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Conceptual Framework

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Capacity and maintenance mechanism of vibrotactile working memory WANG Chundi, WANG Da-hui 2021, 29 (7):  1141-1148.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01141 Abstract ( 1560 )   HTML ( 114 )   PDF (536KB) ( 2449 )   Working memory (WM) can preserve multiple items at one time with a limited capacity is a key issue in working memory research. WM can be divided into separate sub-systems for different information, and different neural substrates are involved in these working memory systems. While visual and verbal domains of working memory are able to store multiple items, we know little about vibrotactile working memory capacity of frequency. Whether vibrotactile working memory can store more than one stimulus is an important question for the ability to compare vibrotactile working memory to visual and verbal domains of working memory systems. Vibrotactile stimulus and visual stimulus have different neural coding mechanisms, that is extensive electrophysiological recordings have shown a monotonic dependence of monkey prefrontal cortex neurons on parametric vibrotactile frequency in the vibrotactile working memory task. At the same time, vibrotactile frequency is analogy, one-dimensional and parametric information generated by somatic sensation. Therefore, it is necessary to study the capacity of vibrotactile working memory, and reveal its cognitive and neural mechanism. Previous vibrotactile working memory studies typically used the one-item delayed match-to-sample vibrotactile discrimination task: subjects are presented with a vibrotactile frequency (sample) to the fingertip, then a second frequency (probe) is delivered to the same fingertip after a delay period. This standard task is used to examine the vibrotactile working memory of single frequency, but cannot be used to examine vibrotactile working memory of multiple frequencies and its capacity. This study intends to explore the capacity of vibrotactile working memory and how parametric vibrotactile frequency is stored and processed in vibrotactile working memory. Although previous studies provided evidence suggestive of a multi-item storage capacity for working memory processing of vibrotactile frequency, the capacity has not yet been measured for vibrotactile frequency. First of all, different modes of vibratory stimulus presentation and response were used to determine the size of the vibrotactile working memory capacity and its cognitive mechanism. In this study, two basic forms of stimuli presentation were used to test capacity and processing of vibrotactile working memory, i.e., simultaneous and sequential presentation. Then using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we will investigate the neural mechanism of maintenance of vibrotactile working memory. The study of vibrotactile parametric working memory is an important part of working memory model, which will contribute to our understanding of working memory system and lay a foundation for cross-modalities research of visual, auditory and tactile information. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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When will employees report their errors? A perspective from secret revealing framework ZHANG Kaili, YIN Kui, TANG Ningyu 2021, 29 (7):  1149-1162.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01149 Abstract ( 1523 )   HTML ( 87 )   PDF (740KB) ( 1812 )   Errors are not rare in organizations. However, prior studies have mostly focused on error management to highlight the important role of organizations to deal with errors, while overlooking the importance of error detection. Since error detection works as the initial and key step for error management, it is important to investigate how errors are detected in organizations. It has been well acknowledged that external error monitoring and individuals’ proactive error reporting work as two main ways for error detection. External error monitoring is shown by colleagues and system error detection. Colleagues can detect errors by supervising others’ tasks, while systems can monitor errors when data fail to reach or exceed the thresholds. However, colleagues may fail to detect errors when they lack the knowledge about others’ work goals and work schedules, and system monitoring is not designed to monitor every work flow, which leads to some equally important errors go undetected. Hence, individuals’ proactive error reporting behavior become rather important. Focusing on employees’ proactive error reporting behavior, this study tries to show the factors that contributing to employees’ error reporting behavior in organizations. Errors are defined as individuals’ unintentional deviance behavior, which is potentially avoidable. After error commission, individuals tend to hide rather than report errors. Following the above, we treat errors as individuals’ workplace secrets and apply secret revealing framework to build our model. In secret revealing framework, the visibility and severity of secrets would lead to individuals’ emotional (i.e., anxiety) and cognitive stress (i.e., rumination), which then lead them to take secret revealing behavior. In this line, we propose that error characteristics as shown by error visibility and error severity to have positive relationships with employees’ anxiety and rumination. In particular, error visibility describes how easily the errors can be noticed by colleagues, while error severity shows the extent to which the errors can have impact on organizational performance. High error visibility or high error severity can lead to employees’ high anxiety and rumination, which then led to employees’ error reporting behavior. Hence, anxiety and rumination mediate the positive relationships between error characteristics and error reporting behavior. Moreover, we further propose that felt obligation to report, which refers to the evaluations about whether the self should report errors after error commission, can also impact employees’ reactions towards their errors. Specifically, when errors have high visibility or severity, employees will generate high obligation to report to ultimately enhance error reporting behavior. Furthermore, whether will employees take error reporting behavior is also influenced by the context. In secret revealing framework, individual characteristics, the relationship with the partner, and environment can exert important influence on the relationships between secret characteristics and individuals’ secret revealing behavior. In consideration of the error management literature, we come to propose that employees’ personal characteristic - conscientiousness, leadership behavior - leader tolerance, and team climate - team psychological safety moderate the relationships between error characteristics and employees’ anxiety, rumination, and felt obligation to report as well as the indirect relationships between error characteristics and error reporting behavior. In short, applying the secret revealing framework, this study builds an overall framework to show how error characteristics may impact employees’ rumination, anxiety, and felt obligation to report to influence their error reporting behavior; moreover, it shows how individual differences, leadership behavior, and team climate may impact the above relationships to exert influence on employees’ error reporting in organizations. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

Meta-Analysis

