Social Phobia: Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment

A total of 292 Chinese children in the first, third, or fifth grade participated in one of two experiments investigating radical awareness; that is, the insight that a component of Chinese characters, called the radical, usually provides information about the character's meaning. The technique used in the experiments was to present two-character words familiar from oral language but which the children had not seen before in print. One of the characters was written in Pinyin, the alphabetic system that Chinese children learn in the first 2 months of first grade. The children's task was to select a character to replace the Pinyin. The first experiment showed that third graders and fifth graders were able to select characters containing the correct radicals even when the characters as a whole were unfamiliar to them, which must mean that they were aware of the relationship between a radical and the meaning of a character. The second experiment showed that children were better able to use radicals to derive the meanings of new characters when the radicals were familiar and the conceptual difficulty of the words was low. Children rated as good readers by their teachers displayed more awareness of radicals than children rated as poor readers. 
 
 
 
Un total de 292 ninos chinos de primero, tercero o quinto grado participo en uno de dos experimentos que investigaron la conciencia de los radicales; es decir la comprension de que un componente de los caracteres chinos, llamado el radical, generalmente proporciona informacion acerca del significado del caracter. La tecnica utilizada en los experimentos consistio en presentar palabras de dos caracteres, familiares en la lengua oral, pero que los ninos no habian visto escritas. Uno de los caracteres fue escrito en Pinyin, el sistema alfabetico que los ninos chinos aprenden en los primeros dos meses de primer grado. La tarea de los ninos fue seleccionar un caracter para reemplazar el Pinyin. El primer experimento mostro que los ninos de tercero y quinto grado fueron capaces de seleccionar caracteres que contenian los radicales correctos, aun cuando los caracteres como totalidad no les eran familiares, lo que sugiere que eran conscientes de la relacion entre un radical y el significado de un caracter. El segundo experimento mostro que los ninos se desempenaron mejor utilizando los radicales para derivar los significados de caracteres nuevos cuando los radicales eran familiares y la dificultad conceptual de las palabras era baja. Los ninos considerados buenos lectores por los docentes demostraron mas conciencia de los radicales que los ninos considerados malos lectores. 
 
 
 
Eine gruppe von insgesamt 292 Kindern der ersten, dritten oder funften Schulstufe nahm an einem von zwei Experimenten zur Erforschung des etymologischen Bewustseins teil; darunter ist die Einsicht zu verstehen, das ein Bestandteil eines chinesischen Schriftzeichens, namlich das sinnbildliche Wurzelelement, Radikal genannt, gewohnlicherweise Informationen zur Bedeutung des Wortzeichens enthalt. Die Vorgangsweise, die bei den Experimenten angewendet wurde, war, Worter mit zwei Schriftzeichen zu prasentieren, die den Kindern vom mundlichen Sprachgebrauch her vertraut waren, aber deren Druckbild sie zuvor noch nicht gesehen hatten. Eines der Schriftzeichen war in Pinyin geschrieben, dem alphabetischen System, das Kinder in den ersten zwei Monaten auf der funften Schulstufe lernen. Die Aufgabe der Kinder war es, ein Bildzeichen herauszufinden, das das Pinyinzeichen ersetzt. Das erste Experiment zeigte, das die Kinder der dritten und funften Schulstufe imstande waren, jene Schriftzeichen auszuwahlen, die das richtige Radikal enthielten, auch wenn das Schriftzeichen als Ganzes ihnen unbekannt war, was die Schlusfolgerung nahelegt, das ihnen die Beziehung zwischen einem Radikal und der Bedeutung eines Zeichens bewust ist. Das zweite Experiment zeigte, das die Kinder besser imstande waren, die Bedeutungen von neuen Schriftzeichen abzuleiten, wenn ihnen die Radikale vertraut waren und der Schwierigkeitsgrad in der Sinnerfassung niedrig war. Jene Kinder, die von ihren Lehrern als gute Leser eingestuft wurden, zeigten mehr Bewustsein fur die sinnbildlichen Wurzelelemente als sogenannte schlechte Leser. 
 
 
 
Un total de 292 enfants de 1°, 3°, et 5° annee ont participe a l'une ou l'autre de deux experiences portant sur la conscience du radical, a savoir l'intuition qu'une composante des caracteres chinois, que l'on appelle le radical, apporte generalement une information sur la signification du caractere. La technique utilisee dans ces experiences a consiste a presenter des mots de deux caracteres, connus a l'oral, mais que les enfants n'avaient jamais vus a l'ecrit. Un des deux caracteres etait ecrit en pinyin, le systeme alphabetique que les enfants chinois apprennent dans les deux premiers mois de la 1° annee. La tâche des enfants consistait a selectionner un caractere substituable au pinyin. La premiere experience a montre que les enfants de 3° et 5° annee etaient en mesure de selectionner des caracteres contenant les radicaux corrects, meme quand les caracteres dans leur ensemble ne leur etaient pas familiers, ce qui signifierait qu'ils etaient conscients de la relation entre un radical et la signification d'un caractere. La seconde experience a montre que les enfants etaient plus en mesure d'utiliser des radicaux pour en deduire les significations des nouveaux caracteres quand les radicaux etaient familiers et que la difficulte conceptuelle des mots etait faible. Les enfants consideres comme de bons lecteurs par leurs maitres ont manifeste une plus grande conscience des radicaux que les enfants consideres comme de mauvais lecteurs.

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Role of Radical Awareness in the Character and Word Acquisition of Chinese Children. Technical Report No. 615.

