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Abstract The aetiological mechanism of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) has still not been fully understood. The aim of this study was to explore the associations between functional genetic variants screened from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and GDM risk among 554 GDM patients and 641 healthy controls in China. Functional analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) positively associated with GDM was further performed. Univariate regression and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to screen clinical risk factors, and a predictive nomogram model was established. After adjusting for age and prepregnancy BMI, rs9283638 was significantly associated with GDM susceptibility (P

The visual perception system of humans is susceptible to cognitive influence, which implies the existence of cognitive perception. However, the specifical trigger for cognitive penetration is still a matter of controversy. The current study proposed that the cognitive processing priority over perceptual processing might be critical for inducing cognitive penetration. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating the processing priority between cognition and perception across three experiments where participants were asked to complete a size-judging task under different competing conditions between cognition and perception. To sum up, we proved that the cognitive processing priority over perceptual processing is critical for cognitive penetration. This study provided empirical evidence for the critical trigger for cognitive penetration.

Assertion is the use of declarative sentences to convey information, which necessitates meeting the “justified-belief norm” as a prerequisite. However, a significant amount of misinformation that did not meet these conditions was spread during COVID-19, leading to a reintroduction of the assertion norm. One possible hypothesis is that the threatening content of the misinformation influenced the perception of the norm. However, this remains unclear to researchers. Therefore, we conducted two experiments to investigate the effect of threatening content in information on individuals’ perceptions of norms. In all the experiments, participants read backstories with and without threatening content, followed by answering assertion questions. It was observed that people do follow a looser assertion norm for information that contains threatening content. Additionally, further exploration revealed that threatening factors also lead individuals to more easily perceive the related content as truth and reduce the probability of being blamed. These two outcomes provide some explanation for the underlying mechanism of threatening factors’ influence. The research results further refined the theory of assertion norms, offering a certain basis for information management.

In this study, we compared two experimental methods of selecting terms in expository text to generate reading representations and tested how well these reading representations predicted reading comprehension. The two experimental methods were the traditional method of using all terms (all keywords) to create participants' representation networks, and the terms categorization (TC) method of using only important terms (core and branch words). Representation networks were assessed using participants' adjacency scores, ratings of relatedness in pairs of terms, and using summary (summary writing) by all turms. An in-subject design was performed in experiments 1 and 2, and an inter-subject design was performed in experiment 3 to test the hypothesis. With the same sample in exp1 and epx2, a different sample in each exp3. Experiment 1 showed that when using only the traditional way of selecting terms, adjacency was better than relatedness in predicting reading comprehension. Reading representations generated based on the summary method could not predict participants' reading comprehension ability, so this method was excluded from subsequent studies. Experiment 2 showed that the terms selected in Experiment 1 were stronger predictors of reading comprehension when the word pairs included a core term (central to understanding of full text) or a branch term (key to understanding paragraph), relative to a detail term (not affect the understanding full text). Experiment 3 found that whereas the two methods were equally effective in generating representations measured by adjacency, TC was superior in generating representations measured by relatedness. These conclusions have important implications for future research and application.

Abstract Digit-tracking, a simple, calibration-free technique, has proven to be a good alternative to eye tracking in vision science. Participants view stimuli superimposed by Gaussian blur on a touchscreen interface and slide a finger across the display to locally sharpen an area the size of the foveal region just at the finger's position. Finger movements are recorded as an indicator of eye movements and attentional focus. Because of its simplicity and portability, this system has many potential applications in basic and applied research. Here we used digit-tracking to investigate visual search and replicated several known effects observed using different types of search arrays. Exploration patterns measured with digit-tracking during visual search of natural scenes were comparable to those previously reported for eye-tracking and constrained by similar saliency. Therefore, our results provide further evidence for the validity and relevance of digit-tracking for basic and applied research on vision and attention.

Background Severe preeclampsia can progress to eclampsia and threaten the life safety of mothers and infants, while intestinal flora composition changes may be involved in the occurrence and development of preeclampsia, but there is no clear evidence. Objective To investigate the relationship between intestinal flora differences and the incidence of preeclampsia in pregnant women in the early and middle stages of pregnancy. Methods A total of 455 pregnant women recruited from the Department of Obstetrics, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Guilin Medical University from January 2019 to January 2021 who met the requirements were selected. Pregnant women diagnosed with preeclampsia after 20 weeks of gestation were classified as preeclampsia group (n=32) , and pregnant women without preeclampsia were classified as non-preeclampsia group (n=423) . The clinical data of pregnant women were collected, and fecal samples were collected in the early (≤12+6 weeks) and middle stages of pregnancy (13~27+6 weeks) for bioinformatics analysis of intestinal flora, and the relationship between bioinformatics and the incidence of preeclampsia was analyzed. Results There were statistically significant differences in age, Shannon index and Simpson index in early pregnancy between preeclampsia group and non-preeclampsia group (P

