation model to examine the effect of upward social comparison on SNS and the underling mechanisms. Specifically, the present study examined whether upward social comparison on SNS would be indirectly related to adolescents’ depression through the experience of envy during SNS using, and whether this indirect association would be moderated by the adolescents’ rumination. This integrated model can address questions about both mediation and moderation in one model. Its results would be helpful to answer the issues such as “what works for whom”, and provide valuable information for early identification and prevention that cannot be obtained by separately testing the two questions. A total of 836 high school students (mean age = 16.34 years, SD = 1.06) participated in this study. Adolescents’ upward social comparison on SNS was measured by the revised upward social comparison questionnaire. Envy was assessed with the SNS envy scale. The short form of ruminative responses scale was used to assess rumination traits. Adolescents’ depression was assessed with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. All the measures have good reliability and validity. The results showed that: (1) after controlling for age, grade, number of friends on SNS and the frequency and time of SNS use, the upward social comparison on SNS has a positive direct effect on adolescents’ depression. (2) The positive association between upward social comparison and adolescents’ depression was mediated by envy, and there is gender difference in this indirect effect. The indirect effect was stronger for girls than boys. (3) For boys, the mediating effect of envy was moderated by rumination. The indirect effect was stronger for boys with high rumination than for those with low rumination. However, the moderating effect of rumination cannot be found in the indirect effect of envy for girls. These findings contribute to our understanding of how and when upward social comparison on SNS impacts adolescents’ depression. On the one hand, the experience of envy during SNS using relative to the upward social comparison on SNS, may serve as a more important role on the emergence and development of adolescents’ depression. On the other hand, more attention should be paid to the boys with high level of rumination (especially reducing their frequency of upward social comparison on SNS) and boys with high frequency of upward social comparison on SNS (especially reducing their rumination). Last but not the least, the prevention and interventions for adolescents’ depression should pay attention not only to the effect of behavior factors, experience factors and personality trait factors, but also to the combined influence of those factors. Related Articles | Metrics

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Integratin the theory of planned behavior and implementation intention to overcome procrastination LIN Lin 2017, 49 (7):  953-965.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00953 Abstract ( 5686 )    Procrastination represents a behavioral tendency to delay beginning or completing a goal-directed action, which results in a gap between intention and behavior. While extant literature has predominately adopted cross-sectional designs to examine the antecedents of procrastination, the current study conducted a quasi- experiment to explore strategies to overcome procrastination by integrating the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and implementation intention. Furthermore, the study employed a daily dairy design to examine how these factors might influence the dynamic process of procrastination over time. One hundred and thirty-four undergraduate students participated in this two-stage study. All participants firstly filled in a general questionnaire to capture their demographic information and individual traits. One week later, on Sunday evening, they were asked to list five academic-related tasks that were assumed to be finished by the end of the upcoming week. Implementation intention was manipulated in which half of the participants were randomly assigned to experimental condition and were instructed to form implementation intention. The other half received no such instruction and served as the control group. In the following week, they were asked to report how much each task was achieved by the end of each day for five consecutive working days. Given the multilevel nature of the data where daily task completion (Level 1) was nested within task (Level 2), and task was further nested within individual (Level 3), hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used for hypothesis testing. Results of series of HLM models indicated that a) all the TPB variables were significantly related to academic procrastination. Specifically, participants procrastinated to a less extent when they had more positive attitude, perceived higher behavioral control, felt stronger subjective norm, and held stronger behavioral intention toward the completion of the task; b) behavioral intention mediated the effects of attitude and perceived behavioral control, but not subjective norm, on procrastination; c) implementation intention mitigated the degree of procrastination such that those instructed to form implementation intention completed higher percentage of planned tasks than their counterparts; d) both perceived behavioral control and implementation intention accelerated the process of task completion in that participants who had higher behavioral control or were instructed to explicitly form action plan were in a higher speed toward task completion. The current study provided empirical evidence that implementation intention manipulation may serve as an effective strategy to overcome procrastination. Specifically, forming implementation intention was effective not only in mitigating the degree of procrastination, but also in accelerating the rate of achieving goals. The potential mediating mechanisms through which implementation intention mitigated behavioral procrastination and accelerated the process of task completion were discussed. Related Articles | Metrics

