Stereotype activation is unintentional: Behavioural and event-related potenials evidence.

In this study, a priming Stroop paradigm was used to determine whether stereotype activation is unintentional. Priming conditions (priming/no-priming) and the relationship between priming and target (consistent/inconsistent/no-relation) were the independent variables; accuracy, reaction time and N400 amplitude were used as dependent variables. The reaction time revealed that stereotype activation is, to some extent, unintentional. Furthermore, the event-related potenial (ERP) results showed that N400 amplitude was larger for inconsistent conditions than for consistent conditions. This result supported the notion that stereotype activation is an unintentional and automatic process.

Prevalence and predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms among child survivors 1 year following the Wenchuan earthquake in China.

The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence rates of probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression and to explore potential risk factors among child and adolescent survivors 1 year following the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. 3052 participants were administered the Child PTSD Symptom Scale, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale for Children, and the earthquake experience scale. Results indicated that the prevalence rates of probable PTSD and depression were 8.6 and 42.5%, respectively. Demographic variables (i.e., age and gender) and most aspects of earthquake experiences (i.e., direct exposure, close ones' exposure, fear for the safety of close ones, prior exposure to trauma, living location, and house damage, with the exception of type of housing) made unique contributions to PTSD and depressive symptoms. In addition, the moderating effect of gender on the relationships between age and PTSD and depressive symptoms was significant. In conclusion, depression was a more common psychological response than was PTSD among child survivors 1 year following the Wenchuan earthquake. Age and gender were risk factors for both PTSD and depressive symptoms. Furthermore, older female survivors exhibit more severe PTSD and depressive symptoms. Additionally, several aspects of earthquake experiences (i.e., direct exposure, close ones' exposure, fear for the safety of close ones, prior exposure to trauma, living location, and house damage) was also important for the development and maintenance of PTSD and depressive symptoms.

Electrophysiological correlates of reading the single- and interactive-mind.

Understanding minds is the cognitive basis of successful social interaction. In everyday life, human mental activity often happens at the moment of social interaction among two or multiple persons instead of only one-person. Understanding the interactive mind of two- or multi-person is more complex and higher than understanding the single-person mind in the hierarchical structure of theory of mind. Understanding the interactive mind maybe differentiate from understanding the single mind. In order to examine the dissociative electrophysiological correlates of reading the single mind and reading the interactive mind, the 64 channels event-related potentials were recorded while 16 normal adults were observing three kinds of Chinese idioms depicted physical scenes, one-person with mental activity, and two- or multi-person with mental interaction. After the equivalent N400, in the 500- to 700-ms epoch, the mean amplitudes of late positive component (LPC) over frontal for reading the single mind and reading the interactive mind were significantly more positive than for physical representation, while there was no difference between the former two. In the 700- to 800-ms epoch, the mean amplitudes of LPC over frontal-central for reading the interactive mind were more positive than for reading the single mind and physical representation, while there was no difference between the latter two. The present study provides electrophysiological signature of the dissociations between reading the single mind and reading the interactive mind.

Event-related potential effects of superior action anticipation in professional badminton players.

The ability to predict the trajectory of a ball based on the opponent's body kinematics has been shown to be critical to high-performing athletes in many sports. However, little is known about the neural correlates underlying such superior ability in action anticipation. The present event-related potential study compared brain responses from professional badminton players and non-player controls when they watched video clips of badminton games and predicted a ball's landing position. Replicating literature findings, the players made significantly more accurate judgments than the controls and showed better action anticipation. Correspondingly, they showed enlarged amplitudes of two ERP components, a P300 peaking around 350ms post-stimulus with a parietal scalp distribution and a P2 peaking around 250ms with a posterior-occipital distribution. The P300 effect was interpreted to reflect primed access and/or directing of attention to game-related memory representations in the players facilitating their online judgment of related actions. The P2 effect was suggested to reflect some generic learning effects. The results identify clear neural responses that differentiate between different levels of action anticipation associated with sports expertise.

Athletic training in badminton players modulates the early C1 component of visual evoked potentials: a preliminary investigation.

One basic question in brain plasticity research is whether individual life experience in the normal population can affect very early sensory-perceptual processing. Athletes provide a possible model to explore plasticity of the visual cortex as athletic training in confrontational ball games is quite often accompanied by training of the visual system. We asked professional badminton players to watch video clips related to their training experience and predict where the ball would land and examined whether they differed from non-player controls in the elicited C1, a visual evoked potential indexing V1 activity. Compared with controls, the players made judgments significantly more accurately, albeit not faster. An early ERP component peaking around 65 ms post-stimulus with a scalp topography centering at the occipital pole (electrode Oz) was observed in both groups and interpreted as the C1 component. With comparable latency, amplitudes of this component were significantly enhanced for the players than for the non-players, suggesting that it can be modulated by long-term physical training. The results present a clear case of experience-induced brain plasticity in primary visual cortex for very early sensory processing.

Involvement of the left inferior frontal gyrus in predictive inference making.

Although predictive inference in reading has been extensively investigated with behavioral paradigms, little is known about its neural substrates. Manipulating the likelihood that a particular event can be predicted from the content of a preceding three-sentence story, the present functional MRI study showed that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the right lingual gyrus were involved in predictive inference generation. It is suggested that the LIFG was responsible for the construction of predictive inference and the right lingual gyrus for integrating the constructed inference into a coherent text representation. Combined with previous research, the results provide brain imaging evidence consistent with predictions from the Schmalhofer et al. model (Discourse Processes, 33, 105-13, 2002) which intends to unify predictive inference and bridging inference in a single theoretical framework.