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The Effect of Repeated Exposure on the Picture Preference Bias of Source Monitoring ZHU Lei,GUO Xiu-Yan,YANG Zhi-Liang 2010, 42 (06):  633-639.  Abstract ( 1664 )   PDF (365KB) ( 3316 )   People often rely on formal knowledge as well as experience about how memory works when evaluating the source of remembered information (Johnson, Raye, Foley, & Foley, 1981; Johnson, 1997). Such reliance may lead to the picture preference bias, a tendency to misattribute perceived words as pictures rather than misattributing perceived pictures as words in a word-picture monitoring task (Foley, Durso, Wilder, & Friedman, 1991; Riefer, Hu, & Batchelder, 1994; Foley, 1998). Previous research has suggested that picture preference bias in source monitoring may have played a role in the misinformation effect in eyewitness memory research. In the present study, the effect of repeated exposure on the picture preference bias was examined in a standard source monitoring paradigm. A 2 (Item type: word vs. picture) × 2 (Exposure: once vs. twice) × 2 (Test: source monitoring vs. recognition) within-subjects design was employed. The participants studied 144 words or pictures either once or twice during the study phase. They then completed a mixed source monitoring and recognition test. The results revealed a significant interaction between source misattribution type and exposure so that the picture preference bias emerged only after repeated exposure: The error of misattributing perceived words to pictures was significantly higher than that of misattributing pictures to words in the repeated exposure condition, but not in the one exposure condition. Findings from the present study suggest that attempting to enhance eyewitness memory by repeatedly exposing the witnesses to the remnants of the original event could be counterproductive. Related Articles | Metrics

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Age-related Declines in Prospective Memory: Modulation of the Prospective and Retrospective Components CHEN Si-Yi,ZHOU Ren-Lai 2010, 42 (06):  640-650.  Abstract ( 1761 )   PDF (342KB) ( 2262 )   Prospective memory (PM) is defined as remembering to remember or remembering to perform an intended action, which requires to form and later realize intentions that must be delayed for minutes, hours, or days, such as remembering to take medication with a meal, or to turn off the stove after cooking. Prospective memory is important in our everyday life, especially to those old people with declined (i.e., less efficient) cognitive functions. Better prospective memory performance can help old people maintain their independent lives and improve their quality of life. So the present study focused on the age difference in an event-based prospective memory task. Regarding the internal mechanism of age differences in PM, two contradictive perspectives were proposed: the age deficits exist in prospective component VS in retrospective component. Noticing-search model (Einstein & McDaniel, 1996) suggested that the PM deficit in old people came from the searching process. On the other hand, Smith and Bayen (2006) applied a formal multinomial processing tree model of PM and indicated that the deficit existed in the process of recognizing target cues, which was resource-demanding. The present study evaluated the two perspectives and further investigated the related cognitive mechanism using a classic paradigm where the prospective memory task was embedded in a semantic categorization task. 60 young (29 females) and 60 old adults (26 females) participated experiment 1 voluntarily. The experiment compared the effect of age on the prospective component and the retrospective component of PM, manipulating semantic relatedness between cue and intention, and the distinctiveness of the cue. Young adults performed better than old adults in both the prospective component and retrospective component, but the effect size of age was larger in prospective component. When the relatedness was high or the cue was distinctive, old adults performed as well as young adults, however, it showed age deficits when the relatedness was low or the cue was indistinguishable.These findings suggest that both data-driven and conceptually driven processes can improve old people’s memory for intentions greatly. Another 68 young (37 females) and 68 old adults (46 females) participated in Experiment 2. The experiment examined the effect of prospective component on the age difference in prospective memory by reducing the demand of retrospective component and manipulating the cognitive resources of prospective memory. Main effect of age, the distractive level of divided attention and the distinctiveness of the target cue were all found in the accuracy of prospective memory. Both the response time of ongoing and PM tasks had a significant decline in the older adults compared to the young ones. Significant age deficits were found when the target was indistinguishable. And the high distractive level task made old adults’ performance even worse. To be summarized, the aging of PM is modulated both by data-driven and conceptually driven processes. Compared to retrospective component, the age effect in PM is greater on the prospective component. The cognitive load in the task influences the age effect in PM since the prospective component is resource-demanding. The age effect is more obvious when the PM task needs more strategic control than automatically processed. These results further reveal the cause of the reasons for age differences in prospective memory. Related Articles | Metrics