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EMMN varies with deviant-standard stimulus pair type and emotion type: Evidence from a meta-analysis study ZENG Xianqing, XU Bing, SUN Bo, YE Jiantong, FU Shimin 2021, 29 (7):  1163-1178.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01163 Abstract ( 1607 )   HTML ( 50 )   PDF (2167KB) ( 1277 )   The automatic detection of facial emotion changes is crucial for survival. Numerous studies using the event-related potential (ERP) technique have found that the amplitude of emotion-related visual mismatch negativity (EMMN) could be used to test the automatic processing of facial emotion. Previous studies suggested that deviant - standard stimulus (D-S) pair (different/same) and emotion type (negative/non- negative) might modulate the EMMN effect, however, the evidence so far was mixed. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis to analyze the findings of 35 studies (involving 721 healthy participants) on EMMN, among them, 26 (K = 43), 30 (K = 50), 22 (K = 24), and 24 (K = 26) studies (Kis the number of effect sizes) were used to analyze early EMMN effect, late EMMN effect, the negative bias of early EMMN effect and EMMN effect. Results showed that: (1) EMMN effects emerged at both the early- (0~200 ms) and late- (200~400 ms) stages, demonstrating that infrequently presented deviant stimulus elicited more negative ERPs at both the early- and late-stages(early: g = -0.66, 95% CI: [-0.77 -0.56]; late:g= -0.61, 95% CI: [-0.76 -0.47]). This suggests that EMMN reflects the probability effect of early- and late- stages emotion-related ERP components; (2) the type of D-S pair moderated the EMMN effect at the early-(Q(1) = 8.58, p < 0.01) but not the late-stages( Q(1) = 2.92, p = 0.09). Specifically, the EMMN effect of different D-S pairs(g = -0.83, 95% CI: [-0.98 -0.68]) was significantly larger than that of the same D-S pairs(g = -0.52, 95% CI: [-0.66 -0.37]) at the early-stage; (3) in the studies of same D-S pairs, the evidence between equiprobable and non-equiprobable paradigm showed no significant differences in EMMN at both stages(early:Q(1) = 1.29, p = 0.26; late: Q(1) = 0.79, p = 0.38); (4) a negative bias was found in both early(g = -0.28, 95% CI: [-0.48 -0.09]) and late EMMN(g = -0.32, 95% CI: [-0.54 -0.10]), i.e., the EMMN elicited by the angry, fearful, angry faces was significantly larger than that of happy faces. These results indicate that the EMMN effect is affected by experimental manipulations such as D-S pair type and emotion type. The influence of D-S pair type on the EMMN effect indicated that a low level of physical information would affect the early EMMN effect, which suggested that we should avoid using the traditional oddball paradigm to study the EMMN effect; In the study of the same D-S pair, the probability difference of D-S pair did not affect the EMMN effect, which indicated that visual refractoriness did not affect the EMMN effect. This suggests that it is feasible to study the EMMN effect by using the reverse oddball paradigm and the equiprobable paradigm. However, more evidence is needed for this conclusion, as the number of studies with the equiprobable(2) is far less than that of non-equiprobable(11). In addition, the EMMN effect is sensitive to emotion type, which negative emotion induces a greater EMMN effect. These results indicate that the EMMN is a crucial electrophysiological index for automatic facial emotion processing. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features: A meta-analysis ZHANG Wen, HU Na, DING Xuechen, LI Junyi 2021, 29 (7):  1179-1194.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01179 Abstract ( 2134 )   HTML ( 197 )   PDF (802KB) ( 2886 )   Rejection sensitivity (RS) refers to the cognitive-affective processing disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to cues of interpersonal rejection (Downey et al., 2004). The developmental model of rejection sensitivity suggests that rejection experience is a disadvantaged environment during the growth process of individuals with borderline personality disorder. Also, forming and maintaining stable interpersonal relationships is human motivation and the basis of physical and mental health. Social rejection is considered as an important negative event in social situations and can be used to measure individual adaption (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Compared with borderline personality disorder, individuals with higher borderline personality features are more universal in our daily life and inclined to perceive rejection and exclusion, which includes marked instability on emotion, interpersonal functioning, identity, and behavior impulsivity (APA, 2013). Previous studies have shown that there is a positive correlation between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality disorder or borderline personality features, which is related to tense and negative interpersonal relationship patterns, negative emotional experience, and so on (Ayduk et al., 2008; Hidalgo et al., 2016; Masland, 2016; Staebler et al., 2011), but the results of those previous empirical studies regarding the relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features are quite different and relatively wide (de Panfilis et al., 2016; Dixon-Gordon et al., 2013; Lazarus et al., 2018). The wide range of correlation coefficients from previous studies may be caused by other potential influencing factors, which should be fully discussed at present (Cavicchioli & Maffei, 2019; Foxhall et al., 2019; Gao et al., 2017). For example, the correlation may be stronger in more immersive laboratory studies than in questionnaires based on imagined situations, when rejection sensitivity is measured (Berenson et al., 2009; Downey & Feldman, 1996; Williams et al., 2007; Wrege et al., 2019); individualism emphasizes that people make friends with more independent choices and pays more attention to personal interests, while collectivist cultures value interpersonal relationships, which may have a stronger correlation (Chen et al., 2018; Falk et al., 2009). Therefore, the present meta-analysis study aims to examine potential factors related to the association between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features, which helps to avoid sample heterogeneity and get more precise and unique results. As mentioned above, the current study aimed at integrating the results of existing research and examining the possible factors related to the relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features through the meta-analysis. Fifty original journal articles that met the inclusion/exclusion requirements were included, including 84 effect sizes, and 7, 400 participants. The homogeneity test indicated heterogeneity of effect sizes. Therefore, we used subgroup analysis and meta-regression to explore how different types of study design, source of the sample, sample type, indices of borderline personality features, and type of rejection sensitivity measurement affect this relationship. The results revealed that (1) the relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features was the strongest in the subgroup of the cross-sectional design, non-European and American samples, mixed subject samples, overall borderline personality feature, and rejection sensitivity measured by questionnaires; (2) participants’ age and the proportion of female participants did not have the significant effect to this relationship in the subgroup with large sample size, namely the cross-sectional design, European and American samples, overall borderline personality feature, and rejection sensitivity measured by questionnaires. This is the first meta-analysis to systematically explore how the underlying moderators have the effect of the relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features, which will advance research in this field. In the future, researchers should pay more attention to explore the predictive relationship between rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features through longitudinal studies, investigate the relationship between different components of rejection sensitivity and borderline personality features, and conduct experiments studies to explore this relationship in China. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