IntroductionReading literacy is not only central to students’ academic success during their school years but also crucial to their personal development in their later life. The development of assessment instruments for reading literacy has been of interest to researchers, educators and educational administrators. The purpose of the present study was to construct and validate a comparable item bank for assessing fourth-grade students’ reading literacy.MethodsOne hundred fifteen reading comprehension items were developed and administered to 2,174 Grade 4 students to construct an item bank. Using the test equating technique and balanced incomplete block design, we divided participants into 10 subgroups, and the 115 items were further assigned into 10 test forms. Item response theory software was used to estimate discrimination, items’ threshold parameters, and students’ ability parameters. The criterion-related validity was also examined in 135 Grade 4 students who completed the reading literacy test and verbal self-description questionnaire.ResultsThe final item bank included 99 reading performance indicators to express high achievement. The correlation between the students’ reading literacy and the verbal self-description questionnaire was significant and demonstrated the item bank’s good criterion-related validity. The item bank developed in this study shows good psychometric characteristics and can be used to assess the reading literacy of fourth graders.

Microbial fermentation for the production of tetramethylpyrazine (TTMP) is considered to be the most promising method, and the development of a cheap fermentation substrate is of great importance for large-scale TTMP production. In this study, inexpensive by-products from the food industry, i.e., molasses and soybean meal (instead of glucose and tryptone), were used as substrates for TTMP fermentation. The pretreatment of soybean meal was explored in order to achieve a better fermentation effect. The contents of each component in the fermentation medium were optimized by central composite design (CCD). The optimum contents were as follows: 72.5 g/L of molasses, 37.4 g/L of diammonium hydrogen phosphate (DAP), 53.4 g/L of soybean meal, and 5 g/L of yeast powder. The software predicted a maximum TTMP yield of 1469.03 mg/L, and the actual TTMP yield was 1328.95 mg/L for the validation experiment in the optimum medium. Under the optimum conditions (72.5 g/L of molasses, 37.4 g/L of DAP, 53.4 g/L of soybean meal, and 5 g/L of yeast powder), the actual maximum TTMP yield (1328.95 mg/L) in this study was much higher than the TTMP yield (895.13 mg/L) under the conditions (150 g/L of molasses, 30 g/L of DAP, 30 g/L of tryptone, and 10 g/L of yeast powder) of our previous study published in Molecules. In this study, the TTMP yield improved by 48.46%, with decreased molasses (more than half), decreased yeast powder (half) and by-product soybean meal instead of tryptone compared to our previous study. In summary, the cheaper fermentation medium had a higher TTMP yield in this study, which improves the application potential of Bacillus sp. TTMP20.

Abstract Morality judgment usually refers to the evaluation of moral behavior`s ability to affect others` interests and welfare, while moral aesthetic judgment often implies the appraisal of moral behavior's capability to provide aesthetic pleasure. Both are based on the behavioral understanding. To our knowledge, no study has directly compared the brain activity of these two types of judgments. The present study recorded and analyzed brain activity involved in the morality and moral aesthetic judgments to reveal whether these two types of judgments differ in their neural underpinnings. Results reveled that morality judgment activated the frontal, parietal and occipital cortex previously reported for motor representations of behavior. Evaluation of goodness and badness showed similar patterns of activation in these brain regions. In contrast, moral aesthetic judgment elicited specific activations in the frontal, parietal and temporal cortex proved to be involved in the behavioral intentions and emotions. Evaluation of beauty and ugliness showed similar patterns of activation in these brain regions. Our findings indicate that morality judgment and moral aesthetic judgment recruit different cortical networks that might decode others' behaviors at different levels. These results contribute to further understanding of the essence of the relationship between morality judgment and aesthetic judgment.

Although it has been found that self-esteem and self-concept clarity are positively correlated, self-determination theory shows that the positive relationship might be lowered for individuals whose basic psychological needs are chronically thwarted. The exact neural mechanisms underlying the relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity are still not fully understood. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) plays an important role in monitoring basic psychological needs, considering that it is more active when some basic psychological needs are actually or potentially thwarted. To better understand the neural mechanisms underlying the relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity, we investigated the differences in the relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity among healthy adults with different levels of spontaneous activities of the dACC using rs-fMRI combined with amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF). As expected, the results showed that the positive relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity was modulated by the ALFF value of the right dACC, which indicated that the positive relationship was significant when the ALLF value of the right dACC was lower, but the positive relationship was not significant when the ALFF value of the right dACC was higher. The modulating roles of right dACC might also reflect that the individuals with higher ALFF value of dACC might experience chronically thwarted relatedness of basic psychological needs, which means the more disturbed by thwarting relatedness information in individuals, the lower positive relationship emerged.

