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ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B

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    25 August 2021, Volume 53 Issue 8 Previous Issue    Next Issue

    Reports of Empirical Studies
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    Reports of Empirical Studies
    N170 adaptation effect of the sub-lexical phonological and semantic processing in Chinese character reading
    ZHANG Rui, WANG Zhenhua, WANG Xiaojuan, YANG Jianfeng
    2021, 53 (8):  807-820.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00807
    Abstract ( 430 )   HTML ( 11 )  
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    Event-Related Potential (ERP) studies of visual word recognition have found that N170, an early component, is sensitive to visual words, reflecting the processing of orthography, phonology, and semantics. However, its role in word reading is still controversial. By taking advantage of the Chinese writing system’s ideographic property, the current study used the neural adaptation paradigm to investigate the sensitivity of N170 to Chinese characters’ sublexical phonological and semantic information. Experiment 1 manipulated the phonetic radical and character’s pronunciation repetition of continuous Chinese characters. The results showed that N170 of the left electrode had neural adaptation to phonetic radical and the whole character pronunciation. Experiment 2 further manipulated the semantic radical and character’s meaning repetition. The results showed that the left N170 only had neural adaptation to the character’s meaning, while the right N170 had neural adaptation to both the repetition of the semantic radical and the character’s meaning. The current results suggested that the left N170 was sensitive to the character’s phonological and semantic information and the phonetic radical, whereas the right N170 was sensitive to the character’s meaning and the semantic radical.

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    The development of visual simultaneous processing skill subcomponents of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia and its relationship with reading
    LI Jie, YANG Yue, ZHAO Jing
    2021, 53 (8):  821-836.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00821
    Abstract ( 397 )   HTML ( 17 )  
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    By using high frequency Chinese characters (Experiment 1) and non-verbal graphic materials (Experiment 2) as stimuli, and adopting the method of parameter estimation based on the theory of visual attention (TVA), we conducted two combined TVA tests to systematically explore the intrinsic mechanism of visual simultaneous processing deficits in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia from grade three to six in primary school. 43 children with Chinese developmental dyslexia and 46 age-matched typical developmental children were recruited and they were divided into middle grade group (grade 3, grade 4) and senior grade group (grade 5, grade 6). Both experiments found that the perceptual processing speed of dyslexic children in different grades was significantly lower than that of the control group. On the weight parameter of spatial attention distribution, the results of Experiment 1 showed that the attention distribution of dyslexics in both grade groups was unbiased, which was different from the left-lateral model of the controls. In Experiment 2, no significant group difference was found. And these two kinds of simultaneous processing subcomponents are closely related to different levels of Chinese reading skills. The results showed that Chinese dyslexic children had a slow and persistent perceptual processing speed deficit when processing multiple visual stimuli at the same time, and showed abnormal spatial attention distribution pattern when processing verbal stimuli simultaneously. This study will help to reveal the mechanism of Chinese developmental dyslexia from the basic cognitive level, and provide a theoretical basis for the further design of related intervention programs to improve reading efficiency.

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    The role of novel semantic association in the promoting effect of insight on memory
    CHEN Shi, LIANG Zheng, LI Xianglan, CHEN Yanran, ZHAO Qingbai, YU Quanlei, LI Songqing, ZHOU Zhijin, LIU Lizhong
    2021, 53 (8):  837-846.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00837
    Abstract ( 377 )   HTML ( 22 )  
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    The present study explores the cognitive and neural mechanisms of insight promoting memory through the learning-test paradigm. In Experiment 1, a behavioral experiment was conducted to test the validity of the Chengyu riddle selection paradigm in exploring insight to promote memory. The results showed that compared with the ordinary associative condition, the participants under the novel associative condition had higher scores of insight in the learning stage and a higher accuracy rate in the test phase, so the effectiveness of the paradigm is verified. In Experiment 2, fMRI was used to explore the key brain regions where insight promotes memory. The results showed that compared with the novel association condition of unsuccess memory, the novel association condition of successful memory activated the brain regions related to the insight process more strongly, including the hippocampus, amygdala, middle frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus. This suggests that deep processing of information and positive emotions during insight problem- solving in the learning phase promote memory, and further analysis shows that compared with normal associative memory, the facilitation effect of novel association on memory is mainly related to the activation of the right hippocampus, which may reflect that the formation of novel association builds episodic memory and novel and valuable semantic associations during insight problem- solving. The results show that the formation of novel semantic associations plays an important role in the insight's promotion of memory.