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Processing Lexical Tones and Emotional Tones in Precategorical Acoustic Storage QIN Wei-Wei,LIU Si-Yun,YANG Li,ZHOU Zong-Kui 2010, 42 (06):  651-662.  Abstract ( 1201 )   PDF (458KB) ( 2040 )   Precategorical acoustic storage (PAS) is described as a limited capacity buffer store in which acoustic traces are overwritten by successive auditory events. The goal of this study is to extend the function of PAS by investigating whether the recency effect and the suffix effect could also be found when Mandarin lexical tones and emotional tones are recalled in a serial order. Four experiments were conducted. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to recall lexical tones in a serial order. In these experiments, the recency effect and the suffix effect were found. In Experiments 3 and 4, emotional tones were required to be recalled in a serial order. Both effects were also found. The results of our current study suggest that lexical tones and emotional tones are represented independently in PAS, but their representation status is affected by the attributes of suffix. The results also implied that representations of Mandarin pitch patterns were not as stable as segmental fragments, revealing their special status in short-term memory processing. A serial of lexical tones served as experimental stimuli in Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiment 1, 20 undergraduates were required to give immediate serial recall of the lexical tones presented auditorily via speech. In Experiment 2, a suffix was presented at the end of each serial of lexical tones. Another 20 undergraduates were asked to verbally report the serial as soon as the suffix disappeared. In that lexical tones have a close relationship with vowels, four types of suffixes were prepared at the end of each serial and were further compared with the results of Experiment 1. The results of the two experiments indicated that lexical tones, regardless of suffix type, showed a similar recency effect and suffix effect as vowels in serial recall performance. These findings imply a representation in PAS. A serial of emotional tones served as experimental stimuli in Experiments 3 and 4, which aimed to discover whether emotional tones also show the recency effect and the suffix effect, thus represented in PAS as well. The suffix in Experiment 4 was either consistent or inconsistent with the final item’s emotional information. The results of Experiment 3 indicated that emotional tones reveal a recency effect in the serial recall task. The results of Experiment 4 were compared with those of Experiment 3, and it was found that emotional tones had the suffix effect only when the emotional information of the suffix was inconsistent with that of the final item. The relationship between the suffix and the final item may be a critical factor that causes the suffix effect. Our results are consistent with the notion that PAS, as a sensory memory system, is a storage that can represent and process various aspects of speech information in a similar way. Further implications of our findings are also discussed in terms of specific attributes of lexical tones and emotional tones. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effects of Verb’s Trait of Continuance and Adverb of Instantaneous Time about Representation of Events of Temporal Shifts in Chinese Text Readin TONG Yu-Guang,ZHANG Qi,ZHANG Li-Fang 2010, 42 (06):  663-671.  Abstract ( 1537 )   PDF (270KB) ( 1811 )   Situation model is the deep representation of events described formed by readers in text reading. How the temporal shifts of story are represented is an important dimension and a controversial issue. Scenario model considered that the units of time representation were the separated chunk (Anderson, Garrod, & Sanford, 1983); strong iconicity assumption reckoned that readers relied on sequence and continuity to process time information(Zwaan,1996) and in his experiments instantaneous temporal shifts and short temporal shifts were confused. Kelter, Kaup & Claus (2004) argued that obvious temporal discontinuity produced temporal shifts. But compared Zwaan’s experiments with examples presented by Kelter et al, the trait of verb’s continuance for temporal shifts was not clear. Thus it seemed that representing temporal shifts was not only determined by temporal adverbs, but also determined by the verb’s trait of continuance of front event. Besides, in Chinese text reading, the adverb of instantaneous temporal shifts could function as a cue followed by different temporal intervals. Hence the present study is to explore the effect of verb’s trait of continuance and adverb of instantaneous time about representation of the events including temporal shifts in text reading. A total of 152 college students participated in present study. Using moving window and probe- judgment technique of on line reading, two experiments were carried out by using E - Prime software. Subjects tried to be self-paced for reading. When one sentence was read, they pressed the space bar, and the next sentence emerged with the former sentence’s disappearance. After several sentences were read, the emergence of "××××？" (×××× represented probe word) prompted subjects to press “J” or “F” to judge whether probe word ever emerged in text. After finishing one text, the emergence of "******" prompted subjects to answer a comprehensive