Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2024-04-23
Abstract： As a crucial component of cognitive function, mathematical ability plays an essential role in an individual’s future development. Previous studies have highlighted significant differences in this ability between children from high and low family socioeconomic backgrounds. Executive functioning are the most reliable factor in explaining this disparity. However, fundamental questions remain about the mediating role of executive functioning in this relationship: (1) The role of specific subcomponents of executive functioning in their relationship. (2) The differences in the impact of socioeconomic status on various mathematical abilities through these executive functioning subcomponents. (3) The variations in the role of executive functioning in the relationship between socioeconomic status and both current and future mathematical abilities. Accordingly, our study explored the impact of socioeconomic status on the second and third graders’ mathematical operations, logical reasoning, and spatial imagination abilities, as well as the mediation role of interference inhibition, response inhibition, and working memory. A total of 185 second-grade students were followed for 20 months in two assessments. At the beginning of second grade, children were assessed on their working memory through forward and backward digit span tasks; their interference inhibition was assessed with the Stroop task; and their response inhibition was assessed via the Go/No-go task. Children’s socioeconomic status was assessed using their parents’ educational levels, occupational status, and Family Affluence Scale. The Chinese Rating Scale of Pupil’s Mathematics Abilities, which included subtests for addition, subtraction, number sequence, length estimation, and cube counting, was utilized to assess the children’s mathematical calculation, logical thinking, and spatial imagination abilities. We explored the main effects of socioeconomic status on children’s current and future mathematical abilities using structural equation modeling and simultaneously developed multiple mediation models to investigate how executive functioning components mediate these relationships. The results indicated that the three types of mathematical abilities in second graders showed significant improvement over the 20-month period; socioeconomic status in the second grade directly predicted mathematical abilities at the same grade level; and socioeconomic status could indirectly predict mathematical calculation abilities in the second grade and logical thinking abilities in the third grade through the mediating role of working memory. It is concluded that the present study extends previous research that has explored the mediation role of executive functioning between socioeconomic status and mathematical ability, demonstrating that working memory is a crucial cognitive factor that contributes to the explanation of this mechanism. It provides a scientific basis for educational and research professionals to develop interventions aimed at enhancing the mathematical abilities of children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
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Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2024-02-18
Abstract： Previous studies have discovered that the concept of prosocial behavior among adolescents is composed of four dimensions: commonweal-social rule, altruism, relationship, and personal trait. Utilizing this four-dimensional structure, the Prosocial Behavior Scale for Adolescents (PBSA) measurements revealed gender and grade-level differences in the importance attributed to each dimension. Furthermore, numerous prior studies on the development of adolescent prosocial behavior have yielded inconsistent results. In this study, we employed a network analysis approach to explore the network of adolescent prosocial behavior, uncovering the relationships among different dimensions and individual questionnaire items, revealing its core dimensions, and shedding light on differences across gender and grade.
Conducted in 2017, this study included 9,160 students from 15 schools spanning eight provinces or municipalities, namely Beijing, Fujian, Henan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Chongqing, with ages ranging from 10 to 17 and covering elementary, middle, and high school students. We utilized the PBSA, consisting of 15 items based on the four-dimensional concept, to assess and analyze the network of adolescent prosocial behavior. The network analysis process followed the standardization guidelines published by Epskamp et al, utilizing qgraph in the R programming for network estimation and computation of centrality indices. Finally, we performed comparisons of dimension networks and item networks across different genders and grades.
In the overall network of adolescent prosocial behavior, as well as in the grade- and gender-based networks, the commonweal-social rule dimension consistently exhibited the highest centrality, followed by altruism, relationship, and traits dimensions. Compared to the prosocial behavior network in females, the male prosocial behavior network showed higher centrality in the commonweal-social rule and relationship dimensions, occupying more central positions within the network. When comparing prosocial behavior networks across different grades, the commonweal-social rule dimension occupied the most central position in all grades. Moreover, its centrality was highest in the middle school group. The centrality of the altruism dimension was highest in the high school group, while the relationship and personal trait dimensions held the highest centrality in the elementary school group. As for the network structure, no differences were found in the gender-based dimension networks. However, differences were identified in the grade-based dimension networks, with high school students exhibiting significantly weaker network strength than middle and elementary school students. Similarly, no notable differences were observed in the item networks based on gender, but differences were found in the item networks based on grade.