Zhongyong, a central theme of Confucian thought, refers to the “doctrine of the mean,” or the idea that moderation in all things is the optimal path. Despite considerable interest in the relationship between zhongyong and creativity, especially in China, studies of this relationship have not yielded consistent results. Based on a review of the literature, we hypothesized that this inconsistency arises from the dual nature of zhongyong itself, which has both a positive side, promoting creativity, and a negative side, inhibiting creativity. We also hypothesized that the negative side of zhongyong takes the form of excessive zhongyong. Indeed, the observations that every coin has two sides and that too much of a good thing is as bad as too little are core principles of zhongyong in traditional Chinese culture. To test these hypotheses, we conducted two empirical studies (measuring explicit and implicit zhongyong personality, respectively) to examine the relationships between positive and negative zhongyong and creativity (measured in terms of creative personality, divergent thinking, and convergent thinking). The results of both studies revealed an interaction between positive zhongyong and negative zhongyong, indicating that only a moderate level of zhongyong is conducive to creativity; both deficiency and excess are harmful. We discuss the implications of these results, suggesting that a zhongyong approach can help to clarify non-linear relationships between things, and recommending to re-assess the creativity of Chinese culture from a neutral and objective outlook. This paper deepens understanding of zhongyong and offers clear insights into creativity from an in-depth cultural perspective.

Insightful problem solving (IPS) attracts widespread attention in creative thinking domains. However, the neural underpinnings of individual differences in IPS are still unclear. The purpose of this research was to investigate inherent full-brain connectivity patterns at voxel-level in IPS. Sixty-two healthy participants were enrolled in the study. We used a voxelwise full-brain network measurement, degree centrality (DC), to depict the characteristics of cerebral network involved in individual differences in IPS. For each participant, we employed a chunk decomposition paradigm, using Mandarin characters as stimuli, to estimate the individual differences in IPS. Results showed that DC in the inferior frontal gyrus, and the middle frontal gyrus/precentral gyrus positively correlated with IPS, while the anterior cingulate cortex, and the brainstern/cerebellum/thalamus exhibited negative correlations with IPS. Using each cluster above as a seed, we performed seed-based functional connectivity analysis further. Results showed that IPS was mainly involved in the default mode network, containing the key regions of precuneus and medial prefrontal cortex. All in all, this research may shed new lights on understanding the neural underpinnings of individual differences in IPS.

Researchers have conducted many studies on the relationship between external rewards and intrinsic motivation. A recent study showed that, compared with delayed rewards, rewards delivered immediately after the experiment enhanced the participants’ intrinsic motivation. However, this study did not rule out the possibility of a misattribution effect of extrinsic motivation. The present research conducted three studies to explore whether immediate rewards actually enhance intrinsic motivation. To rule out the interference of the misattribution effect of extrinsic motivation, according to the different characteristics of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation, Study 1 and Study 2 improved the prior experimental paradigm, and the results indicated that the intrinsic motivation of participants who received extra rewards immediately after completing experimental tasks was stronger than that of participants who received the delayed extra reward. Furthermore, to rule out the potential interference of temporal discounting, Study 3 introduced a new variable—reward magnitude. The results showed that the delivery time of the extra reward had an independent effect on intrinsic motivation and that the immediacy of the extra reward could enhance intrinsic motivation. In all, the three studies strongly demonstrated that immediate external extra rewards could truly enhance intrinsic motivation.

PurposeThe high recurrence rate of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a poor impact on the quality of life and survival time of patients. Especially for late recurrence, poor data are available in analysis. We aim to evaluate whether the splenic volume (SV) measured from preoperative CT images could predict late recurrence in HCC patients after hepatectomy.Patients and MethodsA cohort of 300 HCC patients hospitalized at Xiangya Hospital of Central South University between January 2015 and June 2018 was retrospectively analyzed. The SV was calculated by using automated volumetry software from preoperative CT images. A total of 300 HCC patients were separated into the early recurrence cohort (n=167), the late recurrence cohort (n=39), and the no recurrence cohort (n=94) according to whether there is a recurrence and the recurrence time. Univariate and multivariate Cox analyses were performed to identify the independent risk factors of both early and late recurrence.ResultsAFP, Microvascular invasion (MVI), satellitosis, and BCLC staging were independent risk factors of HCC early recurrence. Splenic volume (HR=1.003, 95%CI:1.001-1.005, P

Studies on the neural correlates of episodic insight have made significant progress in the past decades. However, the neural mechanisms underlying dispositional insight are largely unknown. In the present study, we recruited forty-four young, healthy adults and performed several analyses to reveal the neural mechanisms of dispositional insight. Firstly, a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) technique was used to explore the structural brain mechanisms of dispositional insight. We found that dispositional insight was significantly and negatively correlated with the regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the left thalamus (TLM.L), right temporoparietal junction (TPJ.R), and left dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC.L). Secondly, we performed a seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) analysis to complement the findings of VBM analysis further. The brain regions of TLM.L, DMPFC.L, and TPJ.R were selected as seed regions. We found that dispositional insight was associated with altered RSFC between the DMPFC.L and bilateral TPJ, between the TPJ.R and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, DMPFC.L, TPJ.L, right insula, and right cerebellum. Finally, a mediation analysis found that the personality of neuroticism partially mediated the relationship between the brain region of TLM.L and dispositional insight. These findings imply that dispositional insight has a specific functional and structural neural mechanism. The personality of neuroticism may play a pivotal role in the processes of dispositional insight.

