Causal Attributions and Sex Differences Associated With Perceptions of Occupational Barriers

This study extends previous research addressing sex differences in perceived occupational barriers and evaluates the mediating role of causal attributions in the relationship between perceived occupational barriers and career maturity. Participants (85 women and 30 men) listed their perceived barriers to occupational goals, completed a measure of attributions for career decision making, and completed 2 different measures of career maturity. Findings revealed that a larger proportion of women than men perceived past barriers associated with family-related issues. Results also revealed a significant, negative relationship between the number of perceived occupational barriers and career maturity for participants who believe that career decision making is an externally caused, uncontrollable process. The implications of these findings and suggestions for career counselors to integrate perceived barriers into the counseling process are discussed.     

On Cheng Chung-Ying’s Bentiyong Onto-hermeneutics

The onto-hermeneutic approach to bentiyong 本体用 championed by Cheng Chung-Ying 成中英 is a valuable addition to comparative philosophy. In his well-honed reading, bentiyong is described as the continuous, integrative substance at the base of things, which becomes known through an ongoing hermeneutic integration and interpretation of reality. However, his use of the English word “substance” to describe bentiyong is problematic, mainly because substance, being without properties and existing without change, cannot be read as part of a hermeneutic process. Luckily, there are resources within the Chinese philosophical tradition that can help in overcoming some of the difficulties in translation presented here. Namely, the way that Zhu Xi 朱熹 approaches ti-yong as a principle (li 理) provides a better and more fittingly discursive basis for expressing the onto-hermeneutic character of bentiyong intended by Cheng, and allows English translation of the term with a firm footing in mainstream Neo-Confucianism.     

Editor's Comment

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Knowledge of word length does not constrain word identification

Use of word length for word identification was examined in three naming experiments and one sentence reading experiment in which a foveally presented cue either matched or mismatched the length of a subsequently presented target word. Properties of the target were also manipulated so that it was either a high- or low-frequency word or so that its exterior letters were either consistent with a large or small pool of candidate words. The experiments converged in showing that effects of prior word length cuing were either negligible or absent. The word frequency of the target influenced its recognition but not the lexical constraint of its exterior letters. Importantly, effects of target word properties did not interact with effects of prior target length cuing. Together, these results indicate that knowledge of a word's spatial properties does not constrain its lexical processing.     

Cognitive development following early brain injury: evidence for neural adaptation

Over the past few decades a large body of work from developmental neurobiology has shown that mammalian brain development is the product of dynamic and adaptive processes operating within highly constrained, but continually changing, biological and environmental contexts. The recent study of children with prenatal focal brain injury supports this dynamic view of development for humans. Children's injuries often affect substantial portions of one cerebral hemisphere, resulting in damage that would compromise cognitive ability in adults. However, longitudinal behavioral studies of this population have revealed only mild deficits. It is suggested here that children's capacity for adaptation reflects normal developmental processes operating against a backdrop of serious neural perturbation. Data from three behavioral domains--linguistics, spatial cognition and affective development--illustrate this complex profile of change.