Taken together, the current study has found that, in the overall sample as well as among different genders and grades, the commonweal-social rule consistently serves as a core dimension within the network structure of prosocial behavior. There were significant grade differences in both dimension networks and item prosocial behavior networks, along with subtle gender differences in item networks. These results provide a new perspective for deepening our understanding of adolescent prosocial behavior and expanding the research domain of prosocial behavior. These findings suggest that future interventions targeting the commonweal-social rule and altruism dimensions could potentially boost overall prosocial behavior in adolescents. The middle school stage may be a critical period for promoting commonweal-social rule prosocial behavior.
Subjects: Medicine, Pharmacy >> Preclinical Medicine submitted time 2017-12-07 Cooperative journals: 《南方医科大学学报》
Abstract： Objective To explore progesterone-induced blocking factor (PIBF) expression in the placenta and blood of patients with severe preeclampsia and its relationship with immune tolerance imbalance. Methods Forty-seven patients admitted between January and December, 2012 were enrolled in this study, including 25 patients with early-onset severe preeclampsia (EOPE) and 22 with late-onset severe preeclampsia (LOPE), with 25 women with normal pregnancy serving as control group. The antenatal blood and postpartum placenta were collected for immunohistochemical staining to detect PIBF expression in the placenta and for testing serum PIBF level using ELISA. Flow cytometry was used to detect the percentage of circulating Th1 and Th2 cells and the Th1/Th2 ratio was calculated. Results PIBF was expressed in decidual cells, syncytiotrophoblasts and partial cytotrophablasts. The serum PIBF levels were 213.58 �44.93 ng/ml in EOPE group, 243.00 �61.19 ng/ml in LOPE group and 273.91�8.57 ng/ml in control group. There were significant differences in serum PIBF, blood Th1/Th2 and placenta PIBF-IOD among the 3 groups (P<0.05). EOPE group had significantly lower serum PIBF, lower llacental PIBF quantity (PIBF-IOD) and higher blood Th1/Th2 than the control group (P<0.05). Serum PIBF in women with severe preeclampsia was positively correlated with placenta PIBF-IOD and negatively with blood Th1/Th2 ratio (P<0.05), but a negative correlation between serum PIBF and 24-hour urinary protein was found only in EOPE group (P<0.05). Conclusion The immune tolerance imbalance mediated by PIBF may participate in the pathogenesis of severe preeclampsia. PIBF, the immune suppressor secreted by lymphocytes of pregnancy women, is also a protective factor against severe preeclampsia, which is expected to be a new target in therapy.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-12-07
Abstract： Cooperation among strangers is a key feature of social capital which facilitates societies to effectively compete with other societies. Notably, cooperation among strangers does not remain permanent or stable within a society but can shift with changes in ecology and culture.
In the past few decades, China has experienced tremendous social changes, mainly manifested in rapid economic growth, rising urbanization level, more widespread higher education, and rapid development of the internet. Meanwhile, people’s residential mobility and social interaction scope has expanded. Acquaintance society has been shrinking while stranger society has been expanding. Interpersonal trust has declined and individualism has increased. However, little is known about whether cooperation (operationalized as cooperative behavior in social dilemmas) among strangers has shifted along with above societal changes within Chinese society. Thus, based on the history of experimental research on cooperation among young Chinese adults in situations involving conflicting interests (i.e., social dilemmas), this study meta-analyzed 254 studies conducted between 1999 and 2019 with 302 unique samples and effect sizes involving 29,249 participants to test for possible changes over time in cooperation among strangers.
We conducted meta-regression analyses applying a three-level mixed-effects meta-regression model and performed multiple imputation to handle missing data in our model. For all analyses, year of data collection was entered as the predictor, and the cooperation estimate as the outcome variable. In addition, we also simultaneously added the study characteristic variables (i.e., dilemma type, proportion of male participants, repetitions, group size, K index, communication, sanctions, and period of cooperation) as control variables to the meta-regression models to rule out the possibility that changes in cooperation are explained by study characteristics. Finally, we also calculated the magnitude of change in cooperation and reported the correlations between the sociocultural indicators and cooperation.
We found cooperation among strangers increased over time in Chinese society: The cooperation rate had increased from 0.33 in 1999 to 0.45 in 2019 after controlling for other variables. In addition, some societal indicators (e.g., societal wealth, urbanization level, higher education level, and internet penetration rate) measured 10 to 5 years prior to measures of cooperation were found to be positively associated with cooperation, suggesting that they may be potential societal underpinnings of increases in cooperation. The cooperative behavior among strangers in China and the United States shows a similar upward trend, but cooperation in Chinese society has a larger increase in a shorter period. These findings have important implications for boosting public confidence in solving present and future challenges.
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