Narrative comprehension in adults with right and left hemisphere brain-damage: theme organization.

The effects of delayed presentation of a central theme on the comprehension and interpretation of narratives were investigated in adults with right and left hemisphere brain-damage and normal individuals. The performance of subgroups of the subjects with right and left hemisphere brain-damage also was examined. Right hemisphere brain-damaged groups with anterior and posterior lesions were significantly less accurate and identified significantly fewer central themes when central theme presentation was delayed until the end of a narrative than when the theme was presented at the beginning. Subjects with anterior right hemisphere brain-damage produced significantly more embellishments and confabulations than subjects with posterior damage and non-brain-damaged controls, regardless of theme condition. The performance of non-brain-damaged subjects and subjects with fluent and nonfluent aphasia was unaffected by the organization of the central theme in the narratives.     

Moral paternalism,virtue, and autonomy

According to colour irrealism, material objects do not have colour; they only appear to have colour. The appeal of this view, prominent among philosophers and scientists alike, stems in large part from the conviction that scientific explanations of colour facts do not ascribe colour to material objects. To explain why objects appear to have colour, for instance, we need only appeal to surface reflectance properties, properties of light, the neurophysiology of observers, etc.

Typically attending colour irrealism is the error theory of ordinary colour judgement: ordinary judgements in which colour is ascribed to a material object are, strictly speaking, false. In this paper, I claim that colour irrealists who endorse the error theory cannot explain how we acquire colour concepts (yellow, green, etc.), concepts they must acknowledge we do possess. Our basic colour concepts, I argue, could not be phenomenal concepts that we acquire by attending to the colour properties of our experience. And, I explain, all other plausible explanations render colour concepts such that our ordinary colour judgements involving them are often true. Given the explanatory considerations upon which the irrealist's position is based, this is a severe problem for colour irrealism.     

Dialectics and practical wisdom

Dialectics is essentially the method or logos in which categories of forms are combined to explain things. Dialectics was developed because reason faces difficulties in grasping the sensible world. Practical wisdom is knowledge about some things or certain person or persons because of its variable objects. But it is not entirely specific or only about a particular thing and without universality in any sense. As one kind of dialectics, it combines various elements to accord with the right logos, similar to the way in which various forms are combined in theory. Therefore practical wisdom as a combination or polymerization of elements can be regarded as another kind of logic, namely practical logic or dialectics. __________ Translated from Zhexue Dongtai 哲学动态 (Philosophical Trends), 2005 (4) by Xie Yongkang     

Word comprehension and production asymmetries in children and adults

Two studies investigated differences in the comprehension and production of words in 2-year-old children and adults. Study 1 compared children’s speaking and understanding of the names of 12 novel objects presented over three weekly sessions. Study 2 tested adults’ performance under similar training and testing conditions over two sessions. The findings indicated a comprehension advantage for both age groups. A fine-grained temporal analysis of individual words revealed that acquisition does not resemble a linear stage-wise progression from comprehension to production. Rather, dimensions of lexical knowledge develop at different rates, with words acquired, lost, and maintained over the course of learning. The findings support a dynamic and graded view of lexical processing and have implications for understanding what it means to know a word.     

Contributions of emotion understanding to narrative comprehension in children and adults

This study examined to what extent children and adults differ in how they process negative emotions during reading, and how they rate their own and protagonists’ emotional states. Results show that both children’s and adults’ processing of target sentences was facilitated when they described negative emotions. Processing of spill-over sentences was facilitated for adults but inhibited for children, suggesting children needed additional time to process protagonists’ emotional states and integrate them into coherent mental representations. Children and adults were similar in their valence and arousal ratings as they rated protagonists’ emotional states as more negative and more intense than their own emotional states. However, they differed in that children rated their own emotional states as relatively neutral, whereas adults’ ratings of their own emotional states more closely matched the negative emotional states of the protagonists. This suggests a possible difference between children and adults in the mechanism underlying emotional inferencing.     

Three sources of wisdom of Chinese traditional virtue and a contemporary examination

There are three explanations of the sources of virtue in the history of Chinese traditional ethical thoughts. The first source is tian Dao (the Dao of Heaven) (natural), the second is xing Dao (the Dao of nature) (mind-nature), and the third is ren Dao (the Dao of human) (social). These explanations not only demonstrate the unique wisdom of ancient Chinese thinkers in constructing mortality, but also have special revelations for us to comprehend more accurately the Chinese traditional morality, to clear up the wrong ideas about morality that have formed since modern times, to make virtue ‘present’ instead of ‘latent’, and to construct a moral society. __________ Translated from Fujian Luntan 福建论坛 (Fujian Forum) (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition), 2005 (2) by Xi Liuqin & Peng Hua     

The effects of storage and processing complexity on comprehension repair in children and adults

In four experiments, the ability of young children (6 to 10 years of age) and college adults to repair a comprehension problem in situations varying repair difficulty was examined. The subjects were read short stories describing a consistent or inconsistent adult response to a child's action, and repair information that resolved or failed to resolve the inconsistency. The subjects were asked questions after each story to determine if they had detected and resolved the inconsistency. The repair information was manipulated as a means of varying the storage and prosessing complexity of integrating problem and repair information. The information was separated from or adjacent to the inconsistent response, before or after the response, and the relevancy of the repair information was obvious or only inferentially available. The results showed that even first graders can repair a comprehension problem in situations of minimal information processing complexity, and that increments in complexity affect the repair performance of younger more than older subjects.     

