Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Enhancing cardiovascular health in older adults by combining positive psychology and lifestyle intervention (the ACCOMPLI-CH Study): A mixed-methods feasibility trial
No full textThis study explored the feasibility and preliminary impact of combining positive psychology and lifestyle interventions on cardiovascular health among older adults. A mixed-methods study with a pre-test/post-test design was conducted. Thirteen participants with medium to high cardiovascular risk and at least two modifiable risk factors attended five in-person group sessions over two weeks. For the primary outcome, adherence was assessed through session attendance and homework completion, while acceptability was evaluated across five dimensions: overall satisfaction, training procedure, assessment, implementation generalizability, and suggestions for improvement. Secondary outcomes examined effects on physical health, psychological well-being, and health behaviors. The results showed high adherence, with all participants attending five sessions and most completing homework. For acceptability, quantitative ratings showed good results, and qualitative results indicated enhancement in positive emotions, self-perceptions, physical health, and health literacy. Self-reported health status and dietary habits showed improvements. The findings suggested potential for broad implementation. (c) 2025 Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies
The development of third-party intervention in children aged 4-10: Balancing unfairness aversion and self-interest
No full textThis study explored how children (N = 196, ages 4-10) balance fairness and self-interest when making costly third-party interventions. Using a third-party trust game, children made decisions in both punishment and compensation contexts across three degrees of unfairness. Dynamic time warping (DTW) clustering was applied to identify distinct intervention patterns across unfairness conditions, offering a novel approach to capture children's fairness behaviors as coherent trajectories rather than isolated responses. Results revealed that 4-year-olds, in low unfairness conditions (i.e., a 6:4 distribution), displayed more interventions than 10-year-olds, often exceeding what was required to restore fairness, whereas older children's interventions were more aligned with fairness demands. In low unfairness conditions, inhibitory control was positively associated with intervention intensity, though this effect weakened with age. Age-related differences were evident in the strategies employed, particularly in punishment contexts. Younger children tended to display less clear strategies, while older children were more likely to exhibit either fairness-oriented or self-interest-oriented strategies. Negative empathy-empathy for others' negative emotions-was positively associated with fairness-oriented decisions in punishment situations, with children exhibiting higher negative empathy more likely to be fair. However, the relationship between empathy and third-party compensation was less clear, as empathy was not significantly related to whether participants performed fairness- or self-interestoriented behaviors. These findings suggest that with age, children's third-party intervention strategies become more context-sensitive, shifting from spontaneous punishment in mild unfairness toward more calculated, fairness- or self-interest-oriented decisions. By contrast, thirdparty compensation appeared to be relatively unaffected by age in terms of orientation
Children and adults across 15 countries believe in human uniqueness of mind: a cross-cultural investigation of cross-species mind perception
No full textThe way humans relate to other animals is fundamentally shaped by whether we perceive ourselves as unique, with feelings and thoughts not shared by other animals. How beliefs about animals' ability to feel and think develop across cultures remains largely unexplored. We asked children and adolescents (4-17 years, N = 1025) and adults (N = 190) from 33 urban and rural communities across 15 countries whether animals have thoughts or feelings (judgments of presence), and whether those thoughts or feelings are human-like (judgments of similarity). Bayesian analyses revealed that participants generally ascribed non-human animals the ability for thoughts and feelings. However, they universally denied that animals have human-like thoughts, with these beliefs emerging early in development across all societies and remaining stable across the lifespan. There was more cultural variation found in whether participants attributed human-like feelings to animals. Human mental exceptionalism appears to be a human universal and is restricted to human-like thoughts. Implications for human-animal relationships and ethical considerations for the treatment and conservation of other animals are discussed
Why self-control fails: the effects of self-control depletion on team safety performance in nuclear power plants
No full textThis study highlights the important role of self-control in improving safety performance in nuclear power plants. Drawing on the self-control depletion framework, the study investigates the antecedents and consequences of self-control failure in the context of occupational safety at the team level and examines the moderating effect of team descriptive safety norms. Data were collected from 346 operators across 81 teams. Results showed that team-level self-control demands reduced team safety compliance and participation through team-level self-control depletion, consequently increasing safety incidents. The impact of self-control depletion on team safety compliance and participation was moderated by the interaction of team safety descriptive norm levels and strength. The weakest negative effect occurred when both norm strength and norm levels were high, while the strongest negative effect occurred with high norm strength and low norm levels. To ensure workplace safety, self-management training should be implemented and social norms intervention programs developed
