Death in Contemporary Western Culture

As a Christian priest and minister, I have inevitably taken responsibility for getting to know a wide variety of families as they faced the dying or death of a relative, and in the majority of cases I have not previously known the family. Unlike many other occasions for pastoral contact, the encounter with death has meant that I have met families when they are ready to be very open and honest about their feelings. In this paper, beginning with reference to a contemporary film, I explore the question of the concept of death in Western culture today. I am particularly indebted to Grace Jantzen for shaping a key question: Is it necrophilia or necrophobia that best describes the attitude of Western culture to death? I shall examine these two particular lines of thinking prior to offering some reflections on ways in which the Christian tradition approaches the subject.     

心理学史教学与人才培养模式的改革

心理学史教学应成为大学心理学专业本科生的必修课,对于开启学生的心智和提高心理学理论素养具有其他课程所不可替代的重要作用。心理学史教学要探询古代心理学思想家的心灵智慧,把他们的思想活化,与我们进行心灵的对话。要通过与学生的思想交流,使师生之间就某些学术问题展开讨论,做到相互启迪,教学相长。心理学史教学的改革要加强学生哲学功底的培养,加强中西方思想的融合贯通,加强历史与现实的联系,有目的地培养心理学专业的理论人才。     

重复学习判断中的低自信效应

学习判断是元认知判断的一种重要形式,是对未来回忆成绩的预测。重复学习判断中的低自信效应是一个有趣而反常的现象,指在重复学习测验中,学习判断往往低估了回忆成绩的增加,出现低自信的一种现象。目前,大部分实验证据支持重复学习判断中的低自信效应是普遍存在的,但也有一些实验结果表明该效应是受一定条件限制的。对于这种低自信效应的作用机制,研究者提出了不同的理论模型（如,锚定调整假说、记忆偏向消除理论、过去测验记忆的启发式假说等）进行了深入探讨。最后,文章还指出了此领域现有研究的局限和有待研究的问题     

预期如何影响人们对不愉快事件的体验?

本研究以味觉和痛觉两种感觉通道的体验为对象,探讨预期效价和预期信心如何影响知觉体验的结果及其作用机制。通过基于味觉和痛觉的两个实验,发现预期会影响即时知觉体验,并且预期信心在其中起到调节作用——对预期充满信心时,即时体验和对结果的预期保持一致,预期越积极即时体验越好,预期越消极即时体验越差;而对预期缺乏信心时,即时体验和预期之间呈现背离趋势,预期越积极即时体验越差,预期越消极即时体验则越好。研究结果阐明了预期影响即时体验的机制,对我们理解身心关系也具有重要的理论意义。     

Photography as unconcealment: revisiting the idea of photographic transparency

What distinguishes photography from other visual mediums? This deceptively simple but fundamental question has been at the centre of both past and current debates on the aesthetics of photography for quite some time. In this article, I will first address the premise that this question is intrinsically ontological and unfolded in pioneering debates as a sequence of implications about photographic indexicality. I will then argue that the ontological implications of photographic indexicality have been largely overlooked in subsequent research due to scholars’ concerns with how photography appears to us rather than what photography is in itself. To this end, I will specifically examine Kendall Walton's highly contested transparency thesis and some of its rebuttals, which have exerted a sprawling influence on debates on the aesthetics of photography. I will also argue that, having been exceedingly implicit in his account, what appears as indexicality to Walton and the implications thereof with respect to the transparency argument has operated on a phenomenological level; thus, the thesis itself has failed in instances in which the problem of representation and the very existence of the medium come into play. Finally, I will suggest that indexicality can be regarded as a distinctive feature of photography only when it is considered a predicate of transparency as an interstice of ‘unconcealment’ in the Heideggerian sense that would call into question the very existence of the representation and the photographic medium.     

拓扑几何在知觉组织与空间概念形成中的运用

陈霖的拓扑知觉理论运用几何性质解释知觉组织,并强调拓扑性质的优先性——拓扑知觉是其他几何知觉的基础,拓扑知觉先于其他几何知觉发生。皮亚杰的拓扑首位理论认为儿童的空间概念发展顺序为先发展拓扑几何概念,之后再发展射影与欧式几何概念。两大理论都运用拓扑性质来解释心理现象,其研究对象、研究方法存在很大不同,但它们在理论结构上具有高度一致性,对几何学在心理学上的运用有非常重要的启示意义。     

婚恋关系中的相似性匹配及争议

婚恋匹配涉及身体特征、社会人口统计学特征、个性心理等方面,有相似性匹配和互补性匹配两种假说,但相似匹配的证据远多于互补。针对感知相似与实际相似的作用、相似性匹配与婚恋质量的关系、以及相似匹配的优势地位与适宜性等争议,分析了导致相似性匹配争议的原因。未来应致力于深化研究内容以建立婚恋匹配理论模型,实现测评方法的多样化、测量指标和工具的科学化,确保相似性计算和统计分析方法的严谨性,并加强婚恋匹配的本土化和跨文化研究。     

Youth mentoring: The American Dream comes to the UK?

