Professor Hao Yaodong was one of the pioneers of psychology discipline in modern and contemporary China. While studying in the United States, he was mentored by L. M. Terman, then the president of the American Psychological Association and a distinguished psychologist in the realm of intelligence testing. Prof. Hao was the first to introduce foreign theories of intelligence tests, psychometrics, educational psychology and corresponding empirical research methods into China, and to put them into teaching and research practice, particularly into the practice of psychological testing. Furthermore, he initiated and participated in the establishment of professional psychological associations and academic journals, playing a leading role in developing psychology discipline. Deeply rooted in the northwest of China, Prof. Hao laid foundations for the departments of psychology in both Northwest Normal University and Shaanxi Normal University, which promoted the disciplinary layout in China. As a disseminator of western scientific psychological thoughts and research paradigms and a practitioner of the construction and development of psychology discipline in China, Professor Hao Yaodong made outstanding contributions to the development of psychology in modern and contemporary China.

With eye-tracking methodology, the present study aimed to explore the developmental trajectory of irrelevant speech effects during reading among children across Grades 1−5. By manipulating the type of background sound (meaningful speech, meaningless speech, white noise and quiet), we found that: 1) meaningful speech interfered with all the children’s reading performance, whereas meaningless speech only interfered with reading comprehension among second-grade children; 2) meaningful speech interfered with both the early and late time course stages of vocabulary processing, whereas meaningless speech only affected the late stages of vocabulary processing in lower grades. The results indicate that the mechanism of irrelevant speech effect in primary students is due to the fact that irrelevant speech contains semantic components, supporting the semantic interference hypothesis. The interference effect of phonological components was only observed in the early grades of child development, partially supporting the phonological interference hypothesis. This suggests that younger children are more susceptible to irrelevant speech interference because cognitive functions such as working memory and inhibitory control have not yet fully matured. The irrelevant speech effect in children’s reading decreases with age and stabilizes by the third grade.

To explore the effect of inhibition training on Chinese speechreading abilities of hearing-impaired students, 57 participants were randomly divided into an inhibition training group, a mirror self-imitation group, and a control group. Results showed that the inhibition training group exhibited stronger Stroop interference effects in the pre-test than in the post-test, with better post-test sentence speechreading performance and marginally higher phrase speechreading accuracy than the control group. The mirror self-imitation group, by contrast, achieved significant pre-to-post improvements in word and phrase speechreading. These findings demonstrate that hearing-impaired students’ interference inhibition is trainable, and that the two interventions enhance Chinese speechreading abilities differentially depending on linguistic complexity: inhibition training benefits complex (sentence) tasks, while mirror self-imitation favors simple (word/phrase) tasks.

To investigate the differences in emotional facial expression perception sensitivity between adolescents with high and low aggressive traits, as well as the impact of social exclusion, this study employed gradient videos of neutral and emotional facial expressions as experimental materials. An emotion recognition task was conducted to examine differences in reaction times between the two groups and changes following social exclusion. The results revealed that, compared to the low-aggression group, the high-aggression group recognized angry expressions more quickly but showed slower recognition of sad expressions. After experiencing social exclusion, the low-aggression group exhibited significantly faster recognition of angry and surprised expressions. In contrast, the high-aggression group maintained heightened sensitivity to angry expressions while also demonstrating accelerated recognition of sad and surprised expressions. By exploring the differences in emotional facial expression perception sensitivity among adolescents with varying levels of aggression, this study provides deeper insights into the relationship between adolescent aggression and emotion perception.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of specific body postures on interpersonal trust, and to explore the mediating roles of positive affect and sense of power therein. Employing a one-factor between-subjects design with two conditions, participants were instructed to maintain a specific posture for two minutes, after which their trust levels were assessed using an interpersonal trust task under two scenarios: principal-guaranteed and principal-slightly-loss conditions. The results revealed that briefly adopting an expansive body posture significantly enhanced interpersonal trust and exerted a protective effect on trust in the principal-slightly-loss scenario. Further mediation analysis indicated that both positive affect and sense of power mediated the relationship between body posture and interpersonal trust, with a competitive mediation pattern observed—positive affect demonstrated a stronger mediating effect. These findings suggest that short-term regulation of specific body postures can effectively enhance and protect interpersonal trust, with positive affect playing a key role in this process. The study contributes new empirical evidence for understanding and intervening in interpersonal trust from an embodied cognition perspective.

