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Several norms of psycholinguistic features of Chinese characters exist in Mandarin Chinese, but only a few are available in Cantonese or in the traditional script, and none includes semantic radical transparency ratings. This study presents subjective ratings of age-of-acquisition (AoA), familiarity, imageability, concreteness, and semantic radical transparency in 4376 Chinese characters. The single Chinese characters were rated individually on the five dimensions by 20 native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong to form the Hong Kong Chinese Character Psycholinguistic Norms (HKCCPN). The split-half reliability and intra-class correlations testified to the high internal reliability of the ratings. Their convergent and discriminant patterns in relations to other psycholinguistic measures echoed previous findings reported on Chinese. There were high correlations for semantic radical transparency, imageability and concreteness, and moderate-to-high correlations for AoA and familiarity among subsets of items that had been collected in previous studies. Concurrent validity analyses showed convergence in predicting behavioral response times in various tasks (lexical decision, naming, and writing-to-dictation) when compared with other Chinese character databases. High predictive validity was shown in writing-to-dictation data from an independent sample of 20 native Cantonese speakers. Several objective psycholinguistic measures (character frequency, stroke number, number of words formed, number of homophones and number of meanings) were included in this database to facilitate its use. These new ratings extend the currently available norms in language and reading research in Cantonese Chinese for researchers, clinicians, and educators, as well as provide them with a wider choice of stimuli.

Objectives Research shows that compassion from others and from the self may enable university students to face, overcome, and bounce back from adversity and generate a greater sense of thriving and meaning in life. However, the underlying processes are largely unknown. The present study aimed to examine the associations of compassion with psychological distress, flourishing, and meaning in life among university students and explore the mechanisms underlying these associations. Methods A total of 536 Hong Kong university students completed questionnaires measuring their experiences of compassion from others, self-compassion, resilience, psychological distress, flourishing, and meaning in life. Results Serial mediation analyses showed that compassion from others was associated positively with self-compassion, which was, in turn, linked to greater resilience and consequently lower levels of psychological distress and higher levels of flourishing and meaning in life. Conclusions Our findings reveal the associations of compassion from others and self-compassion with the well-being and life meaning of university students. The findings highlight the importance of being open and receptive to love and kindness from others. The findings also point to the importance of developing a caring attitude toward oneself.

Learners entering higher education may learn specialized vocabulary of new disciplines in their second language (L2) with or without support from their first language (L1). However, these learners cannot rely on an established conceptual representation in L1 when learning L2 specialized vocabulary. The effects of learning a new concept in L1 prior to learning and testing the same concept in L2 are yet unclear. The present study compared the effectiveness of L1-mediation and L2-repetition word learning methods randomly assigned to 75 bilingual adults. Participants learned subject-specific specialized vocabulary through reading a series of definition sentences in two learning episodes a week apart. The L1L2 group ( N = 31) first learned L1 words on Day 1 and then their L2 translation equivalents on Day 2, while the L2L2 group ( N = 44) learned the words in L2 on both days. In each learning session, participants provided self-ratings on their confidence in acquiring word meaning after reading each sentence and completed a word meaning recognition test afterward. Results using linear mixed-effects modeling showed that L1-mediation learning may ease the start of L2 word learning as shown in higher confidence ratings and less reading time, leading to a faster establishment of high-quality conceptual representations. In contrast, L2-repetition learning may strengthen lexical representations and L2-concept connections through increased exposure to L2 words. However, the two learning methods produced comparable results on L2 meaning recognition, so flexible adoption of the learning methods according to the learning goal is suggested.

This study examined the very initial phases of orthographic and semantic acquisition in monolingual native English speakers learning Chinese words under controlled laboratory conditions. Participants engaged in ten sessions of vocabulary learning, four of which were used to obtain ERPs. Performance in behavioral tests improved over sessions, and these data were used to define fast and slow learners. Most important is that ERPs in the two groups of learners revealed qualitatively distinct learning patterns. Only fast learners showed a left-lateralized increase in N170 amplitude with training. Furthermore, only fast learners showed an increased N400 amplitude with training, with a distinct anterior distribution. Slow learners, on the other hand, showed a posterior positive effect, with increasingly positive-going waveforms in occipital sites as training progressed. Possible mechanisms underlying these qualitative differences are discussed.