Table of Content

15 November 2013, Volume 29 Issue 6

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Effects of Spatial Relationship of Facial Features, Facial Skin Color and Lightness on Cartoon Facial Attractiveness

CHEN Yi-zhi, FANG Hui, SHEN Nan, WU Mei-ru, ZHENG Li-yan, WANG Jing-mei, LU Ying-jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  561-570. 

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88 children (43 girls and 45 boys) and 90 college students (42 boys and 48 girls) participated in this study. By method of psychological scale evaluation, effects of spatial relationship of facial features, facial skin color and lightness on child cartoon facial attractiveness were investigated. Children's evaluation of cartoon facial attractiveness was different from that of adults' in spatial relationship of facial features. Children's evaluation results showed the individual attractiveness of female child cartoon faces was optimized when the face's vertical distance between the eyes and the mouth was approximately 24% of its length. Female child cartoon faces' horizontal ratio showed that the individual attractiveness was optimized when the face's interocular distances was approximately 41% of its width; however, the result did not reach statistical significance. Adults' evaluation of female child cartoon facial attractiveness was also exhibiting vertical "golden ratio (19%)". There was no golden ratio for male cartoon faces. Children had preference for child cartoon faces with whitish skin color, while most adults preferred "milk and roses" skin color. Both genders of cartoon faces and subjects had influences on skin color preference. High lightness cartoon faces were more attractive than the low lightness ones. Conclusions: Spatial relationship of facial features, facial skin color and lightness have significant influence on cartoon aesthetic assessment. Therefore, factors such as spatial relationship of facial features and facial skin color should be taken into account in designing cartoon images for audiences of different ages and sexes.

Attention Processing Characteristics of Children with Autism：Evidence from the Multiple Objects Tracking Task

MA Yu, ZHANG Xue-min, ZHANG Ying-li, WEI Liu-qing

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  571-577. 

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The present study was intended to investigate the visual attention processing characteristics of children with autism using dynamic visual tracking task. In present study, the typical multiple objects tracking paradigm was adopted,both age and gender matched mid-low Functioning autistic children and normal control group children participated in the same tracking task。There were eight objects in the tracking task,which one, two, three, or four objects were targets and the others were non targets (distractors), the multiple objects tracking accuracy was recorded, and tracking capacity was calculated. The results showed that: (1) Tracking accuracy of autism was significantly lower than the normal control group children from one target to four targets conditions, which indicated autism group had low performance on tracking stability and persistence; (2) when the target number was one, there was no significant difference on the tracking capacity between normal control group children and autistic children; when the number of targets were two, three, and four, the tracking capacity of normal group of children were high than the autistic children significantly. This indicated that autism group was one focus attentional tracking mode and low performance on attentional shift.

The Spotlight Effect of Anger：How the Incidental Anger Influence our Judgment on the Social News Report

PENG Xiao-fan, XIE De-guang, ZHANG Da-jun

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  578-587. 

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Originally, the spotlight effect was only a theory based on the valence of affect, explaining how the incidental emotion influences individual's perception and judgment through their attention scope. However, the usage of affect valence on these matters remains questionable and further studies on some specific kind of affect was necessary. Anger as a typical negative emotion, rather than sad used in the original study, was proved to be obscure in the defining of its valence. Therefore a 2 (affect)×2 (salience)×2 (gender) between subjects experiment was conducted to test the spotlight effect of anger the reading of social news report. 272 participants were enrolled into this experiment and 243's data was proved to be valid with the double check of affect-state before and after the emotion trigger. The Anger-Dispositional group contains 59 subjects (25 male; 34 female); Anger-Situational 61 subjects (26 male; 35 female); Neutral-Dispositional 60 (25 male; 35 female); Neutral-Situational 63 (23 male; 40 female). Rather than a scale anchored by dispositional-situational, this experiment in this research recorded subjects attribution on these two factors separately, which erase the potential implication of compelling choice on just one side. The result released that anger's spotlight effect was consist with negative emotion and its influence on individuals' judgment was a dual process: increase subjects' attribution proneness to the salience information while restrain to the less salient. Furthermore, this experiment also found the salience of information could bring about an attribution bias on its own. What is more, gender difference occurred on no conditions, which proved that the spotlight effect of anger words on male and female equally.This research offered a further evidence support for the theory of spotlight and extended its explication about how the anger influences individuals' attribution through the attention scope. The comparison between dispositional and situational information in the social news did not support the theory of fundamental attribution error and reminded us and FAE might remain to a unique phenomenon in western culture. The controversial issues between sad and anger was also fully discussed, which developed a reasonable explanation to suite the spotlight effect of anger with other related studies.

