Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-10-11
Abstract： How to understand abstract concepts has always been a research focus in cognitive linguistics. The viewpoint, which is represented by conceptual metaphor theory and perceptual symbol theory, demonstrates that abstract concepts are acquired and grasped through the experience of perceptual movement of the body, and through the understanding and construction of metaphor. As a typical abstract concept, the acquisition of a moral concept's meaning is also based on relevant experience. We propose and test a general hypothesis, which we call the metaphorical retrieval hypothesis (MRH). According to this hypothesis, metaphor mapping is bidirectional and feature integration and processing depth affect the retrieval of metaphor association. In Chinese, there are some psychological metaphors in moral concepts and container space, but there are no linguistic metaphors. Therefore, this metaphorical association is weak, which helps us to verify the metaphor retrieval hypothesis. To explore these questions, the metaphorical association between moral concepts and container space is investigated through three experiments in this study. All experiments were performed using Eprime 2.0. The Stroop paradigm was adopted in Experiment 1 to explore the metaphorical association between Chinese moral concepts and container space. Participants were asked to make moral judgments about words appearing on the inside and outside of the circle. The purpose of Experiment 2a was to investigate the mapping of the target domain to the source domain at low or deep levels of perceptual processing. A priming paradigm was used in which participants were asked to judge the position of the letters in one block task and the category of the letters in another block task, respectively, when a letter was shown on the inside or outside of the container, then the words appeared in the position of the letter and participants judged whether it was moral or immoral. Experiment 2b utilized the same paradigm as Experiment 2a, but the present order of the letter judgment and the moral judgment was reversed in order to explore the mapping of the source domain to the target domain at low and deep levels of perceptual processing depth. Experiment 3a used the same paradigm as experiment 1, during which participants were required to make moral judgments by pressing different buttons about the Chinese words based on whether it appeared inside or outside the circle. The aim of Experiment 3a was to explore the influence of the feature integrational degree on the orientation mapping from the target domain to the source domain. Similarly, to explore the influence of feature integrational degree on the orientation mapping from the source domain to the target domain, Experiment 3b adopted the same paradigm as Experiment 3a, but participants were asked to make container space judgments by pressing different buttons about the Chinese words based on whether it was moral or immoral. Repeated ANOVA analysis was used to analyze the data in the experiments. In Experiment 1, we collected the reaction time of lexical judgment of participants, and the results did not reveal a significant Stroop effect. In Experiment 2a, the reaction time of participants in the lexical judgment task was also recorded. The results showed that the effect of metaphorical consistency, which was incomplete, was only in the deeper perceptual processing depth. In Experiment 2b, the reaction time of participants in the letter judgment task was analyzed. Consistent with Experiment 2a, an incomplete metaphorical consistency effect was found only in the deeper perceptual processing depth. In Experiment 3a, the reaction time of participants in the lexical judgment task was collected, and a complete and strong metaphorical consistency effect was proved. Finally, in Experiment 3b, the reaction time of participants in the container space judgment task was recorded, and the results also suggested a complete and strong metaphorical consistency effect. In summary, the following conclusions were drawn from the three experiments. First, there was a psychological metaphor between moral concept and container space, which was represented as moral internally and immoral externally, respectively. The mapping between container space and moral concepts was bidirectional. Second, the metaphorical association and bidirectional mapping between container space and moral concepts were affected by the depth of perceptual processing and degree of feature integration. Finally, this study also provided evidence to support the Metaphorical Retrieval Hypothesis. "
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-09-29
Abstract： Increasing divorce rates in China have led to greater numbers of children growing up in single-parent homes. Previous studies have indicated that such single-parent children reported greater senses of relative deprivation and more psychological adjustment problems than their counterparts in undivided families. However, few studies have yet examined associations between relative deprivation and psychological adjustment and their directions. We thus explored characteristics of relative deprivation, psychological adjustment, and associations among them over 1.5 years beginning March, 2017. A sample of 273 single-parent children (50.5% boys) was recruited from two primary schools and two junior middle schools in Hubei, China. Attrition was relatively minor, namely 93.4% of participants completed all surveys during three assessment waves. Participants provided self-report data on individual and group cognitive and individual and group affective relative deprivation, and depression, loneliness, social anxiety, and self-esteem, as well as demographic variables (i.e., gender, academic period, and family economic status). All the measures had good reliability and validity. Results indicated that relative deprivation of single-parent children was not obvious, and psychological adjustment was generally good. Boys reported higher levels of depression and loneliness than girls. Moreover, single-parent children with poor family economic status reported higher levels of relative deprivation, depression, and loneliness, as well as lower levels of self-esteem than their counterparts. To explore the possible reciprocal relations between relative deprivation and psychological adjustment, as well as to separate between-person effects from within-person effects, we analyzed data by using the random intercepts cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM). Results showed that there were reciprocal relations between relative deprivation and psychological adjustment in within-person level when controlling for between-person effects and key demographic variables. Specifically, initial relative deprivation significantly negatively predicted psychological adjustment at Time 2, which in turn negatively predicted relative deprivation at Time 3. Moreover, relative deprivation at Time 2 also negatively predicted psychological adjustment at Time 3. These reciprocal relations between relative deprivation and psychological adjustment did not differ by gender and academic period (i.e., primary or secondary school). However, the association between psychological adjustment and relative deprivation was stronger for single-parent children with poor family economic status than for those with good family economic status. These observations expand understanding of the complex relations between relative deprivation and psychological adjustment among single-parent children in China. Additionally, they have important implications for intervention and improvement of mental health for vulnerable groups, especially single parent children. For instance, programs that aim to improve the mental health of single-parent children and to reduce the levels of relative deprivation among this vulnerable group may be helpful in breaking the detrimental cycle between relative deprivation and psychological adjustment.
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