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A meta-analysis of the relationship between the Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors ZHU Yalin, JIN Cancan 2021, 29 (7):  1195-1209.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01195 Abstract ( 2618 )   HTML ( 195 )   PDF (827KB) ( 3230 )   Purpose: The aim of the present study was to use meta-analysis methods to summarize the results of existing studies, explore the relationship between the Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors as a whole, further explore the relationships between the characteristics of the Dark Triad and different types of aggressive behaviors, and explore the relationships therebetween. By exploring the relationships between the Dark Triad and aggression in a comprehensive and in-depth manner, theoretical guidance could be provided for the future intervention of aggression and the Dark Triad, in addition to directions for future research and the discovery of new problems. Methods: Literature on the relationship between the Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors was collected from numerous Chinese and English databases. After literature screening and literature scoring, 87 quantitative studies, 90 independent samples, and 41,273 subjects were included for meta-analysis. First, main effect analysis was conducted to analyze the relationship between the Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors. Second, the adjustment variables were set to investigate whether the relationship between the Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors is affected by the age of the participants, the gender of the participants, the type of the participants, the measurement tools, the measurement methods, the types of aggressive behaviors, the types of literature, the year of the publication, and the background of the culture. Results: The results of the main effect analysis reveal that the relationship between the Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors was positively correlated (r = 0.338~0.405), and the strength of the relationship between Narcissism and aggressive behaviors was significantly weaker than that of Machiavellianism and Psychopathy. The results of the moderating effect analysis reveal that the relationships between different Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors were affected by different factors. To be specific: (1) the relationship between Machiavellianism and aggressive behaviors was affected by the measurement tools of Machiavellianism, type of aggression and age; (2) the relationship between mental illness and aggressive behaviors was affected by the type of literature, cultural background, gender, psychopathic measurement tools, and the type of aggression; (3) the relationship between narcissism and aggressive behaviors was affected by the publication year of the literature, the measurement methods, cultural background, gender, narcissism measurement tools and age; and (4) the relationship between the Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors was affected by the measurement method, cultural background, and literature publication year. Conclusion: Overall, the relationship between the Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors was significantly positive, and the relationship between Narcissism and aggressive behaviors was significantly weaker than the other two dark personalities of the Dark triad. The relationships between different Dark Triad and aggressive behaviors were affected by numerous different factors: (1) Machiavellian subjects were more likely to adopt indirect aggressive behaviors, while Psychopathic subjects were more likely to adopt physical aggressive behaviors; (2) the relationship between aggression and the Dark Triad in Southeast Asia was significantly stronger than that in North America, and the relationship between aggression and the Dark Triad in North America was significantly stronger than that in Western Europe; and (3) the relationship between male aggression and the Dark Triad was significantly stronger than that between female aggression and the Dark Triad. Future researches can further investigate the structure of the Dark Triad in combination with oriental culture. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

Research Reports

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Continuum effect in assimilation process of facial attractiveness HOU Wenxia, TIAN Xinran, LIU Lizhi, YI Bing, OU Yuxiao, CHEN Wenfeng, SHANG Junchen 2021, 29 (7):  1210-1215.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01210 Abstract ( 2026 )   HTML ( 85 )   PDF (443KB) ( 1710 )   Previous studies showed that the attractiveness rating of a face was influenced by context face, which may lead the evaluation to be closer to or far away from the attractiveness of the context, known as assimilation effect or contrast effect. It suggests the influence of context face on target attractiveness evaluation varies and needs to further clarify how it happens. However, there are two problems remain to be solved according to the manner on how the assimilation effect is calculated in previous studies. Firstly, the calculation method of assimilation effect is based on a relative standard by comparing attractiveness ratings of target faces between different contexts (i.e., T1 vs T2), which ignores the initial attractiveness of target face (T0) presented alone. This might lead to an illusive assimilation effect, where both T1 and T2 are far away from T0 and is actually a contrast effect. Secondly, there is a change of assimilation effect associated with the change of target-context difference if an illusive assimilation effect is true. But the change of target-context difference is ignored in previous studies, and how it impact on the attractiveness rating of target face remains unlcear. In this study, the assimilation effect was calculated based on an absolute standard by comparing attractiveness ratings of target faces with their initial attractiveness rated without context. In the experiment, the medium attractive faces was chosen as target face and high-attractive faces as context faces, and the attractiveness difference between the target and the context was changed in a consecutive way. A within-participant design was adopted with the attractiveness difference between the target and the context and exposure time as independent variables. The results found that under highly attractive context faces, individuals' attractiveness ratings of medium target were increased to be closer to the context, resulted in an assimilation effect. In particular, we found the assimilation effect was changed with the attractiveness difference between the target and the context, called the continuum effect in assimilation process. More interestingly, an illusive contrast effect would be concluded if comparing attractiveness ratings between different context without considering th initial attractiveness rating (i.e., a relative standard). That is, the assimilation effect might be mistaken as a contrast effect in previous studies. In addition, the exposure time affected the evaluation of facial attractiveness, and individuals were more inclined to overestimate facial attractiveness in short time. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

