Burnout and duration of service among Chinese voluntary workers

A survey study conducted among 226 Chinese voluntary workers in Hong Kong showed that satisfaction with voluntary work, integration into the voluntary institution, and burnout syndromes contributed to volunteers' expected duration of service. Regression analyses also showed that different sets of variables predicted different spans of expected duration of service. Work satisfaction was the most salient predictor for expected duration of service from six months to ten years. Lack of personal accomplishment predicted expected duration of service for six to twelve months, whereas emotional exhaustion and depersonalization influenced volunteers' expectation to continue in the service for five to ten years.     

Neonatal exposure to novel environment enhances hippocampal-dependent memory function during infancy and adulthood

Early life experience affects behavior and brain mechanisms. Handling rats during the first three weeks in life can slow age-related cognitive decline (as measured by a hippocampal-dependent spatial learning task) and reduce age-related hippocampal neuron loss. It is not clear, however, whether this early environmental influence on learning is selective for old age or is more general, affecting cognitive development during infancy and young adulthood as well. We briefly exposed neonatal rats to a novel non-home environment for 3 min daily during the first three weeks of life (as a component of the handling method). We found that this brief early environmental manipulation resulted in enhanced hippocampal-dependent learning immediately after weaning and that this learning enhancement persisted into adulthood. These results suggest that subtle early life events can affect cognitive development in all developmental stages and that changes in neural mechanisms other than neuron number are likely to mediate the learning enhancement at multiple developmental stages.     

Neural correlates of establishing, maintaining, and switching brain states

Although the study of brain states is an old one in neuroscience, there has been growing interest in brain state specification owing to MRI studies tracing brain connectivity at rest. In this review, we summarize recent research on three relatively well-described brain states: the resting, alert, and meditation states. We explore the neural correlates of maintaining a state or switching between states, and argue that the anterior cingulate cortex and striatum play a critical role in state maintenance, whereas the insula has a major role in switching between states. Brain state may serve as a predictor of performance in a variety of perceptual, memory, and problem solving tasks. Thus, understanding brain states is critical for understanding human performance.     

Effects of antecedent order and semantic context on Chinese pronoun resolution

Three reading time experiments were conducted in order to examine the relative contributions of order of antecedents and semantic context to the resolution of temporarily ambiguous Chinese pronouns. These pronouns were ambiguous because each of them was preceded by two antecedents, both of which were likely candidates for coreference. The identity of the pronoun was revealed by subsequent disambiguating information that constrained the pronoun to one particular interpretation. Experiment 1 showed that reading of the disambiguating phrase was slower when the phrase confined the pronoun to the second rather than to the first antecedent. Experiment 2 produced the same effect of antecedent order (first vs. second antecedent) regardless of whether the target antecedent was an action-performing or an action-receiving entity. In Experiment 3, the order effect was eliminated by a biasing modifier inserted immediately before the pronoun. These results indicate that in a semantically neutral environment, the first-appearing antecedent is the preferred candidate for coreferencing the ambiguous Chinese pronoun. The interaction between order of antecedents and semantic context (in the form of preposed biasing modifiers) suggests that the initial comprehension of Chinese pronouns depends as much on contextual as on structural factors.