question about the text. The reaction time of probe materials(the ninth sentences in experiment 1 and the probe words in the end of the eighth sentences in experiment 2) were recorded and analyzed with repeated measures of MANOVA. The results of experiment 1 indicated that when the verb’s trait of front event was continuity, reading time was not significant differences between the sentences of instantaneous temporal shifts and the sentences of short temporal shifts. When the verb’s trait of front event was temporariness, the sentences of short shifts were read more slowly than the sentence of instantaneous temporal shifts. In experiment 2, when there was no existence of the adverb of instantaneous time, the probe words in the condition of long temporal shifts were reacted more slowly than that in the condition of short temporal shifts. But when the adverbs of instantaneous time functioned as a cue followed by temporal shifts, the reaction time of probe words in the condition of short temporal shifts was not salient than that in the condition of long temporal shifts. The conclusions are derived from this study: (1) the verb’s trait of continuance together with the condition of temporal shifts determines the probe sentences’ reading time. It seems that, the verb’s trait of temporariness of the front event combined with the condition of short temporal shifts slows down the reading speed of sentences of short temporal shifts. The results show that, to differentiate instantaneous temporal shifts from short temporal shifts, and to differentiate the verb of continuity from the verb of temporariness are meaningful for representing the events of temporal shifts. (2) In Chinese text reading, the adverb of instantaneous time functions as a cue for representation of the events of long temporal shifts. In short, representation of events of temporal shifts is not only determined by the length of temporal interval, but also by the “time of mental temporal shifts”. "Time of mental temporal shifts" is the subjective time interval formed by readers in the process of processing temporal shifts according to their understanding of relations of events before and after temporal shifts. The verb’s trait of continuance and the adverb of instantaneous time are the important factors in influencing the "time of mental temporal shifts". Related Articles | Metrics

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Syntactic Prediction in Sentence Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements CHEN Qing-Rong,TAN Ding-Liang,DENG Zhu,XU Xiao-Dong 2010, 42 (06):  672-682.  Abstract ( 1606 )   PDF (327KB) ( 2712 )   The current study was conducted to examine syntactic prediction and structural representation of Chinese coordinate structure during the process of Chinese sentence comprehension. We recorded the eye movements of each participant by using SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) iView Hi-Speed system while they were seated in front of a monitor (resolution of 1024 × 768 pixel). Sixty native speakers of Chinese were recruited, and were paid for their participation. All of them were native speakers of Mandarin Chinese who had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. The experiment materials were composed by 24 critical sentences and other 60 filler sentences. A 2 × 2 factorial design was adopted, with syntactic prediction and temporal ambiguity as within-participant variables. The results from four reading time measures, including the first fixation duration, first pass reading time, go-past time as well as the percent regressions, showed that syntactic prediction could facilitate the processing of Chinese coordinate sentence with local ambiguity. For both types of ambiguous sentences, the occurrence of the word “either” could greatly reduced the time of first fixation duration, first pass reading, go-past, and percent regressions on the critical region and the spillover region, although there was no significant influence of syntactic prediction on the NP region. As revealed by the statistic analysis, there was a significant interaction between these two experimental variables. Moreover, the manipulation of temporal ambiguity was also significant when syntactic prediction was unavailable but not when syntactic processing could be successfully predicted. In contrast with the results of previous English studies, the present study demonstrates that syntactic prediction can facilitate Chinese sentence comprehension and help people deal with ambiguous syntactic constituents. Therefore, in our study, when readers met the sentences with syntactic prediction, they would adopt the sentence-coordination analysis. However, if the sentences were not predicated, they would prefer the NP-coordination analysis and treated the second NP as part of the direct object rather than as the subject of a clause. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Character’s Whole Recognition on the Processing of Components in the Processes of Chinese Characters LUO Yan-Lin,WANG Peng,LI Xiu-Jun,SHI Ya-Qi,CHEN Mo,WANG Pei-Pei,HU Shi-Xiu,LUO Yue-Jia 2010, 42 (06):  683-694.  