Previous studies have explored the impact of the cost ratio of individual solutions versus collective solutions on people’s cooperation tendency in the presence of individual solutions. This study further explored the impact of team credibility on people’s propensity to cooperate in the presence of individual solutions. Study 1 investigated the influence of different level of altruistic tendencies or the self-interest tendencies of teammates on participants’ decision-making. Study 2 explored the influence of the distribution of altruistic tendencies or self-interest tendencies on participants’ decision-making. The results of Study 1 showed that the proportion of participants who chose the collective solution increased with an increase in the altruistic tendencies of the team. When the altruistic tendencies of the teammates reached a certain value, the proportion of participants taking the collective solution showed a trend to stabilize. Furthermore, the proportion of participants who chose the individual solution increased with the increase in the self-interest tendencies of the team. When the self-interest tendencies of the teammates reached a certain value, the individual solution was stably adopted. The results of Study 2 showed that with the total altruistic tendency remaining unchanged, the more altruistic group members that altruistic tendencies were allocated to, the higher a participant’s level of trust in the team would be, which showed the decentralized effect of altruistic tendencies. In the case that the total self-interest tendency was unchanged, the fewer self-interest group members the self-interest tendencies were allocated to, the higher a participant’s level of trust in the team would be, which showed the convergent effect of self-interest tendencies.

PurposeThe detection and characterization of focal liver lesions (FLLs) in patients with cirrhosis is challenging. Accurate information about FLLs is key to their management, which can range from conservative methods to surgical excision. We sought to develop a nomogram that incorporates clinical risk factors, blood indicators, and enhanced computed tomography (CT) imaging findings to predict the nature of FLLs in cirrhotic livers.MethodA total of 348 surgically confirmed FLLs were included. CT findings and clinical data were assessed. All factors with P < 0.05 in univariate analysis were included in multivariate analysis. ROC analysis was performed, and a nomogram was constructed based on the multivariate logistic regression analysis results.ResultsThe FLLs were either benign (n = 79) or malignant (n = 269). Logistic regression evaluated independent factors that positively affected malignancy. AFP (OR = 10.547), arterial phase hyperenhancement (APHE) (OR = 740.876), washout (OR = 0.028), satellite lesions (OR = 15.164), ascites (OR = 156.241), and nodule-in-nodule architecture (OR =27.401) were independent predictors of malignancy. The combined predictors had excellent performance in differentiating benign and malignant lesions, with an AUC of 0.959, a sensitivity of 95.24%, and a specificity of 87.5% in the training cohort and AUC of 0.981, sensitivity of 94.74%, and specificity of 93.33% in the test cohort. The C-index was 96.80%, and calibration curves showed good agreement between the nomogram predictions and the actual data.ConclusionsThe nomogram showed excellent discrimination and calibration for malignancy risk prediction, and it may aid in making FLLs treatment decisions.

Abstract Background and objective Sepsis is a heterogeneous disease and identification of its subclasses may facilitate and optimize clinical management. This study aimed to identify subclasses of sepsis and its responses to different amounts of fluid resuscitation. Methods This was a retrospective study conducted in an intensive care unit at a large tertiary care hospital. The patients fulfilling the diagnostic criteria of sepsis from June 1, 2001 to October 31, 2012 were included. Clinical and laboratory variables were used to perform the latent profile analysis (LPA). A multivariable logistic regression model was used to explore the independent association of fluid input and mortality outcome. Results In total, 14,993 patients were included in the study. The LPA identified four subclasses of sepsis: profile 1 was characterized by the lowest mortality rate and having the largest proportion and was considered the baseline type; profile 2 was characterized by respiratory dysfunction; profile 3 was characterized by multiple organ dysfunction (kidney, coagulation, liver, and shock), and profile 4 was characterized by neurological dysfunction. Profile 3 showed the highest mortality rate (45.4%), followed by profile 4 (27.4%), 2 (18.2%), and 1 (16.9%). Overall, the amount of fluid needed for resuscitation was the largest on day 1 (median 5115 mL, interquartile range (IQR) 2662 to 8800 mL) and decreased rapidly on day 2 (median 2140 mL, IQR 900 to 3872 mL). Higher cumulative fluid input in the first 48 h was associated with reduced risk of hospital mortality for profile 3 (odds ratio (OR) 0.89, 95% CI 0.83 to 0.95 for each 1000 mL increase in fluid input) and with increased risk of death for profile 4 (OR 1.20, 95% CI 1.11 to 1.30). Conclusion The study identified four subphenotypes of sepsis, which showed different mortality outcomes and responses to fluid resuscitation. Prospective trials are needed to validate our findings.