Profiles of wisdom among emerging adults: Associations with empathy,gratitude, and forgiveness

The objective of this cross-sectional study was to examine multidimensional profiles of wisdom among emerging adults. We expected individuals who displayed deeper perspective across multiple dimensions of wisdom to also report greatest adjustment in reports of empathy, gratitude, and forgiveness. Two hundred and sixty-three undergraduate students reported dispositional empathy, gratitude, and forgiveness. Participants also responded to situational vignettes concerning gratitude and forgiveness. Wisdom was measured by coding written advice to hypothetical dilemmas. Cluster analyses supported four wisdom profiles: ‘Procedure-Focused,’ emphasizing methods for addressing challenges; ‘Fact-Focused,’ accentuating factual knowledge; ‘Shallow Perspective,’ showing less perspective across all dimensions; and ‘Deep Perspective,’ showing greater perspective across all dimensions. Participants in the ‘Shallow Perspective’ profile reported less empathy than those in the ‘Deep Perspective’ and ‘Procedure-Focused’ profiles. There were no differences in gratitude and forgiveness across clusters. Results suggest that emerging adults who have more fully developed perspectives about life challenges show greater interpersonal strengths.     

Moral pedagogy and practical ethics

Online science and engineering ethics (SEE) education can support appropriate goals for SEE and the highly interactive pedagogy that attains those goals. Recent work in moral psychology suggests pedagogical goals for SEE education that are surprisingly similar to goals enunciated by several panels in SEE. Classroom-based interactive study of SEE cases is a suitable method to achieve these goals. Well-designed cases, with appropriate goals and structure can be easily adapted to courses that have online components. It is less clear that exclusively online methods can support the wide range of goals necessary to good moral pedagogy in SEE, though there seems no a priori reason to rule this out. Only careful, goal-based assessment of online case study SEE teaching can resolve this question.     

With age comes wisdom: decision making in younger and older adults

In two experiments, younger and older adults performed decision-making tasks in which reward values available were either independent of or dependent on the previous sequence of choices made. The choice-independent task involved learning and exploiting the options that gave the highest rewards on each trial. In this task, the stability of the expected reward for each option was not influenced by the previous choices participants made. The choice-dependent task involved learning how each choice influenced future rewards for two options and making the best decisions based on that knowledge. Younger adults performed better when rewards were independent of choice, whereas older adults performed better when rewards were dependent on choice. These findings suggest a fundamental difference in the way in which younger adults and older adults approach decision-making situations. We discuss the results in the context of prominent decision-making theories and offer possible explanations based on neurobiological and behavioral changes associated with aging.     

听障儿童错误信念理解与谎言理解的关系：情绪理解的调节作用

本研究主要探讨听障儿童自我/他人错误信念理解与谎言理解各层面的关系,以及情绪理解在其中的调节作用。实验1采用错误信念理解和谎言理解来探讨自我/他人错误信念理解与谎言理解各层面的关系。实验2增加了情绪理解任务,并探讨情绪理解在错误信念理解和谎言理解之间关系的机制。结果发现：（1）听障儿童他人错误信念理解、真假信息辨别、谎言意图理解的正确率显著不如典型发展儿童,且他人错误信念理解越好,越容易进行真假信息辨别和谎言意图理解;（2）典型发展儿童自我/他人错误信念理解越准确,谎言意图理解越好;（3）当听障儿童情绪理解得分较高时,自我/他人错误信念理解对谎言行为判断具有正向预测作用;（4）典型发展儿童情绪理解得分较高时,自我错误信念理解对真假信息辨别有正向预测作用,他人错误信念理解对谎言行为判断、真假信息辨别有正向预测作用。这些研究结果不仅表明听障儿童他人错误信念理解对谎言理解具有解释作用,而且表明高情绪理解在谎言理解中有促进作用以及表明高情绪理解在对错误信念理解与谎言理解中的调节作用更加显著。     

Viral videos and virtue: Moral elevation inductions shift affect and interpersonal goals in daily life

Laboratory studies suggest that witnessing virtuous acts triggers moral elevation, an emotion characterized by feeling uplifted and increased prosocial motives. However, it remains unknown whether regular inductions can increase elevation and prosocial motives in daily life without being vulnerable to habituation or adaptation effects. Participants (total N = 181) were randomly assigned to elevating vs. neutral or amusing inductions (video or recall tasks) for seven days (Study 1), ten days (Study 2), or 12 days over one month (Study 3). Multilevel growth models showed that relative to comparison conditions, elevation inductions increased daily elevation, positive affect, and prosocial outcomes (compassionate goals and affiliation), and decreased self-protective motives (self-image goals). Adaptation effects occurred for immediate responses when exercises occurred daily, but not when spaced out over time, and not for outcomes measured later each day. Results suggest benefits of brief, regular elevation experiences and have implications for interventions targeting specific emotions.