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Authors
Chen, Xuanshu
Chen, Jiaxuan
Pan, Xindi
Zhang, Xiaojun
Feng, Shiwen
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Funding
Funding for this research was provided by:
Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX25_3642)
Ministry of Education China Social Sciences and Humanities Fund (24YJE740001)
China National Social Sciences Funding (23AYY013)
Jiangsu Major Research Projects in Philosophy and Social Sciences at Higher Education Institutions (2023SJZD110)
the PAPD of Jiangsu Normal University.
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Article History
Received: 18 April 2025
Accepted: 6 April 2026
First Online: 17 April 2026
Competing interests
: The authors declare no competing interests.
: This study received ethical approval from the Special Committee on Research Ethics of the Academic Committee at Jiangsu Normal University (Approval No.: JSNU-H2025XM-002) in January 17, 2025. It was conducted in strict compliance with international ethical guidelines, including the Declaration of Helsinki. This ensured the standards of participant protection and research integrity. Prior to the experiment, the principal investigator provided all participants (48 undergraduate students and 42 elderly individuals aged over 60) with written informed consent. From January 2025 to March 2025, the research team conducted the informed consent process to ensure that the informed consent form is carefully read and signed by each participant. This procedure was jointly administered by one lead researcher and two research assistants certified in ethics training. Participants were informed that the study aimed to “investigate the cognitive relevance of language descriptive abilities” and explicitly agreed to the following: i. Audio recording during image description tasks; ii. Utilization of anonymized data for academic publications and conference presentations; iii. Exclusive access to raw audio files by authorized research team members, which would be stored on locally encrypted hard drives. For participants aged above 60, additional protective measures were implemented to safeguard their rights and well-being: i. Verification of their full civil capacity was carried out to ensure they could make autonomous decisions; ii. A detailed verbal explanation was given prior to the experiment to ensure they had a comprehensive understanding of the study objectives and data handling procedures; iii. A 72-h cooling-off period was set, enabling participants to withdraw their consent unconditionally via telephone within 3 days of signing the consent form. This multi-tiered approach underscores our commitment to ethical research practices, particularly when involving vulnerable populations.
: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
