In response to reports of people experiencing varying levels of anxiety and depression during the outbreak of COVID-19, researchers have argued that exposure to related information on social media is a salient contributing factor. Based on the integrated model of ruminative response style and the diathesis-stress model, it has been suggested that incorporating rumination and mindfulness may elucidate the potential mechanism underlying the aforementioned association. This study aimed to examine the mediating role of rumination and the moderating role of mindfulness in the association between social media exposure (SME) to COVID-19 information and psychological distress. The results from online questionnaire responses of 439 college students from two universities in Wuhan, Hubei Province, showed that rumination mediated the association between SME and psychological distress. Furthermore, mindfulness was revealed as a protective factor that buffered the adverse effect of SME on psychological distress through rumination. These findings advance a better understanding of the formation process of psychological symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide insights regarding effective interventions for adverse mental health consequences in college students.

This study examined analytical pinyin (a phonological coding system for teaching pronunciation and lexical tones of Chinese characters) skills in 54 Mandarin-speaking fourth graders by using an invented spelling instrument that tapped into syllable awareness, phoneme awareness, lexical tones, and tone sandhi in Chinese. Pinyin invented spelling was significantly correlated with Chinese character recognition and Chinese phonological awareness (i.e., syllable deletion and phoneme deletion). In comparison to good and average readers, poor readers performed significantly worse on the invented spelling task, and a difference was also found between average and good readers. To differentiate readers at different levels, the pinyin invented spelling task, which examined both segmental and suprasegmental elements, was superior to the typical phonological awareness task, which examined segments only. Within this new task, items involving tone sandhi (Chinese language changes in which the tones of words alter according to predetermined rules) were more difficult to manipulate than were those without tone sandhi. The findings suggest that this newly developed task may be optimal for tapping unique phonological and linguistic features in reading of Chinese and examining particular tonal difficulties in struggling Chinese readers. In addition, the results suggest that phonics manipulations within tasks of phonological and tonal awareness can alter their difficulty levels.

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In this chapter, we described a study that compared a problem-based learning (PBL) approach to a traditional approach for teaching decimal concepts to 76 Chinese fi fth graders. This chapter started with a review of literature regarding conceptual change, challenges in teaching decimals to elementary students, the PBL in relation to selfeffi cacy, and the rationales for conducting the present study. Then, we elaborated the PBL approach as an intervention approach in an independent sample of fi fth graders. Finally, we discussed implication of PBL in educational settings.Decimal fraction learning is considered one of the cornerstones of mathematics education internationally (Stacey et al., 2001 ). In the United States, formal instruction of decimal fractions begins in fourth grade and continues throughout all secondary grade levels (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), 2000 ). The NCTM Standards require third to fi fth graders to be able to understand and convert fractions, decimals and percentages. And students older than sixth graders should fl exibly solve problems involving fractions, decimals and percentages. In China, decimals and fractions are also introduced to students at the elementary level beginning in fourth grade (Zong, 2006 ).