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Understanding kind and hostile communicative intentions that are conveyed by others is essential for successful human interaction. However, it still remains unknown whether gender differences exist in understanding others' social interactive intentions, especially behind their body movements. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the gender effects in understanding kind and hostile intentions (versus neutral intention) displayed by two actors (or actresses) and their body movements. We recruited 60 participants from a university in China and recorded the accuracy and reaction times when participants performed an intention inference task. Significant main effects of the gender on accuracies were found. The results showed female observers performed better than males on accuracy of intention inference task. The outcome also indicated observers exhibited higher accuracy of understanding intentions for actors than actresses. Moreover, the results indicated higher accuracy and shorter reaction times for understanding hostile intention than those for kind intention. In addition, there was an interaction effect between the gender of actor/actress and intention conditions on reaction times. In particular, the reaction times for understanding actors' kind intentions was longer than those for actresses; whereas the reaction times for understanding hostile intentions showed a reverse pattern. In conclusion, the evidence demonstrated that behavioral processing underlying social intention understanding differs with different types of communicative intentions, which was also moderated by the gender of the actors/actresses. The findings of the study will facilitate a better understanding of gender vulnerability in neuropsychiatric impairment., Author(s): Liang Huang [sup.1], Yiwen Wang [sup.2], Junxiang Li [sup.1], Guoyao Lin [sup.1], Fangyuan Du [sup.1], Lijun Chen [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.413066.6, 0000 0000 9868 296X, Institute of Applied [...]

The preschool age is an important period in the development of children's emotional abilities. The face and body are both vital carriers of emotional information and adults readily match the emotional cues coming from these two modalities. However, it is unknown whether preschoolers have this ability or not. In the current study, 36 preschoolers (22 boys, aged 44–73 months old) participated in an emotional facial and bodily matching test including angry, happy, and neutral expressions (Experiment 1) and an eye-tracking experiment (Experiment 2). The results show that: (1) preschoolers can accurately match three categories of facial and bodily expressions of emotion (all matching rates were above 93% in Experiment 1); (2) robust emotional matching was observed across conditions in Experiment 2. That is, the eye-tracking indexes including the total fixation duration, the first fixation duration, and the fixation count, all indicated that the preschoolers more thoroughly processed bodily expressions of emotion which were congruent to the facial expressions compared to incongruent bodily expressions of emotion. This study shows that the ability to match facial and bodily expressions of emotion develops at an early age. Preschool children have already reached a high level of this ability. Plain Language Summary: The preschool age is an important period in the development of children's emotional abilities. The face and body are both vital carriers of emotional information and adults readily match the emotional cues coming from these two modalities. However, it is unknown whether preschoolers have this ability or not. In the current study, thirty-six preschoolers (22 boys, aged 44-73 months old) participated in an emotional facial and bodily matching test including angry, happy, and neutral expressions (Experiment 1) and an eye-tracking experiment (Experiment 2). The results show that: (1) preschoolers can accurately match three categories of facial and bodily expressions of emotion (all matching rates were above 93% in Experiment 1); (2) robust emotional matching was observed across conditions in Experiment 2. That is, the eye-tracking indexes including the total fixation duration, the first fixation duration, and the fixation count, all indicated that the preschoolers more thoroughly processed bodily expressions of emotion which were congruent to the facial expressions compared to incongruent bodily expressions of emotion. This study shows that the ability to match facial and bodily expressions of emotion match develops at an early age. Preschool children have already reached a high level of this ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by wide ranging and heterogeneous changes in social and cognitive abilities, including deficits in orienting attention during early processing of stimuli. Investigators have found that there is a continuum of autism-like traits in the general population, suggesting that these autistic traits may be examined in the absence of clinically diagnosed autism. To provide evidence for the continuum of autistic traits in terms of social attention and to provide insights into social attention deficits in people with autism, the current study was conducted to examine the effect of autistic traits of typically developing individuals on social orienting using a spatial cueing paradigm. The typically developing individuals who participated in this study were divided into high autistic traits (HA) and low autistic traits groups using the Autism Quotient scale. All participants completed a spatial cueing task in which social cues (gaze) and non-social cues (arrow) were presented under different cue predictability conditions (predictive vs. non-predictive) with different SOAs (100 ms vs. 400 ms). The results showed that compared to low autistic individuals, high autistic individuals had less benefit from non-predictive social cues but greater benefit from non-social ones, providing evidence that such spatial attention impairment in high autistic individuals is specific to the social domain. Interestingly, the smaller benefit from non-predictive social cues in high autistic individuals was shown only in the 400 ms condition, not in the 100 ms condition, suggesting that their difficulties in orienting to non-predictive social cues may be caused by a deficiency in spontaneously effortful control processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the domain of self-compassion, this study explored the promotion mechanism of online learning behavioral engagement (OLBE) of international students in China under COVID-19. Positive emotion and self-improvement motivation were selected as mediators. Participants were 606 international students from 8 countries who were studying online in their own countries due to the international travel restriction of COVID-19. Results showed positive emotion and self-improvement motivation completely mediated self-compassionate mindfulness (SCM) and OLBE of international students. Positive emotion and self-improvement partially mediated SCM and OLBE of international students respectively. Students with higher SCM engage with online learning more in that they possess more positive emotion and self-improvement motivation. This study suggested that SCM may facilitate OLBE via positive emotion and effective self-improvement motivation., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Chen, Lin and Lyu.)