Regular Articles

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Attention bias to faces in infants and toddlers: Inborn predispositions and developmental changes JING Wei, ZHANG Jie, FU Jinxia, TIAN Lin, ZHAO Wei 2021, 29 (7):  1216-1230.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01216 Abstract ( 1749 )   HTML ( 94 )   PDF (733KB) ( 2236 )   Typically developing (TD) infants show an inborn predisposition to pay attention to faces from birth—that TD infants detect more quickly and fixate longer on faces compared with objects. This innate facial attention bias steadily exists in different stimulus situations at different developmental stages, and shows a rapid growth tendency after a short-term decline between the 4th and 6th weeks in the first year of life.The short-term decline may reflect the inhibitory effect of the initial function from the cortical network on the innate sub-cortical system during the critical period wherein TD infants’ visual attention transit from sub-cortical control to cortical control. After this critical transition, with the gradually maturation of the function of the domain-general frontal-parietal attention control cortical network, TD infants’ ability to suppress interference information and selectively pay attention to specific visual targets gradually enhances. Therefore, the role of visual salience in TD infants’ visual attention patterns is gradually declining with increasing age. With the continuous accumulation of face visual experience, the gradually formed face-specific cortical network strengthens TD infants’ preferentially selective response to faces, the role of the social salience on TD infants’ visual attention patterns continues to increase with increasing age. The two factors mentioned before work together to promote facial attention bias in TD infants. Taking the developmental trajectory of TD infants’ facial attention bias as a reference, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) infants possess an initial innate predisposition to facial attention, but they gradually deviate from the normal track during the critical period of facial cortex development, and ultimately exhibit facial attention impairments around 1 year old. After infancy, there exist still disputes with regard to whether ASD individuals show facial attention impairments in simple stimulus arrays, but they exhibit less facial attention in complex social scenes than TD individuals. This is probably due to the fact that congenital perceptual attention impairments cause ASD individuals not to flexibly switch their attention between different stimuli. They are more likely to “lock” or “fixate” their attention on non-social stimuli with more salient perceptual characteristics in the visual environment. At the same time, due to the abnormal function of the social reward system, ASD individuals fail to recognize the social reward value of faces and lack social motivation to pay attention on faces. As a result, the innate predisposition to pay attention to faces cannot be reinforced promptly. For ASD infants at a critical period of facial cortical development, these two impairments both cause atypical early visual perception learning, which reduce the input of facial visual experience and hinder the professional development of face-selective areas. As a result, in the allocation of visual attention resources in ASD individuals, the role of the visual salience fail to decrease with increasing age, while the role of the social salience fail to increase with increasing age. Future research should explore the origin of the congenital predisposition of facial attention in neonates by using genetic methods and near-infrared brain imaging technology, and systematically investigate the influence of perceptual and social characteristics on the development track of face attention in high-risk infants with ASD to identify the potential mechanism of facial attention impairments. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Auditory temporal processing deficits in developmental dyslexia WANG Runzhou, BI Hongyan 2021, 29 (7):  1231-1238.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01231 Abstract ( 1421 )   HTML ( 68 )   PDF (602KB) ( 1660 )   Developmental dyslexia is a neurological disorder characterized by a specific deficit in reading, despite adequate intelligence and socioeconomic opportunity. A large number of studies have revealed that dyslexics usually exhibit impaired auditory temporal processing. At the behavioral level, dyslexics struggle to discriminate the sequence of rapid and successive stimuli as well as dynamical temporal characteristics. At the neural level, dyslexics evoke weaker mismatch negativity (MMN) and have abnormal neural synchronization. These deficits have been found in the processing of both verbal and non-verbal stimuli, suggesting that such deficits are not specific to speech processing. However, the auditory temporal-order processing deficits of dyslexia are manifested in the processing of both rapidly and slowly presented auditory stimuli. Besides, dyslexic children have more abnormal neural synchronization in low-frequency temporal modulation, and dyslexic adults have more abnormal neural synchronization in high-frequency temporal modulation. Therefore, auditory temporal processing deficits of dyslexia seem to occur not only in a narrow temporal window, but also in a wider temporal window. The developmental characteristics of dyslexia may also imply that the temporal window of auditory temporal processing deficits will narrow with age. Moreover, only the neural mechanism of dyslexics while distinguishing deviant auditory temporal stimuli has been examined in previous studies, and there is still a lack of research, such as the neural mechanism of more general auditory temporal processing and the changing process of such a neural mechanism over time. In summary, the following questions need to be elucidated in further studies. 1) The temporal windows in which auditory temporal processing deficits occur in dyslexia, and how will they change with age. It is generally known that different temporal windows (e.g., 40 ~ 4000 ms) correspond to different levels of language abstractions (e.g., phonetic feature, segment, syllable, word, metrical foot and prosodic phrase), and the cross-language phonological awareness is developed from larger-grained phonological units (such as stressed syllables) to smaller granular phonetic units (such as phonemes). Based on this, it can be inferred that the auditory temporal processing deficits of developmental dyslexia may only exist in temporal windows corresponding to language abstractions, which may gradually narrow with age. In the future, a cross-sectional and longitudinal study can be implemented to investigate this question. 2) What is the neural time course of auditory temporal processing deficits in dyslexia. N1, P2, CNV (contingent negative variation) and LPCt (late positive component of timing) correspond to selective attention, cognitive resource allocation, temporal encoding and temporal discrimination of the temporal processing, respectively. However, the current electrophysiological studies have only confirmed the existence of auditory temporal processing deficits among dyslexics through mismatch negativity waves, while the processing stage in which the auditory temporal deficits occur has not been ascertained. Aftertime, event-related potential (ERP) technology with a high temporal resolution can be used to explore this question. 