Abstract ( 2219 )   PDF (429KB) ( 3377 )   The word superiority effect is an important evidence that whole word processing facilitates letter processing in English word recognition. However, such effect still remains controversial in Chinese character recognition. In this study, two experiments were carried out to explore the effect of Chinese whole character recognition over component processing. There was manipulation of three types of stimuli: real characters, pseudo characters and radical characters, only right-left or up-down structures of which are chosen. The target radicals could be placed either at the left or the right (either the up or the down) side of the three types of character stimuli. Reicher-Wheeler task was used in experiment 1. The stimuli were presented for 350ms, followed by a mask for 200ms, then two radicals for 1700ms. The participants were asked to choose the target radical in the two radicals. Radical judgment task was performed in experiment 2. The target radical was presented for 350ms, followed by three types of stimuli. Participants were asked to judge whether the stimuli character contained the target radical or not. The reaction time and the error rate were recorded by the computer. Twenty-seven healthy female college students participated in this study. The results were as the following: 1) In both experiments, the reaction time of radical judgment in the radical character condition was shorter than the real characters and the pseudo characters. Word superiority effect was found in radical characters. Compared with the pseudo characters, no word superiority effect was found in real characters. These findings indicated that Chinese character’s whole recognition blocked radical processing. 2) The reaction time of left-right structure characters was shorter than that of the up-down ones. That is to say, the structure effect was significant in Chinese characters. 3) The spatial position of radicals in a stimulus had a significant influence on radical recognition. The position effect was found across three kinds of characters. The reaction time of the left radicals was the shortest and the reaction time of the down radicals was the longest among four positions in the three types of characters. Related Articles | Metrics

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Depression-like Behavior and Change in Hippocampus BDNF mRNA Expression Induced by Early Deprivation in Rats JIANG Xue-Hua,ZHANG Min,LU Da-Xiang,WEI Jia,QI Ren-Bin 2010, 42 (06):  695-703.  Abstract ( 1897 )   PDF (552KB) ( 1816 )   There is considerable evidence that adverse early life events have profound and persistent effects on brain functions and may represent a risk factor for the development of depression later in life. Studies of postnatal environmental manipulations in rodents can potentially yield evidence that adverse early-life experience leading to behavior dysfunction is a general mammalian characteristic, and this approach can be used to develop animal models for depression research to explore its neurobiology mechanism. To investigate the long-term effects of early deprivation (ED) on behavior and expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in adult rats, the new-born Sprague-Dawley pups were randomly divided into non-handling (NH) group and ED group. Pups in ED group were isolated from dam, nest and littermates daily for 4 hours from the post-natal day (PND) 1 to PND14 while pups in NH group were undisturbed at room ambient temperature of 21°C. Body weights were monitored after weaning and sucrose preference test was carried out from PND36 to PND64 once a week (n=16). At 12 weeks of age, rats were subjected to behavioral sessions for the foot-shock pre-exposure/shuttle box test (n=8), the contents of BDNF in hippocampus were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (n=8) and hippocampus BDNF mRNA expression was detected by in situ hybridization (n=6). Body weights of ED rats were significantly lower than NH rats (p<0.01), sucrose intake and sucrose preference were significantly decreased in ED rats compared with NH rats (p<0.05 or p<0.01). In contrast to NH rats, ED rats performed less barrier crossings in the training session of shuttle box test (p<0.05), but in the testing session, comparison of the manipulation groups yielded no significant differences. The contents of BDNF in hippocampus and the BDNF mRNA expression in CA1and CA3 of ED rats were decreased significantly (p<0.05 or p<0.01). The results suggest that ED may result in the decrease of growth, the depression-like behavior of anhedonia, and the reduction of hippocampus BDNF mRNA expression in Sprague-Dawley rats, but did not induce the behavior of learned helplessness in a foot-shock pre-exposure/shuttle box test. The reduction of BDNF expression in hippocampus may play a role in the development of depression-like behavior induced by ED. Related Articles | Metrics

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Success Expectations and Performance: Regulatory Focus as a Moderator YAO Qi,MA Hua-Wei,YUE Guo-An 2010, 42 (06):  704-714.  