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    The effect of anger on malevolent creativity and strategies for its emotion regulation
    CHENG Rui, LU Kelong, HAO Ning
    2021, 53 (8):  847-860.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00847
    Abstract ( 1160 )   HTML ( 74 )  
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    The current study aimed to explore the effect of anger on malevolent creativity and its underlying mechanisms and to determine whether such an effect could be modulated by strategies of emotional regulation. Experiment 1 compared the differences of malevolent creativity between individuals in anger, sadness, and neutral emotions and found that individuals in anger produced more and more novel malevolent ideas, emotional arousal, and implicit aggression mediate the effect of anger on the malevolent creative performance. Experiment 2 explored how different emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal, expressive inhibition) influenced the malevolent creative performance of angry individuals. It was found that the cognitive reappraisal group and the expression inhibition group had lower levels of malevolent creativity than the control group. Emotional arousal and implicit aggression mediated the effects of two kinds of emotion regulation strategies on malevolent creativity. These results suggest that anger promotes creativity by enhancing implicit aggression and emotional arousal, and the cognitive reappraisal and expression inhibition strategies can be used as effective strategies to weaken the malevolent creativity of the angry individuals.

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    Structural and functional characteristics of impulsive-related brain regions in heroin addicts with long-term withdrawal
    CAI Huiyan, MIAO Xin, LIN Zhiwei, WANG Mengcheng, YANG Wendeng, LI Jiayi, MA Yankun, WANG Pengfei, ZENG Hong
    2021, 53 (8):  861-874.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00861
    Abstract ( 399 )   HTML ( 19 )  
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    Impulsivity is a typical characteristic of drug addicts, which includes both the power of restraining and controlling drug use, and the component of driving drug use. Heroin addicts themselves have impulsive personality traits, and long-term heroin use will lead to the abnormalities in brain structures and functions related to impulsivity. It is difficult to determine whether impulsivity and related brain structures and functions remain abnormal after withdrawal. Using voxel-based morphometry, amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo) and functional connectivity analysis, 35 heroin addicts and 26 healthy individuals without any history of addiction were studied to explore the structure and function of the brain network of drive and control system related to impulsivity in heroin addicts after long-term withdrawal. The results showed that the total volume of gray matter and the volume of gray matter in the right medial frontal gyrus significantly decreased, and the volume of gray matter in the right middle temporal gyrus and left medial cingulate gyrus decreased with the increase of the total amount of medication. The functional connectivity between the right orbitofrontal gyrus and the caudate nucleus significantly enhanced. The functional connectivity between the right middle temporal gyrus and the left anterior central gyrus significantly decreased. The ReHo values of the right orbitofrontal gyrus, the ALFF values of the right inferior orbitofrontal gyrus and the left hippocampus were significantly lower than those of the control group. The value of ReHo was significantly higher in the right posterior central gyrus. The condition of these brain areas is consistent with the neural basis of impulsivity, indicating that the reward, salience, and custom networks of heroin addicts remain abnormal after 44 months of withdrawal, and are related to the total amount of addictive drugs used. These abnormalities may be the neural basis of addictive impulsivity and may be one of the factors that explain the relapse of addicts after withdrawal.

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    Changes of teachers’ subjective well-being in mainland China (2002~2019): The perspective of cross-temporal meta-analysis
    XIN Sufei, LIANG Xin, SHENG Liang, ZHAO Zhirui
    2021, 53 (8):  875-889.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00875
    Abstract ( 588 )   HTML ( 19 )  
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    As a key index to measure the mental health of teachers, teachers’ subjective well-being is very important to the investigation and analysis of their current situation, and it cannot be neglected to monitor the trend of its dynamic change with the social change and its relationship with the social change. This study conducted a cross-temporal meta-analysis of 51 reports measuring teachers’ subjective well-being (SWB) from 2002 to 2019, including 13,600 teachers. The findings are as follows: (1) the average scores of subjective well-being of teachers is negatively correlated with the year, which indicates that the subjective well-being of teachers in China is decreasing year by year. (2) the changes of eight macro-social indicators from three aspects of social economic conditions (consumption level, housing price, old-age dependency ratio and education funds), social connection (family size, divorce rate and urbanization level) and social threat (crime rate) can significantly predict the decline of teachers’ subjective well-being. (3) the subjective well-being of primary and middle school teachers has a tendency to decrease with the year, and the scores of subjective well-being are lower than those of college teachers. This study not only explores the changing trend of teachers’ subjective well-being in China in the past 20 years, but also puts forward a three-dimensional theoretical framework that influences teachers’ subjective well-being in China. This paper extends the research ideas of group social psychology vertically (with the changes of the times) and horizontally (macroscopical social index), expanding the theoretical basis, and in practice, providing the decision-making basis for intervening and regulating the subjective well-being level of teachers in our country.

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    The impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on followers’ job-related outcomes: The mediating role of emotional ex-haustion
    SONG Qi, CHEN Yang
    2021, 53 (8):  890-903.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00890
    Abstract ( 456 )   HTML ( 20 )  
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    Based on the theory of person-environment fit and the transactional model of stress, we discuss the impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on followers’ attitude, behavior, and performance and the mediating role of emotional exhaustion. In this study, we collected data from 150 leaders and 150 followers (Study 1), 50 leaders and 243 followers (Study 2) in two multi-wave, multi-source surveys. We conducted multi-level polynomial regression and response surface analysis to test the hypothesized model. The results of data analyses showed that: (a) the misfit between needed and received empowering leadership was positively and significantly related to followers’ emotional exhaustion; (b) compared with deficient empowerment, followers’ emotional exhaustion was higher when they received excessive empowerment; and (c) followers’ emotional exhaustion mediated the effect of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on followers’ satisfaction with their leaders, organizational citizenship behavior, and job performance.