3) Whether auditory temporal processing deficits are core causes of dyslexia. Previous studies have shown that dyslexics are also accompanied by deficits in attention and working memory, while the effects brought by differences in their attention and working memory were not excluded from tasks such as temporal order judgment (TOJ) used in previous studies. Control conditions can be set in future studies to explore whether auditory temporal processing deficits are the primary deficits that cause developmental dyslexia. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The neural mechanisms of developmental motor disorders in children with autism spectrum disorder WANG Lin, WANG Zhidan, WANG Hongjing 2021, 29 (7):  1239-1250.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01239 Abstract ( 1785 )   HTML ( 100 )   PDF (797KB) ( 1996 )   Developmental motor disorders, one of common features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are significantly related to the social deficits and the severity of core symptoms of ASD. Previous studies have gradually confirmed that developmental motor disorders are a part of the overall brain dysfunction in children with ASD and share the common neural basis with the core symptoms of ASD. Through a systematic review of the neuroscience literature, we found that the neural mechanism of developmental motor disorders in children with ASD included changes in neurobiochemical mechanisms, fundamental parts of brain structure and brain function mechanisms. Firstly, the neurobiochemical mechanism involved the alteration in the concentration of GABA and of 5-HT, and the abnormal expression of GABA-related protein and of shank protein. The alteration in the concentration of GABA was related to the abnormality of cortical inhibitory function that stimulated sense and motor. The abnormal expression of shank protein was related to cerebellar motor dysfunction. The alteration in the concentration of 5-HT and the abnormal expression of shank protein were related to motor learning difficulty. Secondly, fundamental parts of brain structure involved abnormalities in the structure of the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and corpus callosum. The abnormality in the structure of cerebellum hindered the ability of motor adaptability and motor learning. The abnormality in the structure of basal ganglia was related to motor control problems and gait deviation. The abnormality in the structure of corpus callosum was likely to affect the development of motor coordination. Thirdly, the brain function mechanisms involved the abnormalities in cerebellar activation, cortical-cerebellar circuits and brain connections, and lateralization of brain function. The abnormality in cerebellar activation explained the motor execution difficulty. The abnormality in cortical-cerebellar circuits was related to the difficulty in forming complex movement patterns during motor learning. The lateralization of brain function might be the basis of the gross motor development. The abnormal brain connections were related to the motor execution difficulty, the motor coordination disorder, and the sensory-motor dysfunction. Overall, The above three mechanisms did not operate independently, but to be an interconnected organic entity. Specifically, the neurobiochemical mechanisms led to not only the defects of the development of the central nervous system, but also the synaptic excitation/ inhibition imbalance, thus in turn resulting in the changes of the functional connectivity between cerebellum and motor cortex in children with ASD. The fundamental parts of brain structure had a negative impact on the whole-brain connectivity in children with ASD. The former two together triggered the brain function mechanisms of children with ASD, which ultimately resulted in developmental motor disorders. Besides, the common neural basis shared by the developmental motor disorders and the core symptoms of ASD mainly included the mirror neuron dysfunction, the abnormalities of the thalamus, the basal ganglia, the cerebellum and the mutations of SLC7A5 and PTEN in children with ASD: social and motor deficits of ASD might be caused by the abnormality in the mirror neuron system; the abnormalities of the thalamus, the basal ganglia, and the cerebellum were related not only to the developmental motor disorders, but also to the core symptoms of ASD; the mutations of SLC7A5 and PTEN were expected to serve as a breakthrough linking social deficits and developmental motor disorders in the field of genetics. Future research are expected to focus on other neurotransmitters closely related to motor, such as acetylcholine and dopamine, to explore the dynamic mechanism and formation of the neural network of developmental motor disorders, and to analyze the interaction between the underlying neural mechanisms of developmental motor disorders and that of core symptoms of autism. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

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How does sleep affect creative problem-solving: An interpretation based on memory reorganization WANG Zhengyu, HU Jinsheng 2021, 29 (7):  1251-1263.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01251 Abstract ( 2117 )   HTML ( 130 )   PDF (622KB) ( 2983 )   Memory reorganization is a necessary step in creative problem-solving. Sleep boosts creative problem-solving by promoting memory reorganization. Studies have shown that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep mainly facilitates novel associations, which occur mainly in the neocortex, while non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep facilitates the abstraction of rules, the formation of relational memory, and the integration of memories, which occur mainly in the hippocampus. Although the effect of sleep on creative problem-solving has been documented in most studies, there are still studies that have not yielded positive results. For example, firstly, aging is often characterized by substantial changes in sleep architecture, which results in sleep can not significantly promote creative problem-solving in older adults. Secondly, when memories are reactivated during sleep, the effect of sleep on creative problem-solving are enhanced, compared to sleep without manipulating memories. Thirdly, when facing with thinking set, it is necessary to decompose problem elements into their constituent parts, and then actively reorganize them. Sleep does not support the process of decomposition, so it has no significant effect on the resolution of these problems. Several factors have been shown to moderate the effect of sleep on creative problem-solving; these include sleep structure changes, the manipulation of information processing during sleep, and task types. In the existing theoretical mechanisms, complementary learning systems model suggests that memory reorganization is caused by the transfer of information from the hippocampus to the neocortex. Events experienced during wakefulness are initially encoded in the hippocampus, which is a temporary store. During NREM sleep, memories newly encoded into the hippocampus are repeatedly reactivated and thereby become gradually redistributed to the long-term store (i.e., the neocortex). This hippocampal-neocortical dialogue leads to memory consolidation and reorganization. Spreading activation theory suggests that sleep boosts creative problem-solving most likely via spreading activation. Increased spreading activation during REM leads to a larger associative network being activated. This will expand the problem space and highlight novel connections. In addition, synaptic homeostasis hypothesis emphasizes that sleep may