In the study of emotional memory bias in depressed individuals, most previous studies have used emotional materials, but there were significant differences in the effects of different emotion-inducing methods on face memory. In the present study, two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of different emotion-inducing methods on memory between healthy participants and non-clinically depressed participants. The results from experiment 1 showed that when feedback was used as induction, the memory performance of the non-clinical depression group was significantly higher than that of the healthy group under the condition of negative feedback. Under positive and neutral feedback, there were no significant differences between the two groups. In experiment 2, when emotional materials were used as a mode of induction, no significantly difference in each emotional condition between the healthy and depressed groups was found. The results of the present study show that different methods of emotional induction have different effects on depressed participants. Compared with the emotion induced by the emotional material, the non-clinical depressed participants had a better memory effect induced by negative emotional events.

Psychological derailment refers to the phenomenon whereby original self-expectations are seriously inconsistent with developments in reality. Research to date has neglected the valence of derailment and the mechanism by which it affects mental health. To improve the mental health of Chinese adolescents from the perspective of psychological derailment, after validating the translated Chinese versions of the derailment measurement instruments, we conducted an empirical study on the freshmen in senior high schools and universities in China and obtained three major results. First, the study revealed the prevalence of psychological derailment among Chinese adolescents and its strong correlation with mental health indicators (depression, anxiety, stress and satisfaction with life). Second, the study found significant differences in all mental health indicators among the non-derailed group, the positively derailed group and the negatively derailed group, and suggested that positive psychological derailment may help to ease mental health problems. Third, using path analysis to establish a mediated moderation model relating psychological derailment, psychological derailment valence, self-esteem and depression, the study uncovered that the valence of psychological derailment moderated the effect of psychological derailment on depression, while self-esteem mediated the moderating effect. The implications and limitations of the study are discussed.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0173755.].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203071.].

Against the background of Chinese culture, we investigated the relationship between family socioeconomic status (SES) and children’s reading ability. Participants included 2294 middle-school students in grade 8. SES was measured by parents’ education level, parents’ occupational prestige, and family property, and children’s reading ability was estimated with item response theory. In addition, we adopted an 8-item parent–child relationship scale and a 22-item learning motivation scale that included four dimensions. We examined whether the parent–child relationship mediated the relationship between family SES and reading ability and whether this was moderated by learning motivation. The results indicated that the parent–child relationship played a mediating role in the relationship between SES and reading ability. This relationship was moderated by students’ learning motivation. The direct effects of SES on reading ability at high, medium, and low levels of learning motivation were 0.24, 0.32, and 0.40, respectively.

Creative insight plays an important role in our daily life. Previous studies have investigated the neural correlates of creative insight by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), however, the intrinsic resting-state brain activity associated with creative insight is still unclear. In the present study, we used regional homogeneity (ReHo) as an index in resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) to identify brain regions involved in individual differences in creative insight, which was compued by the response time (RT) of creative Chinese character chunk decomposition. The findings indicated that ReHo in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)/caudate nucleus (CN) and angular gyrus (AG)/superior temporal gyrus (STG)/inferior parietal lobe (IPL) negatively predicted creative insight. Furthermore, these findings suggested that spontaneous brain activity in multiple regions related to breaking and establishing mental sets, goal-directed solutions exploring, shifting attention, forming new associations and emotion experience contributes to creative insight. In conclusion, the present study provides new evidence to further understand the cognitive processing and neural correlates of creative insight.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187135.].

Creative insight has attracted much attention across cultures. Although previous studies have explored the neural correlates of creative insight by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), little is known about intrinsic resting-state brain activity associated with creative insight. In the present study, we used amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) as an index in resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) to identify brain regions involved in individual differences in creative insight, which was measured by the response time of creative Chinese character chunk decomposition. Our results showed that ALFF in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) positively predicted creative insight, while ALFF in the middle cingulate cortex/insula cortex (MCC/IC), superior temporal gyrus/angular gyrus (STG/AG), anterior cingulate cortex/caudate nucleus (ACC/CN), and culmen/declive (CU/DC) negatively predicted creative insight. Moreover, these findings indicate that spontaneous brain activity in multiple regions related to breaking mental sets, solutions exploring, evaluation of novel solutions, forming task-related associations, and emotion experience contributes to creative insight. In conclusion, the present study provides new evidence to further understand the cognitive processing and neural correlates of creative insight.