Academic procrastination frequently contributes to suboptimal learning outcomes, undermining self-belief in their abilities, and distressing psychological states among students. Framed within the temporal decision model of procrastination, this research investigated how episodic future thinking shapes academic procrastination behaviors in primary school students and evaluated the real-world efficacy of a targeted training program aimed at intervening procrastination. The first study involved 1042 pupils who completed a free construction task designed to assess how episodic future thinking shapes procrastination behaviors. Analyses revealed that vivid imagination of negative task engagement emerged as a significant positive predictor of academic procrastination, whereas detailed visualization of positive task outcomes served as a significant negative predictor. In the second study, 80 children exhibiting severe academic procrastination were assigned to either an intervention or a control condition using a pretest-posttest design, aiming to evaluate the benefits of a structured episodic future thinking training program. Results demonstrated that such training effectively reduced students’ levels of academic procrastination. This research not only provides empirical support for the temporal decision model but also translates the findings directly into practical intervention tools for classrooms and households (e.g., imagination diaries, parent guidance manuals on “how to guide children in constructing success scenarios”), offering a novel approach to alleviating student procrastination.

Resilience, a key focus in positive psychology, plays a vital role in helping individuals cope with stress, improve mental health, and enhance social adaptation. This study was the first to operationalize resilience as a dynamic outcome variable and investigated its developmental trajectories and gender differences among Chinese adolescents using a longitudinal design. A cohort of 1789 adolescents was tracked over 18 months, with resilience assessed via self-reports at four time points. Latent growth modeling analysis revealed that: 1) adolescents’ resilience increased in a linear trajectory over time; 2) with respect to the developmental rate of resilience, boys developed significantly faster than girls, despite no gender difference at the initial levels. These findings elucidate the dynamic developmental patterns of stress-coping and gender-specific characteristics in resilience, offering novel theoretical and practical insights for fostering resilience during the critical developmental period.

This study conducted two-wave longitudinal surveys with 7283 adolescents, selecting 977 adolescents with repetitive self-injury as participants to explore the mechanisms and protective factors of repetitive self-injury in adolescents. The results showed that: 1) distal childhood maltreatment positively predicted repetitive self-injury in adolescents; 2) proximal peer victimization mediated the relationship between distal childhood maltreatment and adolescent repetitive self-injury; 3) social support played a protective role in the direct path from childhood maltreatment to repetitive self-injury, with this protective effect being significant only among female adolescents. From the perspective of distal and proximal interpersonal environments, the findings provide insights for the prevention and intervention of repetitive self-injury in adolescents.

Given that traditional estimation strategies often focus on a single condition, the present study firstly investigated the strategies and cognitive mechanisms employed by children in an alternating presentation of the number line estimation task. In Experiment 1, second-grade children were asked to estimate numbers within different ranges but with the same length (0～50, 0～100, 10 cm), while in Experiment 2, they were asked to estimate numbers with different lengths but the same range (10 cm, 18 cm, 0～100). The results revealed that children utilized multiple strategies, employing both internal reference strategies and external reference strategies based on the proportional relationships between conditions. Additionally, the interaction between presentation format and experimental context was found to have a significant effect on the proportional absolute error (PAE). Due to limited cognitive resources, children exhibited significantly better strategy performance in the alternating presentation condition compared to the concentrated presentation condition when dealing with different ranges. However, their strategy performance was significantly worse in the alternating presentation condition when dealing with different lengths. These findings suggest that second-grade children’s strategies exhibit a pattern of “coexistence and competition”, providing new evidence for the applicability of the overlapping waves theory in complex estimation contexts.