benefit memory reorganization by renormalizing synaptic strength to restore cellular homeostasis after net synaptic potentiation during waking. To be specific, synapses in overlapping memories get multiple activations during waking. The stronger the overlap, the more the synapses are activated. When the synapses shrink during sleep, the more activated synapses are likely to be retained, thus preserving overlapping memories and helping to extract the rules of the problem. Recently, some scholars integrated the above theories and proposed the BiOtA model. The model proposes that the iterative alternation between memory replay in REM and NREM boosts the formation of complex knowledge frameworks, and allows these frameworks to be restructured, thus facilitating creative problem-solving. The overlapping memory replay in NREM selectively strengthens shared memories, abstracts the information into the neocortex. In REM, memory representation learned during NREM period are replayed in the neocortex. Such overlapping memory replay in REM will provide a more compressed and thus more abstracted memory representation. Future studies should broaden the scope of research by transforming problem types. Problems frequently encountered in the real world are often much more complex and mainly ill structured. Ill-defined problems may appropriately capture real-world cognitive functioning, therefore they are more worth studying than well-defined problems. Moreover, efforts should be focused on emotional memory and the cross-modal transfer of memories during sleep to deepen the mechanism research. When the problem is difficult to solve, individuals may produce negative emotional memories of the problem, so that the problem-related memories are more strongly activated during sleep, triggering the priority reorganization of them, and thus promoting creative problem-solving. It is necessary to explore the role of emotional memory in the effect of sleep on creative problem-solving. In addition, in the current study, more attention has been paid to the effect of sleep on the reorganization of memory information in single modality. Information gleaned in one modality is potentially useful in other modalities, the cross-modal transfer can further boost creative problem-solving. Therefore, it is necessary to study the effect of sleep on cross-modal transfer to extend the existing mechanism. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Evolutionary continuity and origin explanation of syntax YIN Rong, ZHAO Jia 2021, 29 (7):  1264-1278.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01264 Abstract ( 1065 )   HTML ( 21 )   PDF (720KB) ( 1407 )   Syntax refers to the phenomenon that an organism is able to form a new high-level language unit from several relatively low-level language units based on certain rules, it is an important characteristic of human communication system that distinguishes humans from other animals. According to the saltation view, syntax is the ability developed by human ancestors alone after the differentiation with other primates in evolution. In the history of human evolution, there is no pre- syntax stage. The gradual view holds that syntax has an evolutionary continuity in the primate lineage. Although the brain systems responsible for complex syntax processing are unique to humans, the sequential learning that underlies syntax processing can be traced back to older primates, but it has been further enhanced in humans. The ability of sequence learning to extract, summarize and generalize the abstract structural relations among multiple stimuli is an important cognitive basis for human to implement syntax processing. Numerous studies have shown that in artificial grammar tasks, many species of primate can summarize and master the sequence of stimuli. There has been a gradual evolution in sequence processing between other primates and humans. Comparative studies from neurobiology suggest that the neural mechanisms that support serial order processing and simple grammar stem from the more ancient brain regions that humans share with other primates. It is these brain regions that allow other primates to understand and master ordering in artificial grammatical tasks. The neural mechanisms that support hierarchical structure processing and complex grammar come from areas of the brain that are unique to humans and emerged much later in evolution. So though complex grammar is not present in other primate communication systems, the sequence learning on which human syntactic processing depend stems from a cognitive mechanism that has existed in the evolutionary history of primates. The gradual view poses a challenge to the explanation of the origins of syntax: if simple sequential processing is common to primates, why should it be that only humans have evolved complex grammatical mechanisms based on it? Several hypotheses have tried to answer this question. The Lexical Limitation Hypothesis suggests that the emergence of unique syntax in humans stems from the growth of vocabulary. This theory emphasizes the pressure exerted on the evolution of grammatical mechanisms by ‘information content’, that is, the expansion of expressed content leads to structured language. The Event Perception Hypothesis holds that syntax originated from the way organisms mentally perceive and represent natural events. According to this theory, syntax is the product of the co-evolution of human event coding system and expression system. The Self-Domestication Hypothesis holds that syntax evolved from self-domestication. Offensive language can belittle your competitors and show your strengths at the same time. In the process of human self-domestication, verbal aggression gradually replaced physical aggression and became an alternative means of social competition. This shift, in turn, imposes feedback and evolutionary demands on language itself, leading to the emergence of syntax and complex language forms. These theories discuss the evolutionary origin of grammar from different perspectives, but all of them have insufficient explanatory power. In the field of language evolution research, no theory has been able to fully answer the question of the origin of human syntax. In fact, it is not necessarily a single factor that has dominated syntax evolution. For example, self-domestication reduces interpersonal conflict and increases the frequency of mutual learning, communication and cooperation, thus creating a favorable environment for more knowledge sharing and information dissemination. Complex language allows community members to communicate with each other on interpersonal relationships, thus forming positive feedback on intimate relationships and cooperative alliances. Diversified social interaction makes human beings have a unique tendency of event perception. It was the interaction of different factors at different times that led to the eventual development of mature syntax mechanism in humans. Future research should clarify whether the neural mechanisms found in artificial grammar tasks are common processors for hierarchical processing in all fields, and further explore the relationship between syntactic processing and semantic processing. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The effects of prosocial spending on subjective well-being and its mechanism CUI Xinyue, LI Bin, HE Ruwan, ZHANG Shuying, LEI Li 2021, 29 (7):  1279-1290.