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The Number of Words in Printed School English. Technical Report No. 253.

https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10579&context=annals-of-iowa

How Women Saved the City

Occasional acts of immorality are commonplace. One way in which people deal with their own prior immoral acts, is to rationalize why their acts are morally acceptable. It has been argued that such post hoc moral rationalizations may contribute to continuation or escalation of immoral behavior. This paper experimentally tests this causal influence of post hoc moral argumentation on escalation of immoral behavior and also tests how this depends on people’s level of moral identity. In three experiments we asked participants to generate moral arguments for their past behaviors. The results show that engaging in moral rationalization causes subsequent continuation and escalation of previous immoral behavior, but more so for low moral identifiers than for high moral identifiers.

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Moral Rationalization Contributes More Strongly to Escalation of Unethical Behavior Among Low Moral Identifiers Than Among High Moral Identifiers.

Prior research has shown that moral judgment, moral elevation, and moral identity contribute to prosocial behavior. However, how these three motivating factors interact in predicting prosocial behaviors is not yet clear. The current study proposed and examined a moderated mediation model to illustrate the specific process of how prosocial behavior is motivated by these factors. A total of 264 Chinese undergraduate and graduate students participated in the present study (140 females; age range 17-26, M = 20.25, SD = 1.57). Moral judgment competence, intensity of moral elevation, and moral identity were measured by self-reported scales, and the tendency to engage in prosocial behavior was assessed in a simulated "Ask for help" situation. The multiple regressive results showed that moral elevation mediated the effect of moral judgment on prosocial behavior, and moral identity moderated this mediation through interacting with moral elevation. However, within the proposed model, the mediating effect of moral elevation was stronger in women than in men, while the moderating role of moral identity appeared only in women. These findings imply different methods for men and women to enhance their prosocial behaviors, including the need to pay more attention to developing moral reasoning in men while putting more emphasis on evoking moral emotion and moral traits in women. Together, these results supported the assumptive model and provided a comprehensive framework to explain prosocial behaviors.

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How Can Prosocial Behavior Be Motivated? The Different Roles of Moral Judgment, Moral Elevation, and Moral Identity Among the Young Chinese.

Numerous studies have found that people tend to commit prosocial acts subsequent to previous immoral acts, as a response to the latter. This phenomenon is called moral cleansing or moral compensation. However, the specific mechanism how previous immoral acts motivate moral compensatory behaviors is still not fully understood. This study aimed to examine the roles of guilt and moral identity in the relation between previous immoral acts and subsequent prosocial behaviors to clarify the mechanism. Based on the extant research, the current study proposed a moderated mediation model to illustrate the process of moral cleansing. Specifically, a previous immoral act motivates guilt, which further leads to subsequent prosocial behaviors, while moral identity facilitates this process. The participants were primed by a recalling task (immoral act vs. a neutral event). The results support the hypothesized model and provide a framework that explains moral cleansing by integrating the roles of guilt and moral identity. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of people's morality with regard to how people adapt moral behaviors to protect their moral self-image.

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Why does the "sinner" act prosocially? The mediating role of guilt and the moderating role of moral identity in motivating moral cleansing

The present study examined the developmental relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, using a 1-year longitudinal study with a sample of 439 Chinese-speaking students in Grades 1, 3, and 5, respectively. Children's text reading and three components of morphological awareness: homophone awareness, homograph awareness and compounding awareness were measured. After controlling for word reading, vocabulary knowledge, IQ, rapid automatized naming and phonological awareness measured at the initial level, the structural equation modeling results indicated that children's compounding awareness made a significant direct contribution to reading comprehension only from Grade 5 to 6. Children's reading comprehension also made a unique contribution to compounding awareness from Grade 5 to 6. Thus a reciprocal relationship between compounding awareness and reading comprehension was found for Grade 5 to 6. Reading comprehension in Grades 3 and 5 predicted homophone awareness in Grades 4 and 6 were marginal significance, respectively, but initial homophone awareness did not predict later reading comprehension across grades. Furthermore, there no unique connection between homograph awareness and reading comprehension across grades. These findings suggest a dynamic relationship between different aspects of morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking children across elementary school years.

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The Relationship Between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension Among Chinese Children

There is some research showing that social anxiety is related with attentional bias to threat. However, others fail to find this relationship and propose that gender differences may play a role. The aim of this study was to investigate the gender differences in the subcomponents of attentional bias to threat (hypervigilance and difficulty in disengaging) among adolescents with social anxiety. Overall, 181 children and adolescents aged between 10 and 14 participated in the current study. Images of disgusted faces were used as threat stimuli and an Exogenous Cueing Task was used to measure the subcomponents of attentional bias. Additionally, the Social Anxiety Scale for Children was used to measure social anxiety. The repeated measurement ANOVA showed that male participants with high social anxiety showed difficulty in disengaging from threat, but this was not the case for female participants. Our results indicated that social anxiety is more related with attentional bias to threat among male adolescents than females. These findings suggested that developing gender-specific treatments for social anxiety may improve treatment effects.

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Ruibo Xie

Papers

How Can Prosocial Behavior Be Motivated? The Different Roles of Moral Judgment, Moral Elevation, and Moral Identity Among the Young Chinese.

Why does the "sinner" act prosocially? The mediating role of guilt and the moderating role of moral identity in motivating moral cleansing

The Relationship Between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension Among Chinese Children

Gender Differences in the Difficulty in Disengaging from Threat among Children and Adolescents With Social Anxiety.

The Role of Resilience and Student-teacher Relationship to Parent-child Separation-PTSS among Left-behind Children in China