Cui Ji-fang

National Institute of Education Sciences | NIES · Department of Information

Background Episodic future thinking (EFT) has important functions in people’s daily life and was found to be impaired in patients with psychiatric diseases. Studies have been carried out to improve EFT, while results were mixed. The present study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis to examine the overall effect of intervention on EFT, and potential mo...

Background Mind wandering is a common phenomenon in daily life. However, the manifestations and cognitive correlates of mind wandering in different subclinical populations remain unclear. In this study, these aspects were examined in individuals with schizotypal traits and individuals with depressive symptoms, i.e., subclinical populations of patie...

Negative association was found between the frontal theta/beta ratio and mind wandering in participants with high schizotypal traits, while no such association was found in participants with low schizotypal traits. These findings provide insights into the neural mechanism of mind wandering in individuals with high schizotypal traits.

Introduction: Patients with schizophrenia exhibit prospective memory (PM) impairment. Intraindividual reaction time variability (IIRTV) is an index of attentional control that is required for PM. This study examined the differences in IIRTV between patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls and the relationship between IIRTV and PM performanc...

This study demonstrated that the higher stop-signal probability condition showed a longer go reaction time and shorter stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) compared with the lower stop-signal probability condition. In addition, preparation cost was correlated with SSRT. These results suggest that preparation facilitates response inhibition.

The adaptive function of balanced time perspective is widely acknowledged within positive psychology, yet little is known regarding the expression of time perspective in clinical populations and its relation to clinical features. The current study aimed to examine the nature of time perspective in schizophrenia and to determine whether alterations...

Background: Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to re-experience past events (autobiographic memory, AM) and pre-experience possible future events (episodic future thinking, EFT) through mental simulation. Empirical findings suggest that individuals with high level of schizotypy exhibit MTT impairment. However, the neural correlates of this im...

Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to project oneself to the past or future through mental simulation. Moreover, MTT can involve self‐related or other‐related information. This study aimed to compare MTT in individuals with high levels of schizotypy and that in their counterparts with low levels of schizotypy. Participants with high (n = 37) a...

The present study aimed to examine whether impairments in reactive (outright stopping) and proactive (preparation for stopping) response inhibition are affected by negative emotions in individuals with high schizotypy, a subclinical group at risk for schizophrenia, as well as the neural mechanisms underlying these processes. Twenty-seven participan...

Objective The present study aimed to examine how individuals with high schizotypy, a high risk group of schizophrenia patients, resolve emotional conflict in proactive and reactive control and the underlying neural mechanisms. Methods Thirty-two individuals with high schizotypy and 30 matched individuals with low schizotypy completed an emotional...

Balanced time perspective refers to the ability to flexibly switch between different temporal foci in an adaptive manner according to the current context. Functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) has been suggested to support balanced time perspective. The coupling between the DMN and fronto-parietal network (FPN) may drive man...

Objective This study aimed to examine prospective memory (PM) performance and the potential effect of implementation intention on PM performance and the underlying mechanisms in individuals with high schizotypyal traits (HSTs) using eye-tracking paradigms. Methods In Experiment 1, 30 individuals with HSTs and 30 individuals with low schizotypal tr...

Sex differences in various aspects of behaviour and cognition have been widely observed. Few studies, however, have explored potential sex differences in maintaining a balanced time perspective or their underlying neural correlates. To address these questions, two studies were conducted. In Study 1, time perspective was assessed in 1913 college stu...

Schizotypal traits have been found to be negatively associated with satisfaction with life but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. This study investigated the association between schizotypal traits and satisfaction with life and explored the mediating role of trait anxiety and mind wandering in the relationship between those two vari...

Sex differences in behaviour and cognition have been widely observed, however, little is known about such differences in maintaining a balanced time perspective or their potential underlying neural substrates. To answer the above questions, two studies were conducted. In Study 1, time perspective was assessed in 1,913 college students, including 77...