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01279 Abstract ( 3543 )   HTML ( 329 )   PDF (698KB) ( 4497 )   While prosocial behavior has long been concerned by researchers, many recent studies have focused on prosocial spending. Prosocial spending refers to spending money on others in the form of gifts or charitable donations. Compared with other prosocial behaviors, spending money on others is less time needed and more popular in the online environment. Prosocial spending not only benefits the recipient but also exerts a positive effect on the giver’s subjective well-being. We would discuss some important aspects which have been explored in the relationship between prosocial spending and subjective well-being. First of all, the effect of prosocial spending on subjective well-being depends on the type of recipient (individual vs. organization or society at large). Secondly, this effect has been proved to cultural universality and cultural persistence. Prosocial spending is relatively immune to the effects of hedonic adaptation, because people’s daily life affords numerous opportunities for they to spend money on others, which potentially providing frequent small doses of joy. Moreover, the mechanism underlying this effect could be explained by several theories, which include self-determination theory, social norm theory, evolution theory and social exchange theory. According to self-determination theory, prosocial spending promotes people’s subjective well-being through satisfied with the fundamental human needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Specifically, prosocial spending provides an opportunity for people to make a meaningful impact, which is potentially satisfying the human need for competence. It can also enhance people’s feelings of social connection, therefore satisfying the human need for relatedness. And people would derive more happiness from prosocial spending when they have an autonomous motivation for helping. According to social norm theory, most others would approve of a person's conduct when people compliance with social norms. Because prosocial spending is driven by a desire to adhere to social norms, then individuals can maintain a positive self-concept and improve their own happiness levels by this way. According to evolutionary theory, people tend to be happier when their prosocial spending on relatives rather than unrelated individuals. At the same time, prosocial spending can also be explained by the model of reciprocal altruism. Spending money to benefit others can leave a good impression, such that people may improve their social status and reputation, and thereby enhance individual subjective well-being. According to the social exchange theory, when individuals spending money on others, they make a cost-benefit analysis based on their own values. And the giver can get happiness as emotional rewards after the prosocial spending even they don’t get a material benefit from the recipient. Additionally, both internal and external factors influence the relationship between prosocial spending and subjective well-being. External factors such as culture would make an impact on them, because define of subjective well-being and prosocial behavior is different between differetial cultures. And the goals of prosocial spending would also influence this effect. People would benefit more postive affect from specifical goal other than fuzzy goal in their prosocial spending. Internal factors include individual motivations and their understanding of happiness. When people doing the prosocial spending is driven by their own internal motivation (vs. Internal motivation), it is more likely to promote the subjective well-being. In general, this research underscores the value of prosocial spending is not only helping others, but also is improving their own subjective well-being. This finding can change the individual's stereotypes of spending that is loss, and it can even motivate people to actively participate in more prosocial activities, thus to make great contributions to people’s happy life and the construction of a harmonious society. Future studies should focus on examining the boundary conditions of the effect, exploring the long-term positive effects of prosocial spending, and improving the ecological validity of research on prosocial spending. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Negative discounting in intertemporal choice SUN Hongyue, LU Pan, JIANG Yuanping 2021, 29 (7):  1291-1299.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01291 Abstract ( 2055 )   HTML ( 119 )   PDF (585KB) ( 2082 )   Mainstream models on intertemporal choice assume that a temporal discounting process occurs when people choose between outcomes occurring at different times in an intertemporal choice. Economists and psychologists have proposed a series of models to describe the intertemporal decision-making behavior. Whether it is the initial discounting utility model or the later hyperbolic model, etc., the hypothesis of time discounting has been upheld, which refers to people’s tendency to discount the value of delayed outcomes by the amount of time one must wait for them, thereby reducing the subjective value of these future outcomes. However, there is a phenomenon that fundamentally deviates from the discounting family model—the negative discounting phenomenon. The emergence of negative discounting challenges the time discounting hypothesis held by mainstream intertemporal decision-making models. The current researches on intertemporal choice pay little attention to the negative discounting phenomenon. Its related researches mainly concentrated in the early stage and that on its influencing factors and internal mechanism are even poorer. This article systematically sorted out the phenomenon of negative discounting, which was found in money and non-money domains with benefits and losses. There is a certain percentage of negative discounting phenomenon in every domain, which may be underestimated. Researchers need to pay more attention to this phenomenon in the future and find more by modifying the decision-making paradigm. This article also elaborated on the possible explanation mechanism—anticipated emotions. The negative discounting phenomenon in the domain of gain and loss can be explained by "anticipated savoring" and "anticipated dread" respectively. However, there are few empirical studies on the mechanism of negative discounting. Future research should combine eye tracking and fMRI technology to further explore the mechanism and enrich researches on the influencing factors of the negative discounting, such as individual characteristics and option characteristics. Currently, researchers mostly explored intertemporal choice behavior under the framework of time discounting hypothesis. However, it will help us better understand intertemporal choice and further improve the intertemporal decision model to explore the internal mechanism and influencing factors of the negative discounting. Moreover, in certain situations of gains or losses, the phenomenon of negative discounting will benefit individuals’ mental health as well as social harmony. Therefore, it is of great social significance to formulate a boosting strategy to facilitate the emergence of the negative discounting phenomenon. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Inspiration of Bayesian decision theory for action anticipation in complex decision making in sports: Taking tennis and soccer as examples WANG Ze-Jun, CHU Xin-Yu 2021, 29 (7):  1300-1312.