This paper examines the ways in which the North American experience has influenced youth mentoring programmes in the UK and focuses on the theoretical assumptions about young people which have underpinned mentoring interventions. A more critical approach to this North American 'legacy' is required if the value of this form of intervention is to be accurately assessed. The paper argues that an over-reliance by mentoring interventions on developmental paradigms has curtailed their capacity to take account of the wider social context in which young people are making their transitions to adulthood. It is suggested that alternative theoretical frameworks which address the complexity and multiplicity of youth transitions hold more promise for understanding and theorising the role of mentoring in the UK setting. A recent Scottish study of informal mentoring processes attempted to open up these theoretical possibilities by using a framework which recognised young people as active participants and agents. This study revealed that a range of models of mentoring may be in place within informal mentoring relationships. The paper argues that findings from this study demonstrated a need for a more critical approach to the 'classic notion' of mentoring as exclusively a one to one relationship between an adult and a young person. Since mentoring is now a highly popular form of intervention with 'socially excluded' young people these questions about the theoretical base for the concept require urgent attention.     

文本阅读双加工理论与实验证据

文本阅读信息加工过程研究一直是国内外心理学界高度重视和关注的领域, 形成了建构主义理论、最低限度假设理论和记忆基础文本加工理论等派别百家争鸣的局面。这些理论争议的焦点在于自然阅读是主动的、积极的、目标策略驱动的过程, 还是被动的、消极的、自动的过程。在全面总结国内外心理学界有关文本阅读的研究成果的基础上, 文本阅读双加工理论提出并对文本阅读的主要争议进行了整合。该理论的核心观点是文本的自然阅读过程是连贯阅读与焦点阅读的双加工过程。文本阅读中读者所阅读的材料特点不同, 引发的阅读信息加工活动也不同, 而不同性质的阅读过程, 又会引发不同的推理整合, 从而会建构不同类型的文本表征。文本阅读双加工理论已经形成了比较完整的理论框架, 并获得了很多实验证据的支持。当然, 文本阅读双加工理论作为一个新的理论, 其中的有些观点还需要进一步检验。在未来的文本阅读研究领域, 有很多问题还需要研究者进一步关注。     

The effects of practice with one positive set in a memory scanning task can be completely transferred to a different positive set

Recognition tasks in which the items have been assigned to one and only to one response category throughout an experiment typically reveal that the functions relating reaction time and positive set size are negatively accelerated and have slopes which decrease significantly with practice. The present experiments were designed to determine whether this practice effect is specific to the individual items practiced or if it depends, at least partially, on relations built up among the positive set items. The results permit rejection of both alternatives. In the extreme case tested, it was found that, after prolonged practice with the same items composing nested positive sets, these items could be replaced with unpracticed ones without producingany significant change in the effect of set size, reaction times, or error levels. Absence of change in overall reaction times in combination with stability of slope values leads to the conclusion that not only do those practice effects which are related to the set-size effect transfer exceedingly well to unpracticed items, but practice effects on all other stages involved in item recognition also show almost total transfer to unpracticed items. It is concluded that, under the conditions of these experiments, the gain (through practice) in efficiency in processing the stimulus is independent of the stimulus.     

The hyperactive child at adolescence: Cognitive,emotional, and social functioning

In view of the paucity of detailed followup studies on hyperactive children, the performance of 15 adolescents diagnosed hyperactive 5 years previously was compared to that of a control group of equivalent age, sex, intelligence, and social class. Eleven cognitive tests measuring sustained attention, visual-motor and motor skills, abstraction, and reading ability, as well as three self-assessment tests examining selfesteem, activity level, social functioning, academic status, and career aspirations were administered. The hyperactives performed significantly worse than the controls on the sustained attention, visualmotor, and motor tasks, and on two of the four reading tests. They also gave themselves significantly lower ratings on some of the selfesteem and sociability items. It would appear that the hyperactives at adolescence still have attentional and stimulus-processing difficulties, which affect not only their academic performance but also their social functioning.This study was supported by a Federal-Provincial Mental Health Grant to Dr. G. Weiss. The authors wish to thank Katherine Levine and Margaret Radigan for their assistance with test preparation and scoring. Thanks are also extended to Ken MacRae for his computer-processing advice, particularly his help with several multivariate and principal components analyses from which the present authors have derived their current theoretical position. Klaus Minde and Nancy Cohen are now at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, while Elizabeth Hoy is at the Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.     

The development of psychotherapists' theoretical orientation and clinical practice

There is a growing recognition on the part of psychotherapy researchers of the importance of studying therapist variables, recognising that they have a sizeable influence on both therapeutic process and outcome. A model of the development of therapists' theoretical orientation and clinical practice is outlined, based on the integration of data from 161 Portuguese therapists with the extant literature. The selection of initial orientation is addressed, showing that, regarding this choice, therapists from different persuasions appear to emphasise different variables. In terms of changes in the initial theoretical orientation, it seems not only that 'clinical experience' plays a central role, but also that therapists subscribing to different orientations may find different solutions to their theoretical development. Implications and suggestions for improving training are oudined.     