Interrelationships between childhood trauma, alexithymia, and depressive symptoms: A network analysis and replication
No full textBackground: Childhood trauma has been found to increase the risk of developing alexithymia and depressive symptoms. However, the complex interplay between childhood trauma, alexithymia, and depressive symptoms remains unclear. Objective: To understand how different facets of childhood trauma, alexithymia across positive and negative emotions, and depressive symptoms interact with each other, this study adopted the network analysis approaches to examine this complex relationship. Participants and setting: An initial sample of 2918 Chinese college students completed a set of psychometric questionnaires measuring childhood trauma, alexithymia and depressive symptoms. Another independent sample (n = 858) was used to investigate the replicability of our results. Methods: Undirected networks were estimated to explore the most relevant connections between the above variables. Bayesian network analysis was further used to explore the potential causal directions between the variables. Results: Findings from the initial dataset showed that childhood trauma was positively correlated with both alexithymia and depressive symptoms in the undirected networks. Physical abuse was the most central node. The Bayesian network analysis indicated that externally orientated thinking and depressed mood may be key drivers for activating other symptoms. Physical abuse might affect suicide ideation through difficulties in describing negative emotions. The replication dataset showed similar network structures as the initial dataset. Conclusions: The findings suggest that childhood trauma, especially physical abuse, plays an important role in developing later depressive symptoms via valenced components of alexithymia. This study clarifies how early adversities link to depressive symptoms through emotional functioning and informs clinical interventions targeting influential symptoms in trauma-exposed populations
Satiety modulates reward processing in food addiction: Evidence from event-related potentials
No full textThis study investigates the neural correlates of reward processing deficits in food addiction (FA), focusing on the anticipation and feedback phases under different metabolic states. Fifty-four participants (individuals with FA and healthy controls, HC) completed a food and monetary reward task during hungry and satiated states, with electroencephalography (EEG) recording. We specifically measured two event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with anticipation and feedback of reward: Stimulus-Preceding Negativity (SPN) and Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN). In addition, Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) scores assessed addiction severity. Repeated-measures ANOVA and correlation analyses examined group differences and neural-behavioral associations. Behavioral data showed heightened food reward anticipation in individuals with FA during satiety. Participants with FA exhibited larger SPN for food rewards in the satiated state compared to HC, indicating persistent reward anticipation, while FRN was attenuated across both metabolic states in the FA group, reflecting persistent feedback deficits. Monetary rewards showed no group differences between HC and FA. The FRN amplitude correlated with YFAS scores, linking feedback impairment to addiction severity. These results highlight that FA is characterized by food-specific reward processing deficits, particularly exacerbated in satiety. Impaired FRN emerged as a key ERP marker of these deficits and correlated with addiction severity. These findings underscore the critical role of dysregulated reward feedback processing in FA, offering FRN as a potential target for diagnostic and therapeutic interventions.</p
Insufficient cognitive resources allocation with compensatory sensory enhancement in children with attention difficulties
No full textA subset of children exhibits ADHD symptoms without meeting full diagnostic criteria. These children demonstrate behavioral difficulties and functional impairments but often lack access to evidence-based interventions. This study examined the neural mechanisms underlying the ADHD symptoms in these children by using classic and modified oddball paradigms that incorporated novel stimuli and rare repetitive distractors and analyzed event-related potential (ERP) components across different stages of visual attentional processing. Forty-six children participated in the study and were categorized into a group with normal visual attention (Group 1) and a group with attention difficulties (Group 2) by the Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA-CPT). Behavioral results revealed that Group 2 children had lower accuracy rates in both tasks, though no interaction emerged between stimulus condition and group. Reaction times did not differ significantly between groups. ERP results indicated that Group 2 exhibited reduced N2 amplitudes and prolonged N2 latencies across all conditions. In the modified task, they also showed attenuated P3 amplitudes to target stimuli. Additionally, Group 2 displayed shorter P2 latencies across conditions. These findings suggest deficits in top-down attention and early bottom-up sensory processing in children with ADHD symptoms. Furthermore, we propose a compensatory mechanism wherein heightened early sensory sensitivity may partially counteract deficient neural resource allocation in later attentional stages. Together, these results imply that training programs targeting cognitive abilities could help alleviate behavioral symptoms.</p