Drawing on the quiet ego hypothesis and the self-transcendence effect of awe, the present study examined the effects of awe with different valences on adolescents’ cooperative behavior, as well as the roles of the need for accommodation and the quiet ego, using two experiments. The results indicated that both positive and negative awe significantly promoted adolescents’ cooperative behavior (Experiment 1). Furthermore, both positive and negative awe promoted cooperative behavior through the chain mediation of the need for accommodation and the quiet ego, whereas only positive awe facilitated cooperative behavior through the mediation of the quiet ego (Experiment 2). These findings provide further evidence for the prosocial effects of awe and elucidate the similarities and differences in the underlying mechanisms by which awe of different valences promotes cooperative behavior.

To clarify the relationship between awe and individual creativity and the psychological mechanisms that underlie it, Study 1 (1a, 1b) used questionnaire measures and a video-based induction paradigm, respectively, to examine the predictive effects of trait and state awe on creativity. Study 2 (2a, 2b) integrated survey and experimental methods to test the causal influence of awe on creativity and to illuminate its mediating processes. Convergent results indicated that: 1) higher levels of awe were associated with superior creative performance; 2) cognitive flexibility and creative self-efficacy sequentially mediated the facilitatory pathway from awe to creativity. These findings not only elucidate the internal mechanisms by which awe enhances creativity but also provide theoretical rationale and intervention directions for nurturing students’ innovation capabilities in educational practice.

Human-AI collaboration has become a new norm for creative activities in the digital-intelligence era, and the corresponding human-AI collaborative creativity literacy has thus emerged as a prominent research topic. This study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the structure and measurement of human-AI collaborative creativity literacy. Study 1 conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 frontline AI professionals and individuals with rich experience in human-AI collaborative creativity. The interviews focused on the literacy required for human-AI collaborative creativity. The results showed that such literacy comprised five categories: knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, and ethics. Building on these findings, Study 2 developed a scale to measure human-AI collaborative creativity literacy and administered it to a total of 3432 participants. The results showed that the scale comprised three dimensions: knowledge and skills, attitudes and values, and ethics. The scale demonstrates a sound internal structure, good reliability and validity, and met psychometric requirements, indicating that it can serve as an effective instrument for assessing human-AI collaborative creativity literacy.

Technological advances have improved the language capabilities of pedagogical agents, enabling the creation of AI-generated pedagogical agents. However, it is unclear which language style of pedagogical agent is appropriate for students with different cognitive styles, and further exploration is needed into the effectiveness of their AI-generated pedagogical agents. Therefore, Experiment 1 examined the effects of conversational and formal style pedagogical agents on video learning among pupils with different cognitive styles. The results indicated no significant differences in social presence, cognitive load, or test scores between the two conditions for field-independent students. However, field-dependent students exhibited higher social presence and test scores in the conversational style condition than in the formal style condition; the social presence in field-dependent students fully mediated the relationship between language style and test scores. Experiment 2 further examined whether the conversational style pedagogical agents created using AI-generated voice, AI-generated voice and human-like appearance, or AI-generated voice and cartoon appearance were equally effective for field-dependent students, compared to real-human conversational style pedagogical agents. The results indicated that only the conversational style pedagogical agents created using AI-generated voice and cartoon appearance further improved the test scores of field-dependent students. These findings suggest that conversational style pedagogical agents are more effective for field-dependent students, and their effectiveness can be further enhanced when they are created using AI-generated voice and cartoon appearance.

