Table of Content

15 March 2013, Volume 29 Issue 2

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The Regulative Effect of Cognitive Flexibility on Metacognitive Monitoring and Control

MU De-fang, CHEN Ying-he

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  113-120. 

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Metacognitive regulation is the essential component of metacognition. It is composed of monitoring and control. According to metacognitive processing level model, metacognitvie monitoring influences metacognitve control. However, its internal mechanism remains unclear. Executive function, which consists of inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility, is the mediating factors in cognitive development. The present study aimed to use Master Mind game to obtain valid scores that adequately reflected metacognitive monitoring, and investigate the moderator effect of cognitive flexibility on metacognitve monitoring and control. The results showed that: cognitive flexibility was regulative on metacognitive monitoring and control. To higher level of cognitive flexibility students, metacognitive controlling level improved with metacognitive monitoring, the frequency of violation of feedback were lower. To lower level of cognitive flexibility students,they did not regulate effectively next step according the results of feedback information. The relation between metacognitive regulation and executive function was discussed.

Study on the Influencing Factors of Perceptual Span in Chinese Reading

YAN Guo-li, ZHANG Qiao-ming, BAI Xue-jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  121-130. 

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Perceptual span refers to the area of effective vision from which useful information can be obtained during a fixation in reading (McConkie and Rayner, 1975; Rayner and Pollatsek, 1989;D. Shen et al.,2008). Research has demonstrated that skilled adult readers of Chinese obtain useful information from an asymmetric region extending roughly 1 character spaces to the left of fixation to about 2~3 character spaces to the right of fixation. To determine the size of the perceptual span, the classic gaze-contingent moving-window technique was developed (McConkie and Rayner, 1975 ). In this technique, the text outside a pre-defined window around the point of fixation is masked by Xs or scrambled letters. Thus, wherever the reader looks, the text is visible within the window, but outside the window the text is disrupted in some way. By varying the masking material, the researcher have found the perceptual span is different in English and other alphabetic writing systems. In the present study gaze-contingent moving-window technique was used to explore the development of perceptual span in Chinese reading. 24 third graders, 24 fifth graders and 24 college students participated in the experiment. Their eye movements were recorded with a SR Research EyeLink 2K eye tracker. 120 sentences were presented in six viewing conditions (R0, L1R1,L2R2, L3R3, L4R4 and whole line) to examine the perceptual span of participants in different conditions. The results showed: (1)Ages, material difficulties and reading skill affected perceptual span independently. (2) The third graders could obtain useful information from a region about 1~2 character spaces to the right of fixation, and the perceptual span of the fifth graders and adults was about 2~3 character spaces to the right of fixation. (3) Compared with easy materials, the reading efficiency of reading difficult materials was lower, average fixation time was longer, perceptual span and forward saccade amplitude was smaller. (4)perceptual span of higher readers was larger than that of slower readers, especially in reading easy materials.In summary, the perceptual span is affected by age, difficulty of materials and reading ability. The perceptual span of reading is larger with the development of age and reading ability, and the readers can get larger perceptual span of easy material than difficult ones.

Interaction Effects of 5-HTTLPR, Gender, and Family Socioeconomic Status on Facial Expression Recognition in Chinese College Students

ZHU Bi, CHEN Chuan-sheng, Robert, K., Moyzis, LIN Chong-de, DONG Qi, HE Qing-hua, CHEN Chun-hui, LI Jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  131-138. 

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A polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) has been implicated in recognition of facial emotions. Previous research has separately examined the effects of gender, 5-HTTLPR genotype, and family socioeconomic status (SES) on facial expression recognition (FER). The current study examined how these factors interacted in a large Chinese college students sample (N=531). Results showed significant main effects of gender and family SES on FER, favoring females and those from higher SES backgrounds. The three-way interaction among gender, family SES, and 5-HTTLPR was also significant, mainly because high-SES females with the long allele of 5-HTTLPR showed lower FER than s allele homozygous. These results are interpreted as a gene-environment interaction from an expanded contextualist perspective.

