Concurrent drinking and smoking among college students: An event-level analysis

Cigarette smoking and drinking commonly co-occur among college students, a population that is at high risk for developing alcohol and nicotine use disorders. Several studies have been conducted that have examined predictors of drinking or smoking to gain a better understanding of the antecedents of engaging in these behaviors. Yet, few studies have examined specific factors that influence concurrent smoking and drinking in this population. The current study used data from a 21-day electronic diary-based study of college students (n=86) who engaged in concurrent drinking and smoking to examine event-level associations between alcohol use and cigarette smoking in the student's natural environment. We specifically focused on within-person analyses of contexts in which students reported smoking and drinking simultaneously in comparison to contexts in which students reporting drinking without smoking. Situational contexts included environmental setting, whether s/he was alone or with others, and changes in stress and urges to smoke before initiating drinking. Results indicated that students drank more while smoking and smoked three times as many cigarettes, on average, during drinking episodes. Being with others at a party or a bar was associated with increased odds of smoking while drinking. Likewise, increased stress since the prior assessment predicted a greater likelihood of smoking while drinking. Based on the findings from the present study, it is important for future prevention and intervention efforts to consider social settings and heightened stress among students as potential risk factors for engaging in concurrent drinking and smoking.     

Gender differences in children's arithmetic performance are accounted for by gender differences in language abilities

Studies have shown that female children, on average, consistently outperform male children in arithmetic. In the research reported here, 1,556 pupils (8 to 11 years of age) from urban and rural regions in the greater Beijing area completed 10 cognitive tasks. Results showed that girls outperformed boys in arithmetic tasks (i.e., simple subtraction, complex multiplication), as well as in numerosity-comparison, number-comparison, number-series-completion, choice reaction time, and word-rhyming tasks. Boys outperformed girls in a mental rotation task. Controlling for scores on the word-rhyming task eliminated gender differences in arithmetic, whereas controlling for scores on numerical-processing tasks (number comparison, numerosity estimation, numerosity comparison, and number-series completion) and general cognitive tasks (choice reaction time, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and mental rotation) did not. These results suggest that girls' advantage in arithmetic is likely due to their advantage in language processing.     

宗教界开展公益慈善事业问题研究

近年来,我国宗教界开展公益慈善事业受到广泛关注,其活动领域、机构注册、政策优惠等问题成为政界、学界、教界共同关注的焦点。本文主要探讨宗教界开展公益慈善事业时,如何正确处理与国民教育、社会福利之间的关系,对有宗教背景的公益慈善机构注册难、获得政策优惠难的原因进行了分析,并且对政府宗教工作部门今后进一步鼓励和规范宗教界开展公益慈善事业提出了意见和建议。     

青少年多维自我控制量表的编制及信效度检验

编制与多维自我控制理论相适应的,用于测量中国青少年多维自我控制的量表并检验其信、效度。通过查阅文献、专家评估等方式形成初测问卷; 以初中生和高中生为被试,选取1424名被试进行初测,681名被试正式施测。主动性自我控制量表包含情绪调节、目标维持和自我控制策略3个维度,抑制性自我控制量表包含注意力控制、冲动控制和情绪控制3个维度。两个量表均具有良好的结构效度、效标关联效度和信度。综上所述,青少年多维自我控制量表中的主动性、抑制性自我控制量表均符合测量学标准,可用于评估中国青少年的自我控制能力。     

Islamic Personal Religion and Moral Reasoning in Social Justice and Equality: The Evidence From Indonesian College Students

Researchers have long been concerned with the relationship between religion and social justice and equality. Hoping to understand this association at the individual level, researchers have taken on the psychological models of personal religion and Kohlberg's moral reasoning. This article extends this line of inquiry to Islam, using Muslim college and graduate students in Indonesia. Specifically, it explores the extent to which religious orientations and Islamic doctrinal orthodoxy relate to Kohlbergian principled reasoning in justice and equality. In view of the results, the Muslim respondents are skewed toward the nonprincipled mode of Kohlbergian moral reasoning. In addition, those with greater intrinsic religiosity are likely to respond in an increasingly principled manner to moral dilemmas, whereas personal extrinsic religiosity tends to increase conventional practice of moral reasoning. Quest religiosity and doctrinal orthodoxy have little to do with Kohlbergian principled reasoning. The implications of these findings are discussed by giving attention to the accent of personal mediation, Islam as a belief system, and congregational worship to principled reasoning in social justice.     

