Family Income Affects Children's Altruistic Behavior in the Dictator Game

This study aimed to examine how family income and social distance influence young rural Chinese children's altruistic behavior in the dictator game (DG). A total of 469 four-year-old children from eight rural areas in China, including many children left behind by parents who had migrated to urban areas for work, played the DG. Stickers comprised the resource, while recipients in the game were assumed to be either their friends or strangers, with the social distance (i.e., strangers compared to friends) as a between-subjects variable. Children donated significantly more stickers to their friends than to strangers. Moreover, children from lower income families donated more stickers than children from higher income families. However, no gender and parental migrant status differences in children's prosocial behaviors were evident in this sample. Findings of this study suggest that children's altruistic behaviours to peers are influenced by family characteristics since preschool age. The probable influence of local socialization practices on development and the possible adaptive significance were discussed

Psychological Traces of China's Socio-Economic Reforms in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games

Can traces of rapid socio-economic changes within a society be reflected in experimental games? The post-Mao reforms in China provide a unique natural quasi-experiment to study people from the same society who were raised with radically different values about distribution of wealth and altruistic behavior. We tested whether the size of offers in the ultimatum and dictator games are an increasing function of the number of years Chinese citizens experienced of the Mao era ("planned economy"). For the cohort that lived throughout the entire Mao era, we found that mean offers in the two games were substantially higher than what is typically offered in laboratory studies. These offers were also higher than those of two younger Chinese cohorts. In general, the amount offered decreased with less time spent under Mao, while in the oldest group in which every member spent the same amount of time under Mao, the younger members tended to offer more, suggesting an additional effect of early education under Mao and contradicting the alternative hypothesis that generosity increases with age. These results suggest that some of the observed individual differences in the offers made in experimental games can be traced back to the values of the socio-economic era in which individuals grew up

Genetic Basis and Neural Mechanism of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a defective mental disease and its core impairments are social function defect, communication defect, restrictive and stereotyped behavior pattern. The paper introduces the genetic basis and neural mechanism of ASD. ASD has high genetic rate, and 5-HT and testosterone of ASD individual are both higher. Neuroimaging studies find that there are some differences between ASD and normal individuals in the structure and function of amygdala, cingulate gyrus, the fusiform gyrus, mirror neurons, prefrontal lobe and other brain areas, but it is inconsistent in the discrepancy direction of some areas' activation patterns. In addition, the results of functional connectivity studies also confirm the hypothesis that the ASD individuals are under-connection. Future research should focus more on how to use the basic research outcomes to put forward effective treatment and training for clinical research