The Time Course of Negative Compatibility Effect in the Non-masked Priming Paradigm

XIA Yi-ting, JIANG Jun, ZHANG Qing-lin

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  588-594. 

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Research using the masked priming paradigm proved that negative compatibility effect exists, confirming the effect of unconscious priming stimulus on target response. However, whether the effect is dependent on the masking stimulus is still a fierce controversy. The author manipulated the time intervals between prime and target in non-masked priming paradigm, investigating the key point the negative compatibility effect occurring. The results found that: (1) negative compatibility effect existed without the masking paradigm; (2) compatibility effect changed with the way the stimulus presented. It indicates that negative compatibility effect is not dependent on the masking and that the stimulus presentation has a great impact on the effect.

A Research on the Relationship between Elementary School Students’ Parenting Styles and Social Creativity：the Mediating Role of Self-esteem

ZHANG Jing-huan, MAN-da-hu, LIU Gui-rong, ZHANG Shun, DOU Fei-fei, LIN Chong-de

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  595-603. 

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Based on a sample of 548 elementary students, the present study explored the characteristics of children's social creativity, and detected the effects of parenting styles on children's social creativity as well as the mediating role of self-esteem. The result showed that: (1) Significant differences of social creativity were emerged in gender and urban-rural. Girls performed significantly higher social creativity than boys. Students from the rural areas reported significantly higher suitability than those from the urban areas. (2) Canonical correlation suggested that on the relationship between parenting styles and social creativity, opinions exchange and love withdrawal could explain the appropriateness, while choice making could explain the originality. (3) Parental autonomy support was a significant positive predicator of social creativity (γ=0.27), while psychological control was a significant negative predicator of social creativity (γ=-0.29). Self-esteem partly mediated the relationship between parental autonomy support/psychological control and social creativity.

The Associations Between Parental and Teacher Autonomy Support and High School Students’ Development

TANG Qin, FANG Xiao-yi, HU Wei, CHEN Hai-de, WU Meng-xi, WANG Fan

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  604-615. 

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During high school, individuals are confronted with developmental tasks centered on issues of: Academic Development, Personal-Social Development, and Career Development. Parental and teacher support is an essential environmental factor in how successfully high school students adapt to these tasks.Here, adolescents' autonomy is particularly important as a great deal of research, based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), demonstrated that adolescents with higher autonomy support from parents and teachers tended to have positive developmental outcomes.However, some researchers are suspicious of the universal application of and emphasis on autonomy in these studies, which have been mainly conducted in Western countries whose cultures highly value individual autonomy. In collectivist cultures, such as China, where obedient and dependent students/children are considered normal and desirable does adolescent autonomy and parent and teacher autonomy support play as significanta role in adolescent development? Furthermore, do parental and teacher autonomy support equally affect adolescents' development? Lastly how do parental and teacher autonomy support interact and if so, what are the results of such interaction? This study aimed to investigate the effects of parental and teacher autonomy support on high school student development in contemporary China. Based on stratified sampling, 4988 adolescents from 16 public high schools in Henan and Yunnan provinces were recruited to participate in this study. Demographic information (including gender, grade, school type), parental autonomy support (PAS), teacher autonomy support (TAS) and academic/personal-social/career development were collected through a self-administrated questionnaire. This data was analyzed using analysis of variance (MANOVA), Pearson correlations and Structural Equation Model. Results were as follows: (1)Concerning academic and career development, girls scored significantly higher than boys, and students in key schools scored significantly higher than those in common schools. Concerning personal-social development, students in key schools scored significantly higher than those in common schools, and the scores of students in grade 11 and 12 were significantly higher than students in grade 10.(2)Not only were all three developmental domains highly correlated with each other, PAS and TAS were also significantly positively associated with all three developmental domains. (3) PAS and TAS could positively predict academic development, personal-social development and career development. PAS better predicted academic development and personal-social development than career development. Compared with PAS, TAS predicted academic development the best and career development the least.(4)The effects of TAS on the three developmental domainswere much more significant than that of PAS. (5)The interactive effects of TAS and PAS significantlyaffected academic and career development. The present study enriched Self-Determination Theory by confirming the predictive effect of autonomy support in a collectivist culture on students' development in three domains. Additionally, adolescents' development in all three domains was more significantly affected by TAS than PAS, a result worthy of additional exploration. The results also suggested that families and schools should come together to create autonomy-supporting environments in order to improve high school students' comprehensive development.

