Spatial spillover effect of the synergistic development of inward and outward foreign direct investment on ecological well-being performance in China.

Inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) can promote a country's economic growth, but the effect of inward and outward FDI on regional ecological well-being performance (EWP) is uncertain. Using the data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2004 to 2019, this study employs the spatial Dubin model to examine the spatial spillover effects of synergistic development of inward and outward FDI on regional ecological well-being performance and their mediating mechanisms. The result shows that the synergistic development of inward and outward FDI can significantly improve regional EWP and imply a positive spatial spillover effect. The dynamic effect analysis indicates that synergistic development of inward and outward FDI has a lag effect on the improvement of regional EWP. The mechanism test found that the synergistic development of inward and outward FDI can enhance the EWP of the region and the spatially related regions by promoting the rationalization, upgrading and technological innovation of the industrial structure. These findings have some insights into improving global ecological well-being in an open economy.

The asynchronous influence of facial expressions on bodily expressions.

The ability to extract correct emotional information from facial and bodily expressions is fundamental for the development of social skills. Previous studies have shown that bodily expressions affect the recognition of basic facial expressions dramatically. However, few studies have considered the view that facial expressions may influence the recognition of bodily expressions. Further, previous studies have failed to consider a comprehensive set of emotional categories. The present study sought to examine whether facial expressions would impact the recognition of bodily expressions asynchronously, using four basic emotions. Participants performed an affective priming task, in which the priming stimuli included four facial expressions (happy, sad, fearful, and angry), and the target stimuli were bodily expressions matching the same emotions. The results indicated that the perception of affective facial expressions significantly influenced the accuracy and reaction time for body-based emotion categorization, particularly for bodily expression of happiness. The recognition accuracy of congruent expressions was higher, relative to that of incongruent expressions. The findings show that facial expressions influence the recognition of bodily expressions, despite the asynchrony.

N170 changes reflect competition between faces and identifiable characters during early visual processing.

According to the neuronal recycling hypothesis, brain circuits can gain new functions through cultural learning, which are distinct from their evolutionarily established functions, creating competition between processes such as facial and identifiable character processing. In the present study, event-related potential (ERP) recording was used to examine electrophysiological correlates of identification levels of Chinese characters as well as the competition between facial and Chinese character processing after the characters were learnt. Twenty volunteers performed a lateralized face detection task, and N170 responses were recorded when the participants viewed only Chinese characters (identifiable or unidentifiable in Xiaozhuan font), or Chinese characters and faces concurrently. Viewing identifiable Chinese characters bilaterally elicited larger N170 amplitudes than viewing unidentifiable ones. N170 amplitudes in response to faces bilaterally declined when identifiable Chinese characters and faces were viewed concurrently as compared to viewing unidentifiable Chinese characters and faces concurrently. These results indicate that the N170 component is modulated by the observer's identification level of Chinese characters, and that identifiable Chinese characters compete with faces during early visual processing.