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01300 Abstract ( 2773 )   HTML ( 130 )   PDF (1047KB) ( 2174 )   The study of sports decision making is a significant field of cognitive psychology in sports. Sports decision making is characterized by less available information, greater time pressure and uncertainty of the outcome. While athletes are under great time pressure and have to make decisions quickly, they tend to use intuitive decision making. The core of sport decision making is action anticipation, which is usually thought to be influenced by kinematic and non-kinematic factors. Considering that athletes use and rely on two kind of information simultaneously in sports decision making, one of the key issues in the study of action anticipation is to explore the contribution of diverse information sources to the expectation of action outcome and the interaction between them. Therefore, some researchers try to use Bayesian decision theory to explain the integration of different information and analyze how athletes make the optimal choice in complex competition environments in sports. Due to athletes have time pressure in complex competition environments, Bayesian sport decision theory provides a basic framework for how to better combine opponent's (visual) kinematic information in real-time with non-kinematic (contextual) information. On the one hand, Bayesian decision theory is composed of Bayesian statistics and decision theory, which can be used to explain the two psychological processes of sport decision making, that is, action anticipation and action selection response, respectively. When integrating multiple information sources, the uncertainty of information sources is used to weigh the influence of different ones, so as to generate an ideal decision. On the other hand, athletes may use heuristics approximation to make decision quickly. Heuristics approximation assumes that athletes may choose to switch between kinematic and non-kinematic information according to the degree of uncertainty of diverse information sources in competition under time pressure, thus improving the efficiency of sport decision making. Then judgement utility disrupts the integration of contextual priors and kinematic information, which results in decreased impact of explicit contextual priors during action anticipation. Put in Bayesian terms, the weighted average of the reliability conveyed by contextual prior and current sources of information is convolved with the utility values assigned to possible judgements. Therefore, a fundamental aspect of Bayesian theory is that our ultimate judgements are affected by both the reliability of available information and the potential costs and rewards associated with inaccurate and accurate judgements. At first, this review discusses the diverse information sources affected the effect of action anticipation in detail, and then illustrates the potential application of Bayesian decision theory in the field of tennis and soccer field in which inspired by Bayesian decision model research, respectively. This review also discusses the basic framework of Bayesian decision theory from the perspectives of Bayesian decision theory and heuristic approximation, and tries to construct Bayesian sports decision theory to explain complex decision making in sports. As a result, more empirical studies are needed to improve the decision making in sports under the Bayesian framework in the future, which may be beneficial to improve the ability of decision making in athletes in competition. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics

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I am gifted! Perceived overqualification and its influence on employees LI Pengbo, CHEN Limei, CHU Fulei, SUN Yuqing, ZHOU Ying 2021, 29 (7):  1313-1330.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2021.01313 Abstract ( 6824 )   HTML ( 190 )   PDF (941KB) ( 3760 )   Perceived overqualification refers to one’s perception of possessing more education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities than the required job qualifications. Overqualification is a common phenomenon in organizations and has gradually become a hot topic in the research of organizational behavior. After years of development and accumulation, existing research has conducted in-depth discussions on the connotation, measurement, effects and situational factors of employees’ perceived qualification, and formed a relatively complete knowledge map; however, in terms of the construct itself and the effects of perceived overqualification, existing research still holds different views and inconsistent conclusions, and needs to be improved in future studies. What is perceived overqualification? How to measure it? What kinds of negative effects does it have on employees? What are the situational factors of these negative effects? Does it only have negative effects? What are the theoretical mechanisms behind these effects? Based on these questions, this paper systematically sorts out and deeply analyzes the existing studies, and the results show that: (1) perceived overqualification reflects employees’ subjective perception of overqualification, and existing research has not yet achieved consensus on its dimensions and all measurements are developed based on western context; (2) perceived overqualification can negatively influence employees’ work attitudes, behavior and performance, as well as their physical and mental health, through affecting their cognitive feelings and emotional experience. Furthermore, these negative effects can be enhanced, weakened or even eliminated under the influence of different employees’ personal traits (e.g., personality, need orientation, values, cognitive evaluation, etc.) and different situations (e.g., organizational practice, team relationship, leadership style, work-related characteristics, etc.); (3) in addition to the negative effects, perceived qualification also has a positive effect, U-shaped effect or inverted U-shaped effect on some positive outcomes, such as employees’ proactive behavior, in-role performance, creative performance and so forth. (4) human capital theory, person-job fit theory, relative deprivation theory, equity theory, psychological contract theory, and conservation of resource theory are the main theories to explain the negative influences of perceived overqualification, whereas self-categorization theory, self-verification theory, and self-regulation theory are the ones to explain its positive influences. On the basis of the above research findings, this paper proposes the following four important research directions for future research on perceived overqualification: (1) future research can conduct more extensive and in-depth surveys on Chinese employees and take its root in Chinese context to clarify the connotation and structure of perceived overqualification, explore and develop a more clearly structured scale of perceived overqualification with higher reliability and validity that can reflect Chinese context; (2) future research can overcome the limitation of existing research that focuses on the individual level, and pay more attention to perceived overqualification on the team level, optimizing its measurement and examining its multi-level effects on the team-level and individual-level outcomes; (3) future research can explore the influence of perceived overqualification on employees and its mechanisms from a more integrated perspective. In particular, future research can build a parallel mediation model to compare the mechanism and intensity of negative and positive effects of perceived overqualification, and to explore the boundary conditions of these two different effects; (4) future research can examine the changing process and influencing factors of perceived overqualification from a more dynamic perspective. Besides, future research can take into consideration other important factors, such as external uncertainty, and explore the effect based on a longer time frame to capture its long-term trend. Figures and Tables | References | Related Articles | Metrics