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The causes of abusive supervision from the perspective of rule-adaptation LIU Chao, LIU Jun, ZHU Li, WU Shouqiang 2017, 49 (7):  966-979.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00966 Abstract ( 1925 )    Abusive supervision (AS) defined as sustained display of nonphysical hostility (including both verbal and nonverbal behaviors) enforced by managers against their subordinates (Tepper, 2000) has drawn much attention from researchers. As a negative leadership behavior, it often leads to negative consequences in the workplace such as increasing employees’ intention to quit, deviant behaviors, psychological distress and lowering the individuals’ organizational commitment. Although much has been done to investigate the antecedents (e.g., from the perspective of subordinate character, supervisor character and the environment) of the AS, little is known about why specific subordinates are treated with nonphysical hostility by their leaders (Tepper et al., 2011). To address this gap, the main purpose of the current study is to explore the united impacting mechanism of work performance and political skill. Based on perspective of rule-adaptation and resource dependence theory, we attempted to examine the congruence and incongruence effects of the task performance-political skill on leader abuse. To avoid common method variance problem, we collected data from different sources, that is, gathering variables political skill (PS, using Ferris et al.’s (2005) 18-item measure) and AS (using Tepper’s (2000) 15-item measure) from the subordinates and organizational deviant behavior (using Bennett and Robinson’s (2000) 12-item measure) and task performance (TP, using Williams and Anderson’s (2001) 5-item measure) from the supervisor. We finally got 243 effective dyads’ information of the subordinate and their supervisors. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of the above measures are 0.91, 0.94, 0.96 and 0.86 respectively and it’s a multisource feedback research and appropriate to conduct polynomial regression with response surface analysis which could provide elaborate and abundant analyzing results. The analyses of 243 subordinate-supervisor dyads from two companies in China showed that (1) The more congruence of subordinate’s PS and TP level, the less AS would be; (2) Under the condition of subordinate’s TP-PS incongruence, the higher level of PS and lower level of TP, the less AS would be; (3) Under the condition of TP-PS congruence, the none-AS level rose to a peak and then fell down as subordinate’s TP-PS levels rose which should be paid attention to. Theoretically, the study contributes to the areas of AS, rules and subordinates’ workplace behaviors. Besides, the idea of resource dependence theory is also applied to the individual level and adds explanatory power in the relationship of TP-PS and AS. The practical implication of the study is that it provides explicit directions for the subordinates and the organization to cope with AS. We also discuss the limitations and future research directions of the study. Related Articles | Metrics

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When do procedural justice and outcome justice interact to influence legitimacy of authorities? The moderating effect of social class YANG Linchuan, MA Hongyu, JIANG Hai, LIANG Juan, QI Ling 2017, 49 (7):  980-994.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00980 Abstract ( 2100 )    Much of recent attention has been directed toward legitimacy as an important source of power for authorities in societies. Studies of the origins of perceived legitimacy have focused on the influence and interactive effects of procedural and distributive justice. However, in many studies, the two-way interaction between outcome and procedure justice was found to be statistically non-significant. According to the Construal-Level Theory, the elevated ranks and resources of upper-class individuals would increase their perceived psychological distance from others, and this distance would lead to more abstract information processing. Thus, we suspected that upper-class individuals would value procedural justice information above perceive legitimacy, whereas lower-class individuals would give greater importance to issues of distributive justice. In this study, three experiments were conducted to examine this hypothesis. Two hundred and sixty undergraduate students participated in Experiment 1, and 241 adults participated in Experiment 2. Both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 used a 3×2×2 between-subjects design in a controlled laboratory setting. Firstly, the subjects took part in a manipulation of their relative social class. Then, the procedural justice was manipulated by a voice/ no-voice procedure. Additionally, the distributive justice was controlled through the distribution of lotteries. After the treatments, perceived legitimacy of authorities was measured. The three-way interaction between outcome, procedure, and social class was statistically significant, F (2, 248) = 3.12, p < 0.05, and ηp2 = 0.03. Three hundred and seventy undergraduate students participated in Experiment 3. They were assigned to upper/lower-class groups based on their family occupations and subjective SES. Then, they experienced the procedural and distributive justice in 6 different scenarios before their perceived legitimacy of the authority was measured. The three-way interaction between outcome, procedure, and social class was significant, F (2, 358) = 8.40, p < 0.05, and ηp2 = 0.05. The results of three experiments indicated that: (1) participants in a fair-outcome treatment condition perceived higher legitimacy than those who were in unfair outcome conditions. (2) lower-class participants assigned to a fair-outcome condition perceived authorities to be more legitimate than their counterparts in unfair outcome conditions in both voice and no-voice procedure condition. (3) lower-class participants perceived lower legitimacy when they assigned to voice (vs. no-voice) procedure condition in both fair and unfair outcome that the partner received a worse reward conditions. (4) upper-class participants who were in fair outcome condition perceived authorities to be more legitimate relative to their counterparts in other unfair outcome conditions in voice procedure condition. (5) upper-class participants in the voice procedure condition perceived the authorities to be more legitimate than their counterparts in no-voice procedure condition in the fair outcome setting. These results suggested that individuals’ social class influenced the interactive effects of procedural and distributive justice on perceived legitimacy. In particular, it was found that procedural justice exerted ironic influences on perceived legitimacy of lower-class individuals. Moreover, the study tried to demonstrate that social class would modulate the relationship of social justice and perceived legitimacy in the social domain. These findings were informative to the development of administrative strategies that would influence people from different social classes. Related Articles | Metrics