The Mechanism of Unconscious Conflict：An Exploring Based on Stroop Paradigm

JIANG Jun, XIA Yi-ting, CHEN An-tao, CHEN Xue-fei, ZHANG Qing-lin, ZHANG Wei-wei

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  139-146. 

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Unconscious information has a great impact on behavior. It can trigger not only lower-level cognitive functions but also higher cognitive functions such as conflict control. Although findings obtained from previous behavioral and cognitive neuroscience studies have strongly confirmed the existence of unconscious conflict, a fierce controversy on whether unconscious conflict arises from semantic conflicts or response conflict still exists. In a masked version Stroop priming task, we dissociated unconscious semantic conflict and response conflict. The results suggested that both semantic conflict and response conflict contributed to unconscious conflict. This suggested that unconscious conflict may consist of both semantic conflict and response conflict. The results further supported the view that unconscious stimuli can be processed to the semantic level.

The Role of Morphological Awareness in Linguistic Skills Development of Chinese Kindergartener：Evidence from A Longitudinal Study

DONG Qiong, LI Hong, WU Xin-chun, RAO Xiao-wei, ZHU Jin

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  147-151. 

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To explore the roles of compounding awareness, homograph awareness and radical awareness in the development of oral vocabulary, character recognition and reading comprehension, 75 kindergarteners were tested twice over one and half years interval. The results show that (1) all aspects of morphological awareness and linguistic skills of kindergarten were improved with time, (2) with autoregression effects of linguistic skills controlled, homograph awareness uniquely predicted the later vocabulary, and compounding awareness uniquely predicted the later character recognition, and both compounding awareness and radical awareness explained unique variance in later reading comprehension.

The Relationship Between Risk-Taking Propensity and Entrepreneurial Intention of University Students：The Moderating Role of Perceived Entrepreneurial Culture

LI Hai-lei, GONG Yan-ming, ZHANG Wen-xin

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  152-158. 

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996 undergraduates of grade one to four completed the Kogan-Wallach Choice Dilemma Questionnaire (CDQ), Perceived Entrepreneurial Culture Questionnaire and Entrepreneurial Intention Scale of Undergraduates during school hours, in order to explore the relations between risk-taking propensity, perceived entrepreneurial culture and entrepreneurial intention. The results indicated that: (1) Males reported significantly higher levels of both entrepreneurial goal intention and entrepreneurial implementation intention than of females; (2) Both individual's risk-taking propensity and perceived entrepreneurial culture positively predicted entrepreneurial goal intention; (3) Individual's perceived entrepreneurial culture moderated the relation between risk-taking propensity and entrepreneurial goal intention. Specifically, risk-taking propensity predicted entrepreneurial goal intention positively for those individuals with higher level of perceived entrepreneurial culture. However, among those individuals with lower level of perceived entrepreneurial culture, risk-taking propensity didn't predict entrepreneurial goal intention.

The Effects of Locus of Control and Guilt and Shame on Counterfactual Thinking

GAO Xue-de

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  159-165. 

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The present study aimed to investigate the role of locus of control and self-oriented moral emotions (guilt and shame) in inducing the counterfactual thinking. 128 college students were first divided into two groups of high and low locus of control based on their scores on an Internal-External Locus of Control Scale (IE), they were then randomly assigned to conditions in which they were primed with either guilt or shame. After the guilt and shame priming procedure, participants were induced to generate counterfactual thinking. In this study a 2 (Locus of Control: external control and internal control) ×2 (Self-Moral Emotion: guilt and shame) experimental design were adopted. The results indicated that: (1) Locus of control had significantly effect on counterfactual thinking, external control participants generated more action and situational-oriented counterfactual thinking, but internal control participant generated more self-oriented counterfactual thinking. But guilt and shame had no significant effect on counterfactual thinking. (2) The generation of counterfactual thinking was influenced jointly by locus of control and self-oriented moral emotions (guilt and shame): For participants of external control, there were more likely to an action and situation-oriented counterfactual thinking in shame emotion than in guilt emotion, but for participants of internal control, there were more likely to a self-oriented counterfactual thinking in guilt emotion than in shame emotion. The results can also explain the contradiction thinking of relationship between guilt and shame and counterfactual thinking of previous studies based on different participants.

