Placing a text in context

Can readers accurately retrieve information about the context in which text comprehension occurs? If so, does their memory for context vary with their level of comprehension? Participants studied ambiguous passages in a high-knowledge or low-knowledge condition. They were then asked to remember the spatial location of individual sentences, the color of a border surrounding the passage, or the color of a shirt worn by the experimenter. Recall protocols were collected after participants answered the context question. Knowledge about the topic of the text facilitated both contextual retrieval and recall. Moreover, contextual retrieval and recall were correlated, primarily in the high-knowledge condition. The results suggest that personal experiences accompanying comprehension are encoded in memory along with text meaning and have implications for theories of source monitoring.     

Placing the perceptual-cognitive approach in perspective

Although some features of the "psychological approach" are compelling, its immediate impact as a theoretical framework appears to be limited by somewhat ambiguous key constructs and the lack of appropriate placement vis-a-vis extant conceptual views.     

Placing the Blame for crime in press reports

This study examined the attributions of responsibility contained in factual accounts of crime in a number of Canadian daily newspapers. The focus was upon the relative amount of coverage accorded crime suspects and victims, as well as upon the presence or absence of references to the victim's contribution to the offense. Also, examined were the effects of the type of crime involved and the gender of the parties to an offense upon offender/victim coverage and references to victim contribution.

As expected, offenders tended to receive greater coverage than victims. The coverage of the offender, relative to the victim, tended to be greatest when the offender was a male and a property, rather than violent crime was involved. The victim's gender did not exercise an effect on offender/victim coverage. In about one‐quarter of the articles, a mention was made of the victim's contribution to the offense. Such references to the victim's role were more likely to be found where the offender was a female, the victim a male and where the offense was violent in nature. These findings about the media portrayals of the respective roles in crime of offenders and victims, as well as the effects of the type of crime and gender on these roles, conformed, in large part, to what is known about the actual dynamics of criminal behavior.     

The vibrating nerve impulse in Newton,Willis and Gassendi: first steps in a mechanical theory of communication

In later editions of his two major works, Isaac Newton proposed an electrical hypothesis of nervous transmission. According to this hypothesis, an electrical aether permeates the nerve and transmits vibrations along it. This implies that the nerve is a communication line, and potentially, an extension of the mind. The opposite view was held by Cartesian mechanists, who taught that the nerve is a power line, transmitting either pressure or tension, and that the mind is separate from the nervous system. The Newtonian model eventually supplanted the Cartesian model in the mid 18th century, and became a crucial part of the conceptual environment in which neuroscience originated. In this paper I examine the scientific origins of the Newtonian model of nervous transmission. I argue that Newton's model relies on prior work by Thomas Willis and Pierre Gassendi. Willis supplied the anatomical and physiological "hard data" upon which the model was built. But Gassendi, a generation before, laid out the conceptual foundations of the problem, including the principle of impulse-transmission, and the corrolary principle of the muscle as an autonomous generator of force. I conclude that Gassendi's work has been undeservedly neglected as a turning-point in the history of neuroscience.     

Placing events in time: the role of autobiographical recollection

Episodic experience is argued to be rich in temporal information, but it remains unclear whether temporal information is directly coded in the event memory or is reconstructed at retrieval. The two experiments reported here emphasise the role of reconstructive processes of autobiographical context in establishing the date of memories. Younger and older participants were presented with famous public events, although only the latter had actually lived through them. Participants were asked to make forced-choice judgements about the date of the event and other event-related facts. Overall, while the older group showed better fact knowledge of the events, this did not translate into better dating performance. This older group showed similar dating performance across events with high and low factual knowledge. In contrast, the younger group's dating accuracy was determined by their level of knowledge. This suggests that older individuals who have direct episodic experience of an event may perform the task in a qualitatively different manner, eschewing semantic facts in favour of other sources of information. Crucially, this process does not appear to enhance performance. A second experiment addressed the issue of whether older participants date events based on general qualities of the event memory (e.g., vividness), the availability of other event-related semantic facts, or autobiographical context. It was found that the ability to place an event in autobiographical context is related to dating accuracy, but not to other aspects of memory.     