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    The impact of normative misperception on food waste in dining out: Mechanism analyses and countermeasures
    CHEN Sijing, PU Xueli, ZHU Yue, WANG Hao, LIU Jianwei
    2021, 53 (8):  904-918.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00904
    Abstract ( 454 )   HTML ( 31 )  
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    Normative misperception refers to the cognitive bias between an individual’s normative perception and people’s true views of the behaviors or attitudes of others. The occurrence of normative misperception has been proven to be universal, and it occurs when people mistakenly estimate the benefit of a certain attitude and/or behavior. Scholars have begun to draw on normative misperception to explain humans’ social behavior. However, whether different types of norm misperception (behavioral vs. attitudinal misperception) have different effects on behavior, and whether different normative information (descriptive vs. injunctive normative information) diverges in alleviating the normative misperception and its influence on behavior remain unclear. We also ask whether the theory of impression management could be applied to normative misperception in exploring the psychological mechanism underlying its impact on behavior. The current study aims to address these issues with food waste in dining out as the target behavior.
    Study 1 was a correlational study based a survey carried out among residents from six provinces situated in the western, central, and eastern regions of China. We measured the independent variables (behavioral misperception and attitudinal misperception), dependent variable (food wasting behavior during the most recent eating out), and mediators (three dimensions of impression evaluation: sociability, morality, and competence) with scales developed in previous literature. After excluding outliers and participants who failed the attention check question, we collected 957 valid data. In study 2, two two-factorial experiments (descriptive normative vs. non-normative information in experiment 1; injunctive normative vs. non-normative information in experiment 2) were conducted to test the effects of descriptive (injunctive) normative information on behavioral (attitudinal) misperception. We also ran bootstrap analysis separately for each set of data to determine the relationship among normative information, misperception, impression evaluation, and food wasting behavior.
    The results of study 1 showed that participants tended to overestimate others’ food waste and their approval of wasteful behavior, and both misperceptions had significant positive effects on food waste, implying that these misperceptions not only exist, but also promote people’s food wasting behavior further. The t-test revealed a greater effect on attitudinal misperception as opposed to behavioral misperception on food waste. In addition, as speculated, the sociability dimension of impression evaluation mediated the relationship between both misperceptions and wasteful behavior, whereas the mediating role of morality and competence were not significant. In other words, because participants overestimated others’ wasteful behavior and their degree of approval, they worried that being too economical in public might be considered as being stingy or indecent, and this worry further bred wasteful behavior. Study 2 confirmed the difference between the mechanisms underlying the two types of normative information: descriptive normative information reduced the behavioral misperception itself, creating a new normative perception among the participants and prompting them to switch from complying with the original norm (people generally waste food) to adhering to the new one (people’s wasteful behavior is not as common as imagined), which mitigated misperception’s negative effect on wasteful behavior. On the contrary, injunctive normative information did not decrease the attitudinal misperception itself but rather moderated the relationship between the misperception and behavior: misperception still existed, but its prescriptive power declined.
    The findings of this study highlight the importance of considering the distinction between the two types of normative misperception in social norm campaigns, and suggest two possible ways of correcting people’s normative misperception: providing descriptive normative information to decrease people’s behavioral misperception and providing injunctive normative information to ameliorate attitudinal misperception’s detrimental effect on behavior.

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    The effect of opponent’s emotional facial expressions on individuals’ cooperation and underlying mechanism in prisoner’s dilemma game
    XIONG Chengqing, XU Jiaying, MA Danyang, LIU Yongfang
    2021, 53 (8):  919-932.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00919
    Abstract ( 469 )   HTML ( 30 )  
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    Three experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of the opponent’s happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions on individuals’ cooperative behaviors and the mediating and moderating roles of related variables. The results showed that participants were found to be more cooperative towards happy opponents compared to angry ones, and the expectations of opponents’ cooperation mediated the relationship between emotional facial expressions and participants’ cooperative behaviors (Experiment 1); only under the condition of intuitive decision mode, participants were found to be more cooperative towards happy and neutral opponents compared to angry ones, and the expectations of opponents’ cooperation mediated the relationship between emotional facial expressions and participants’ cooperative behaviors (Experiment 2); only under the condition of time constraint, participants were found to be more cooperative towards happy opponents compared to angry and neutral ones, and the expectations of opponents’ cooperation mediated the relationship between emotional facial expressions and participants’ cooperative behaviors (Experiment 3). Based on these results, a moderated mediation model was established to reveal the complex relationships among emotional facial expressions, expectations of cooperation, cooperative behaviors, and individuals’ decision-making modes.

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