Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 Nov 19:5:1316.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01316. eCollection 2014.

Individual differences in Zhong-Yong tendency and processing capacity

Ting-Yun Chang  1 , Cheng-Ta Yang  1
Affiliations

Individual differences in Zhong-Yong tendency and processing capacity

Ting-Yun Chang et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

The present study investigated how an individual's Zhong-Yong tendency is related to his/her perceptual processing capacity. In two experiments, participants completed a Zhong-Yong Thinking Style Scale and performed a redundant-target detection task. Processing capacity was assessed with a non-parametric approach (systems factorial technology, SFT) and a parametric (linear ballistic accumulator model, LBA) approach. Results converged to suggest a positive correlation between Zhong-Yong tendency and processing capacity. High middle-way thinkers had larger processing capacity in multiple-signal processing compared with low middle-way thinkers, indicating that they processed information more efficiently and in an integrated fashion. Zhong-Yong tendency positively correlates with the processing capacity. These findings suggest that the individual differences in processing capacity can account for the reasons why high middle-way thinkers tend to adopt a global and flexible processing strategy to deal with the external world. Furthermore, the influence of culturally dictated thinking style on cognition can be revealed in a perception task.

Keywords: Zhong-Yong; individual differences; linear ballistic accumulator model; systems factorial technology; workload capacity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Illustration of all possible test trials. (B) Illustration of the experimental procedure of the redundant-target detection task.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Plots of the capacity coefficient C(t) for the high and low middle-way thinkers in Experiment 1. (B) Plots of the capacity coefficient C(t) for the high and low middle-way thinkers in Experiment 2.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Plots of the predicted density functions on top of the empirical reaction time histograms of the redundant-target, single-target, and no-target conditions for each group.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Scatter plot of the drift difference and Zhong-Yong score with a trend line (solid blue line) and the 95% confidence interval for the trend (band-shaped gray area).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Brown S. D., Heathcote A. (2008). The simplest complete model of choice response time: linear ballistic accumulation. Cogn. Psychol. 57, 153–178. 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2007.12.002 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Chiu C.-Y. (2000). Assessment of Zhong-Yong (dialectic) thinking - preliminary findings from a cross-regional study. Hong Kong J. Soc. Sci. 18, 33–55.
    1. Colonius H., Townsend J. T. (1997). Activation-state representation of models for the redundant signals effect, in Choice, Decision, and Measurement: Essays in honor of R. Duncan Luce, ed Marley A. A. J. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; ), 245–254.
    1. Donkin C., Brown S. D., Heathcote A. (2009). The overconstraint of response time models: rethinking the scaling problem. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 16, 1129–1135. 10.3758/PBR.16.6.1129 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Eidels A., Donkin C., Brown S. D., Heathcote A. (2010). Converging measures of workload capacity. Psychon. Bull. Rev. 17, 763–771. 10.3758/PBR.17.6.763 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources