Traditional Chinese culture is commonly viewed as a trinity of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Originally emerging from the Book of Changes , the concept of Taiji has a profound interactive influence with Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist thought in the history of Chinese philosophy. Because the construction of self-models is often closely related to thinking modes, as a root metaphor in the Chinese culture, the diagram of Taiji that best fits Chinese yin–yang thinking can be used as a prototype to explain the self-structure, the process of self-cultivation, and the realm of person making in the context of Chinese culture. This article reviews the Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist Taiji model of the self and the theory of self-cultivation realms based on these self-models and examines the similarities and differences among them. The ternary Taiji models of the self can complement one another and contribute to a more comprehensive, profound, and accurate understanding of the pluralistic connotations of the traditional Chinese self.

An important theme in the development of self-psychology is the attempt by scholars to construct a self-model with universal cultural adaptability. Among them, representatives are the tripartite model of self-built by Triandis, the theory of the independent self and interdependent self-proposed by Markus and Kitayama, Yang Kuo-Shu's four-part theory of the Chinese self, Hwang Kwang-Kwo's Mandala model of self, and Shiah Yung-Jong's Non-self-Theory. However, these models have a difficult time explaining the structure and development of the Chinese self in Chinese cultural background. After pondering over Chinese traditional culture and the Chinese self, inspired by the archetype of Taiji diagram, in this paper, we construct the Taiji Model of Self. The Taiji Model of Self can not only properly represent the Chinese self-structure, but also explain the growth course of the Chinese self and four kinds of life realms of Chinese people with satisfactory cultural and ecological validity.

Using original texts of Confucian and Taoist primary classics as materials, we conducted an eight-week educational intervention experiment combining classroom teaching and post-class reflection as cultural manipulation. Ninety-four sixth-grade students from three parallel mainstream classes were randomly assigned to three intervention groups, comprising two experimental groups (Confucian and Taoist values interventions) and a control group (natural science intervention). The results suggest that the Confucian intervention had a positive effect on interdependent self and holistic thinking, the Taoist intervention had a positive effect on independent self and holistic thinking, and the natural science intervention promoted analytical thinking.

Building on Habermas’s worldview, this paper attempts to construct a theory of wisdom that integrates the advantages of Eastern and Western cultures. To this end, we review previous definitions of wisdom and their problems and analyze the importance of worldview for wisdom. A worldview provided by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas is eminently persuasive. We argue that Habermas’s worldview provides a more suitable basis for a polycultural theory of wisdom. The specific components of the wisdom theory are: (1) a relationalist belief in the universal world; (2) transcendental agency in the subjective world; (3) intersubjective communication orientation in the social world; and (4) integrated principles of certainty and uncertainty in the objective world. Inspired by this theory, people could adopt different principles for their subjective, social, and objective worldviews and coordinate them to deal with the problems of human survival, which would also promote the long-term flourishing of human civilization.

Introduction: Social-emotional competence (SEC) plays a critical role in the personal and academic development of university students. However, there is a lack of culturally appropriate tools to assess SEC in Chinese populations. This study aimed to develop and validate Chinese versions of two established SEC measurements: the Social Emotional Competence Questionnaire (C-SECQ) and the Social-Emotional Learning Scale (C-SELS).Methods: Two studies were conducted using independent samples of Chinese university students. Study 1 (N = 195) involved preliminary psychometric evaluation, while Study 2 (N = 540) provided an independent validation. Both internal consistency and construct validity were examined for the C-SECQ. For the C-SELS, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted in Study 1, and the resulting model was tested in Study 2 for convergent and discriminant validity.Results: The C-SECQ demonstrated high internal consistency and strong construct validity across both samples, supporting its suitability for use in the Chinese context. In contrast, EFA of the C-SELS revealed a new three-factor structure: Emotional and Social Awareness, Goal Setting and Problem Solving, and Emotional Regulation and Responsibility. However, this revised model showed limited convergent and discriminant validity in Study 2, indicating insufficient psychometric support.Discussion: These findings support the C-SECQ as a reliable and valid tool for assessing SEC among Chinese university students. The study also highlights the challenges in adapting and validating the C-SELS, emphasizing the need for further refinement and cross-cultural validation. Overall, this research contributes to the development of context-appropriate SEL assessment tools in Chinese educational settings.

Anaphora is an essential means of maintaining textual coherence, the phenomenon of replacing one word or phrase in the preceding part of a discourse with another. At least two crucial stages are involved in anaphor processing: bonding and resolution. The links between the anaphor and potential antecedents are established in the former stage, which would be evaluated and integrated into the latter stage. We reviewed relevant event-related potential (ERP) studies that examined the time course of anaphor processing and neural oscillation studies that explored energy changes in alpha, theta, and gamma frequency bands, which were associated with attention, working memory retrieval, and integration, respectively. The existing neuroimaging studies revealed the involvement of language processing networks and the Theory of Mind (ToM). Further research should explore the neural correlates and the effects of potential factors on anaphor processing, which could help gain a more comprehensive picture from multiple perspectives.