Abstract ( 1980 )   PDF (448KB) ( 4265 )   According to classic psychological theories of motivation, success expectations induce high motivation and thus lead to high performance. However, recent researchers have found that people sometimes select subjectively worse performance goals, thus lowering their expectations so as to avoid future mistakes and regret. Therefore, our research was directed to answer the “when” and “how” questions-when are the classic relationships (i.e., the positive correlations between expectations and performance) most likely to occur and what self-regulatory principles underlie their occurrence. Applying regulatory focus theory, we hypothesized that regulatory focus moderated the relations between expectations and performance and that motivation served as a mediator and partially explained the mechanism. These hypotheses were tested through two studies, both of which used the game “Spot the Differences” as experimental materials and recruited undergraduate students as participants. Study 1 measured the level of expectations and manipulated temporary regulatory focus with task framing techniques. Study 2 measured individual chronic regulatory focus with Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (RFQ) to further test the moderating effects. In addition, considering that Study 1 didn’t support the main effects of expectations as presented in classic motivational theories, Study 2 applied within-subject experimental design and manipulated expectations through the difficulty of tasks. Motivations were manipulated as the time participants spent on the tasks in both studies, and their mediating effects were tested according to the procedures proposed by Muller, Judd, & Yzerbyt (2005). The findings showed that: ①Regulatory focus moderated the relationship between expectations and performance. For promotion focus individuals, success expectations correlated positively with performance, which was consistent with classic motivational theories; For prevention focus individuals, the correlation was not significant. ②Motivation mediated the interactions—high success expectations raised the motivational strength of promotion focus individuals, thus resulting in enhanced performance; while it made no significant motivational impacts on prevention focus individuals. The present research deepens our understanding of the relationship between expectations and performance by considering regulatory focus as both a situational factor and s chronic individual difference. Furthermore, it extends the moderating effect of regulatory focus from realistic outcomes to outcome expectations. It also suggests that positive beliefs about further (e.g., high success expectations) do not always lead to positive outcomes, which may depend on their relationships with individual properties and situational requirement. Related Articles | Metrics

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Impact of Advertising Intervention on Consumer’s Brand Attitude and Trust YUAN Deng-Hua,LUO Si-Ming,FU Chun-Jiang,XIE Ying-Qin 2010, 42 (06):  715-726.  Abstract ( 2835 )   PDF (434KB) ( 7246 )   To counter the negative effects of a product-harm crisis, brands hope to capitalize on their equity, and often use advertising as a communication device to regain customers’ lost trust. We study how advertising influences consumers’ brand attitude and brand trust for crisis brand. Most theories assume that the new attitude replaces the former one; but some scholars argue that a new attitude can override, but not replace, the old one, resulting in dual attitudes. They suggest two different evaluations of the same attitude toward the object: an implicit attitude and an explicit attitude. Based on the Dual-Attitude Model, we proposed the research hypotheses that the advertising appeal mode and the advertising penetrating degree would influence consumer’s implicit brand attitude and explicit brand attitude differently; the brand attitude would affect the brand trust. Random sampling and intentional sampling were used with a group of university students, all of whom knew which was the noncrisis milk brand and which milk brand had been affected by the Melamine Events. The sample included 200 students who represented the consumer. They were assigned randomly either to the experimental groups or control group. The sample excluded subjects who omitted items in the explicit brand attitude and brand trust questionnaire and had an error rate of IAT equal to or higher than 20%. All analyses reported here involve the remaining 158 participants. The advertising interventions were used in the experimental groups, but not in the control group. A pretest-posttest design was used for both experimental group and control group. A 2×2 factorial between-subjects design was implemented within the experimental groups. Techniques included in the SPSS statistical package were to analyze the responses of the subjects to the questionnaire and the IAT, specifically ANOVA, and Multiple Regression Analysis. The results of the experiments indicated the following: (a) In the Melamine Events context, the negative implicit attitude to the crisis brand and the positive implicit attitude to the high quality brand were formed by subjects; (b) In some senses, a positive impact on consumer’s implicit brand attitude was made by the advertising intervention, however, a significant impact on consumer’s explicit brand attitude and brand trust was made; (c) Higher positive explicit attitude to crisis brand would be more driven by the high penetrating advertising than by the low penetrating advertising, also, it would be driven more by rational appeal advertising than by emotional appeal advertising. (d) There is an interaction on implicit brand attitude between the advertising penetrating degree and the mode of advertising appeal. (e) Brand trust would be driven by the dual brand attitudes. Base on this study, we suggested the managers of companies that they should use advertising intervention to change consumer’s attitude to the crisis brand reasonably, they should pay attention not only to the explicit brand attitude but also to the implicit brand attitude. Meanwhile, the study suggested that brand managers should master techniques of advertising according to the psychological rules of the consumer. Related Articles | Metrics