Interparental Conflict Affects Adolescents’ Social Anxiety：Serial Mediation Analysis

WANG Ming-zhong, ZHOU Zong-kui, FAN Cui-ying, CHEN Wu

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  166-173. 

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In order to explore the serial mediation of perception of threat and emotional insecurity between interparental conflict and adolescents' social anxiety, we conveniently chose 500 high school students from two public high schools in Henan province as our subjects and investigated them with such instruments as Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale (CPIC), Security in the Interparental Subsystem Scale (SIS scale) and Social Anxiety Subscale. Data were collected and analysed with SPSS 17.0, and we used the bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap method to analyze the serial mediating roles of perception of threat and emotional insecurity between interparental conflict and adolescents social anxiety. This study simultaneously tested the cognitive contextual theory and the emotional security theory so as to explore the mechanisms by which interparental conflict affected adolescents' social anxiety. It revealed the different effects of perception of threat by adolescents on different dimensions of emotional insecurity. The results indicated that, interparental conflict affects adolescents social anxiety mainly through three ways: through the mediating role of perception of threat; through the mediating role of emotional insecurity, especially the role of negative representation and emotional maladjustment; through the mediating roles of both perception of threat and emotional insecurity. Parents reduce their conflicts before adolescents, resolve their conflicts in reasonable ways, so as to lower adolescents' perception of threat and emotional insecurity, and finally reduce their social anxiety in interpersonal contexts.

The Relation Among Behavioral Inhibition, Maternal Parenting and Toddlers’ Behavioral Problem

DING Xiao-li, ZHANG Guang-zhen, LIANG Zong-bao, DENG Hui-hua, TANG Xin, LIU Ya-peng

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  174-182. 

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The present study aimed to investigate the relation among behavioral inhibition, parenting style and toddlers' behavioral problem in Chinese culture. A total of 200 toddlers who were about 24 months old and their mothers participated in this study. Mother-toddler dyads were observed in the laboratory, using a modified version of behavioral inhibition paradigm. Mothers also reported their parenting style and toddlers' behavioral problem. Scores of behavioral inhibition were obtained on the basis of coding of toddlers' behavior during observation. The results showed that: (1) behavioral inhibition was positively associated with toddlers' internalizing behavior problem, but not associated with externalizing behavioral problem; (2) mothers' rejection positively predicted toddlers' externalizing behavior problem; (3)protection and concern negatively predicted toddlers' externalizing behavior problem;(4) toddlers' gender moderated the recation between of mothers' parenting style and toddlers' behavior problem, and encouraging independence was negatively associated with boys' internalizing behavior problem while positively associated with girls' internalizing problem, we also found that rejection was not associated with boys' internalizing behavior problem while positively associated with girls' internalizing problem, and protection and punishment was associated with boys' but not girls' externalizing behavior problem. These results indicate that both inhibition and parenting style are associated with behavioral problem, and parental influences on toddlers are different for boys and girls.

The Role of Dysfunctional Attitude on the Relationship between Stress and Depression in School-age Children：A Multi-wave Longitudinal Study

WU Wen-feng, LU Yong-biao, CHEN Shi-ying

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  183-191. 