Delay discounting (DD) refers to the phenomenon in which the subjective value of future rewards is reduced over time. There are individual differences in the DD rate, and increased discounting has been observed in those with various psychiatric disorders. Episodic future thinking (EFT) is the act of vividly imagining events that may happen in the f...

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with cognitive dysfunctions, including mental time travel (MTT). However, findings on diminished MTT ability may be confounded by a number of factors, including the individuals’ language ability, factors related to the MTT task and the demographic factors of participants. The present study provided a m...

The relationship between a balanced time perspective and life satisfaction has been demonstrated in previous studies, yet the potential mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. The current study tested whether a latent factor “temporal negative affect” underlay anxiety and depression and whether this latent factor mediated the relati...

Whether patients with schizophrenia are impaired in flexibly regulating attention in accordance with fluctuations in cognitive demand to achieve optimal task performance remains unclear. To address this issue, 47 patients with schizophrenia and 47 matched control participants were recruited to complete a time-based prospective memory task. Every 2-...

Schizotypy, a subclinical group at risk for schizophrenia, has been found to show impairments in response inhibition. However, it remains unclear whether this impairment is accompanied by outright stopping (reactive inhibition) or preparation for stopping (proactive inhibition). We recruited 20 schizotypy and 24 non-schizotypy individuals to perfor...

This study aimed to explore the relationships among clinical insight, subjective memory complaints, and objective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia. We recruited 205 patients with schizophrenia and 221 healthy controls in this study. The participants were administered a subjective-report scale on memory (the Prospective and Retrospe...

Background: Saccade-induced retrieval enhancement (SIRE) refers to the phenomenon that actively engaging in horizontal eye movements before recall enhances subsequent memory performance. This effect is thought to be the result of interhemispheric interactions stimulated by saccades. An alternative explanation is that saccades promote memory retrie...

Objective Patients with schizophrenia and individuals with schizotypy, a subclinical group at risk for schizophrenia, have been found to have impairments in cognitive control. The Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control (DMC) framework hypothesises that cognitive control can be divided into proactive and reactive control. However, it is unclear whethe...

Objective People often prefer immediate small rewards compared to delayed larger rewards, which is referred to delay discounting. Schizotypy, a subclinical group at risk for schizophrenia, tends to discount more than healthy controls. Episodic future thinking (EFT), in which people mentally simulate future events to pre‐experience the future, has b...

Patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) consistently show prospective memory (PM) impairments, and the technique of implementation intentions has been shown to improve PM performance in these patients. PM is considered to have prospective and retrospective components. However, it remains unclear which component of PM is impaired in patients with SCZ and...

The beneficial effect of implementation intentions (II) on prospective memory (PM) deficits in patients with schizophrenia has been reported. However, these studies were limited to brief interventions such that the transfer and long-term effects of II training remains unclear. This study examined whether a 10-session II programme could improve PM p...

Introduction: Prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to execute a planned intention in the future. It can be divided into event- and time-based, according to the nature of the PM cue. Event-based PM cues can be classified as focal or non-focal. Patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) have been found to be impaired in both event- and time-based PM....

The present study aimed to investigate the moderating effect of age on the relationship between future time perspective (FTP) and future-oriented coping. A total of 1,915 participants aged 9-84 years completed measures of FTP and future-oriented coping. Moderation analyses were conducted to examine whether age played a role in the association betwe...

This study explored specificity and visual perspective of mental time travel in schizophrenia. Fifteen patients with schizophrenia and 18 controls were recruited. Participants were asked to recall or imagine specific events according to cue words. Results showed that schizophrenia patients generated fewer specific events than controls, the recalled...

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by executive dysfunction, and working memory (WM) comprises one core component of executive function. Many studies have investigated WM impairments in individuals with ASD, however, a conclusive agreement has not been reached. The present study provided a meta-analytic review of WM impairments in in...