The negativity bias has been shown in many fields, including in face processing. We assume that this bias stems from the potential threat inlayed in the stimuli (e.g., negative moral behaviors) in previous studies. In the present study, we conducted one behavioral and one event-related potentials (ERPs) experiments to test whether the positivity bias rather than negativity bias will arise when participants process information whose negative aspect involves no threat, i.e., the ability information. In both experiments, participants first completed a valence rating (negative-to-positive) of neutral facial expressions. Further, in the learning period, participants associated the neutral faces with high-ability, low-ability, or control sentences. Finally, participants rated these facial expressions again. Results of the behavioral experiment showed that compared with pre-learning, the expressions of the faces associated with high ability sentences were classified as more positive in the post-learning expression rating task, and the faces associated with low ability sentences were evaluated as more negative. Meanwhile, the change in the high-ability group was greater than that of the low-ability group. The ERP data showed that the faces associated with high-ability sentences elicited a larger early posterior negativity, an ERP component considered to reflect early sensory processing of the emotional stimuli, than the faces associated with control sentences. However, no such effect was found in faces associated with low-ability sentences. To conclude, high ability sentences exerted stronger influence on expression perception than did low ability ones. Thus, we found a positivity bias in this ability-related facial perceptual task. Our findings demonstrate an effect of valenced ability information on face perception, thereby adding to the evidence on the opinion that person-related knowledge can influence face processing. What’s more, the positivity bias in non-threatening surroundings increases scope for studies on processing bias.

Recent theories propose that language comprehension can influence perception at the low level of perceptual system. Here, we used an adaptation paradigm to test whether processing language caused color adaptation in the visual system. After prolonged exposure to a color linguistic context, which depicted red, green, or non-specific color scenes, participants immediately performed a color detection task, indicating whether they saw a green color square in the middle of a white screen or not. We found that participants were more likely to perceive the green color square after listening to discourses denoting red compared to discourses denoting green or conveying non-specific color information, revealing that language comprehension caused an adaptation aftereffect at the perceptual level. Therefore, semantic representation of color may have a common neural substrate with color perception. These results are in line with the simulation view of embodied language comprehension theory, which predicts that processing language reactivates the sensorimotor systems that are engaged during real experience.

A recent study observed a working memory (WM) Stroop effect with a magnitude equivalent to that of the classic Stroop effect, indicating that WM operates over the same representations as attention. However, more research is needed to examine this proposal. One unanswered question is whether the WM Stroop effect occurs when the WM item and the perceptual task do not have an overlapping response set. We addressed this question in Experiment 1 by conducting an attentional word-color task and a WM word-color task. The results showed that a WM Stroop effect also occurred in that condition, as a word that only indirectly evoked a color representation could interfere with the color judgement in both the attentional task and WM task. In Experiment 2, we used a classic Simon task and a WM Simon task to examine whether holding visuo-spatial information rather than verbal information in WM could interfere with perceptual judgment as well. We observed a WM Simon effect of equivalent magnitude to that of the classic Simon effect. The well-known stimulus-response compatibility effect also existed in the WM domain. The two experiments together demonstrated that WM operates over the same representations as attention, which sheds new light on the hypothesis that working memory is internally directed attention.

Most research on working memory (WM) training for children with developmental dyslexia (DD) has focused on western alphabetical languages. Moreover, most of these studies used a combination of training tasks targeting a variety of WM components, making it difficult to determine whether WM training generates a general improvement in overall reading, or improves specific cognitive skills corresponding to the WM components that are targeted in training. We tested the general and specific effects of WM training on the reading skills of 45 Chinese children with DD, grades 3 to 5. In Experiment 1, the experimental group received a program targeting the verbal WM component; in Experiment 2, the experimental group was trained with a program targeting visuospatial WM. In both experiments the control group played a placebo video game. In Experiment 1, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the visual rhyming task, which is highly correlated with verbal WM. In Experiment 2, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the orthographic awareness test, which is highly correlated with visuospatial WM. Furthermore, in both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, the experimental groups outperformed the control groups on the fast word naming test, which is highly related to both visuospatial WM and verbal WM. Results indicated that WM training improved specific reading-related cognitive skills that are highly correlated with the specific WM components that were the target of training.

The scientific community has been divided as to the origin of individual differences in perceiving the sounds of a second language (L2). There are two alternative explanations: a general psychoacoustic origin vs. a speech-specific one. A previous study showed that such individual variability is linked to the perceivers' speech-specific capabilities, rather than the perceivers' psychoacoustic abilities. However, we assume that the selection of participants and parameters of sound stimuli might not appropriate. Therefore, we adjusted the sound stimuli and recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from two groups of early, proficient Cantonese (L1)-Mandarin (L2) bilinguals who differed in their mastery of the Mandarin (L2) phonetic contrast /in-ing/, to explore whether the individual differences in perceiving L2 stem from participants' ability to discriminate various pure tones (frequency, duration and pattern). To precisely measure the participants' acoustic discrimination, mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by the oddball paradigm was recorded in the experiment. The results showed that significant differences between good perceivers (GPs) and poor perceivers (PPs) were found in the three general acoustic conditions (frequency, duration and pattern), and the MMN amplitude for GP was significantly larger than for PP. Therefore, our results support a general psychoacoustic origin of individual variability in L2 phonetic mastery.