The Characteristics of Kindergarten Teachers’ Occupational Well-being and Its Relationship with Occupational Commitment

WANG Gang

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  616-624. 

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In order to explore the characteristics of kindergarten teachers' occupational well-being and its relationship with occupational commitment, 533 kindergarten teachers in Sichuan and Chongqing were investigated randomly by KTOWBS and TOCS. The results showed that: (1) The level of kindergarten teachers' occupational well-being except cognitive well-being was relatively high. The psychological and emotional well-being of kindergarten teachers in town were significantly better than those in countryside, and the social well-being of kindergarten teachers in public kindergartens was significantly better than that in private kindergartens. (2) Kindergarten teachers earning more than 1000 Yuan a month were significantly better than those earning less than 1000 Yuan a month in social well-being; Kindergarten teachers earning more than 2000 Yuan a month were significantly better than those earning less than 2000 Yuan a month in psychological, emotional and cognitive well-being. Whereas with the prolongation of working hours, theirs psychological well-being decreased. (3) Dimensions of kindergarten teachers' occupational well-being correlated with affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment differently. Hierarchical linear regression showed: the coefficient of prediction of social, cognitive, emotional and psychological well-being to affective commitment was 17%, the coefficient of prediction of cognitive and social well-being to normative commitment was 7%, and the coefficient of prediction of social well-being to continuance commitment was 1%.

The Influence of Learning Times and Material Difficulty on Judgment of Learning’s Absolute Accuracy

JIANG Ying-jie, YANG Ling, YAN Yan

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  625-630. 

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This research explored the effect of material difficulty and study times on the absolute accuracy of immediate and delayed Judgment of Learning (JOL). The design of this experiment was 5(learning times)×2(material difficulty), and every participant joined all conditions. All items which composed by 24 paired easy items and 24 paired difficult items were assigned separately in the immediate and delayed conditions. The difficulty of all items was evaluated by passing rate. 45 participants who were undergraduates attended this experiment and studied all the items for five times. We adopted the classical paradigm of the judgment of learning: study-judgment-recall. All responses which were grades of judgment of learning and memory performance were recorded by computer, while absolute accuracy of JOL was evaluated as indexes. We collected 37 effective data in the end. The results were as follows:(1) In the immediate-JOL condition, the Underconfidence-With-Practice effect appeared both in easy and difficult items;(2) In the delayed Judgment of Learning condition, there was no Underconfidence-With-Practice effect in any items, but there were no bias in easy items and Overconfidence-With-Practice effect in difficult items;(3) Both Underconfidence-With-Practice and Overconfidence-With-Practice effects disappeared gradually following the repeating times.

Investigation on Mental Health State of Primary and Secondary School Students after 30 Months of Wenchuan Earthquake

LIN Chong-de, WU Xin-chun, ZHANG Yu-di, ZANG Wei-wei, ZHOU Xiao, DAI Yan

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  631-640. 

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A survey on posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD), depression, learning burnout and posttraumatic growth(PTG) was conducted on primary and secondary school students in the severely-stricken areas of Wenchuan earthquake at 30 months after the earthquake. The results showed that the level of primary and secondary students' PTSD and depression were comparatively high, and the prevlence rate is 6.6% and 69.5% respectively, among which girls and high school students were high risk populations. The overall situation of learning burnout was not serious,but their learning self-efficiency was comparatively low. In addition, the level of primary and secondary school students' PTG was high, and had the similar difference of sex and grade with PTSD; the relationship between PTSD, depression, learning burnout and PTG are positive, zero and zero respectively. It's suggested that the mental health educators pay more importance attention to reducing students' PTSD and depression as well as stimulating students' PTG. Meanwhile, they should be fully aware of psychological distress occurred in the students with high levels of PTG.

