Encaged and Enraged: A Study of How Level of Aggression Relates to Perceived Crowdedness, Risk, and Boredom

Social distancing policies have been practiced in different regions around the world to minimize the number of cases of COVID-19. After an outbreak in mid-July 2020, the Hong Kong government adopted a series of administrative measures and strongly encouraged residents to stay at home. This lockdown period provided an opportunity to study variations in levels of aggression when people spend more time than usual in an overcrowded living environment. A total of 185 Hong Kong residents were recruited for this study. Their perceptions of the crowdedness of their living space, aggression level (measured using the BPAQ-SF), proneness to boredom (measured by the BFS-SF), and perceptions of risk regarding COVID-19 were collected via online questionnaires. Perceived crowdedness, proneness to boredom, and perceptions of susceptibility to COVID-19 were found to significantly predict the variance of different types of aggression in a regression model. In a mediation analysis, anger acted as a mediator of the relationship between proneness to boredom and different types of aggression. Participants’ perceptions of their susceptibility to COVID-19 suggested an underlying worry about the contagiousness of the virus, which was in turn associated with feelings of uncertainty and a rise in aggression level

The Role of Linguistics Habits and Proprioception Sense on Mental Number Line

AbstractThe present study investigated the relationship between linguistic styles and numerical representation as evidenced by the Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes effect, which smaller (larger) number is respond faster with left (right) hand. In Study 1, sixteen participants did numerical judgments by pressing left-or-right side keyboard button with digits presented randomly on three sides of the screen. SNARC effect was found to be significant whereas no significant main effect of number placement was found. In Study 2, fifteen participants reacted with moving the joystick to leftward or rightward with one hand only. No SNARC effect was found as well as the interaction effect. These results suggested the role of proprioception sense in the conceptualization of mental number line

Contribution of discourse and morphosyntax skills to reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic and typically developing children

This study aimed at identifying important skills for reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic children and their typically developing counterparts matched on age (CA controls) or reading level (RL controls). The children were assessed on Chinese reading comprehension, cognitive, and reading-related skills. Results showed that the dyslexic children performed significantly less well than the CA controls but similarly to RL controls in most measures. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that word-level reading-related skills like oral vocabulary and word semantics were found to be strong predictors of reading comprehension among typically developing junior graders and dyslexic readers of senior grades, whereas morphosyntax, a text-level skill, was most predictive for typically developing senior graders. It was concluded that discourse and morphosyntax skills are particularly important for reading comprehension in the non-inflectional and topic-prominent Chinese system

Tonal perception and its implication for linguistic relativity

published_or_final_versionPsychologyDoctoralDoctor of Philosoph

Application of children's reasoning skills: how children know a cat has life

published_or_final_versionPsychologyMasterMaster of Philosoph

Encaged and Enraged: A Study of How Level of Aggression Relates to Perceived Crowdedness, Risk, and Boredom

Social distancing policies have been practiced in different regions around the world to minimize the number of cases of COVID-19. After an outbreak in mid-July 2020, the Hong Kong government adopted a series of administrative measures and strongly encouraged residents to stay at home. This lockdown period provided an opportunity to study variations in levels of aggression when people spend more time than usual in an overcrowded living environment. A total of 185 Hong Kong residents were recruited for this study. Their perceptions of the crowdedness of their living space, aggression level (measured using the BPAQ-SF), proneness to boredom (measured by the BFS-SF), and perceptions of risk regarding COVID-19 were collected via online questionnaires. Perceived crowdedness, proneness to boredom, and perceptions of susceptibility to COVID-19 were found to significantly predict the variance of different types of aggression in a regression model. In a mediation analysis, anger acted as a mediator of the relationship between proneness to boredom and different types of aggression. Participants’ perceptions of their susceptibility to COVID-19 suggested an underlying worry about the contagiousness of the virus, which was in turn associated with feelings of uncertainty and a rise in aggression level