Table of Content

15 September 2025, Volume 41 Issue 5

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Effect of Target Detection on Familiarity and Recollection of Memory Retrieval

DONG Yueqing, XIAO Fenni

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  609-615.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.01

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The Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) study found that the stimuli that co-occur with targets are remembered better than those that co-occur with distractors in target detection tasks performed when a target detection task is performed during memory encoding. This phenomenon is different from previous views of limited attention resources, and has attracted the attention of researchers. Subsequently, researchers applied the target detection task to the memory retrieval stage and found that the stimuli that co-occur with targets are recognised as 'old words’ more easily than the stimuli that co-occur with distractors. Therefore, it is still unclear whether the impact of target detection on memory retrieval is consistent with the ABE. This study added “remember/know/guess” judgments after the end of memory retrieval to explore the effect of target detection on familiarity and recollection of memory retrieval, and its underlying mechanism. The results showed that for the male population, the effect of target detection on memory retrieval was not only manifested in familiarity, but also in recollection; while for the female population, the impact of target detection on memory retrieval is only manifested in familiarity. The influence of target detection on memory retrieval is different from ABE in the encoding stage.

Screen Time and Young Children’s Self-regulation: The Role of Adult Involvement

ZHANG Heyi, YU Li

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  616-625.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.02

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There is a global trend that digital media users are growing younger. Children’s screen activities have shifted from non-interactive to interactive and from disembodied to embodied, as technological innovation continues to progress. In this study, two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of different screen time patterns on children’s self-regulation and to examine the role of adult involvement. The results showed that: (1) Age was a determining variable in children’s self-regulation ability; (2) There was an interaction between the screen time pattern and adult involvement, showing that adult involvement contributed to the effects of interactive active screen time and cognitive active screen time on self-regulation. The study suggests that the development of children’s self-regulation is based on physical maturity, adult education, and human-environment interaction. Adult scaffolding can help young children benefit from interacting with screens and support the development of early self-regulation.

The Relationship between Jigsaw Puzzle Ability and Inhibitory Control of Young Children: The Mediation Effects of Sustained Attention and Verbal Ability

XIN Cong, CHENG Ping, ZHENG Yuanxia, LIU Guoxiong

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  626-638.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.03

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Based on Vygotsky’s relevant theories, 188 preschoolers aged 2 to 4 years were selected for this study. The Stroop Test, the Continuous Performance Test, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test were used to measure inhibitory control, sustained attention, and verbal ability, respectively. On this basis, this study attempted to investigate the relationship between jigsaw puzzle ability and inhibitory control of preschoolers, and the sequential mediating role of sustained attention and verbal ability. The results showed that: (1) Jigsaw puzzle ability significant positive predicted sustained attention and verbal ability, while sustained attention and verbal ability significant positive predicted inhibitory control; (2) Sustained attention and verbal ability played separate mediating roles between jigsaw puzzle ability and inhibitory control in preschoolers; (3) Sustained attention and verbal ability acted as sequential mediators between jigsaw puzzle ability and inhibitory control in preschoolers. This study enriches the explanatory perspective that jigsaw puzzle ability by affecting the underlying cognitive processes (i.e., sustained attention and verbal ability) associated with preschoolers’ inhibitory control.

The Reciprocal Relations between Parental Warmth and Executive Function and Their Influence on Later Academic Adjustment of School-age Children

LIU Yuqing, QIAO Xiaoguang, ZHANG Simin, XING Xiaopei

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  639-651.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.04

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The present study used RI-CLPMs to capture the reciprocal relationship between parental warmth and children’s EF at within-person level, and then mediating models were established to examine the effects of EF and parental warmth on children’s academic adjustment. A total of 513 school-aged children (Wave 1: mean_age = 10.57 years, SD = 0.93; 50.80% boys, 49.20% girls) were recruited from Guangdong Province, and three-wave longitudinal design (three months apart) was conducted. Children reported their own EF and parental warmth on Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-2 (BRIEF-2) and Egna Minnen av Barndoms Uppfostran-Child (EMBU-C) at three time points, and reported their academic adjustment on Psychological Suzhi Measure for Pupils (PSMP) at T3. The results were as follows: at the within-person level, expect for the path from children EF at T2 to both parental warmth at T3, the cross-lagged paths between paternal or maternal warmth and children’s EF were statistically significant, that is, the fluctuations in paternal or maternal warmth could significantly predicted the fluctuations in children’s EF at later time point, and vice verse. At the between-person level, there were significantly positive relations between children’s EF and both maternal and paternal warmth, indicating that children whose fathers or mothers performed higher warmth across the three waves also performed stronger levels of EF across the three waves. Besides, increases in both maternal and paternal warmth at T1 could predict later promotion in children’s EF at T2 and T3, which in turn would predict higher academic adjustment at T3, but the indirect paths from children’s EF to academic adjustment via paternal or maternal warmth were not supported. This study reveals that at the within-person level, the improvement of parental warmth is conducive to the improvement of children’s executive function and academic adjustment level, and the improvement of children’s executive function is also conducive to the increase of parental warmth.

Longitudinal Associations between Parental Emotional Dysregulation and Parental Emotion-related Socialization Behaviors: A Cross-lagged, Actor-partner Interdependence Model

LIU Chang, JIANG Liuqing, ZHENG Tianpeng, BIAN Yufang

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  652-662.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.05

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To investigate the longitudinal reciprocal associations between parental emotional dysregulation and parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs), a sample of 1542 parents of fourth-grade children were recruited, and followed annually from 2018 to 2020.A cross-lagged, actor-partner interdependence model was applied for the data analysis. Results showed that: (1) Parental emotional dysregulation had both negative and positive bidirectional associations with supportive and non-supportive ERSBs, respectively; (2) Both paternal and maternal emotional dysregulation significantly predicted their own ERSBs in subsequent time waves, while parental ERSBs could also significantly predict their own emotional dysregulation in subsequent time waves; (3) Both paternal and maternal emotional dysregulation significantly and positively predicted their partner’s non-supportive ERSBs in subsequent time waves.

The Relationship between Physical Health and Long-term Changes of Older People Attachment: A 6-year Follow-up Study

ZHAO Muen, HAN Buxin, WANG Dahua

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  663-674.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.06

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To explore how physical health is associated with attachment changes in older adults, 779 married older adults were tracked for six years (measured once every two years, four times). Multivariate latent variable curve model was used to analyze the relationship between physical health and long-term changes of attachment. We used the three dimensions of physical health measurement in SF36 (physiological function, physical function, and bodily pain) to measure physical health, and OAMAS to measure elderly marital attachment (this is a tool specially developed older peple, including three dimensions: attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, and attachment security). The results showed that: (1) In the past six years, the attachment avoidance of older people increased significantly, while the attachment security decreased significantly; (2) Bodily pain has a long-term process effect on attachment anxiety and attachment security in the six years (bodily pain has a marginally significant effect on anxiety). Moreover, the intercept associations corresponded to long-term process effects, suggesting that long-term process effects of bodily pain may shape individual differences in attachment in older age. In conclusion, the attachment changes and develops in later years of Chinese people, and the increase of bodily pain shapes the long-term change of attachment and accumulates into individual differences.

The Effects of Prior Knowledge and Concept Maps Types on Learning Scientific Expository Essays

QU Kejia, DONG Shuangshuang, QIAO Luyao

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  675-683.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.07

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This current study used three experiments to examine the learning effects of prior knowledge and concept map types on learning scientific expository essays, as well as how to promote learners with low prior knowledge to learn scientific expository essays by interactive concept maps. In Experiment 1, the impact of learning with different types of concept maps was investigated for learners with high and low prior knowledge. In Experiments 2 and 3, we investigated whether adding text before learning interactive concept maps and interactive concept maps with hierarchical structure might effectively promote the learning effect of learners with low prior knowledge. The results showed that: (1) For learners with high prior knowledge, learning scientific expository essays by interactive concept maps has a better transfer effect than learning them by static concept maps, and both static concept maps and interactive concept maps had better retention effects. For learners with low prior knowledge, the transfer effect of learning by static concept map was better than that of interactive concept map, and the retention effect of learning by static concept map was better than that of connecting interactive concept map; (2) Learners with low prior knowledge who read relevant texts prior to studying interactive concept maps performed significantly better on both retention and transfer tests than those who did not; (3) Learners with low prior knowledge learned better from hierarchical structure concept maps than from network structure concept maps on both retention and transfer performance. The findings indicate that learners' prior knowledge and concept map type affect the learning effect of scientific expository essays. For students with low prior knowledge, both the inclusion of relevant texts and the use of hierarchical concept maps can effectively improve the learning effect of scientific expository essays through interactive concept maps.

The Contagious Effect of Perceived Teacher’s Job Burnout on High School Student’s Study Burnout: A Resource-loss Perspective

HUANG Jie, ZHU Dan, ZHOU Limin

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  684-691.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.08

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Based on the Conservation of Recourse theory, this two-wave longitudinal study developed and tested a cross-level mediation model linking perceived teacher’s job burnout to high school student’s study burnout through increment of teacher autonomy support increament and academic self-efficiency. A total of 2731 high school students were recruited from 70 classes of 8 schools in Hubei and Hunan provinces. The hierarchical linear model analysis shows that perceived teacher’s job burnout has a significant direct effect on study burnout and indirect effects sequentially through increment of teacher autonomy support and academic self-efficiency. However, it is important to note that the increment of academic self-efficiency positively mediates the relationship between perceived teacher’s job burnout and study burnout, while the increment of teacher autonomy has a negative mediation effect on this relationship. This study may have important practical implications for the prevention and treatment of study burnout in high school students.

College Students’ Academic Contingent Self-worth and Academic Involution Behaviors: Analyses Based on Latent Growth Modeling

WEI Jun, YI Cong, ZHOU Xiting

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  692-700.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.09

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This study examined the potential influence of academic contingent self-worth on academic involution behaviors among Chinese college students, and distinguished this influence between urban- and rural-origin students. Based on a three-wave longitudinal design, this study conducted two-group latent growth modeling to analyze the data. Beginning from one month after college enrollment, a total of 1183 college freshmen (M_age = 18.61 years at Wave 1; 39% boys; 48% urban) reported on their academic contingent self-worth and academic involution behaviors three times over a year with 6-month intervals between waves. Three sets of findings were revealed. First, rural (vs. urban) college students generally showed higher academic contingent self-worth and more academic involution behaviors. Second, a higher initial level, but not the change rate, of academic contingent self-worth predicted more increases in academic involution behaviors over time. Third, the predictive effects of academic contingent self-worth on their academic involution behaviors were significant only among urban students. The findings highlight academic contingent self-worth as an important psychological driving factor for academic involution behaviors among college students, and provide insights for improving the prevailing involution culture and establishing a more positive and healthy education ecology in Chinese universities.

The Influence of Family Function on Adolescents’ Depression and Social Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Belief in a Just World

TANG Jiayi, FU Chengyu, XU Wei

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  701-709.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.10

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Previous studies rarely examined the mechanism how family function affects adolescents' emotional problems through the perspectives of cognitive beliefs. In order to explore the role of belief in a just world in this process, a sample of 845 students, drawing from grades 8 and 11 of a middle school in Chongqing, was investigated in a six-month longitudinal study. At baseline(T1), the Family Intimacy and Family Adaptability Scale (FACES II-CV) was used to measure their family function. Depression and social anxiety levels were measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory-Brief form (SPAI-B), respectively; After 6 months(T2), the Belief in a Just World Scale (BJWS) was employed to assess the participants’ belief in a just world, and depression and social anxiety levels were measured again. The results showed that family function at T1 was positively associated with belief in a just world at T2, and both were negatively correlated with emotional problems at T2. Moreover, the belief in a just world at T2 mediated the relationship between family function at T1 and emotional problems at T2, indicating that family function may mitigate depressive and social anxiety symptoms in adolescents through enhancing their belief in a just world.

Longitudinal Relationships between Parental Psychological Control, Depressive Symptoms and Meaning in Life among High School Students: A Cross-lagged Panel Model Analysis

YE Wenting, TENG Zhaojun, LI Yangyang, CUI Hongjing, NIE Qian

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  710-719.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.11

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This longitudinal study examined the bidirectional relationships between parental psychological control, personal life meanings, and depressive symptoms among high school students. The participants were 2355 students (M_age = 15.82, 41.7% male) from two high schools in Southwest China. The measures include the Dependency-Oriented and Achievement-Oriented Psychological Control Scale, the Depressive Symptom Scale, and the Meaning in Life Questionnaire. The cross-lagged pannel models suggested: (1) A bidirectional relationship between parental psychological control and depressive symptoms over one year; (2) Depressive symptoms were found to significantly predict students’ sense of life meaning one year late. However, the presence of meaning did not have a significant effect on the prediction of depressive symptoms one year late; (3) Moreover, parental psychological control significantly predicted students’ sense of life meaning, with depressive symptoms acting as a mediation process between them. The study underscores the need for parental education programs designed to lessen the extent of psychological control. Furthermore, it calls for collaboration between families and schools in nurturing adolescents’ life meaning, positioning it as a preventive measure against mental health issues.

Intimate Relationship Satisfaction on College Students’ Subjective Well-being: A Diary Method Study

JIAO Jiao, MU Dan, SHI Lu

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  720-729.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.12

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To investigate the relationship between intimate relationship satisfaction and subjective well-being of college students, and to explore the multilevel mediating effect of state real self. A total of 107 college students were selected as subjects, and the Relationship-Assessment Scale, the State Authenticity Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Scale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale were used for 14 consecutive days, and a multilevel mediation model was built. The results indicated that: (1) The intimate relationship satisfaction of college students significantly and positively predicted positive emotion and life satisfaction, and significantly negatively predicted negative emotion; (2) State real self mediated the relationship between intimate relationship satisfaction and subjective well-being at the within-person level; (3) State real self mediated the relationship between intimate relationship satisfaction and subjective well-being at the between-person level. From the perspective of daily life, the results support and expand the self-determination theory of multidimensional structure of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation continuum, which has enlightening significance for promoting the happiness of Chinese college students in intimate relationships.

A Study of Latent Transition Analysis in Health Risk Behaviors and Association with Depressive Symptoms among Medical Students

HE Tingting, RONG Fan, LI Shuqin, WAN Yuhui

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  730-739.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.13

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4211 freshmen students from two medical colleges were selected for baseline survey (T1), followed up (T2) one year later. A questionnaire survey was conducted to explore the typologies of health risk behaviors and stability and transition characteristics of different exposure patterns in medical students, and to analyze the association between different transition patterns of health risk behaviors and depressive symptoms. The main findings of this study were as follows: (1) 67.6% of medical students have maintained a stable life behavior from freshman to sophomore years, 30.7% of the medical students changed from high risk group to low risk group (improvement group), and 1.7% of the college students changed from low risk group to high risk group (deterioration group); (2) Compared with the persistent low-risk group, medical students in the persistent high risk group, improvement group, and deterioration group had an increased risk of depressive symptoms in medical students, but in the persistent high-risk group had the highest risk. The results suggest that the health risk behaviors of medical students are associated with the increased risk of depressive symptoms, and advocating positive and healthy life behaviors is beneficial to the prevention and control of depressive symptoms in medical students.

Bridging the Age Digital Divide: Internet Usage Behavior of Elderly

NIU Gengfeng, JIN Siyu, SHI Xiaohan, YANG Wencheng, ZHOU Zongkui

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  740-749.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.14

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In the current information society, the Internet usage of the elderly has received significant attention. Although Internet usage has a wide impact on the daily life and health of the elderly, the usage rate among the elderly remains relatively low. Therefore, it is important to clarify the current status of internet usage among older adults, its effects on usage, and influencing factors. Based on the above, this paper systematically outlines the characteristics of internet usage among older adults, its effects on usage, and theoretical foundations. It also summarizes the influencing factors from individual and environmental perspectives, outlining both facilitating and inhibiting factors. Additionally, this paper points out the limitations of current research and future research directions-promoting basic research on “age-friendly” transformation, adopting longitudinal tracking and cognitive neuroscience research methods, and further exploring the antecedents, consequences, and potential psychological mechanisms of internet usage among older adults.

The Development of Multidimensional Latent Variable Modeling: Dual Perspectives of Hierarchy and Overlapping

GU Honglei, WEN Zhonglin

Psychological Development and Education. 2025, 41(5):  750-760.  doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.05.15

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Empirical psychological, educational, and managemental researches are frequently confronted with multidimensional latent variables (e.g., emotional intelligence, job burnout). The measurement model of multidimensional latent variables is established through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), bifactor models, exploratory structural equation models (ESEM), bayesian structural equation models (BSEM), bifactor exploratory structural equation models (bifactor-ESEM), and bifactor Bayesian structural equation models (bifactor-BSEM). BSEM and bifactor-BSEM models are developed within the Bayesian statistical framework, while other models are proposed on the base of frequency statistics. Although domestic scholars are familiar with CFA and have a certain understanding of bifactor model, ESEM and BSEM, they know little about bifactor-ESEM and bifactor-BSEM. The latter two models not only allow the coexistence of global and specific constructs (i.e., both general and specific factors in the models), but also incorporate the effects of non-target subdomains on items (i.e., cross-loadings between specific factors). First, this study reviews and comments on the traditional modeling methods of multidimensional latent variables. Second, we introduce the characteristics of bifactor-ESEM and bifactor-BSEM and their applications in social science research (e.g., psychology). Third, a flow chart of multidimensional latent variable modeling is presented, which balances the simplicity and the precision. Finally, an empirical example is illustrated to demonstrate the use of various modeling methods of multidimensional latent variables.