Some studies show that the medial frontal cortex is associated with more skilled action anticipation, while similar findings are not observed in some other studies, possibly due to the stimuli employed and the participants used as the control group. In addition, no studies have investigated whether there is any functional connectivity between the medial frontal cortex and other brain regions in more skilled action anticipation. Therefore, the present study aimed to re-investigate how the medial frontal cortex is involved in more skilled action anticipation by circumventing the limitations of previous research and to investigate that the medial frontal cortex functionally connected with other brain regions involved in action processing in more skilled action anticipation. To this end, professional badminton players and novices were asked to anticipate the landing position of the shuttlecock while watching badminton match videos or to judge the gender of the players in the matches. The video clips ended right at the point that the shuttlecock and the racket came into contact to reduce the effect of information about the trajectory of the shuttlecock. Novices who lacked training and watching experience were recruited for the control group to reduce the effect of sport-related experience on the medial frontal cortex. Blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) activation was assessed by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Compared to novices, badminton players exhibited stronger activation in the left medial frontal cortex during action anticipation and greater functional connectivity between left medial frontal cortex and some other brain regions (e.g., right posterior cingulate cortex). Therefore, the present study supports the position that the medial frontal cortex plays a role in more skilled action anticipation and that there is a specific brain network for more skilled action anticipation that involves right posterior cingulate cortex, right fusiform gyrus, right inferior parietal lobule, left insula and particularly, and left medial frontal cortex.

Microblogs is one of the main social networking channels by which information is spread. Among them, Sina Weibo is one of the largest social networking channel in China. Millions of users repost information from Sina Weibo and share embedded emotion at the same time. The present study investigated participants’ propensity to repost microblog messages of positive, negative or neutral valence, and studied the neural correlates during resting state with the reposting rate of each type microblog messages. Participants preferred to repost negative messages relative to positive and neutral messages. Reposting rate of negative messages was positively correlated to the functional connectivity of temporoparietal junction (TPJ) with insula, and TPJ with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). These results indicate that reposting negative messages is related to conflict resolution between the feeling of pain/ disgust and the intention to repost significant information. Thus, resposting emotional microblog messages might be attributed to participants’ appraisal of personal and recipient’s interest, as well as their cognitive process for decision making.

Although human preference for beauty is common and compelling in daily life, it remains unknown whether such preference is essentially subserved by social cognitive demands or natural tendency towards beauty encoded in the human mind intrinsically. Here we demonstrate experimentally that humans automatically exhibit preference for visual and moral beauty without explicit cognitive efforts. Using a binocular rivalry paradigm, we identified enhanced gender-independent perceptual dominance for physically attractive persons, and the results suggested universal preference for visual beauty based on perceivable forms. Moreover, we also identified perceptual dominance enhancement for characters associated with virtuous descriptions after controlling for facial attractiveness and vigilance-related attention effects, which suggested a similar implicit preference for moral beauty conveyed in prosocial behaviours. Our findings show that behavioural preference for beauty is driven by an inherent natural tendency towards beauty in humans rather than explicit social cognitive processes.

Theories of embodied language comprehension have proposed that language processing includes perception simulation and activation of sensorimotor representation. Previous studies have used a numerical priming paradigm to test the priming effect of semantic size, and the negative result showed that the sensorimotor representation has not been activated during the encoding phase. Considering that the size property is unstable, here we changed the target property to examine the priming effect of semantic shape using the same paradigm. The participants would see three different object names successively, and then they were asked to decide whether the shape of the second referent was more similar to the first one or the third one. In the eye-movement experiment, the encoding time showed a distance-priming effect, as the similarity of shapes between the first referent and the second referent increased, the encoding time of the second word gradually decreased. In the event-related potentials experiment, when the difference of shapes between the first referent and the second referent increased, the N400 amplitude became larger. These findiings suggested that the shape information of a word was activated during the encoding phase, providing supportive evidence for the embodied theory of language comprehension.

To test the hypothesis that pleasure from artistic music is intellectual while that from popular music is physiological, this study investigated the different functional mechanisms between aesthetic appreciation of artistic and popular music using fMRI. 18 male non-musicians were scanned while they performed an aesthetic rating task for excerpts of artistic music, popular music and musical notes playing and singing (control). The rating scores of artistic and popular music excerpts were both significantly higher than that of control materials while the scores of them were not different. The fMRI results showed both artistic and popular conditions activated the VS and vmPFC, compared with control condition. When contrasted popular and artistic condition directly, we found popular music activated right putamen, while artistic music activated right mPFC. By parametric analysis, we found the activation of right putamen tracked the aesthetic ratings of popular music, whereas the BOLD signal in right mPFC tracked the aesthetic ratings of artistic music. These results indicate the reward induced by popular music is closer to a primary reward while that induced by artistic music is closer to a secondary reward. We also found artistic music activated ToM areas, including PCC/PC, arMFC and TPJ, when compared with popular music. And these areas also tracked aesthetic ratings of artistic music but not those of popular music. These results imply that the pleasure from former comes from cognitive empathy. In conclusion, this study gives clear neuronal evidences supporting the view that artistic music is of intelligence and social cognition involved while the popular music is of physiology.

We experimentally demonstrate a broadband vis-NIR absorber consisting of 300-400 nm nanocone structures on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite. The nanocone structures are fabricated through simple nanoparticle lithography process and analyzed with three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain methods. The measured absorption reaches an average level of above 95% over almost the entire solar spectrum and agrees well with the simulation. Our simple process offers a promising material for solar-thermal devices.

Although there has been extensive research on the processing of the emotional meaning of music, little is known about other aspects of listeners' experience of music. The present study investigated the neural correlates of the iconic meaning of music. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded while a group of 20 music majors and a group of 20 non-music majors performed a lexical decision task in the context of implicit musical iconic meaning priming. ERP analysis revealed a significant N400 effect of congruency in time window 260-510 ms following the onset of the target word only in the group of music majors. Time-course analysis using 50 ms windows indicated significant N400 effects both within the time window 410-460 ms and 460-510 ms for music majors, whereas only a partial N400 effect during time window 410-460 ms was observed for non-music majors. There was also a trend for the N400 effects in the music major group to be stronger than those in the non-major group in the sub-windows of 310-360 ms and 410-460 ms. Especially in the sub-window of 410-460 ms, the topographical map of the difference waveforms between congruent and incongruent conditions revealed different N400 distribution between groups; the effect was concentrated in bilateral frontal areas for music majors, but in central-parietal areas for non-music majors. These results imply probable neural mechanism differences underlying automatic iconic meaning priming of music. Our findings suggest that processing of the iconic meaning of music can be accomplished automatically and that musical training may facilitate the understanding of the iconic meaning of music.

The problem of distributed estimation in energy-harvesting wireless sensor networks (EH-WSNs) is studied. In general, the energy state of an energy-harvesting sensor varies dramatically. Existing efforts mainly concentrate on the problem of distributed estimation for battery-powered WSNs, ignoring the crucial issue of energy harvesting. Therefore, the unpredictable energy harvesting, the energy storage device, and energy consumption are modeled in a unified way to jointly address the energy harvesting and distributed estimation problem. In this paper, combining with the classical adaptive distributed estimation scheme, the problem of parameter estimation in EH-WSNs is formulated as a game of complete and perfect information. Each player decides its strategy according to the others' energy states and actions. The subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) is derived by backward induction. Simulation results show that the proposed SPE makes full use of the harvested energy and improves the estimation performance.

Established linguistic theoretical frameworks propose that alphabetic language speakers use phonemes as phonological encoding units during speech production whereas Mandarin Chinese speakers use syllables. This framework was challenged by recent neural evidence of facilitation induced by overlapping initial phonemes, raising the possibility that phonemes also contribute to the phonological encoding process in Chinese. However, there is no evidence of non-initial phoneme involvement in Chinese phonological encoding among representative Chinese speakers, rendering the functional role of phonemes in spoken Chinese controversial. Here, we addressed this issue by systematically investigating the word-initial and non-initial phoneme repetition effect on the electrophysiological signal using a picture-naming priming task in which native Chinese speakers produced disyllabic word pairs. We found that overlapping phonemes in both the initial and non-initial position evoked more positive ERPs in the 180- to 300-ms interval, indicating position-invariant repetition facilitation effect during phonological encoding. Our findings thus revealed the fundamental role of phonemes as independent phonological encoding units in Mandarin Chinese.

PURPOSE: To examine the relationship between negative life events, coping styles, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among adolescent survivors exposed to 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, China. METHODS: A survey was conducted in a sample of 2250 adolescent students from two schools in Dujiangyan District, a seriously damaged area, 20 kilometers away from the epicenter, 6 months after the earthquake. Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire including demographics, negative life events, coping styles, and PTSD symptoms. RESULTS: Academic pressure was the strongest predictor of adolescents' PTSD symptoms among all negative life events. Main effects of negative life events, positive coping and negative coping on PTSD symptoms were significant in both younger adolescents and older adolescents, while the moderator effects of two coping styles were found significant only within older adolescents. CONCLUSIONS: Coping may play a role to moderate the relationship between post-earthquake negative life events and PTSD symptom, but the function seems to depend on the age of participants. Psychosocial coping skills training may be important in the prevention and intervention of mental health problems in adolescent survivors of traumatic earthquake.