Social cognitive predictors of academic persistence and performance in engineering: Applicability across gender and race/ethnicity

We examined the utility of social cognitive variables in the longitudinal prediction of academic persistence and success of engineering students. The participants, 908 students enrolled in engineering majors at two state universities, completed measures of academic support, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, interests, satisfaction, positive affect, and intended persistence at the end of each of their first four semesters. In the current study, students' first and second semester responses were used to predict persistence and grade performance in engineering by the end of six semesters. Path analytic findings indicated that second-semester persistence intentions, satisfaction with the major, self-efficacy, and social support each produced direct paths to persistence. Objective ability (mathematics SAT scores), outcome expectations, and interests were linked to persistence indirectly via their relations to other variables in the model. In addition, self-efficacy and objective ability jointly predicted grade performance. Results were stable across gender and racial/ethnic groups. Implications for research and practice on academic adjustment in engineering are considered.     

Physicalism and neo-Lockeanism about persons

The central objection to neo-Lockeanism about persons (NLP) is the too many thinkers problem: NLP ends up with an absurd multiplication of thinkers. Sydney Shoemaker attempts to solve this problem by arguing that the person and the animal do not share all of the same physical properties. This, according to him, leads to the idea that mental properties are realized in the person’s physical properties only. The project of this paper is to reject Shoemaker’s physicalist solution to the too many thinkers problem. I first argue that his physicalism fails to explain why two physically indistinguishable objects differ in their persistence conditions and physical properties. I then argue that Shoemaker illicitly treats the case of the person and the case of the animal differently, first in regard to cerebral function and its relation to mental properties, and second in regard to brainstem function and its relation to biological properties. This shows that Shoemaker’s solution actually undermines his entire argument.     

Increasing toughness by promoting discontinuous precipitation in Cu–Ni–Si alloys

The influence of precipitation morphology, including continuous precipitation (CP) and discontinuous precipitation (DP), on the mechanical behaviour of Cu–Ni–Si alloys was studied. The Cu–6Ni–1.5Si (in wt%) alloy was solution heat treated at 980 °C for 2 h and aged at 500 °C for 0.5 and 3 h to produce CP and DP structures. The DP specimen showed an abnormal increase in tensile ductility with increasing strain rate, unlike the CP counterpart. The impact toughness of the DP specimen was 1.6 times greater than that of CP specimen. The fracture mode in DP specimen was mostly dimpled rupture, while the mixed mode of cleavage fracture and dimpled rupture was noted on the CP specimen.     

Suicide Risk Among Wounded U.S. Service Members

The association between suicide and combat injuries sustained during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was examined. A retrospective population‐based cohort design was conducted using official military records to identify combat injuries (October 7, 2001, to December 31, 2007). Those who were injured during combat had higher crude suicide rates than those who deployed and were not injured (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 1.50; confidence interval [CI] = 1.06, 2.12), or never deployed (IRR = 1.46; CI = 1.04, 2.06). After adjusting for demographics, these findings were no longer statistically significant. Although our data did not support an elevated suicide risk among wounded service members, additional research is needed to examine the impact of injury severity.     

Effects of workshop trainings on evidence-based practice knowledge and attitudes among youth community mental health providers

Enhancing the public health impact of evidence-based practices (EBPs) in usual care settings is a key priority of the National Institute of Mental Health. Longitudinal data from community mental health providers (N = 268) participating in a series of state-sponsored workshops in modular approaches to EBPs for youth are presented. EBP workshop attendance for youth anxiety resulted in increased knowledge for EBPs for anxiety (and not other conditions) and EBP workshop attendance for youth disruptive behaviors resulted in increased knowledge for EBPs for disruptive behaviors (and not other conditions). Providers' tendencies toward incorrectly classifying non-EBP therapies as evidence-based increased over time, suggesting that providers over-generalize the EBP label as a result of attending these types of workshops. Regarding EBP attitudes, most measures of attitudes improved when providers attended a workshop. Additionally, an overly inclusive view of what constitutes an EBP at intake was related to significant decreases in openness to trying EBPs over time, whereas more positive attitudes at intake was related to achieving a more refined view of what constitutes an EBP over the course of attending trainings. Study limitations and implications for implementation of EBPs in usual care settings are discussed.     

Curvature and the visual perception of shape: theory on information along object boundaries and the minima rule revisited

Previous empirical studies have shown that information along visual contours is known to be concentrated in regions of high magnitude of curvature, and, for closed contours, segments of negative curvature (i.e., concave segments) carry greater perceptual relevance than corresponding regions of positive curvature (i.e., convex segments). Lately, Feldman and Singh (2005, Psychological Review, 112, 243-252) proposed a mathematical derivation to yield information content as a function of curvature along a contour. Here, we highlight several fundamental errors in their derivation and in its associated implementation, which are problematic in both mathematical and psychological senses. Instead, we propose an alternative mathematical formulation for information measure of contour curvature that addresses these issues. Additionally, unlike in previous work, we extend this approach to 3-dimensional (3D) shape by providing a formal measure of information content for surface curvature and outline a modified version of the minima rule relating to part segmentation using curvature in 3D shape.     

Impaired categorical perception of lexical tones in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

The degree to which cognitive resources are shared in the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones remains uncertain. Testing Mandarin amusics on their categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones may provide insight into this issue. In the present study, a group of 15 amusic Mandarin speakers identified and discriminated Mandarin tones presented as continua in separate blocks. The tonal continua employed were from a high-level tone to a mid-rising tone and from a high-level tone to a high-falling tone. The two tonal continua were made in the contexts of natural speech and of nonlinguistic analogues. In contrast to the controls, the participants with amusia showed no improvement for discrimination pairs that crossed the classification boundary for either speech or nonlinguistic analogues, indicating a lack of categorical perception. The lack of categorical perception of Mandarin tones in the amusic group shows that the pitch deficits in amusics may be domain-general, and this suggests that the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones may share certain cognitive resources and/or processes (Patel 2003, 2008, 2012).