Placing Our Counseling Texts in Context: A Reply to Lyddon

Following Lyddon (1995), contextualist understandings of development, including dialectical change and cognitive construction, are distinguished from organismic perspectives on the basis of the distinction between formal and final causation. Life-span developmental and postmodern contextualist trends are offered as a viable framework for emerging counseling theories that seek to capture the diversity of human development.     

Placing the face in context: cultural differences in the perception of facial emotion

Two studies tested the hypothesis that in judging people's emotions from their facial expressions, Japanese, more than Westerners, incorporate information from the social context. In Study 1, participants viewed cartoons depicting a happy, sad, angry, or neutral person surrounded by other people expressing the same emotion as the central person or a different one. The surrounding people's emotions influenced Japanese but not Westerners' perceptions of the central person. These differences reflect differences in attention, as indicated by eye-tracking data (Study 2): Japanese looked at the surrounding people more than did Westerners. Previous findings on East-West differences in contextual sensitivity generalize to social contexts, suggesting that Westerners see emotions as individual feelings, whereas Japanese see them as inseparable from the feelings of the group.     

正确认识和对待"举证责任倒置"

“举证责任倒置”作为处理民事诉讼中的例外原则运用于医疗纠纷的处理必将对医患关系的根本好转提供有利的措施保证,如何认识和对待“举主责任倒置”是一个崭新的课题,就此,我们谈点不成熟的看法。     

Placing the mnemonic model in context: diagnostic, theoretical, and clinical considerations

The mnemonic model of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) proposed by D. C. Rubin, D. Berntsen, and M. K. Bohni presents some provocative and potentially insightful ideas about this mental disorder. D. C. Rubin et al. suggested that PTSD is caused and maintained through a "pathogenic memory" (D. C. Rubin et al., 2008, p. 985) of a negative event rather than by exposure to a traumatic event per se. The present authors examine the mnemonic model in the context of relevant diagnostic, theoretical, and clinical considerations. Specifically, to evaluate the arguments and evidence provided in support of the mnemonic model of PTSD, the present authors focus on 4 issues: (a) problems inherent with comparing a theoretical model (i.e., the mnemonic model) with a diagnostic model (i.e., the DSM-IV-TR model), (b) problems with not comparing the mnemonic model with relevant cognitive and memory models of PTSD, (c) problems with the degree to which the research reviewed provides support for the mnemonic model, and (d) concerns that memory in PTSD is confounded with the basic disorder, rather than causing PTSD. The present authors conclude with suggestions for future theory and research to help differentiate between memory's role in the origins of PTSD and memory's role in the clinical course of the disorder.     

Placing perceptions of politics in the context of the feedback environment, employee attitudes, and job performance

The authors proposed a model suggesting that organizational environments supporting high levels of informal supervisor and coworker feedback are associated with lower employee perceptions of organizational politics. Furthermore, these lowered perceptions of politics were proposed to result in higher employee morale (as reflected in job satisfaction and affective commitment) and, through morale, to higher levels of task performance and organizational citizenship. The proposed mediational model was supported with empirical results from 150 subordinate-supervisor dyads sampled across a variety of organizations. Higher quality feedback environments were associated with lower perceptions of organizational politics, and morale mediated the relationships between organizational politics and various aspects of work performance. These findings suggest that when employees have greater access to information regarding behaviors that are acceptable and desired at work, perceptions of politics are reduced and work outcomes are enhanced.     

Placing hope in self and others: Exploring the relationships among self-construals,locus of hope,and adjustment

Traditional hope theory is dominated by an individualistic assumption wherein the self is considered as the focal agent of goal attainment. However, in collectivist cultures more relational dimensions of hope also need to be considered. The locus of hope dimension (internal vs. external locus) was added to the traditional hope theory in order to capture both individualistic and collectivist types of hope. Hope could either be anchored on oneself (internal locus) or on significant others (external locus). External locus could further be divided into family, friends, and spiritual hope. There is still a dearth of research on the external locus of hope, with most of the previous studies focusing on the internal locus. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine how internal and external loci of hope could predict various indices of psychological adjustment. We also examined how individual differences in self-construals would predict locus of hope. Results among the Chinese university students indicated that independent self-construal was positively associated with the internal locus of hope, while interdependent self-construal was positively associated with the external locus of hope. Internal locus and external locus of hope related to family and friends were positively associated with adjustment, but spiritual hope was not. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.