The Effect of Disaster Exposure on PTSD of Primary and Secondary Students：Mediating and Moderating Effects

WU Xin-chun, ZHANG Yu-di, LIN Chong-de, ZANG Wei-wei

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  641-648. 

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To examine the relationship between the severity of disaster expose and posttraumatic stress disorder and explore the mediating effects of the severity of subjective fear and the moderating effects of social support, disaster expose questionnaire,subjective fear questionnaire, social support questionnaire and the Child PTSD Symptom Scale were used to investigate 3058 primary and secondary students in the areas which were heavily destroyed in Wenchuan earthquake at 1 year after the earthquake. The Results found that prevalence rate of PTSD of primary and secondary students was 9.6%, and witnessed the death of other persons was 16.2% among those students. In addition, disaster exposure positively predicts PTSD, severity of subjective fear partially mediated the relationship between disaster exposure and PTSD. Moreover, social support did not moderate the relationship between subjective fear and PTSD, but social support mediated the relationship between disaster exposure and PTSD. Specially, regardless of the type of social support, support from parent and teacher but not classmates and others could mediate the relationship between disaster exposure and PTSD.

The Effect of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder on Aggressive Behavior after The Wenchuan Earthquake：The Moderating Effect of Coping Style

CHENG Ke, ZHOU Xiao, CHEN Qiu-yan, ZHANG Chen-guang, WU Xin-chun

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  649-656. 

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This study aimed to explore the relationship among posttraumatic stress disorder,aggressive behavior and coping style. 980 pupils who experienced the Wenchuan earthquake were investigated by revised child PTSD symptom scale and self-designed questionnaire on behavior problems and child coping style.The result found that pupils have fewer aggressive behavior,but male students have more aggressive behavior than female students. Positive cognition moderate negatively the role of avoidence symptom in aggressive behavior. Negative vent moderate activiely the effect of avoidence symptom and hyperarousal symptom on aggressive behavior respectively.

Neuroticism Personality and Posttraumatic Growth in Adolescent：The Moderating Effect of Coping Style and Mediating Effect of Social Support

AN Yuan-yuan, WU Xin-chun, LIU Chun-hui, LIN Chong-de

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  657-663. 

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In order to explore the relationships among adolescents' post-trauma growth, neuroticism personality, coping style and social support, 497 middle school students were investigated by questionnaires at 2 year after Wenchuan earthquake. The structural equation modeling results revealed that: (1) there was no significant difference between adolescents' posttraumatic growth on age and gender, and the three dimensions of children posttraumatic growth had significant differences, the experience of relationships with others had changed most, followed by the changes in the perception of self, and the changes in general philosophy of life the least; (2) positive coping (positive cognition and seeking support) had fully mediated the relationship between the neuroticism personality and posttraumatic growth, while negative coping (avoidant coping and negative vent) had not; (3) the mediating effect of positive coping between neuroticism personality and posttraumatic growth was moderated by social support, that is when the social support is low, individuals high in neuroticism personality are more likely to seek positive coping, and result in increasing PTG.

Media Violence and Aggression：A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

TENG Zhao-jun, LIU Yan-ling, PAN Yan-gu, YAO De-zhong

Psychological Development and Education. 2013, 29(6):  664-672. 

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It has been debated that causality was existed between media violence and aggression. On the basis of this debating and development of social cognitive neuroscience, the relations between media violence and aggression could be explored by ERP and fMRI. Firstly, we analyzed the implications through social cognitive neuroscience on media violence and aggression, which almost based on ERP and fMRI evidence. And then, we focused on that we might pay much attention to the subjects, tools and designs. In the future direction, cross sectional and various of media violence effect on aggression will be designed, and social cognitive neuroscience based on Catalyst Model background is to study for media violence associated with aggression, and it will be significant to construct the model of cognitive neural mechanism of media violence on aggression.