The work analysis method is effective for revealing developmental trends in adolescents’ future orientation, but its widespread application is hindered by high costs, stringent rater requirements, and subjectivity in the scoring process. To address these issues, this study explored the feasibility of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based work-analysis method in scoring adolescents’ future orientation. Collecting datasets of future orientation works from 307 students at various educational stages and using manual scoring as benchmark, we evaluated the reliability, discriminability, test-retest reliability, and criterion-related validity of AI scoring. The results showed that AI scoring demonstrated good psychometric properties on all indices and achieved high consistency with the manual ratings. The feasibility of AI-based work-analysis method in future oriented scoring is thus validated preliminarily. Furthermore, in view of its high consistency and stability, AI scoring can facilitate the broader application of the work-analysis method in future orientation measurement.

Attentional bias toward addiction-related information is one of the key factors underlying the emergence and maintenance of addictive behaviors. However, it remains unclear whether there are distinct patterns of attentional bias toward game information among adolescents with different levels of internet gaming addiction. The present study combined the dot-probe paradigm with eye-tracking technology, recruiting three groups of participants: adolescents with internet gaming addiction, adolescents with problematic online gaming use, and controls. We recorded their eye-movement patterns while viewing game-related and game-unrelated information, to examine group differences in attentional bias patterns toward different types of information. The results showed that adolescents with internet gaming addiction exhibited a significantly shorter first fixation latency toward game-related information than those with problematic online gaming use and controls. Adolescents with internet gaming addiction and those with problematic online gaming use both showed significantly longer first fixation duration and total fixation duration on game-related information than on game-unrelated information. These findings indicate that adolescents with different levels of internet gaming addiction show distinct patterns of attentional bias. Adolescents with internet gaming addiction exhibited a vigilance-disengagement difficulty pattern toward game-related information, whereas adolescents with problematic online gaming use showed a disengagement difficulty pattern.

Individual psychological factors and perceived organizational factors of older workers both influence their motivation to continue working beyond retirement, yet the patterns of their synergistic effects remain unclear. This study employed fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to explore the antecedent condition combinations and multiple enhancement patterns of older workers’ motivation to continue working beyond retirement, based on a survey of 789 older workers. The results showed that three configurations were identified that enhance older workers’ high motivation to continue working beyond retirement that is the strong individual and strong organization enhancement pattern, the strong organization and moderate individual enhancement pattern, and the strong individual and moderate organization enhancement pattern. This paper identifies multiple antecedent configuration pathways for older workers’ motivation to continue working beyond retirement, thereby providing new insights for effective intervention and promotion of such motivation.

To investigate the relationship between meaning in life and depression among college students, and to explore the chain mediating effect of rumination and self-esteem in this relationship, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 1430 college students using the Meaning in Life Scale, the Depression Self-Rating Scale, the Rumination Scale, and the Self-Esteem Scale. The results indicated that: 1) meaning in life demonstrated a significant negative correlation with college students’ depression; 2) rumination and self-esteem played mediating roles between meaning in life and college students’ depression respectively; 3) meaning in life had an impact on college students’ depression through the chain mediating effect of rumination and self-esteem. The research reveals the influence path of meaning in life on depression among college students, which has enlightening significance for the prevention of depression among college students.

Well-being is an important indicator of high school students’ mental health. The development of a comprehensive well-being scale for high school students has both theoretical and practical significance. Based on the analysis of existing well-being measurement tools and dimensions, combined with the needs of social development in China and the psychological development characteristics of high school students, a structural model of comprehensive well-being for high school students was formed, including 4 modules and 20 dimensions. More than 3400 high school students were selected for the study, and through open-ended questionnaire surveys, item analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, a total of 70 questions were obtained for the High School Students’ Comprehensive Well-Being Scale. The internal consistency reliability, split half reliability, test-retest reliability, construct validity, content validity, and criterion validity of the scale met the standards of psychometrics. The equivalence test indicates that the scale has the same meaning when measuring different genders and grades. The homogeneity coefficient test suggests that the composite total score of the scale is meaningful. In conclusion, this scale can be used as a valid tool to measure the comprehensive well-being of high school students.