Suicidal ideation,affective lability,and religion in depressed adults

Suicidal ideation is a strong precursor to suicidal acts and like depression is complex with many risk and protective factors. The purpose of this study is to determine if affect lability, positive and negative religion/spirituality (RS) are related to suicidal ideation and if RS mediates the relationship between affect lability and suicidal ideation. RS are used synonymously to reflect a multidimensional construct. In this cross-sectional study of 183 depressed psychiatric patients, we confirm that depression and affective lability both contribute to suicidal ideation. Positive RS is associated with lower suicidal ideation. Negative RS is associated with higher suicidal ideation; however, this occurs through its association with affective lability. Affective lability and negative aspects of RS are two factors related to suicide ideation that could be addressed in the treatment of depressed patients.     

Learning about sounds contributes to learning about words: Effects of prosody and phonotactics on infant word learning

This research investigates how early learning about native language sound structure affects how infants associate sounds with meanings during word learning. Infants (19-month-olds) were presented with bisyllabic labels with high or low phonotactic probability (i.e., sequences of frequent or infrequent phonemes in English). The labels were produced with the predominant English trochaic (strong/weak) stress pattern or the less common iambic (weak/strong) pattern. Using the habituation-based Switch Task to test label learning, we found that infants readily learned high probability trochaic labels. However, they failed to learn low probability labels, regardless of stress, and failed to learn iambic labels, regardless of phonotactics. Thus, infants required support from both common phoneme sequences and a common stress pattern to map the labels to objects. These findings demonstrate that early word learning is shaped by prior knowledge of native language phonological regularities and provide support for the role of statistical learning in language acquisition.     

Dissolving an epistemological puzzle of time perception

Robin Le Poidevin (2007) claims that we do form perceptual beliefs regarding order and duration based on our perception of events, but neither order nor duration are by themselves objects of perception. Temporal properties are discernible only when one first perceives their bearers, and temporal relations are discernible only when one first perceives their relata. The epistemic issue remains as to whether or not our perceptual beliefs about order and duration are formed on the causal basis of an event’s objective order and duration. Le Poidevin raises this issue in the form of an epistemological puzzle of time perception, from which he derives the claim that the order and duration of events do not causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them. Since his view is motivated by a causal truthmaker principle for grounding knowledge, it also holds that perceptual beliefs about temporal features must be caused by the features themselves in order to count as knowledge. Given these theoretical commitments, there is a puzzle concerning how such perceptual beliefs could constitute knowledge of temporal properties. In response to Le Poidevin, I argue for an account according to which order and duration are objects of perception, causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them, and such beliefs are capable of counting as knowledge. I conclude by showing that, on my alternative account, the epistemological puzzle dissolves and his own solution to it fails.     

The relationship between DRM and misinformation false memories

This research investigated the relationship between false memories induced by two different paradigms (misinformation and Deese–Roediger–McDermott [DRM]). The misinformation effect refers to the phenomenon that a person’s recollection of a witnessed event can be altered after exposure to misleading information about the event. DRM false memory represents the intrusion of words that are semantically related but not actually presented in the study session. Subjects (N = 432) completed both misinformation and DRM false memory tests. Results showed a small but significant correlation (r = .12, p = .02) between the misinformation and DRM false memories. Furthermore, using signal detection theory, we found that the discrimination ability index (d′) was related to both the misinformation and DRM false memories (r = ?.12 and ?.13, p = .01), while the response bias was related only to DRM false memory (r = ?.46, p < .001). These results suggest that misinformation and DRM false memories generally involve different mechanisms and that their shared mechanism may involve the global discrimination ability.     

Sibling association and occupational interests

The effect of the composition and size of family on the subject and career interests of girls of above-average ability in a secondary school were examined. The main finding was that girls with order brothers or from larger families tend to express artistic occupational interests. This is explained in terms of the family socialisation theories of Parsons and Bales.