Interrelationships between childhood trauma, alexithymia, and depressive symptoms: A network analysis and replication
No full textBackground: Childhood trauma has been found to increase the risk of developing alexithymia and depressive symptoms. However, the complex interplay between childhood trauma, alexithymia, and depressive symptoms remains unclear. Objective: To understand how different facets of childhood trauma, alexithymia across positive and negative emotions, and depressive symptoms interact with each other, this study adopted the network analysis approaches to examine this complex relationship. Participants and setting: An initial sample of 2918 Chinese college students completed a set of psychometric questionnaires measuring childhood trauma, alexithymia and depressive symptoms. Another independent sample (n = 858) was used to investigate the replicability of our results. Methods: Undirected networks were estimated to explore the most relevant connections between the above variables. Bayesian network analysis was further used to explore the potential causal directions between the variables. Results: Findings from the initial dataset showed that childhood trauma was positively correlated with both alexithymia and depressive symptoms in the undirected networks. Physical abuse was the most central node. The Bayesian network analysis indicated that externally orientated thinking and depressed mood may be key drivers for activating other symptoms. Physical abuse might affect suicide ideation through difficulties in describing negative emotions. The replication dataset showed similar network structures as the initial dataset. Conclusions: The findings suggest that childhood trauma, especially physical abuse, plays an important role in developing later depressive symptoms via valenced components of alexithymia. This study clarifies how early adversities link to depressive symptoms through emotional functioning and informs clinical interventions targeting influential symptoms in trauma-exposed populations
Shared neurogenetic architecture links adolescent neurodevelopmental deviations to adult psychopathological procrastination
No full textWhile general procrastination is common, psychopathological procrastination, a debilitating phenotype often indicative of subclinical psychiatric conditions, remains poorly understood in terms of its neurobiological underpinning. Challenging its traditional conceptualization as a mere behavioral deficit, we investigated the neurogenetic architecture of psychopathological procrastination. Leveraging a prospective adolescent twin cohort (N = 71 twin pairs) with neuroanatomical imaging (baseline) and psychopathological procrastination phenotyping in young adulthood (8-year follow-up), we first established moderate heritability for psychopathological procrastination (h(2) = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.14 - 0.71). Employing normative modeling of brain morphology, we found that adolescent neurodevelopmental deviations, specifically within the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), predicted adult psychopathological procrastination. Crucially, these predictive adolescent NAcc deviations exhibited a strong shared genetic basis with adult psychopathological procrastination (rg = 0.89, 95% CI: 0.89 - 1.00). Beyond regional effects, psychopathological-procrastination-specific whole-brain deviation patterns were identified, which showed neurobiological enrichment with cortical functional gradient and key dopaminergic (DAT/D1) and serotonergic (5-HT receptors) neurotransmitter systems. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal transcriptomic integration of these neuroimaging signatures with human brain gene expression data pinpointed significant associations with molecular transport, neuroimmune responses, and neuroinflammation, further implicating dysregulation within serotonergic and dopaminergic pathways. Collectively, our findings delineate a multisystem neurogenetic architecture of psychopathological procrastination, providing supportive evidence that recontextualizes this debilitating phenotype from a simple behavioral issue to a condition with neurodevelopmental antecedents, potentially suggesting its conceptualization as a subclinical brain disorder
Sensorimotor synchronization in children with autism spectrum disorder: The role of timing and modality
No full textImpaired sensorimotor synchronization is observed in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet the underlying mechanism of this impairment remains unclear. The current study investigated the impact of the inter-stimulus interval and the modality of stimulus on synchronization performance in children with ASD. Twenty-one high-functioning children with ASD and 21 typically developing (TD) children participated in a finger-tapping task. There were no significant group differences in age, gender, or IQ. Results showed that children with ASD exhibited greater asynchrony at longer time intervals and lower efficiency in multisensory integration compared to TD children. Notably, children with ASD were able to benefit from multisensory cues to improve their sensorimotor synchronization at longer intervals. Children's synchronization performance was correlated with total IQ, fluid reasoning, and visual spatial ability. These findings shed light on the underlying mechanism of atypical synchronization in children with ASD and provide a new avenue for developing targeted training on sensorimotor synchronization for children with ASD
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