Time perspective is a fundamental dimension of the psychological time construct, with a pervasive and powerful influence on human behavior. However, the developmental trajectory of time perspective across a human lifespan remains unclear. The current study aimed to portray the developmental trajectory of all dimensions of time perspectives from chi...

Present-fatalistic time perspective refers to a fatalistic, helpless, and hopeless attitude toward the future and life, and researches have suggested it was negatively associated with life satisfaction. However, age may moderate such an association. In the current study, participants aged 12 to 84 years (N = 1598) finished measures of present-fatal...

Mental time travel refers to the ability to recall past events and to imagine possible future events. Schizophrenia (SCZ) patients have problems in remembering specific personal experiences in the past and imagining what will happen in the future. This study aimed to examine episodic past and future thinking in SCZ spectrum disorders including SCZ...

Mental time travel refers to the ability to recall past events and to imagine possible future events. Schizophrenia (SCZ) patients have problems in remembering specific personal experiences in the past and imagining what will happen in the future. This study aimed to examine episodic past and future thinking in SCZ spectrum disorders including SCZ...

Delay discounting is the decrease in subjective value of a reward as the interval of receiving it is increased. Previous studies have found inconsistent results on the relationship between age and delay discounting, and few studies have been conducted using Chinese participants. The current study aimed to clarify this relationship using a relativel...

In this study, the authors evaluated the Chinese version of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI). The ZTPI was tested among a sample of 303 university students. A subsample of 51 participants was then asked to complete the ZTPI again along with another set of questionnaires. The five-factor model of a 20-item short version of the ZTPI sho...

Mental time travel refers to the ability to recall episodic past and imagine future events. The present study aimed to investigate cultural differences in mental time travel between Chinese and Australian university students. A total of 231 students (108 Chinese and 123 Australians) participated in the study. Their mental time travel abilities were...

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) simulates uncertain gains and losses in real life situations and thus is a good measure of uncertain decision-making. The role of working memory (WM) in IGT performance still remains unclear. The present study aimed to examine the effect of WM on IGT performance. Three groups of participants matched on gender ratio were...

Prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to perform a planned action at a future time. Implementation intention is an encoding method in the form of “if situation Y is encountered, then I will initiate the goal-directed behavior X”. It has been applied to improve PM performances. The present study conducted a systematic and meta-analytic revie...

In our daily life, it is very common to make decisions in uncertain situations. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) has been widely used in laboratory studies because of its good simulation of uncertainty in real life activities. The present study aimed to examine the neural correlates of uncertain decision making with the IGT. Twenty-six university stude...

Event-related potentials were used in this study to investigate the neural correlates of prospective memory and whether working memory is involved in prospective remembering. Thirty undergraduate or graduate students participated in the study. All participants completed a working memory test, namely, the Chinese Letter-Number Span Test, and were di...

Prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to do something at a future time. Studies have shown that implementation intention can improve PM performance. The present study aimed to examine the effect and mechanism of implementation intention on PM in individuals prone for schizotypal personality disorder (SPD proneness) in a laboratory condition...

No abstract available.

The present study aimed to examine social attribution in children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and Asperger's syndrome (AS). A sample of 20 boys (9 with HFA and 11 with AS) and 20 age-matched controls were recruited for this study. All participated in two tasks measuring social attribution ability, the conventional Social Attribution Task (SA...

There are several similarities between prospective memory (PM) and vigilance, the present study aimed to examine the relationship between PM and vigilance using event-related potentials (ERP). Behavioral results indicated that PM showed longer reaction time and less accuracy than vigilance. The ERP data revealed that PM and vigilance did not show s...

Schizophrenia and normal aging have both been associated with structural and physiological changes in the prefrontal and temporal cortex and impairments in prospective memory (PM). This study aimed to compare PM performance in patients with schizophrenia, healthy older, and healthy younger individuals. Computerized event- and time-based PM tasks we...

The current study aimed to extend the clinical utility of the Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) to individuals with schizotypal personality features. It provided preliminary findings on the suitability and efficacy of the SCIT for these individuals in mainland China.