PsyCh Journal

What do humans mean when they say that time passes quickly or slowly? In this article, we try to respond to this question on the basis of our studies on the judgment of the passage of time and its links with the judgment of physical durations. The awareness of the passage of time when consciousness is altered by meditation is also discussed. A dissociation is then made among the "self-time perspective," the "self-duration" (internal duration), and the "world-duration" (external duration)...

A time interval marked by two short sounds ("empty interval") is perceived to be longer when one or more short sounds are inserted within this time interval ("filled interval"). This illusion is known as the filled-duration illusion (FDI), which has been mainly observed above 500 ms. Previous evidence has mostly shown, however, that the FDI within 500 ms is not robust due to individual differences. FDI in this short range has been less influenced by the properties of sound markers (such as amplitude, time duration, and sound energy distribution)...

Guided by the "opportunity-propensity" (O-P) framework, this study explores how immigrant status might affect students' civic knowledge through an antecedent factor (socioeconomic status [SES]), opportunity factors (civic learning at school and civic participation at school), and propensity factors (perceived open classroom climate, perceived student-teacher relationship, and perceived importance of conventional citizenship). The data were taken from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016...

This study investigated adolescents' self- and other-evaluative moral emotions in prosocial contexts across cultures (Chinese and Canadian). The sample consisted of 341 adolescents from three age groups: early adolescents (Grade 7-8), middle adolescents (Grade 10-11), and late adolescents (1st-2nd-year university). Approximately equal numbers of participants were recruited across genders, age groups, and cultures. Participants were presented eight different scenarios depicting the self or others in prosocial contexts...

Anhedonia is defined as deficits in experiencing everyday life pleasure. Empirical studies suggest that anhedonia and working memory (WM) share overlapping neural substrates. Although WM training has been shown to alleviate anhedonia in individuals with social anhedonia, it is not clear whether WM training may also improve anhedonia in individuals with subsyndromal depression. This study examined the potential effect of WM training on improving anhedonia in college students with subsyndromal depression. Fifty college students were recruited and classified as the depressive (19 students) and non-depressive (31 students) groups according to their scores on the Beck Depression Inventory...

In the Ganzfeld technique, the visual and auditory perceptual fields are homogenized. After a short exposure to completely unstructured sensory input, participants transit into an altered state of consciousness. Visual homogenization is typically accomplished by a combination of goggles and bright light; auditory homogenization is accomplished by the presentation of unstructured auditory noise via headphones. The induced state is phenomenologically similar to a transition state between wakefulness and sleep, characterized by alterations in attentiveness, perception, and awareness, as well as by a compressed sense of time...

Over the last few years, several studies have investigated the possible effects of mindfulness meditation on time perception. Mindfulness meditation has been linked to both longer time production (TP) and increased bodily perception, and bodily processes are in turn thought to lie at the core of human time perception. Nevertheless, the connection between mindful movements (MMs; i.e., specific types of mind-body coordination-demanding physical activity) and time perception has been ignored. Consequently, in the current study we examined the effect of MMs on TP...

Cooperation is the crux of many social problems, thus third-party sanction, as one of the most important ways to promote cooperation, is worth studying. The present study compared the effects of third-party punishment alone, third-party reward alone, and the combination of third-party reward and third-party punishment on cooperation in the context of a public goods experiment. In addition, we explored the characteristics of third-party sanctioning behaviors. A total of 280 students participated in the present study...

The current study reports on a cross-cultural validation of the recently developed Resiliency Scale for Young Adults (RSYA) with two samples consisting of 617 Canadian university students and 651 Chinese university students. Confirmatory factor analysis, tests of cultural invariance, and correlations with relevant individual difference variables were conducted as tests of validity. In the Chinese sample, confirmatory factor analysis supported the factor structure of the RSYA and internal consistency reliabilities for the three factors and 10 facets were good-to-excellent...

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to do something in the future. Implementation intention refers to a self-regulatory strategy in the form of "If …, then …" planning that can improve PM performance. However, the neural basis of the effect of implementation intention on PM remains unclear, as do the phases of PM that are affected by implementation intention. This study aimed to address these issues. Healthy participants were randomly assigned to the implementation intention (n = 18) and typical instruction (n = 20) conditions...

Neurological soft signs (NSSs), conventionally defined as subtle neurological abnormalities, are frequently found in individuals with schizophrenia. Many neuroimaging studies have also reported that NSSs are associated with grey matter changes in patients with schizophrenia at different stages of the illness. However, these findings may be confounded by the effect of antipsychotic medications, chronicity, and duration of untreated psychosis. Examining NSSs in individuals with ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis may help to identify the neuroanatomical substrates of NSSs related to the illness itself and to avoid these potential confounding effects...

The reasons why we sleep have been debated endlessly and the arguments have tended to focus upon one key biological function that applies to the human species. Such explanations cannot account for the ubiquity of sleep across all animal life. This Opinion Paper explores the logic which enables all animal sleep to be defined as follows: Sleep is a period of physical inactivity during which time an individual of a particular species avoids movement within an environment to which it is poorly adapted, whilst using this time to undertake a range of essential biological activities that allow optimum performance during the period of activity...

Progress in chronobiology thus far has been built on botanical field investigation records, experiments on the development of biological clocks, open questions, established rules, and molecular mechanisms. In this review, three clock-related diseases, namely cancer, Alzheimer's disease (AD), and depression, are discussed. Evidence-based mechanisms of action of active compounds, namely epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), curcumin, and melatonin, from three medicinal plants, Camellia sinensis K., Curcuma longa L...

Diurnal environmental factors (zeitgebers) set the circadian clock in an antagonistic way: The body clock is tuned forward in the morning, while the same factor late in the day puts the body clock back to a later time-point: Morning light, for example, reduces the clock-effective light-reception (zeitnehmer2 ) by shifting the expression of the circadian, light-processing, molecular machinery more into the late, light-less night. Evening light does the same by a backward-shift, respectively. The balance between these daily back and forth adaptations results in a synchronization of the organismic timing with its environment...

Drug addiction as a biological, psychological, and social issue affects all dimensions of one's life. The purpose of this study was to determine the role of attachment styles, dysfunctional attitudes, and spirituality in predicting membership in addicted and non-addicted groups. This was a cross-sectional study conducted on 60 addicted people and 60 non-addicted people. The Adult Attachment Scale of Hazan and Shaver, Allport Religious Orientation Scale, and the 26-item Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS-26) were used to measure the variables...

Although the impacts of infertility-related stress on mental health have been testified in the literature, the underlying mechanism between them is still not clear. In response to this issue, 286 Chinese women who were pursuing medical treatment for fertility problems in two state-owned hospitals were invited to complete the survey, including the 7-item Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), the Fertility Problem Inventory (FPI), the 5-item Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5), and demographic variables (e.g., age). The multiple linear regression method (SPSS 16) was used to investigate the impact of infertility-related stress and marital satisfaction on infertile women's mental health...

In the course of evolution, health is prioritized for human well-being and economies. Epidemiological and experimental studies suggest that modern life habits, including eating habits, and living and working conditions, can deteriorate health through circadian misalignment. This has been most commonly observed with urban societies and working classes of non-standard working schedules (NSWSs), such as shift work, night work, and overtime work. Poor health conditions with NSWSs generate economic burden for the modern society...

We tested the incubation effect on promoting problem-solving insight in a "test-incubation-retest" procedure in different groups receiving a reward notification (RN) before or after the incubation phase, or no RN. Only RN given before incubation significantly promoted creative performance, implying that incubation may help optimize the promoting effects of reward on creativity.

While the abrupt onset of a peripheral visual cue usually leads to speeded responses to following targets at the cued relative to other positions, responses are slowed if targets lag behind the cue by more than ~200 ms. This response delay is termed inhibition of return (IOR) and has been considered as a mechanism to orient behavior toward novel areas. IOR has been found in both detection and discrimination tasks with later onset in discrimination tasks, probably due to a higher processing demand. Here we examined whether the processing demand of cues can modulate IOR in the detection task...

Time production (TP) with or without chronometric counting both instantiates and reflects the working of an internal clock, as originally posited by Treisman. We exploit the fact that a number of experienced meditators, who had previously participated in a study wherein TP was assessed, and who had employed chronometric counting then, would be coming back to the lab to participate in a second study. We specifically requested that they should not employ chronometric counting this time, thus allowing us to contrast TP with and without counting...