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To explore the role of cognitive vulnerability factors in Beck's depression theory on the relationship between stress and depression by a multi-wave longitudinal study of 3^th grade and 7^th grade children. The hierarchical linear modeling analysis showed that dysfunctional attitude couldn't moderate the relationship between stress and the change of depressive symptoms in both 3th grade students sample and 7th grade students sample significantly. The multilevel structure equation model analysis discovered that dysfunctional attitude of cognitive factors couldn't mediate the relationship between stress life events and depressive symptom significantly in third-grade students' sample, but it could significantly mediate the relationship of stress and depressive symptoms in seventh-grade students' sample. The results might suggest that: (1) Beck's cognitive theory, in which dysfunctional attitude significantly moderating the relationship between stress and the change of depression, may not be hold in Chinese children; (2) The mediating mode hypothesis of cognitive vulnerability to depression, in which the cognitive vulnerability factors mediate the relationship of stress and the change of depression, may not be hold in younger children, but it may be hold in older children.

Effect of Gratitude on Adolescents’ Academic Achievement：Moderated Mediating Effect

YE Bao-juan, YANG Qiang, HU Zhu-jing

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  192-199. 

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This study constructed a moderated mediation model in which everyday academic resilience mediated the relationship between gratitude and academic achievement, and this mediation effect was moderated by stressful life events. A sample of 1361 adolescents was recruited in the study to complete gratitude questionnaire, everyday academic resilience questionnaire, stressful life events scale, and academic achievement questionnaire. The results indicated that: (1) everyday academic resilience played partial mediating effect between gratitude and academic achievement. Gratitude not only had a direct influence on academic achievement, but also promoted academic achievement indirectly by increasing everyday academic resilience; (2) stressful life events moderated this mediation effect. Stressful life events moderated the second path of the mediation. With stressful life events increasing, the effect of everyday academic resilience on academic achievement reduced. Therefore, the effect of gratitude on adolescents' academic achievement was moderated mediating effect. These findings had important theoretical and reference value to increase academic achievement.

Concurrent and Longitudinal Study on Self-esteem's Buffering the Effect of Stressful Events on Early Adolescents’ Depression

DENG Hui-hua, CHEN Hui, ZHONG Ping, TANG Xin, LIANG Zong-bao

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  200-207,213. 

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The present study used longitudinal data, which were self-reported 3 times by 598 early adolescents over a 3-year period, and conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses in order to investigate whether self-esteem's buffering the effect of stressful events on depression varied with time gap between self-esteem and depression. It was found that the concurrent self-esteem buffered the concurrent and long-term effect of stressful events on depression. In contrast, the antecedent self-esteem enhanced the long-term effect of antecedent stressful events on depression. The finding has implications for interventions aimed at preventing depression where improving self-esteem of early adolescents in time would reduce the risk of depression induced by their experienced stressful events for individuals with low self-esteem.

A Study on Belief in a Just World and Subjective Well-being of “Ant Tribe”

JIANG Jiang, WANG Rong, ZHANG Wen

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  208-213. 

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In order to clarify the relationships among general belief in a just world (GBJW), personal belief in a just world (PBJW) and subjective well-being (SWB), 304 subjects from "ant tribe" living in Xiaoyuehe community of Beijing were recruited to fill the related questionnaires. The results indicated that: (1) satisfaction with life of "ant tribe" was low, but they still kept their affect positive and held high level of belief in a just world. (2) BJW could predict SWB positively which means the "ant tribe" with high level of BJW will feel happier. (3) PBJW mediated the relationship between GBJW and SWB. When people believe the world is just, they also believe themselves can be treated fairly, and then their SWB will be improved.

A Review of the Emotion As Social Information Model

CHEN Jing, WANG Wei

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(2):  214-223. 

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Emotion As Social Information (EASI) Model proposes that there are two processing ways when we are processing the information from others' emotional expressions. The strength of two processing ways will be affected by epistemic motivation levels and social settings types, and it will exert further impact on people's decision-making. The empirical supports are sometimes direct and sometimes indirect, including experimental results from negotiation research field, leaders research field, and Ultimatum game and Dictator Game research fields. It will help us to further understand and explore the neurophysiology mechanism of the EASI Model with the recent achievements of neurophysiology in theory of mind and empathy research fields. This model has good development potentialities, but it is still not fully grown due to its relative youth. So it needs to be further explored this model in theoretical construction and to apply this model in practice.