Purpose: Categorical perception (CP) manifests in various aspects of human cognition. While there is mounting evidence for CP in facial emotions, CP in vocal emotions remains understudied. The current study attempted to test whether individuals with a tonal language background perceive vocal emotions categorically and to examine how factors such…

The developmental trajectory of audiovisual speech perception in Mandarin-speaking children remains understudied. This cross-sectional study in Mandarin-speaking 3- to 4-year-old, 5- to 6-year-old, 7- to 8-year-old children, and adults from Xiamen, China (n = 87, 44 males) investigated this issue using the McGurk paradigm with three levels of…

Although children develop categorical speech perception at a very young age, the maturation process remains unclear. A cross-sectional study in Mandarin-speaking 4-, 6-, and 10-year-old children, 14-year-old adolescents, and adults (n = 104, 56 males, all Asians from mainland China) was conducted to investigate the development of categorical…

In this paper, I first provide a brief review of how scholars have conceptualized, tested, and elaborated aptitude frameworks relevant to second language (L2) speech learning. Subsequently, I introduce an emerging paradigm that assigns a fundamental role to domain-general auditory processing (i.e., having a good ear) in L1 speech acquisition and…

Background: Previous studies on language production in normal ageing have primarily focused on distinct dimensions of older adults' spoken language performance, such as fluency and complexity. However, little attention has been paid to the complex, interconnected relations between these dimensions. Additionally, older adults have been treated as a…

Human beings naturally prefer and support ingroup members more than outgroup members, but to what extent do we "morally value" equal treatment to ingroups and outgroups? Across four preregistered studies, we examined the development of "group-transcendent fairness," that is, the moral endorsement of allocating resources equally…

Purpose: For colocated targets and maskers, binaural listening typically offers a small but significant advantage over monaural listening. This study investigated how monaural asymmetry and target--masker similarity may limit binaural advantage in adults and children. Method: Ten Mandarin-speaking Chinese adults (aged 22-27 years) and 12 children…

The extent to which highly emotional autobiographical memories become central to one's identity and life story influences mental health. Young adults report higher distress and lower well-being, compared with middle-aged and/or older adults; whether this replicates across cultures is still unclear. First, we provide a review of the literature that…

This study investigated the relationship between retirement saving needs estimation and the amount of self-reported private retirement savings amassed by working-age adults in Hong Kong, China, by focusing on the mediating role of retirement saving needs estimation between retirement goal clarity and the amount of private retirement savings. Based…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between education and competencies from a comparative view, while controlling for background characteristics (e.g. parental education), home features (e.g. income) and country fixed effect. Design/methodology/approach: This paper utilises an international data sets of 12 Belt and…

This research investigated environmental literacy and nature experience among 1433 children and adults in Chengdu, China. Utilizing a standard measure of environmental literacy modified to be culture- and age-appropriate, we found almost universal agreement that nature should be protected. Although our results showed that older groups were less…

According to the executive framework of prospective memory (PM), age-related differences in PM performance are mediated by age-related differences in executive functioning (EF). The present study further explored this framework by examining which specific components of EF are associated with PM differences between and within three age groups. A…

There have been many studies exploring the advantages that bilingualism confers to individuals' working memory and metacognition (see Ransdell, 2006; Del Missier et al., 2010). The hypothesis of language critical period states that if no language learning and teaching happen during the critical period, an individual will never be able to fully…

Conflict adaptation is key in how children self-regulate and assert cognitive control in a given situation compared with a previous experience. In the current study, we analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify age-related differences in conflict adaptation. Participants of different ages (5-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and…

This article seeks to make sense of the seeming contradiction that the number of degrees awarded annually and the attainment rate of the adult population in the US have both grown, even as the country has fallen behind many global competitors on the latter indicator. Two reports issued in 2012---one by the Pew Research Center, the other by the…