SOCIAL COGNITION
Year:2016 | Volume:5 | Issue:1 (9)|Papers Count:10

Introduction: Achieving the optimal performance of improved attention is among the most important goals of students. This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of neurofeedback training on the improvement of Continuous Attention.Method: The method was quasi- experimental and had pre-post tests as well as control and experimental groups.The sample consisted of 30 student athletes in Tabriz. The 15 participants of the experimental and control groups were selected randomly. The experimental group took Neurofeedback training for 20 sessions, 3 sessions per week.Results: Data were analyzed using analysis of covariance. The results showed that the difference in mean score of the experimantal and control groups was significant (P<0.01). Therefore, the Neurofeedback training may improve continuous attention in students.Conclusion: Due to the positive effects of this method on participants' attention, it can be concluded that the training can be an effective way to achieve optimal performance.

Introduction: Social perspective-taking is one of the essential skills for social relationships and is rooted in cognitive abilities.There is no scale to measure this skill exclusively and the available tools only measure social perspective-taking as a subscale.One of the major barriers to basic research in psychology fields is lack of standardized tests; therefore, the main aim of this study was introducing the social perspective taking and the codification and validation of its scale.Method: To accomplish the aims, 750 undergraduate students of Kurdistan province filled out the researcher made questionnaire of Social Perspective Taking. They also filled out The Oxford Happiness Scale and Beck Anxiety scale for assessing the discriminate validity. Data were analyzed by Pearson Correlation coefficient, Cronbach alpha and factor analysis.Results: The results showed that there is significant positive relationship between happiness and social perspective taking and significant negative relationship between anxiety and social perspective taking. These results indicated the concurrent validity of the scale. Also, reliability of the social perspective taking scale measured by Cronbach alpha was 0.78.Factor analysis of social perspective taking extracted4 factors including: cognitive prediction of others, understanding others perspective, put him/herself on others place, and respecting differences.Conclusion: Preliminary estimates showed that the Social Perspective Taking Scale is a reliable and valid tool for assessing social perspective-taking skills.

Introduction: The present study aimed to predict the mediating role of learned helplessness in the relationship between Differentiation of Self and Repetitive Negative Thinking.Method: To do this, 335 (164 males, 176 females) students were selected from Azad University of Lar using multistage cluster sampling method. The participants completed the Differentiation of Self Questionnaire (Drake, 2011), the Learned Helplessness Questionnaire (Quinless & Nelson, 1988), and the Repetitive Negative Thinking Questionnaire (Ehring, 2010).Results: The results of simultaneous multiple regression analysis based on Baron and Kenny (1989) steps indicated that Emotional Reactivity, Fusion with others, and Emotional Cut Off positively predicted Repetitive Negative Thinking and I-Position negatively predicted Repetitive Negative Thinking. In addition, Fusion with others and Emotional Cut Off predicted Learned Helplessness positively and I -Position predicted Learned Helplessness negatively.The Learned Helplessness mediated the relations between the Differentiation of Self and Repetitive Negative Thinking.Conclusion: In conclusion, Emotional Reactivity predicted Repetitive Negative Thinking positively and I-Position by mediating Learned Helplessness predicted it negatively.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to compare the executive functions (flexibility, planning, and organizing) and memory (active and passive) of monolingual and bilingual students.Method: For this purpose, 120 students, including 60 male and female students who were Persianspeaking monolinguals and aged between 7 to 12 years (30 girls, 30 boys) and 60 Armenian-Persian bilingual students (30 girls, 30 boys) from the second to the sixth grade in district 8 of Tehran were selected by convenience sampling.Andre-ray test was used to measure executive function (planning and organization), and Wisconsin test was used to measure executive function tests (flexibility). Furthermore, 3 × 3 Matrix of Cornoldy was used to measure working memory and Matrix 5 × 5 Cornoldy was used to assess passive memory. Data were analyzed by two-way ANOVA using SPSS software.Results: The results showed that the executive functions of organizing and planning of monolingual students are different from bilingual students.However, there was not a significant difference between the two groups in the passive and working memory. In addition, significant differences were not observed between the genders, except that in monolingual students the executive function of flexibility of girls was better than boys.Conclusion: Based on the results and the advantages of bilingual students in executive functions over monolingual students, early second language education in preschools could be recommended.

Introduction: The purpose of this research was comparing spreading rumors on the Internet and Narcissism among Face Book, Internet, and non-Internet users of citizens of Tehran. Method: A sample of 500 Internet users was selected on cluster random basis from among the 22 districts of Tehran. This sample consisted of 183 Internet users, 163 Face Book users, and 100 non-Internet users with no information of the Internet. The study benefited from Narcissism questionnaire (Raskin & Tri 1988), Internet rumor questionnaire (John Hiven Kim & Viag 2010) Face Book questionnaire (Ras et al.2009) as tools to collect data. Out of the 500 questionnaires, 44 were eliminated due to being incomplete resulting in a total 456 questionnaires. To analyse the data, Pearson correlation and Variance were used.Results: The findings showed a significant positive relationship between Narcissism and using Face Book and Narcissism can predict 28% of using Face Book. However, there was no meaningful relationship between the time of using the Internet and spreding roumor on the Internet. In addition, in relation to the variable of Narcissism, the results showed significant difference between Determinism, Show off, Superiority, Beneficiary, and Egotism among the 3 groups; however, there was no significant difference between Exploitation and Autarky. In addition, this study showed that there is no significant difference between spreading rumors and its components among users of Face Book and Internet users.Conclusion: According to the results, reducing the time of using Face Book leads to improving welfare of the society. It is recommended to offer required educational facilities for amending lifestyle especially personality traits of Narcissism for improving individual and social relations.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to compare the Theory of Mind, the Concept of God, and the Concept of homeland among nursery and preschool children with different parenting styles.Method: This research was a post-event descriptive study.The statistical population included kindergarten and pre-school children in Tehran. The 51 children, who were between 3.5 to 6 years old, were selected by convenience sampling. Then they were classified into three groups based on their parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative and permissive. Theory of mind was measured by games for all the participants; God's image was measured through drawings and descriptions of God, and the cognitive concept of homeland through semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical tests such as Kruskal-Wallis test.Results: The results showed that the number of children who achieved the theory of mind in families with authoritative parenting style was more than their counterparts in other families. The results also indicated that the kind image of God in children with authoritarian parenting is lower than the other two groups. Finally, there was no significant relationship between the concept of homeland and methods of parenting.Conclusion: Based on the results, we can say that authoritative parenting style influences the formation of the theory of mind and the kind image of God.

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of problem solving training on test and social anxiety in elementary school male students.Methods: The statistical population of this study were all the elementary school male students of Najaf Abad city in academic year 2013-2014. Out of the population, 30 students were selected through cluster random sampling and were assigned randomly in one experimental (n=15) and one control (n=15) group.Both groups completed a Test Anxiety Questionnaire (Abolghasemi et al.1375) and Jerabek's (1996) Social Anxiety Questionnaire in pre-test and post-test stages. Eight weekly sessions of problem solving training was administrated to the experimental group for once a week, but the control group received no intervention. Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data.Findings: The results showed that both of the dependent variables in the experimental group were reduced significantly compared with control group.Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, problem solving training can be considered as an efficient intervention to reduce test and social anxiety in primary school students.

Introduction: Considering the importance of facial emotion recognition in social interactions and the conflicting results of the previous studies that have evaluated the emotion recognition in healthy individuals with psychiatric symptom distress, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between facial emotion recognition and psychiatric symptom distress as indexed by the SCL-90-R scale.Method: The sample size was 60 that consisted of 31 subjects with clinical symptoms and 29 healthy individuals as the control group. The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) Form was chosen to determine the level of psychiatric symptom distress, and the facial emotion recognition was examined by 42 images of facial emotion picture (Ekman & frieze, 1976) that measured 6 different emotional states (sadness, happiness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise, and the neutral state).Findings: The results of data analysis indicated that the participants with depression symptoms had difficulty in recognizing disgust, happiness and neutral state; however, the participants with anxiety symptoms had better performance in recognizing fear.Conclusion: The findings indicated that different symptoms, which are due to different underlying neurobiological and cognitive functions, influence emotion recognition in different ways.

Introduction: According to recent researches, biases in information processing and its relation with other factors such as craving and personality traits play a vital role in the etiology and maintenance of drug dependence disorders. The aim of the present study was to investigate the moderator role of personality characteristics on relationship between cognitive biases and craving in opium dependent individuals.Method: To do so, 100 male opiate dependent individuals were selected by convenience sampling. The primary data collection was conducted using Prob Dot task, Memory Recognition task, Word-stem Completion test, Craving Beliefs Questionnaire and Neo big five Personality Scale.The data were analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis.Findings: The results indicated that personality variables moderated the relationship between craving with attentional bias and implicit memory bias, but these factors did not have any effect on the relationship between craving and explicit memory bias.Conclusion: The results showed that automatic cognitive processes such as attention and implicit memory are bottom-up processes and tend to be affected by personality traits, whereas consciousness cognitive processes such as explicit memory is topdown processing and is influenced by individuals’ conception.

Introduction: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of forgiveness ongeneral health through life satisfactionin students. Method: The study was based on the causal correlation method, and the statistical population consisted of all the students of Payam Nour and Azad University of Lamerd in the second semester of the academic year 2013-2014. The sample of the study consisted of 166 (99 male and 67 female) students which were selected by multistage random sampling. Data collection tools were Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS), Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ).Structural equation modeling (SEM) through AMOS-16 and SPSS-16 software packages was used for data analysis.Results: Analysis of structural equation modeling indicated that the default model of effect of forgiveness ongeneral healththrough life satisfaction fit the data. Further analysis revealed that forgiveness had indirect and direct significant relationship withgeneral health through life satisfaction.Conclusion: Based on the results, it can be said that people bring themselves feelings of satisfaction and happiness and reduce their physical and mental problems and discomforts by forgiving their own mistakes and those of others.