不合规任务与工作拖延行为的关系：自我损耗和主动性人格的作用

工作拖延行为是当今职场人士面临的普遍困扰之一。基于资源保存理论,本研究从不合规任务视角探究工作拖延行为的成因。对196位员工的两时点调查数据进行层次回归分析,结果表明：不合规任务正向预测员工工作拖延行为,自我损耗在不合规任务与工作拖延行为之间起着中介作用,主动性人格负向调节不合规任务与自我损耗的正向关系以及自我损耗的中介效应。以上结果对预防或降低工作拖延行为具有启发意义。     

The role of death romanticization in the dynamics of suicide

Suicide is an emotional, complex event, the causes of which are not well understood. Hence, the subject of suicide cannot be adequately treated in an objective, simplified, scientific discussion without ignoring its essentially personal nature. In an attempt to add some insights into the personal dimension of suicide to analytical theory considered in the following pages, subjective, spontaneous thoughts, both philosophical and indulgingly emotional, have been included. The subjective thoughts have been separated from the theoretical discussions and will be found in the sections labeled with a letter a (e.g., iii a and v a) following the theory sections to which they most closely relate. A reading of these extra sections is extraneous to the understanding of the suicidal theory presented here, and they have been included only for the reader's interest.     

The Influence of Social Comparison Situations on Individual Task Performance: Experimental Illustrations

In the past ten or so years, numerous experiments have been conducted to illustrate the intervention of social regulations in cognitive functioning (e.g., social coordination, sociocognitive conflict, and social marking). However, in that way, social comparison processes have not received any extended theoretical and empirical attention. Several experimental results are reported here in an attempt to show that the social conditions, in particular personal and categorical comparison situations, in which subjects are led to perform memory and problem-solving tasks constitute a determining factor in their cognitive performances. The discussion presents some new theoretical prospects for the study of social regulations of cognitive functioning.     

Cultivating the Opinionated: The Need to Evaluate Moderates the Relationship Between Crime Drama Viewing and Scary World Evaluations

The literature on cultivation processes assumes that second‐order judgments (e.g., attitudes) are repeatedly updated during viewing (i.e., on‐line) and can be reported when asked. In this article, we propose this reasoning only holds for people high in their need to evaluate (NTE). Low‐NTE individuals do not update their opinions on‐line and have to construct their attitudes memory‐based, limiting the likelihood of finding second‐order relationships. Results from a cross‐sectional survey among 226 adolescents indicate that crime drama viewing and scary world beliefs are only correlated among high‐NTE individuals. NTE does not moderate cultivation through nonfiction. The theoretical implications of memory‐based attitudes for second‐order cultivation are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research on attitudinal media effects.     

Hume’s definitions of ‘Cause’: Without idealizations,within the bounds of science

Interpreters have found it exceedingly difficult to understand how Hume could be right in claiming that his two definitions of ‘cause’ are essentially the same. As J. A. Robinson points out, the definitions do not even seem to be extensionally equivalent. Don Garrett offers an influential solution to this interpretative problem, one that attributes to Hume the reliance on an ideal observer. I argue that the theoretical need for an ideal observer stems from an idealized concept of definition, which many interpreters, including Garrett, attribute to Hume. I argue that this idealized concept of definition indeed demands an unlimited or infinite ideal observer. But there is substantial textual evidence indicating that Hume disallows the employment of idealizations in general in the sciences. Thus Hume would reject the idealized concept of definition and its corresponding ideal observer. I then put forward an expert-relative reading of Hume’s definitions of ‘cause’, which also renders both definitions extensionally equivalent. On the expert-relative reading, the meaning of ‘cause’ changes with better observations and experiments, but it also allows Humean definitions to play important roles within our normative practices. Finally, I consider and reject Henry Allison’s argument that idealized definitions and their corresponding infinite minds are necessary for expert reflection on the limitations of current science.     

复杂性理论在心理学研究中的价值

复杂性哲学和复杂性研究为科学研究开辟了一条蹊径,使得人们能够以一种全新的、复杂性的视角来重新认识他们所“熟知、熟悉”的人类世界。复杂性理论的世界观为当前心理学的转向提供了理论支持,而且它的一些具体的研究方法如“黑箱”的方法以及功能模拟方法已经在心理学研究中体现出其价值。可以说,复杂性理论为心理学摆脱当前困境及实现整合开启了一扇光明之门。     

The Dangers of Pragmatic Virtue

Many people want to hold that some theoretical virtues—simplicity, elegance, familiarity or others—are only pragmatic virtues. That is, these features do not give us any more reason to think a theory is true, or close to true, but they justify choosing one theoretical option over another because they are desirable for some other, practical purpose. Using pragmatic virtues in theory choice apparently brings with it a dilemma: if we are deciding what to accept on the basis of considerations that are not truth-conducive, it looks like we should either refrain from believing what we accept, and adopt some sort of instrumentalist attitude to the theories we cherish; or alternatively, we stand charged with engaging in theoretical irrationality in our belief formation. This paper discusses the appropriate response to this dilemma.